Tamegroute is a village located in the Draa River valley in southern Morocco. It historically served as a hub of learning and religion through its famous Sufizawiya. This was a historical center of the Nasiriyya order, one of the most influential Sufi orders in the Islamic world. Tamegroute's glazed ceramics are also very well known.
Climate
Zawiya Nasiriyya/Naciria
Tamegroute has been a religious center since the 11th century. The Nasiriyya zawiya was founded in the 17th century as the seat of the religious brotherhood of the Nasiriyya. Tamegroute had a religious school made famous by Abu Hafs Umar b. Ahmed al Ansari in 1575–76. The Nasiriyya order took its name from founder Sidi Muhammad bin Nasir al-Drawi, who took over teaching at the Tamegroute zawiya in the 1640s. Since that time the leaders of the zawiya have been descendants of bin Nasir without interruption from father to son until the present day. Sidi Muhammad bin Nasir was a theologian, scholar and physician, especially interested in mental disorders. He wrote several works of fikh, some poetry, and hundreds of letters and treatises on Islamic law. He followed and extended the teachings of Shadhili and under his leadership the Nasiriyya became the 'mother'zawiya' of Sufi islam in the Maghreb with several branches in different parts of the country, including the zawiya of Irazan in the Sous valley where 500 students were financed by the brotherhood. He was succeeded by his son Ahmad who made six pilgrimages to Mecca and made each of these pilgrimages into a journey of several years. Sidi Ahmad bin Nasir traveled to Ethiopia, Arabia, Egypt, Iraq and Persia. During his travels he took the opportunity of establishing new branches of the Sufi brotherhood. He wrote a voluminous series of memoirs of his journeys called the Rihla and he brought back numerous works from all parts of the Islamic world. The brotherhood decided, already in the 17th century to found a university of the Quran. That university received, right from the beginning, more than 1500 students from countries in the Middle-East and West Africa. When Ahmad bin Nasir died, the library of Tamegroute, with its thousands of manuscripts was one of the richest of North Africa. Some fine examples of the collection of manuscripts are still on display in the zawiya today and attract many tourists from Morocco and abroad. Among them are a 14th-century Quran with beautiful calligraphy in Kufic script, writings of Avicenna, Ibn Rushd, El Khwarizmi, a translation of Pythagoras, treatises on theology, astronomy, geography and pharmacology. Later sheikhs of the Sufi brotherhood of the Nasiriyya also played an important role as religious and cultural leaders and teachers of the Sufi doctrine. The 19thsheikhAbu Bekr is well-known, in the Draa valley and in the west through his encounters with the travelers Gerhard Rohlfs and Charles de Foucauld. The graves of eight marabouts attract the visit of patients from all parts of the country, some of which remain in Tamegroute for months and sometimes even for years, hoping for healing and redemption by the baraka of the Nasiriyya. In order to view the books at the library, a permit must be obtained from the Moroccan government, which allows you to handle the books inside the library only. The books collected by Ali Ben include texts on medicine, Qu'ranic learning and astrology, as well as mathematics and the sciences. The building of the zawiya, as it stands now with its green tiles, dates from 1869, when it was rebuilt after a fire.
The founders of the religious brotherhood Nasiriyya wanted to raise the status of the village of Tamegroute to that of a "Medina", that is to say to make it a city. They assembled the merchants and craftsmen that they had brought from Fes, a city that enjoyed good relations with Tamegroute at the time. However, today Tamegroute is a little village again, but the pottery has become its main characteristic. Except for a few ochre shades, a green glaze is the dominant colour in pottery from Tamegroute. As with Fes Zelliges, and even more so, the ancient techniques give the glaze infinite variations.
Local institutions
The outdoor weekly market is held on Saturdays in the city center, where you can admire all kinds of pottery
In the 17th century the famous Shilha poet, Muhammad Awzal, found sanctuary in Tamegroute. His first work in Berber al-Hawd was written here. His last work An-Nasiha, is an ode in praise of Sidi Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Nasir, Awzal's spiritual guide and grand master of the Nasiriyya Sufi order, probably inspired as a funeral eulogy by his death, around 1717. Another famous inhabitant of Tamegroute was Sidi Ahmad al-Tijani who joined the order of the Nasiriyya before establishing his own brotherhood.
Tamegroute was the place of birth of one of the most important officials of the Saadian court, the author and ambassador Abu-l-Hasan Ali Ibn Mohammed al-Tamgruti, best known because of the rihla of his journey to Istanbul in 1590–91 for Ahmad al-Mansur
