Slat al-Azama Synagogue

Slat al-Azama. The name itself marks the origin — azama from the refugees' experience of catastrophe. Founded the same year as the Alhambra Decree, by Jews who had just lost Spain.

The synagogue is smaller than the Lazama, quieter. Painted plaster walls, carved wood, oil lamps. It still holds occasional services. The community that built it brought Spanish liturgical traditions that merged with indigenous Moroccan Jewish practice. The result — Sephardic Moroccan Judaism — is what survives here.

At dawn of the Middle Ages, 70,000 Jews lived in Marrakech. By 1936, 15,000. Today, fewer than 75. King Mohammed VI ordered the original name 'Mellah' restored to the quarter and Jewish paintings returned to its alleys.