Moulay Idrīs Zarḥūn Shrine

The shrine of Moulay Idris stands in the town of Moulay Idriss Zerhoun, below Mount Zerhoun near Meknes. It holds the tomb of Idris I, a descendant of Muhammad who fled Abbasid rule after the Battle of Fakh and in 789 allied with the Berber Awraba at Oualili, founding the first Islamic state in Morocco.

He died in 791, possibly poisoned at the caliph Harun al-Rashid's order, and was buried under a domed qubba; his posthumous son Idris II took power in 803 and later built Fez. The Marinids revived the Idrisid legacy after the alleged rediscovery of Idris I's remains in 1318, when the annual August moussem took shape.

The Alaouite sultan Moulay Ismail had the mausoleum rebuilt between 1719 and 1721 and established its mosque as the town's Friday mosque. Sultan Abd al-Rahman enlarged it again in 1822.