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If there is just one building you actively seek out in Fes - or, not to put too fine a point on it, in Morocco - it should be the Medersa Bou Inania , even though parts of it are currently inaccessible due to repair work. The most elaborate, extravagant and beautiful of all Merenid monuments, it comes close to perfection in every aspect of its construction - its dark cedar is fabulously carved, the zellij tilework classic, and the stucco a revelation. In addition, the medersa is the city's only building still in religious use that non-Muslims are permitted to enter. Nonbelievers cannot, of course, enter the prayer hall - which is divided from the main body of the medersa by a small canal - but are allowed to sit in a corner of the marble courtyard and gaze across to it. The admission hours are daily 8.30am-5.30pm (9am-4pm during Ramadan); occasionally tourists may be asked to leave at other times of prayer and, as with all the Fes medersas, there is a standard 10dh admission fee. Set somewhat apart from the other medersas of Fes, the Bou Inania was the last and grandest built by a Merenid sultan. It shares its name with the one in Meknes, which was completed (though not initiated) by the same patron, Sultan Abou Inan (1351-1358). But the Fes version is infinitely more splendid. Its cost alone was legendary, and Abou Inan is said to have thrown the accounts into the river on its completion, claiming that "a thing of beauty is beyond reckoning". At first glance, Abou Inan doesn't seem the kind of sultan to have wanted a medersa - his mania for building aside, he was most noted for having 325 sons in ten years, deposing his father, and committing unusually atrocious murders. The Ulema , the religious leaders of the Kairaouine Mosque, certainly thought him an unlikely candidate and advised him to build his medersa on the city's garbage dump, on the basis that piety and good works can cure anything. Whether it was this, or merely the desire for a lasting monument, which inspired him, he set up the medersa as a rival to the Kairaouine itself, and for a while it became the most important religious building in the city. A long campaign to have the announcement of the time of prayer transferred here failed in the face of the Kairaouine's powerful opposition; but the medersa was granted the status of a Grand Mosque - unique in Morocco - and retains the right to say the Friday khotbeh prayer.
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