Dar al-Magana

[1][2] The clock was part of the large charitable complex centered around the Bou Inania Madrasa built by the Marinid sultan Abu Inan.

Each hour one of the doors opened; at the same time a metal ball was dropped into one of the twelve brass bowls.

[4] The facade of the building is decorated with carved stucco around the windows and by sculpted arabesque and epigraphic motifs on the wooden rafters and corbels.

[5] The clock has been defunct for generations and a lack of documentation and collective memory about its exact functioning has impeded efforts to repair it.

The bowls have been removed since 2004 with the aim of repairing or reconstructing its mechanism, though the project, managed by ADER-Fes (a foundation for the restoration of monuments in Fes), has been unsuccessful in this regard so far.

Dar al-Magana in the beginning of the last century. Metal balls were released from twelve little doors into brass bowls on the lower beams to signal the hours. The rafters on the top level originally supported a small roof, now gone.
The bowls of Dar al-Magana over the Tala'a Kebira in 1925.
The restored facade of the Dar al-Magana today (with the bowls missing)