Ibn Danan Synagogue

Restored 17th-century synagogue with intact women's gallery and mikveh

The best-preserved of Fez's historic synagogues, the Ibn Danan was built in the seventeenth century and restored in the 1990s by a joint Moroccan-American project. It is a beautiful, intimate space with a central bimah (reading platform), wooden galleries, and a functioning mikveh (ritual bath) below floor level — one of the only surviving mikvehs in Morocco.

The synagogue is now part of the circuit managed by the city's Foundation for the Protection of Historic Sites. A caretaker can usually be found to let you in and explain the building. The Jewish community of Fez is now almost entirely gone — most emigrated to Israel and France in the 1950s and 60s — but the synagogue is kept in good order as part of Morocco's effort to acknowledge its Jewish heritage.

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A story
The Ibn Danan family were prominent rabbinical scholars who came to Fez as refugees from Spain after the 1492 expulsion. The synagogue they built became the most important in the Mellah. During the French Protectorate, Rabbi Raphael ibn Danan buried his Torah scrolls under the synagogue floor to protect them from looters — they were rediscovered during restoration work in the 1990s.

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