Historically the spiritual and intellectual capital of northern Morocco, Fez(Ar. Fās) was home to the largest Jewish community of the medieval Maghreb. Although tradition maintains that Fez was founded in 789 by Idrīs ibn ʿAbd Allāh (Idrīs I), who established the Idrisid dynasty, the early fourteenth-century Arabic chronicle Rawḍ al-Qirṭās by Ibn Abī Zarʿ maintains that it was founded in 808 by Idrīs II. The city stands at the confluence of the Fez and Sebou rivers on the northeastern end of the Saïss plain and marks the intersection of two major axes of c…