Rahba Kedima

This guide to Rahba Kedima in Marrakesh traces the square's double life: for centuries a slave market held late on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday afternoons, where people marched across the Sahara or seized by Barbary pirates were bought and sold, and today a spice market run by generations of the same families. You'll hear how the trade continued in the open into the early twentieth century before fading out. Listen for the antique iron shackles still sold nearby in the souks as curiosities.