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When the city's founder, Moulay Idriss I, died in 792, Fes was little more than a village on the east bank of the river. It was his son, Idriss II , who really began the city's development, at the beginning of the ninth century, by making it his capital and allowing in refugees from Andalucian Córdoba and from Kairouan in Tunisia - at the time, the two most important cities of western Islam. The impact on Fes of these refugees was immediate and lasting: they established separate, walled towns (still distinct quarters today) on either riverbank, and provided the superior craftsmanship and mercantile experience for Fes's industrial and commercial growth. It was at this time, too, that the city gained its intellectual reputation. The tenth-century Pope Silvester II studied here at the Kairaouine University, and from this source he is said to have introduced Arabic mathematics to Europe.

The seat of government - and impetus of patronage - shifted south to Marrakesh under the Berber dynasties of the Almoravides (1068-1145) and Almohads (1145-1250). But with the conquest of Fes by the Merenids in 1248, and their subsequent consolidation of power across Morocco, the city regained its pre-eminence and moved into something of a "golden age". Alongside the old Medina, the Merenids built a massive royal city - Fes El Djedid , meaning "New Fes" - which reflected both the wealth and confidence of their rule. They enlarged and decorated the Kairaouine mosque, added a network of fondouks (inns) for the burgeoning commercial activity, and greatly developed the Kairaouine University - building the series of magnificent medersas , or colleges, to accommodate its students. Once again this expansion was based on an influx of refugees, this time from the Spanish reconquest of Andalucia, and it helped to establish the city's reputation as "the Baghdad of the West".

It is essentially Merenid Fes which you witness today in the form of the city and its monuments. From the fall of the dynasty in the mid-sixteenth century, there was decline as both Fes and Morocco itself became isolated from the main currents of Western culture. The new rulers - the Saadians - in any case preferred Marrakesh, and although Fes re-emerged as the capital under the Alaouites , it had begun to lose its international stature. Moulay Ismail, whose hatred of the Fassis was legendary, almost managed to tax the city out of existence, and the principal building concerns of his successors lay in restoring and enlarging the vast domains of the royal palace.

Under French colonial rule , there were positive achievements in the preservation of the old city and relative prosperity of the Ville Nouvelle, but little actual progress. As a thoroughly conservative and bourgeois city, Fes became merely provincial. Even so, it remained a symbol of Moroccan pride and aspirations, playing a crucial role in the struggle for independence . The nationalist factions came together in Fes in 1943 to form the unified independence party: Istiqlal ; an event recorded in Arabic on a tablet outside the Hôtel Batha , on Place de l'Istiqlal. And later, in 1955, the subsequent events in Fes were marvellously brought to life in Paul Bowles's novel The Spider's House .

Since independence in 1956, the city's position has been less than happy. The first sultan, Mohammed V, retained the French capital of Rabat, and with this signalled the final decline of the Fassi political and financial elites. In 1956, too, the city lost most of its Jewish community to France and Israel. In their place, the Medina population now has a predominance of first-generation rural migrants, often poorly housed in mansions designed for single families but now accommodating four or five, while the city as a whole is increasingly dependent on handicrafts and the tourist trade. If UNESCO had not moved in with its Cultural Heritage plan for the city's preservation, it seems likely that its physical collapse would have become even more widespread.

Socially, too, the city has had major problems. It was a focus of the riots of December 1990, in which the disaffected urban poor and the students vented their frustrations on government buildings, and burnt out the luxury Hôtel des Merenides , above the Medina, though without attacking any tourists.