In antiquity, Volubilis was an important Roman town situated near the westernmost border of Roman conquests in present day Morocco. The marble Arch of Caracalla, right in the middle of Volubilis, was erected in 211 AD in honor of the Emperor Caracalla and his mother, Julia Domna. The arch is surmounted by a bronze chariot and with its Corinthian columns remains an impressive monumen
Historical Description
The name of Volubilis is known both from ancient texts and from the abundant epigraphic material from the site itself Its origin is unknown but may be a Latinized version of the Berber name for the oleander, oualili, which grows in profusion on the banks of the wadi Khoumane that runs round part of the site.
The Roman geographer Pomponius Mela, writing in the 1st century AD, described Volubilis as modestly sized, though he had never visited it. References by Pliny the Elder and in the 2nd century AD Antonine Itinerary, while describing its location, make no comments on its size.
Its easily defensible location at the foot of the Jbel Zerhoun and the good soils of the plain, suitable for agriculture and the cultivation of fruit trees (especially olives), attracted settlers to the site of Volubilis at least as early as the 3rd century BC, as shown by a Punic inscription found in the town. By the time of the Mauritanian kingdom, whose capital was here from the 3rd century BC until AD 40, Volubilis already had a defensive wall, enclosing about a dozen hectares. The town appears to have been laid out on a regular plan on the Punic-Hellenistic model.
The town developed along Roman lines during the reigns of Juba II and Ptolemy (25 BC to AD 40), when it may have been the capital. The Roman annexation of the Mauritanian kingdom in AD 40 led to the creation of two provinces, Mauretania Caesarensis in the east and Mauretania Tingitana in the west; Volubilis was given the status of a municipium in the latter. It rapidly expanded to its maximum extent, with the construction of many public and private buildings, the latter associated with craft and industrial installations, most notably for the production of olive oil, the main product of the region. Epigraphic evidence points to the fact that the inhabitants of Volubilis during the Roman period were ethnically mixed, with Jews, Syrians, and Spaniards living alongside the indigenous African population.
During the reign of Marcus Aurelius a town wall, with eight monumental gates, was constructed in 168- 9, and the Severan emperors provided the to\\11 with a new monumental centre, including a capitol and basilica. This was made possible by Caracalla's remission of taxes, an event commemorated by the construction of a triumphal arch dedicated to him.
At the beginning of the reign of Diocletian, in 285, the Romans abruptly abandoned southern Tingitana, for reasons that remain obscure, and Volubilis entered its "dark age." This was to last until the until the accession of ldris I. The aqueduct that brought water to the town having been broken, the inhabitants of Volubilis, who were by now probably for the most part members of the Berber Baquates tribe, moved to the west of the triumphal arch, where they built a new residential area near the wadi Khoumane. This was separated from the upper part of the town by a new defensive wall, which came down to the river bank.
The area of the triumphal arch became the cemetery of this community. Four inscriptions dated to between 599 and 655 reveal that this was a Christian community with civic institutions still in place.
It is not certain what influence the raids of Oqba ben Nafi (681) or Moussa ben Nossair (710) had on Volubilis. However, documents and coins show that it had converted to Islam before the arrival ofldris. A descendant of the Caliph Ali, Idris was driven during the struggles between the Abbassids and the Shiites to seek refuge in Morocco, where he was well received by the chief of the Aomaba tribe living around Volubilis. He established himself in "Walila," from where he quickly took over the reins of power, creating a new city at Fez. His son Idris II (803-29) favomed Fez over Volubilis, but the latter was not completely abandoned, although there must have been a substantial movement of its inhabitants to the new town of Moulay ldris nearby, founded after the assassination of the founder of the ldrissid dynasty in 791. It was still occupied when El Bekri wrote about it in 1068. However, it is probably that the Almoravid raids later in the 11th century spelt the end of many centuries of continuous occupation.
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