Place name origin
Established in 1059, the city was a military camp and a regional headquarter for the Almoravids while fighting separatist Berber tribes in the coastal provinces. In this regard, ''the Ksar el Hjar'' was built(the watch-tower of stone), which overlooked the tents of the Garrison army. In ''The last storytellers'', Hamilton said that at this time, the city was known as Marrakech, which derived from the local slang for to ''cross over'' and to''hide''.While different tailes from the same book reported that Marrakech won this name because of the courage of its thieves who would cross the garrison defences to reach herds of cavalry horses. A third version is that the name came from the Almoravid army strategy to ''cross over'' the high Atlas mountain obstacle to secure the central base of the country.
The etymological explanation mentioned in Wikipedia stands behind the second theory stating that '' Marrakech'' came from the Berber words ''murr akush meaning ''the land of God'', though an other interpretation reported that it derived from the Arab words murra kish, which translate to ''pass by quickly''-a warning given to passengers of thieves and wild animals while crossing the desert.
Since 1960, Marrakech have become an active tourist destination and attracted stars, musicians, artists, and cineasts from all over the world . In 1985, the old Medina was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In November 2016, Marrakesh hosted the meeting of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
In the 21st century, new economic policies increased the number of hotels and touristic facilities
to reach the goal of ''20 million of tourists annually visiting Morocco'' by 2020.
link1:Almoravid dynasty
link2:C. Edmund Bosworth, Historic cities of the islamic world,Brill,Boston,2007
link3:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marrakesh#Etymology
link4:Richard Hamilton, The last storytellers, I.B Tauris, New York,2011
link5:UNESCO world heritage sites
link6:The current economic situation of Marrakech
link7:The economic perspectives of Marrakech
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