Most of what circulates online about Bahia Palace traces back to the same handful of unsourced tourist pages, copying each other’s dates. This page lists what this site reads instead, and where those readings are uncertain.
Deverdun remains the standard survey of Marrakesh before the Protectorate and is the source for the palace’s dated inscriptions. Wilbaux is the reference on how the medina’s built fabric formed. Ghachem-Benkirane and Saharoff document the interiors.
These are stated as open rather than resolved in favour of whichever version reads better.
1866–1867, by inscription.
Many sites say 1859. That is the year Sultan Muhammad IV took the throne, not a construction date. The two chambers flanking the garden carry an inscription dating them to 1866–1867, which is the earliest firm evidence the building offers about itself.
No — the grandson of one.
His grandfather was owned by Sultan Moulay Slimane and rose to be his chamberlain. His father Si Moussa was already a court officer when Ba Ahmed was born in 1841–1842, so the widely repeated “slave’s son” is a generation out.
Reportedly from Ba Ahmed’s favourite wife.
al-Bahia means “the brilliant”. Some accounts read the name as describing the palace itself rather than a person. The claim that Ba Ahmed chose it himself as an act of calculated arrogance has nothing behind it and has been removed.
Unresolved.
His death year is given variously as the late 1870s and as 1890. The sources do not agree, and this site does not pick one.
No official annual figure exists.
The only published count is 410,141 visitors between January and April 2019. Figures circulating as “500,000 a year” are estimates, and are labelled as such wherever this site uses them.
Corrections are welcome, particularly from historians, guides and archivists working on Marrakesh. Cite the source you are working from and the page it contradicts, and it will be checked and fixed.
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