There is no other city quite like Fez. I have performed there four times now, and every return feels less like an arrival and more like a remembering — as if some part of me never actually left. The medina at night, the call to prayer echoing across the rooftops, the scent of cedar and jasmine threading through the ancient alleyways — it reaches somewhere in you that the everyday world doesn’t touch.

What moves me most about this city is not only its beauty, but what that beauty means. In 859 CE — two hundred and thirty-seven years before Oxford began teaching, and three hundred and fifty years before Cambridge — a woman named Fātimah al-Fihrī founded the world’s first university right here. Al-Qarawīyyīn. She gave her entire inheritance and fasted throughout the construction, refusing to return to her own home until it was complete. Ibn Khaldun shaped his understanding of history and civilisation within these walls. Ibn al-Khatīb walked these streets. Sacred knowledge of every kind — jurisprudence, astronomy, medicine, philosophy, Sufi metaphysics — flowed through this city for centuries.

A civilisation capable of producing all of this cannot be built by ambition or power alone. It is built from within — by people who understood that ‪maḥabba‬ and ‪ma‘rifa‬, love and inner knowing, are not two destinations but one continuous movement of the soul toward its source. The beauty of Fez is not incidental. It is the outward form of an inward orientation. It was built by people who believed, in the most precise sense, that beauty is a reflection of the Divine. That is what you feel when you walk those streets. That is what is written into the stone.

The concerts on the evenings of the 6th and 7th were two of the most beautiful nights I have spent on stage. Here is a small moment from the speech I gave that evening:

“We are living through difficult times. The world is in turbulence — politically, spiritually, psychologically. In moments like these, art is not a luxury. It is a lifeline. Sacred and traditional music speaks to something in us that ordinary language cannot reach. It reminds us who we are beneath the noise. It reconnects us to our deepest purpose on this earthly plane: to serve, to love, to know, and to give.”

→ [Read the full speech here]

I must say that one of the most memorable experiences from Fez happened before the concert even began.

At our first ever Golden Circle gathering in Fez, I had the joy of meeting Dr. Ghizlane, a member of our Circle community. I cannot fully describe what it felt like. There is something that genuinely moves me about knowing that within this community there are people of such depth and grace. Meeting her in Fez, a city built on the conviction that knowledge and love are inseparable, felt powerful and emotional.

You are all so dear to me. More than I know how to say.

This community is something I do not take for granted for a single day. We found each other across continents and languages, drawn together by something more than coincidence. I pray the Circle grows and flourishes and that one day, somewhere on this globe, many of us find ourselves in the same room!

For now, home briefly, then Türkiye. The journey continues.

With love and gratitude, always 💛

Sami