Fluorite from the Milpo mine in Peru is instantly recognisable. The octahedral forms, vivid colour and mineral associations are remarkable...
Old Stock Morocco: Six Incredible Finds
Morocco is one of the great mineral specimen producing countries.
We see Azurite, vanadinite, fluorite, baryte and quartz produced in abundance, but when we look a little deeper into individual finds the lineup becomes even richer.
Some localities have famously produced specimens sporadically over many years, while others appeared strongly for a short period, entered private collections, and became much less familiar as production moved elsewhere. This is especially true of discoveries made before the proliferation of social media and online cataloguing.
Luckily, old dealer archives give us a glimpse into this fascinating history, sometimes down to the year a pocket was found or the mineral show where specimens first appeared.
Six localities in particular tell very different parts of that story: M’Ssici, Iouriren, Sidi Ayed, Kerrouchen, Tizirine & Tinejdad.
Morocco at a Glance
- M’Ssici: Quartz with goethite, azurite, malachite and other secondary copper minerals
- Iouriren Mine: Faden Quartz, epidote, siderite, pyrite and an unusual suite from a gold mine
- Sidi Ayed: Yellow fluorite associated with azurite, malachite and baryte
- Kerrouchen: Fine Azurite and Malachite after Azurite, with a collecting history extending back to at least the 1960s
- Tizirine: Quartz geodes with acicular goethite, baryte, calcite and aragonite, a locality cherished for decades
- Tinejdad: World class Ferruginous Quartz, known for intensely red iron rich crystals
Locality Name Discrepancies
Moroccan locality names can sometimes be confusing. M’Ssici appears on older labels as Mecissi, Mcissi and M’Cissi. Sidi Ayed is also written Sidi Ayad, while Kerrouchen frequently appears as Kerrouchene. Administrative boundaries and province names have changed as well, so two labels describing the same occurrence can look quite different. When we write our labels, we follow Mindat's formatting.
M'Sissia Quartz: A Brief Window in Time
Although specimens were being collected earlier, M’Ssici really entered the international mineral scene at Sainte Marie aux Mines in 2010, followed by another important showing at Munich in 2011. The material is distinctive and instantly recognisable: vivid blue azurite and green malachite growing across ochre and brown iron stained quartz, with crystals that are lustrous, individual and well defined.
What makes M’Ssici particularly interesting is the variety within such a recognisable aesthetic. Azurite occurs as lenticular crystals, rosettes, dense blue aggregates and even stalactitic growths, while malachite can be botryoidal, acicular or partly replacing the azurite. Against the limonitised quartz, the colours are unmistakable. It's one of those localities where very different specimens can still be recognised almost immediately as M’Ssici.
Morocco has produced many famous copper minerals, but few have this incredible visual identity. The classic quartz, azurite and malachite material appears to have had a very short period of documented production, concentrated around 2010 and 2011.
Iouriren: Morocco's Faden Quartz
Iouriren is an unusual source of Moroccan material. Better known as a gold mine, it's also produced quartz with siderite, pyrite, epidote and electrum. Among the most distinctive are its rare Faden Quartz specimens.
Faden Quartz from Iouriren is documented as early as 2004. An archived Fabre Minerals specimen shows a fan of stretched quartz crystals with a visible internal thread, small green epidote crystals and even a curved crystal near the base. Fabre remarked on how strongly the specimen resembled Alpine material despite coming from Morocco.
This is certainly an unusual locality for Faden Quartz. The habit is more familiar from Alpine fissures and Pakistan, where large numbers of classic Faden specimens have been documented on Mindat. Moroccan Faden Quartz is far more sparsely represented in the collector record.
What is Faden Quartz?
Faden Quartz takes its name from the German word Faden, meaning “thread”, referring to the pale line running through the crystal. Traditionally this has been explained as the result of quartz repeatedly fracturing and rehealing as a fissure slowly opens, leaving a visible internal record of that growth. This crack/seal model remains widely accepted and has recent experimental support.
The story may be more complicated, however. In his recent book Faden Crystals, volcanologist Marco Campos-Venuti challenges the traditional model after studying thousands of specimens. He proposes that Faden structures instead develop around a pre existing microcrystalline filament, with the filament itself potentially composed of minerals other than quartz. It is a fascinating new interpretation of a well established crystal habit.
Sidi Ayed: Mixed Mineral Masterpieces
Sidi Ayed is one of Morocco’s most interesting and regarded mixed mineral localities, producing combinations that are simply extraordinary. Yellow fluorite forms the foundation, accompanied by bladed baryte, quartz, vivid blue azurite, green malachite and other associated copper minerals. The best pieces are built from several distinct generations of growth.
The locality has been producing collectible fluorite for decades, with yellow fluorite documented from around 1989, while by about 1995 specimens were already known with azurite and malachite growing directly over the fluorite. Later finds continued to produce new variations, including azurite coatings over fluorite with malachite and lamellar baryte, and a 2021 group of sharp yellow green fluorites with quartz and small baryte crystals.
While the mineral combinations change, the locality retains a remarkably distinct visual character.
Kerrouchen: Malachite After Azurite
Kerrouchen has been known for fine azurite and malachite since the 1960s, but some of its most memorable specimens emerged during the early 2000s, when striking Malachite after Azurite pseudomorphs began appearing.
These specimens are often sculptural with crisp, beautifully defined forms. Thick blades, prisms and pointed azurite crystals were progressively replaced by malachite, sometimes completely, while retaining the original azurite form. Others retain patches of deep blue azurite beneath or between the malachite, allowing both stages of the transformation to be seen in a single crystal.
Some of the best examples came from the early 2000s, when especially vivid expressions of the replacement process appeared, from partly altered blue azurite to complete green malachite pseudomorphs.
What is a Pseudomorph?
A pseudomorph forms when one mineral replaces another, while retaining the original crystal’s external shape. In Kerrouchen specimens, azurite was progressively replaced by malachite, so a green crystal can still retain the shape of the blades, edges and terminations originally formed by blue azurite.
Partial replacements are especially interesting because both minerals stay visible. Blue azurite can survive at the centre or termination while malachite spreads across the crystal, preserving a snapshot of the alteration process itself.
Tizirine: An Earlier Period of Moroccan Collecting
Tizirine takes us back to an earlier generation of Moroccan mineral collecting. Quartz with dark sprays of goethite was already entering collections by the 1970s, long before many of the Moroccan localities familiar to collectors today had become established internationally. Jordi Fabre records buying one example during a trip through Morocco in 1974. At the time, the identity of the dark inclusions was still uncertain.
The material is distinctive, with fine black to brown goethite needles forming sprays and radiating bundles through white or translucent quartz. These specimens were circulating at a time when Moroccan material was documented far less precisely than it is today, and some old examples were even sold under different mineral identifications before goethite was firmly established.
Tinejdad: Brilliant Red Quartz
Tinejdad has become one of the great modern localities for Ferruginous Quartz. The material entered with impact on the international market around 2017, when intensely red quartz specimens started appearing from the area. Mineral Auctions described the find as producing robust crystals and larger display specimens with a remarkably strong red colour.
The colour comes from iron oxide inclusions, generally attributed to hematite or goethite, which can turn the quartz anything from warm brick red to saturated blood red. The material is impressive for its bright, colour paired with large, well formed quartz crystals.
Tinejdad has become an important reference point for this style of quartz that Rocks & Minerals devoted its 2023 Connoisseur’s Choice feature to Ferruginous Quartz from the locality.
For a mineral that occurs in countless forms around the world, Tinejdad has produced a variety that is instantly recognisable, internationally collected, and still being collected in small pockets today.
Old Moroccan Material
The more you look into older Moroccan material, the more specific their story becomes. A specimen that is labelled “Morocco” can often be traced back to a particular find, a particular year, or even a particular mineral show.
M’Sissia, Iouriren, Sidi Ayed, Kerrouchen and Tizirine & Tinejdad each produced material with its own very recognisable character, and in some cases, material that has become genuinely difficult to find again.
Leave a comment