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Essaouira History
Long before any humans set foot in
Essaouira (pronounced Essa-weara), the region was inhabited by giant reptiles. In 1998, the fossilized bones of one of these large beasts were
discovered east of the town, on the right back of the River Qsob.
They date to
the Jurassic period (195 million years ago).
The Phoenicians came here in the 7th century B.C., followed by
the Carthaginians. Excavations on one of the offshore islands
unearthed a pottery sherd inscribed with the name
of the Carthaginian admiral Hanno. A Greek
voyager in the 4th century B.C. noted that the people who inhabited the coast around Essarouira were very fond of elephant
ivory, since they drank out of ivory
goblets, the women had ivory necklaces, and "even" the horses had ivory ornaments. At the end of the 1st
century B.C., Juba II, king of Mauretania,
established a center for the production of the famous purple
dye obtained from the local murex shellfish. In the 10th
century a.d.,
the town became known
as Amogdur. after its Berber patron saint, Sidi
Mogdul. and exported from its port produce from all over
southern Morocco. The Portuguese, always on the move,
installed a trading post there in the 15th century, and in 1506
built a small fort (now ruined) to protect the entrance to the
port. They encouraged trade and the exploitation of the sugar
cane plantations of the interior, but didn't stay long in the
town. Essouira had no truly safe port, and the Portuguese
doubtless preferred to concentrate their energies on El-Jadida,
Safi, and Agadir.
The Saadian sultan Abd el-Malik
rebuilt the place a bit in 1628, but it was not 1764 that the
town really took off, thanks to the Alaouite sultan, Mohammed
III, who decided to turn it into a naval base. It seems that
Sidi Mohammed's choice of Essaouira came from his desire to
punish Agadir, a town which openly defied him and took the lion's share of
European trade. Determined
to do a good job, the sultan entrusted the design of the new
town to a French prisoner,
Theodore Cornut. So its roads were straight, cutting each other at
right angles, and the whole place was surrounded with French-style
ramparts. Mogador became re-baptized Essaouira ("the
picture," said to
refer to the Frenchman's plan), and Sidi Mohammed set about
making a commercial
success of his new town. The foreign consuls established in Rabat
and Agadir were ordered to take up residence in Essaouira, rich Moroccan
families were invited to settle there, and an important community
of Jewish merchants, with their intimate knowledge of European
languages and business
methods, help trade to expand. By 1780, almost 1,000 Europeans
were involved in a dozen commercial enterprises and 40 percent
of maritime trade passed through Essaouira. It was here that
U.S. Consul General, Thomas Barclay, landed in June 1786 on his
way to Marrakech to negotiate
a treaty of friendship with the Moroccan sultan, Under
the Protectorate, the improvement of the ports of Agadir, and especially
Casablanca, halted much of this trade, though it was then that the
modern town grew up outside the ramparts.
In the
19th century, Mogador was the only port (outside of
Tangier) that was open to European trade. This protected trade
status attracted British merchants, who settled in the
Kasbah and a large Jewish community.
The town went into decline during the beginning of the
20th century as the French protectorate favored
Casablanca and the Jewish community left. However,
thanks to tourism and its fishing port, it is again on
an upward swing.
Its cultural mix,
whitewashed buildings and pinkish-red ramparts make it one of
the most attractive resorts on the Atlantic coast. Consistent wind
attracts windsurfers from all over the world.
Essaouira
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