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Rabat History
Rabat and
Salé, situated respectively on the left and right banks of the mouth
of the Bou Regreg River, on the Atlantic Coast, are so
intimately linked, both by their past and their present, that
they are best taken together. The two are often referred
to, administratively at least, as Rabat- Salé.
But each town jealously guards its individuality and, one
has to add, keeps up its rivalry with its neighbor.
Rabat is both an old imperial city and a new administrative
capital. It was also the residence of the late King
Hassan II. It is a well-kept, calm, and peaceful town in which
the visitor can relax and enjoy the numerous sights of all
periods without fuss or hassle. On the other side of the Bou Regreg
River, Salé has an
equally rich past and an energetic and fast-growing
population.
Early
occupation. The earliest record of occupation in Rabat
indicates that the Phoenicians, and then the Carthaginians, established a small
settlement on what is now called
Chellah, near the mouth of the Bou Regreg River, in the 3rd century B.C. The Romans continued
to occupy the site, called Sala Colonia, in the 1st century A.D., but it was almost certainly
inhabited,
too, by the local Mauretanian people. Upon the departure of the Romans
in the 4th century A.D., the Berber Berghouatas, set up a small independent state that particularly flourished in
the 8th century A.D. They were followers of the Kharijite heresy and for this were attacked and
subdued by the
Idrissids in the 10th century. Forced to move across the river,
they founded the town of Salé.
Almohad
and later dynasties. In Rabat, the new powers built a ribat,
or fortified
monastery, on the site of the present Oudaya Kasbah. Later, in 1146,
the Almohad sultan, Abd el-Mumen, converted the ribat into
vast fortified camp,
where he assembled his forces prior to the invasion of Spain. At
the end of the 12th century, the ribat, now called Ribat
el-Fath (Victory Fort)
became the capital of the Almohad sultan Yacub el-Mansour. After
his victory over the Spanish and Portuguese at the battle
of Alarcos in 1195, he
surrounded the town with over 5 km of fortified ramparts, with five
gates. Two of these gates still exist: the gate leading to the
Oudaya Kasbah and Bab er-Rouah. Yacub el-Mansour also started, but never finished,
the construction of what was to have been one of the biggest mosques
in the Islamic world, the Hassan Mosque. With the decline of the
Almohad dynasty came
the decline of Rabat when the Merinids chose Fès as
their capital, though they did build a necropolis on the Roman
site of Sala Colonia (Chellah) at the beginning of the 14th
century, where they buried
their sultans and important officials who had fought in Spain.
The Merinids also built the walls of Salé.
Whi]e Rabat dropped down, Salé
climbed up. The town prospered and became an important
commercial port, trading
skins, wool, and ivory for manufactured goods brought in by English,
Flemish, and Italian merchants. In the 16th century the population
of Rabat had dwindled to a few hundred families, while Salé
continued to enjoy its prosperity.
Corsairs.
At the beginning of the 17th century, Rabat started to look up again
with the arrival of Moslem Andalusian refugees fleeing from
Christian Spain. Salé
also benefited from the presence of these skilled craftsmen.
In Rabat, they installed themselves in the Oudaya Kasbah and
became very successful pirates, even setting up an independent
pirate republic
with Salé
between 1638 and 1647. The raids of the "Sallee
Rovers" in the
Mediterranean and Atlantic, with their fleet of small, rapid,
and well-armed sailing
boats—often crewed by adventurers of all nationalities—earned
them a terrifying reputation, to such an extent that the foreign
powers were forced to negotiate with the Republic to stop the
loss of their boats,
men, and merchandise. Particularly prized captures were the
merchant ships returning from
the Americas laden with gold, but theChristian
captives also came in useful as slave labor or as a trading
commodity to be bought back by their respective
countries. The pirates' activities greatly
increased the prosperity of both towns. In 1666, Mulay Rashid
tried to curtail
their activities, but it needed Mulay Ismail's firm hand at the
beginning of the 18th
century to put an end to all this (albeit only temporarily, for
sporadic piracy continued until the beginning of the 19th
century).
The
modern capital. The establishment of the French Protectorate
from 1912 and the choice of Rabat as capital left Salé to
itself, while encouraging the growth of Rabat and its
transformation into a modern town. The two towns, while
still being intimately linked in a love-hate relationship,
followed different paths. The French Resident General made Rabat
the country's administrative center, and built a whole new town
known as La Ville Nouvelle,
leaving the medina untouched. The sultan, Mulay Yusef, was
installed in a palace built on the site of the one briefly used
by Mohammed III in the second half of the 18th century. Rabat
has remained the seat of government and the principal royal
residence since Moroccan independence in 1956. It houses all the
ministries, foreign embassies, and international organizations, and so is considered the town of
civil servants and diplomats. It also has a university. Both
Rabat and Salé have grown enormously in the last decades:
Rabat's population numbers 634,000, while that of Sale is
635,000. A further 197,000 people live in the neighboring towns
of Skhirat and Temara, south of Rabat, which now almost form
a single block with Rabat.
Rabat | Morocco History |
