Tangier
Tangier is a city in northwestern Morocco, on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The city is the capital of the Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima region, as well as the Tangier-Assilah Prefecture of Morocco.
Many civilisations and cultures have influenced the history of Tangier, starting from before the 10th centuryBCE. Originating as a strategic Phoenician town and trading centre, Tangier has been a nexus for many cultures. In 1923, it became an international zone managed by colonial powers and became a destination for many European and American diplomats, spies, bohemians, writers and businessmen. That status came to an end with Moroccan independence, in phases between 1956 and 1960.
By the early 21st century, Tangier was undergoing rapid development and modernisation. Projects include tourism projects along the bay, a modern business district called Tangier City Centre, an airport terminal, and a football stadium. Tangier's economy is set to benefit greatly from the Tanger-Med port.
Names
The Carthaginian name of the city is variously recorded as , , , and ; these appear in Greek and Roman sources as Tenga, Tinga, Titga, etc. The old Berber name was Tingi, which Ruiz connects to Berber tingis, meaning "marsh". The Greeks later claimed that Tingís had been named for Tinjis, a daughter of the Titan Atlas, who was supposed to support the vault of heaven nearby. Latin Tingis then developed into Portuguese Tânger, Spanish Tánger, and French Tanger, which entered English as Tangier and Tangiers. The Arabic and modern Berber name of the town is Ṭanjah.Moroccan historian Ahmed Toufiq considers that the name "Tingi" has the same etymology as Tinghir, and is composed of "Tin", which is a feminine particle that could be translated as "owner" or "she who has", and "gi" which may have originally been "ig", meaning "high location". This corresponds to the popular Moroccan phrase Tanja l-ɛalya, which may be a remnant echo of the original meaning, as well as a reference to the high location of Tangier. A similar construction can be found in the name of Tinmel, the first capital of the Almohads, which is composed of "Tin", and "Amlel" meaning "at foot of the mountain" or "at a low location".
Tangier was formally known as following its elevation to colony status during the Roman Empire. The nicknames "Bride of the North" and "Door of Africa" reference its position in far northwestern Africa near the Strait of Gibraltar.
This is also where the name for the fruit tangerine comes from.
History
Ancient
Tangier was founded as a Phoenician colony, possibly as early as the 10th centuryBCE and almost certainly by the 8th centuryBCE. The majority of Berber tombs around Tangier had Punic jewelry by the 6th centuryBCE, speaking to abundant trade by that time. The Carthaginians developed it as an important port of their empire by the 5th centuryBCE. It was probably involved with the expeditions of Hanno the Navigator along the West African coast. The city long preserved its Phoenician traditions, issuing bronze coins under the Mauretanian kings with Punic script. Under the Romans other coins were issued, bearing Augustus and Agrippa's heads and Latin script obverse but an image of the Canaanite god Baal reverse. Some editions of Procopius place his Punic stelae in Tingis rather than Tigisis; in either case, however, their existence is highly dubious.The Greeks knew this town as Tingis and, with some modification, record the Berber legends of its founding. Supposedly Tinjis, daughter of Atlas and widow of Antaeus, slept with Hercules and bore him the son Syphax. After Tinjis' death, Syphax then founded the port and named it in her honour. The gigantic skeleton and tomb of Antaeus were tourist attractions for ancient visitors. The Caves of Hercules, where he supposedly rested on Cape Spartel during his labors, remain one today.
Tingis came under the control of the Roman ally Mauretania during the Punic Wars. Q. Sertorius, in his war against Sulla's regime in Rome, took and held Tingis for several years in the 70sBCE. It was subsequently returned to the Mauretanians but established as a republican free city during the reign of BocchusIII in 38BCE.
Tingis received certain municipal privileges under Augustus and became a Roman colony under Claudius, who made it the provincial capital of Mauretania Tingitana. Under Diocletian's 291 reforms, it became the seat of a count and Tingitana's governor. At the same time, the province itself shrank to little more than the ports along the coast and, owing to the Great Persecution, Tingis was also the scene of the martyrdoms by beheading of SaintsMarcellus and Cassian in 298. Tingis remained the largest settlement in its province in the 4th century and was greatly developed.
Medieval
Probably invited by Count Boniface, who feared war with the empress dowager, tens of thousands of Vandals under Gaiseric crossed into North Africa in 429 CE and occupied Tingis and Mauretania as far east as Calama. When Boniface learned that he and the empress had been manipulated against each other by Aetius, he attempted to compel the Vandals to return to Spain but was instead defeated at Calama in 431. The Vandals lost control of Tingis and the rest of Mauretania in various Berber uprisings.Tingis was reconquered by Belisarius, the general of the Byzantine emperor JustinianI, in 533 as part of the Vandalic War. The new provincial administration was moved, however, to the more defensible base at Septem. Byzantine control probably yielded to pressure from Visigoth Spain around 618.
Count Julian of Ceuta supposedly led the last defences of Tangier against the Muslim invasion of North Africa. Medieval romance made his betrayal of Christendom a personal vendetta against the Visigoth king Roderic over the honour of his daughter, but Tangier at last fell to a siege by the forces of Musa bin Nusayr sometime between 707 and 711. While he moved south through central Morocco, he had his deputy at Tangier Tariq ibn Zayid, Musa's mawla launch the beginning of the Muslim invasion of Spain. Uqba ibn Nafi was frequently but erroneously credited with Tangier's conquest by medieval historians, but only owing to Musa's later commission at the hands of Al-Walid I.
Under the Umayyads, Tangier served as the capital of the Moroccan district of the province of Africa. The conquest of the Maghreb and Spain had, however, been undertaken principally as raids for slaves and plunder and the caliphate's leadership continued to treat all Berbers as pagans or slaves for tax purposes, even after their wholesale conversion to Islam. In the area around Tangier, these hateful taxes were mostly paid in female slaves or in tender lambskins obtained by beating the ewes to induce premature birth. Governor Yazid was murdered by Berber guards whom he had tattooed as slaves in, and in the 730s, similar treatment from Governor Ubayd Allah and al-Muradi, his deputy at Tangier, provoked the Berber Revolt. Inspired by the egalitarian Kharijite heresy, Barghawata and others under Maysara al-Matghari seized Tangier in the summer of 740. In the Battle of the Nobles on the city's outskirts a few months later, Maysara's replacement Khalid ibn Hamid massacred the cream of Arab nobility in North Africa. An enraged Caliph Hisham ordered an attack from a second army "whose beginning is where they are and whose end is where I am," but this army was defeated at Bagdoura the next year. The Barghawata were concentrated further south on the Atlantic coast, and area around Tangier fell into chaos until 785.
The Shia Arab refugee Idris arrived at Tangier before moving further south, marrying into local tribes around Moulay Idriss and assembling an army that, among its other conquests, took Tangier. During the division of the sultanate that occurred on the death of IdrisII, Tangier fell to his son Qasim in 829. It was soon taken by Qasim's brother Umar, who ruled it until his death in 835. Umar's son Ali became sultan, as did Qasim's son Yahya after him, but they governed from Fez.
The Fatimid caliph Abdullah al-Madhi began interfering in Morocco in the early 10th century, prompting the Umayyad emir of Cordova to proclaim himself caliph and to begin supporting proxies against his rivals. He helped the Maghrawa Berbers overrun Melilla in 927, Ceuta in 931, and Tangier in 949. Tangier's governor was subsequently named chief over Cordova's Moroccan possessions and allies. Ali ibn Hammud, named Cordova's governor for Ceuta in 1013, took advantage of the realm's civil wars to conquer Tangier and Málaga before overrunning Cordova itself and proclaiming himself caliph in 1016. His Barghawata ally Rizḳ Allāh was then permitted to rule from Tangier with general autonomy.
Yusuf ibn Tashfin captured Tangier for the Almoravids in 1077. It fell to Abd al-Mumin's Almohads in the 1147, and then flourished under his dynasty, with its port highly active.
Like Ceuta, Tangier did not initially acknowledge the Marinids after the fall of the Almohads. Instead, the local chief Yusuf ibn Muhammad pledged himself to the Hafsids in Tunisia and then to the Abbasids in the east before being killed in 665. Abu Yusuf Yaqub compelled Tangier's allegiance with a three months' siege in 1274.
The next century was an obscure time of rebellions and difficulties for the city. During this time, the traveler Ibn Battuta was born in Tangier in 1304, leaving home at 20 for the hajj. Piracy from Tangier and Salé began to harass shipping in the strait and North Atlantic in the late 14thcentury. A partial plan of the late medieval kasbah was found in a Portuguese document now held by the Military Archives of Sweden in Stockholm.
Early modern
When the Portuguese started their colonial expansion by taking Ceuta in retribution for its piracy in 1415, Tangier was always a major goal. They failed to capture it in 1437, 1458, and 1464, but occupied it unopposed on 28 August 1471 after its garrison fled upon learning of the conquest of Asilah. As in Ceuta, they converted its chief mosque into the town's cathedral church; it was further embellished by several restorations during the town's occupation. In addition to the cathedral, the Portuguese raised European-style houses and Franciscan and Dominican chapels and monasteries. The Wattasids assaulted Tangier in 1508, 1511, and 1515 but without success. In the 17th century, it passed with the rest of Portugal's domains into Spanish control as part of the personal union of the crowns but maintained its Portuguese garrison and administration.Iberian rule lasted until 1661, when it was given to England's King CharlesII as part of the dowry of the Portuguese infanta Catherine of Braganza. A squadron under the admiral and ambassador Edward Montagu arrived in November. English Tangier, fully occupied in January 1662, was praised by Charles as "a jewell of immense value in the royal diadem" despite the departing Portuguese taking away everything they could, evenaccording to the official report"the very fflowers, the Windowes and the Dores". Tangier received a garrison and a charter which made it equal to other English towns, but the religious orders were expropriated, the Portuguese residents nearly entirely left, and the town's Jews were driven out owing to fears concerning their loyalty. Meanwhile, the Tangier Regiment were almost constantly under attack by locals who considered themselves mujahideen fighting a holy war. Their principal leader was Khadir Ghaïlan of the Banu Gurfat, whom the Earl of Peterborough attempted to buy off. Ultimately, the truce lasted only for part of 1663 and 1664; on May 4 of the latter year, the Earl of Teviot and around 470 members of the garrison were killed in an ambush beside Jew's Hill. Lord Belasyse happened to secure a longer-lasting treaty in 1666: Khadir Ghaïlan hoped to support a pretender against the new Alawid sultan Al-Rashid and things subsequently went so badly for him that he was obliged to abide by its terms until his death in 1673.
The English took advantage of the respite to improve greatly the Portuguese defences. They also planned to improve the harbour by building a mole, which would have allowed it to play the same role that Gibraltar later played in British naval strategy. Incompetence, waste and outright fraud and embezzlement caused costs to swell; among those enriched was Samuel Pepys. The mole cost £340,000 and reached long before its destruction. Although funding was found for the fortifications, the garrison's pay was delayed until in December 1677 it was 2 years in arrears; Governor Fairborne dealt with the ensuing mutiny by seizing one of the soldier's muskets and killing him with it on the spot.
A determined siege by Sultan Moulay Ismail of Morocco between 1678 and 1680 was unsuccessful, but longstanding exasperation with the colony's finances and the difficulties caused by the siege pushed Parliament to write off the effort in 1680. At the time, Tangier's population consisted of only about 700 apart from the thousand-man garrison; Governor Kirke estimated 400 of them had suffered gonorrhea from the same "mighty pretty" sex worker. Forces under Lord Dartmouth methodically destroyed the town and its port facilities for five months prior to Morocco's occupation of the city on 7 February 1684.
Ali ibn Abdallah and his son Ahmed ibn Ali served in turn as the town's governors until 1743, repopulating it with populace from the surrounding countryside. They were powerful enough to oppose Sultan Abdallah through his various reigns, giving support and asylum to his various rivals within and without the royal family.
The city was attacked by Spain in 1790.