Morocco Travel Guide

B3

B3

B3

A1

D3

B3

D1

D1

D1

    Sleeping

4    Pension    Hollande

    Eating

5    Fès    Market

6    La Fabrique

    Drinking

7    Café   Hafa

    Entertainment

8    Beach  Club    555

    Shopping

9    Ensemble   Artisanal

Transport

10 Ferry    Company Ticket  Offices

11 Ferry    Terminal

12 Grands   Taxis

History

Tangier’s history is a raucous tale of foreign invasion, much of it driven by the city’s strategic
location at the entrance to the Mediterranean. The area was first settled as a trading base by
the ancient Greeks and Phoenicians (who brought the traditional Moroccan hooded robe, the
jellaba, with them), and named for the goddess Tinge, the lover of Hercules, whose Herculean
effort separated Europe from Africa to form the Strait of Gibraltar. Under Roman rule, it was
the capital of the province of Mauretania Tingitana. The Vandals attacked from Spain in AD
429, followed by the Byzantines, and then the Arabs, who invaded in 705 and quelled the
Berber tribes. Tangier passed between various Arab factions before finally coming under
Almohad rule in 1149. Then the Portuguese arrived, capturing the city on their second attempt
in 1471, only to hand it to the British 200 years later as a wedding gift for Charles II. Its value is
difficult to assess: the English diarist Samuel Pepys called it ‘the excrescence of the earth’.
Moroccans regained control of the city under Sultan Moulay Ismail in 1679, destroying much of
the city in the process. They remained in power until the mid-19th century, when North Africa
once again piqued the interest of the European powers.

The modern history of Tangier begins here. While the rest of Morocco was divided between
France and Spain, strategic Tangier was turned into an ‘International Zone’ of various sectors,
similar to West Berlin in the Cold War. France, Spain, Britain, Portugal, Sweden, Holland,
Belgium, Italy and the USA all had a piece of the pie, which was managed by the sultan, at
least on paper. This situation lasted from 1912 until shortly after Moroccan independence, in
1956, when the city was returned to the rest of the country. During this famous Interzone
period, expats flooded in, forming half the population, and a wild, anything-goes culture broke
out, attracting all sorts of people, for reasons both high and low. Socialites, artists, currency
speculators, drug addicts, spies, sexual deviants, exiles, eccentrics – the marginalia of mankind