A resident of this country reduces the population of Salee as low as two
or three thousand. For many years, the port of Salee was the rendezvous
of the notorious pirates of Morocco, who, together with the city of
Rabat, formed a species of military republic almost independent of the
Sultan; these Salee rovers were at once the most ferocious and
courageous in the world. Time was, when these audacious freebooters lay
under Lundy Island in the British Channel, waiting to intercept British
traders! "Salee," says Lempriere, "was a place of good commerce, till,
addicting itself entirely to piracy, and revolting from the allegiance
to its Sovereign, Muley Zidan, that prince in the year 1648, dispatched
an embassy to King Charles 1, of England, requesting him to send a
squadron of men-of-war to lie before the town, while he attacked by
land." This request being acceded to, the city was soon reduced, the
fortifications demolished, and the leaders of the rebellion put to
death. The year following, the Emperor sent another ambassador to
England, with a present of Barbary horses and three hundred Christian
slaves.
Rabat, or Er-Rabat, and on some of the foreign maps Nuova Sale, is a
modern city of considerable extent, densely populated, strong and
well-built, belonging to the province of Temsna. It is situated on the
declivity of a hill, opposite to Salee, on the other side of the river,
or left side of the Bouragrag, which is as broad as the Thames at
London Bridge, and might be considered as a great suburb, or another
quarter of the same city. It was built by the famous Yakob-el-Mansour,
nephew of Abd-el-Moumen, and named by him Rabat-el-Fatah, _i.e._, "camp
of victory," by which name it is now often mentioned.
The walls of Rabat enclose a large space of ground, and the town is
defended on the seaside by three forts, erected some years ago by an
English renegade, and furnished with ordnance from Gibraltar. Among the
population are three or four thousand Jews, some of them of great wealth
and consequence. The merchants are active and intelligent, carrying on
commerce with Fez, and other places of the interior, as also with the
foreign ports of Genoa, Gibraltar, and Marseilles. In the middle ages,
the Genoese had a great trade with Rabat, but this trade is now removed
to Mogador, Many beautiful gardens and plantations adorn the suburbs,
deserving even the name of "an earthly paradise."
The Moors of Rabat are mostly from Spain, expelled thence by the
Spaniards. The famous Sultan, Almanzor, intended that Rabat should be
his capital. His untenanted mausoleum is placed here, in a separate and
sacred quarter. This prince, surnamed "the victorious," (Elmansor,) was
he who expelled the Moravedi from Spain. He is the Nero of Western
Africa, as Keatinge says, their "King Arthur." Tradition has it that
Elmansor went in disguise to Mecca, and returned no more. Mankind love
this indefinite and obscure end of their heroes. Moses went up to the
mountain to die there in eternal mystery. At a short distance from Rabat
is Shella, or its ruins, a small suburb situated on the summit of a
hill, which contains the tombs of the royal family of the Beni-Merini,
and the founder of Rabat, and is a place of inviolate sanctity, no
infidel being permitted to enter therein. Monsieur Chenier supposes
Shella to have been the site of the metropolis of the Carthaginian
colonies.
Of these two cities, on the banks of the Wad-Bouragrag, Salee was,
according to D'Anville, always a place of note as at the present time,
and the farthest Roman city on the coast of the Atlantic, being the
frontier town of the ancient Mauritania Tingitana. Some pretend that all
the civilization which has extended itself beyond this point is either
Moorish, or derived from European colonists. The river Wad-Bouragrag is
somewhat a natural line of demarcation, and the products and animals of
the one side differ materially from those of the other, owing to the
number and less rapid descent of the streams on the side of the north,
and so producing more humidity, whilst the south side, on the contrary,
is of a higher and drier soil.
Fidallah, or Seid Allah, _i. e_., "grace," or "gift of God," is a
maritime village of the province of Temsa, founded by the Sultan
Mohammed in 1773. It is a strong place, and surrounded with walls.
Fidallah is situated on a vast plain, near the river Wad Millah, where
there is a small port, or roadstead, to which the corsairs were wont to
resort when they could not reach Salee, long before the village was
built, called Mersa Fidallah. The place contains a thousand souls,
mostly in a wretched condition. Sidi Mohammed, before he built Mogador,
had the idea of building a city here; the situation is indeed
delightful, surrounded with fertility.
Dar-el-Beida (or Casa-Blanco, "white house,") is a small town, formerly
in possession of the Portuguese, who built it upon the ruins of Anfa or
Anafa, [22] which they destroyed in 1468. They, however, scarcely
finished it when they abandoned it in 1515. Dar-el-Beida is situate on
the borders of the fertile plains of the province of Shawiya, and has a
small port, formed by a river and a spacious bay on the Atlantic. The
Romans are said to have built the ancient Anafa, in whose time it was a
considerable place, but now it scarcely contains above a thousand
inhabitants, and some reduce them to two hundred. Sidi Mohammed
attempted this place, and the present Sultan endeavoured to follow up
these efforts. A little commerce with Europe is carried on here. The bay
will admit of vessels of large burden anchoring in safety, except when
the wind blows strong from the north-west.
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