Asilah

Given its relative proximity to the European continent and its strategic position in the northern part of the Atlantic coast, the history of Asilah is very rich and varied, as it was the object of desire of different powers throughout the centuries.

Those who first settled here were probably the Phoenicians, who founded a commercial settlement called Zilil. Their heirs were taken over by the Carthaginians and, above all, by the Romans in the time of Emperor Augustus, within a network of coastal and commercial towns in the province of Mauritania Tingitana, which also included Lixus (Larache), Tingis (Tangier) and even Sala (Rabat).

After the Arab conquest in 712, a new period of Muslim domination began, but not without conflicts and disputes. In that century and the next, Asilah was a small town rebuilt by the Idrisid dynasty, sometimes harassed by the Norman invaders. In the middle of the 10th century it was conquered and rebuilt by the Umayyad Caliphate of Al-Hakam II, although after the fall of this political entity with its capital in Cordoba (from the 11th century) it fell into the hands of the successive Almoravid, Almohad and Marinid empires.

In the middle of the 15th century came the conquests of the Europeans, who until then had limited themselves to commercial contacts (Genoa, Pisa, Venice, Marseilles, Barcelona). In 1471, the Portuguese took it and fortified it with the wall that can still be admired today, around the medina. Its strategic military importance can be understood by knowing that in 1578 King Sebastian I disembarked here accompanied by about 15,000 soldiers, on his way to what would later be his death: the battle of the Three Kings, in Alcazarquivir, in his attempt to conquer the north of Morocco.

After a very brief Spanish domination following the integration of Portugal into Spain in 1580, it was conquered by the Saadis at the end of that century. And after another brief recovery by the Spaniards in the following century, it was taken again (and definitively) by the Alaouite Sultan Moulay Ismail in 1691. During this period, an important reconstruction of the medina’s hamlet began, and this is what has largely survived to the present day.

Since then it has served as a refuge for pirates, which is why it was bombed by the Austrians in the 19th century. The Spanish Navy did the same in the framework of the Moroccan War in 1860. At the beginning of the 20th century, the regime of terror that the self-proclaimed Pasha El Raisuni dispensed for a few years was famous, but in 1912 Asilah was integrated into the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco.

Therefore, the Spanish influence can be seen in some aspects of daily life in Asilah, such as gastronomy. After the country’s independence in 1956, Asilah did not experience such unbridled growth as other Moroccan cities, and conceived tourism and culture as pillars of its activity, especially since the 1970s, when it began to be visited or inhabited by foreign artists and other Western citizens. As a result, a large festival is held every year in the summer.