The Kasbah of Essaouira. A fortified naval base on the Atlantic coast of Morocco (18th century)

Since ancient times, the site of Amogdoul or Mogdoul, located on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, has been a destination for Phoenician and Roman sailors thanks to its purple dye production activities. Greek and Byzantine merchants also left their mark. Only the Portuguese transformed it into a commercial port and in 1505 built a fort there, the Castello Real, which would later be called Mogador. In 1765, the Alawite sultan Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdallah decided to find a real port city on the site of the old Portuguese trading post with the aim of providing the capital Marrakech with a new port and weakening the Souss revolt by stifling the port of its capital, Agadir (Robinet 2014, p. 15). His decision was also dictated by the desire to create the first planned new city in Morocco. For this reason, the sultan turned to a French engineer, Nicolas Théodore Cornut, who lived in Gibraltar and had worked for the French king Louis XV. The new city, inspired by the port city of Saint-Malo, had a quadrilateral layout that is still visible today. Thanks to its very regular layout, the city took on its current name of Essaouira, which means “the well-designed”. The port medina was equipped with important fortified buildings, consisting of walls with several gates and bastions, as well as a kasbah and a port, both equipped with two batteries, called Sqala, armed with dozens of cannons. The military architecture of Essaouira follows several models, on the one hand the Arab Moroccan Cherifian style, inspired by the fortifications of Marrakech, and on the other hand the European models of the time, in the Vauban or Manueline style. Since its foundation, Essaouira has become one of the main international trading centers linking Morocco to Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries.