History of Tangier: From Tingis to the International Zone

Tangier's story begins in legend. Greek myths tell of Tingis, wife of the giant Antaeus, whom Hercules defeated here; the hero then fathered a son with her, who founded the city and named it after his mother. The Caves of Hercules, west of the city, are still said to be where he rested.

History is plainer. Phoenician traders settled on the bay at least by the first millennium BCE, drawn by its command of the Strait, and by the 6th century BCE the town, called Tinga in Punic, was part of Carthage's trading world, a port linking the Atlantic coast of Africa and the Iberian Peninsula.

After the fall of Carthage, Tingis came under the Berber kings of Mauretania, allies of Rome. Augustus made it a free city, and Claudius raised it to a Roman colony, Colonia Iulia Tingi, and made it the capital of the new province of Mauretania Tingitana, which took its name from the city.

Roman Tingis was famous for its garum, a fermented fish sauce traded across the empire, and roads linked it with Volubilis and Sala, near Rabat. It was largely Christian by the 4th century, and under Diocletian's reforms the province was attached to the diocese of Hispania, with Tingis still its seat.

Around 429 the Vandals crossed from Spain and swept along North Africa, taking Tingis on their way to Carthage. A century later, the Byzantine Empire of Justinian reclaimed parts of the old Roman world and restored imperial control over the Strait.

The Byzantines fortified their outposts and built churches, but the city's trade had faded. This was the last chapter of antiquity in Tangier, before a new power arrived from the East.

In 702 the armies of the Umayyad Caliphate, led by Musa ibn Nusayr, took Tangier. In 711 his lieutenant Tariq ibn Ziyad, an Amazigh commander, crossed the Strait from here to begin the Muslim conquest of Spain; the Rock of Gibraltar, Jebel Tariq, still carries his name.

Under Islamic rule the city, now Tanja, passed from the Idrisids to the Almoravid and Almohad empires, then to the Marinids. It stayed a trading port between Africa, Europe and the Middle East, and in 1304 it was the birthplace of Ibn Battuta, one of the greatest travellers of the Middle Ages.

After taking Ceuta in 1415, Portugal set its sights on Tangier. Its attacks failed in 1437 and in the years that followed, but in 1471, after Portugal captured Asilah, the people of Tangier left the city and King Afonso V's troops occupied it.

The Portuguese held Tangier for nearly two centuries. They shrank the city inside stronger walls and turned the great mosque into a cathedral. From 1580 to 1640, when the crowns of Spain and Portugal were united, Tangier was ruled from Madrid, though Portuguese officials still ran it day to day.

In 1661 Tangier became part of the dowry of the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza when she married King Charles II of England. The English planned a great naval base and built the Mole, a huge breakwater to shelter their fleet.

It never paid. Sultan Moulay Ismail's forces besieged the city again and again, and London tired of the cost. In 1684, after 23 years, the English left, blowing up the Mole and the walls before they sailed. Wenceslaus Hollar's etchings of 1669 show the city at its English height.

Back under Moroccan rule from 1684, Tangier became the sultans' window on the world, and the foreign consuls who lived there turned it into Morocco's diplomatic capital. In 1821 Sultan Moulay Suleiman gave the United States a building in the medina, the first American public property abroad; foreign consuls ran a Sanitary Council from 1840; and the painter Eugène Delacroix arrived with a French embassy in 1832.

Tangier even gave its name to a fruit: tangerines, grown around the city and shipped to Europe from its port, took the name of Tangier. In 1905 Kaiser Wilhelm II landed here to challenge France, and the Algeciras conference of 1906 set up the State Bank of Morocco in the city.

When France and Spain divided Morocco into protectorates in 1912, Tangier was set apart. The Tangier Protocol of 1923, in force from 1925, created the Tangier International Zone: about 380 square kilometres run by a group of foreign powers, including France, Spain, Britain, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden, with the sultan represented by the Mendoub. Spain occupied it during the Second World War, from 1940 to 1945.

With low taxes, a free port and few rules, the Interzone drew bankers, smugglers, spies, writers and artists. Paul Bowles settled in 1947, William Burroughs wrote much of Naked Lunch here in the 1950s, and Moroccan nationalists used the city to organise. On 9 April 1947, Sultan Mohammed V gave a speech in Tangier calling for Morocco's unity and independence.

After Morocco's independence, the International Zone was dissolved on 29 October 1956 and Tangier rejoined the kingdom. Its free-port privileges lasted until about 1960, and the city became a favourite summer residence of the royal family.

Since the 2000s Tangier has been transformed. Tanger Med, opened east of the city in 2007, is one of the largest ports in Africa and the Mediterranean; the Al Boraq high-speed train reaches Rabat and Casablanca since 2018; and the old port has become a marina below a restored medina and Kasbah.