Essaouira city

Key figures

The foundation of the city of Essaouira was the work of the Moroccan 'Alawid sultan Mohammed bin Abdallah, who made an original experiment by entrusting it to several architects in 1760, in particular Théodore Cornut and Ahmed al-Inglizi, who designed the city using French captives from the failed French expedition to Larache in 1765, and with the mission of building a city adapted to the needs of foreign merchants. Once built, it continued to grow and experienced a golden age and exceptional development, becoming the country's most important commercial port but also its diplomatic capital between the end of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century.

Medina of Essaouira was designated by the UNESCO a World Heritage Site in 2001.

Name and etymology

The name of the city is usually spelled Essaouira in Latin script, and الصويرة in Arabic script. Both spellings represent its name in Moroccan Arabic, aṣ-Ṣwiṛa. This is the diminutive (with definite article) of the noun ṣuṛ which means "wall (as round a yard, city), rampart". The pronunciation with pharyngealized /sˁ/ and /rˁ/ is a typically Moroccan development. In Classical Arabic, the noun is sūr (سور, with plain /s/ and /r/), diminutive suwayrah (سويرة); this is the only form cited in all dictionaries of Classical Arabic. Hence, the spelling of the name in Arabic script according to the classical pronunciation is السويرة al-Suwayrah (with sīn not ṣād).

Until the 1960s, Essaouira was generally known by its Portuguese name, Mogador. This name is probably a corruption of Amegdul (Arabic: أمقدول, romanized: Ameqdūl), which was mentioned by the 11th-century geographer al-Bakrī. The name Mogador originated from the Phoenician word Migdol, meaning 'small fortress'.