Essaouira
Visited in November 2018
At a glance
- Country
- Morocco
- Region
- —
- Population
- 82,962
- Type
- City in Marrakech-Safi, Morocco
- Coordinates
- 31.51°N, 9.77°W
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Overview
Essaouira, known until the 1960s as Mogador (Arabic: موغادور, romanized: Mūghādūr, or موݣادور, Mūgādūr), is a port city on the Atlantic coast in western Morocco. It has 82,962 inhabitants as of 2024. 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.
Summary from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.