Morocco
Home > Exhibition Trails > Morocco > Andalusian Morocco > Itinerary VIIANDALUSIAN MOROCCO
A Discovery in Living Art
Region: Central and Northern Morocco (Rif mountains)
ITINERARY VII: The Ports of the Strait
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Description |
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The ports are in a privileged position, in terms of political and cultural relations between Morocco and the Iberian Peninsula, as they are located at the coastal tip of north Morocco, between Tangier and Ceuta, at a point which seems to want to join up to Spain. The stretch of sea filling the Strait which was compared to a river, as opposed to being viewed as an obstacle, and, since the earliest times of history, was always an easy means of communication between , Europe and other Mediterranean countries. It is through this coastal zone that Morocco came into contact with Punic, Roman, Byzantine, and Visigothic civilisations (as did Spain), and through which the Roman province of Mauretania Tingitania, the capital which was Tangiers, was linked, at the end of the Roman Empire, to the diocese of Spain. It was thus that during the height of the Moroccan-Andalusian civilisation, particularly during the 7th/13th and 8th/14th centuries, Ceuta (Sebta), Ksar Es-Seghir and Tangier enjoyed an economic prosperity and cultural development that was without precedent. |