Beginning with the name it was given, “Mazagan” is a name thought to stem from the Berber toponym “Mazighan”, meaning “water from the sky”. A term said by some to have been used in the region to designate the wells intended to collect rainwater... But according to the geographer Al Idrissi, who wrote the city’s name in Arabic as Mazighan in the 10th century, the term would mean “millstones”. Andre Prive supposes, for his part, that the word is of Portuguese origin, and that after its destruction, the city was called Al Mahdouma, “the demolished one”, before finally adopting the name of El Jadida (“the new” or “the brand-new”) once it had been rebuilt.
At the beginning of the 15th century, the Portuguese are said to have found a small abandoned tower in ruins, which had reportedly been used before as a guard post called “El Brija” which is the diminutive of “borj”. During the construction of the first citadel, they called it “Castello real”, then provisionally, “Sao Jorge” after the rebuilding of the fortress.
It should be noted that the Portuguese were aiming to expand their trade route through Morocco, which they regarded as the second Portuguese Algarve, owing to the fact that the Kingdom geographically faced the European Algarve. They were therefore strongly attached to it, economically as well as militarily. The islands of Madeira, the Azores and Cape Verde completed, by virtue of their proximity, the Portuguese naval, economic and military Atlantic triangle.
Thus, as early as the 14th century, Portugal embarks on a vast enterprise of discovery of the islands and coastline of the South Atlantic, which would allow them to sail around Africa and reach the Indian Ocean, so as to develop the flourishing trade with India. This gave rise to the need to establish ports of call along this maritime route, for the resupply of their ships.
After a first attempt, in 1509, to establish their authority by erecting a small square fort fitted with four towers around the old ruined guard tower called El Brija (Castello Real), it was in 1514, following the conquest of Azamor, (present-day Azemmour), that the Portuguese settled in the region.
In 1541, this city established on the frontier between Christendom and Islam became the first ideal city of the renaissance outside Europe. Some 2,000 people settled there until its abandonment by the Portuguese, in 1769, on the orders of the Portuguese royal power.
After the siege of Mazagan of 1561, organized by the Saadian Sultan Moulay Abdallah, no further war was waged against the fortress until 1768, when the Alaouite Sultan Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah, backed by an army of 75,000 soldiers and 44,000 sappers, was firmly determined to retake this city, to make it a symbol of his ambition to consolidate the Sharifian Empire.
Although the city was totally besieged, the resistance of the people of Mazagan, who endured the worst privations, revealed the heroism of these inhabitants, who emerged victorious.
A peace agreement was signed between Morocco and Portugal. All the more so as the borders of Brazil were threatened to the South and to the North, as the Portuguese crown no longer regarded the conquest of North Africa as a political stake, and as Lisbon no longer provided any support to Mazagan, which was in utter decay and abandonment, ravaged by famine and by epidemics.
The pressure from Sultan Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdallah, as well as the rebuilding of Lisbon, entirely destroyed in 1755 by an earthquake, became the ideal opportunity for Portugal to withdraw definitively, and with dignity, from Morocco.
A truce was observed during which the 2,600 inhabitants of Mazagan were able to reach the Sea Gate.
They carried away their personal belongings as well as the religious ornaments of the city, and such was their rage that they destroyed everything before their departure and blew up the Governor’s gate, in such a way that the city became impassable and inaccessible by land for years. It was then named Al Mahdouma (the demolished one).
The 14 ships cast off their moorings on March 11, 1769, with the plan of rebuilding an identical city on Brazilian soil.
After a transitional six-month stay in Lisbon, they set sail again toward Amazonia on September 15, 1769, for a new adventure, carrying with them the memory of this Moroccan Mazagan.
