Rabat — All about Rabat

Sala, the Roman town

The Phoenicians founded trading posts on the Atlantic coast, but whether one existed at Sala is still debated. In the 1st century BC locals still wrote in Neo-Punic; the region belonged to the Berber kingdom of Mauretania before being annexed by Rome.

On the site of the Chellah the Romans built Sala Colonia, over older Mauretanian buildings. With Lixus it was one of the two main Roman naval posts on the Atlantic coast of Mauretania Tingitana; its port was a stop for ships sailing south to Anfa and Mogador island. The town emptied from the 5th century and was largely in ruins when the Arabs arrived in the 7th century.

The ribat and the Almohads' dream city

In the 10th century a ribat, a fortified post held by warriors of the faith, was founded to fight the Barghawata to the south; Rabat's name comes from it. Around 1030 the town of Salé was born on the other bank. Around 1150 the Almohad caliph Abd al-Mu'min built a kasbah with palace and mosque on the site of today's Udayas kasbah, and had a canal dug to bring water: the site became a launch point for armies heading to al-Andalus.

Ya'qub al-Mansur (1184-1199) thought bigger: an imperial capital, Ribat al-Fath, with huge walls, monumental gates such as Bab er-Rouah and Bab Oudaya, and a gigantic mosque whose remains include Hassan Tower. When he died in 1199 everything remained unfinished, and the city was never really populated.

Salé takes the lead (13th-16th century)

Under the Marinids it was Salé, on the north bank, that prospered. The south bank declined so much that in 1515 Leo Africanus counted only about a hundred inhabited houses.

The Marinids still left two marks: a great mosque in today's medina, and on the site of ancient Sala, the Chellah, their dynasty's royal necropolis, ringed by walls with a monumental gate.

The Bou Regreg republic (1627-1666)

In 1609 Philip III ordered the expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain. About 2,000 of them, from Hornachos near Badajoz, settled in the kasbah, and thousands more followed. In 1627 Rabat and Salé formed the autonomous Republic of Bou Regreg, which lived by privateering: its corsairs, the "Salé Rovers", attacked merchant ships as far as northern Europe.

The south bank, then called "New Salé", filled up; an "Andalusian Wall" marked the new medina, and Rue des Consuls became a main artery. The Alaouite founder Moulay Rashid took the city in 1666, but privateering went on until the early 19th century: in 1829 Austria bombarded the city after losing a ship.

City of the Alaouite sultans

Moulay Ismail (1672-1727) enlarged the kasbah, built a royal residence there, now a museum, and settled the Udaya military tribe, which gave it its name. Sidi Mohammed ben Abdallah (1757-1790) founded the royal palace, the Dar al-Makhzen, inside the old Almohad enclosure.

Moulay Slimane (1792-1822) built the Dar al-Bahr palace and several mosques, and created the Mellah in the east of the medina. In the early 19th century the walls were extended and the city covered about 840 hectares; it had 20,000 to 25,000 inhabitants around 1900.

Capital of the protectorate (1912-1956)

After the Treaty of Fes of March 1912 and the riots that followed, Resident-General Lyautey moved the capital from Fes to Rabat: it was on the coast, more accessible and close to Casablanca, which he already saw as the future economic centre. In 1913 he commissioned the planner Henri Prost to design the administrative new town, built beside the preserved medina.

The city grew fast: 33,714 inhabitants in the 1921 census, about 83,000 in 1936 and 156,000 in 1952. In 1921 a third of the population was European.

Capital of independent Morocco

At independence in 1956 Mohammed V kept Rabat as capital. Foreigners gradually left; in 1971 the city had about 368,000 inhabitants, 3.5% of them foreign. The American Rabat-Salé air base closed in the early 1960s.

The city hosted major summits: in 1969 the summit that gave birth to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation; in 1974 the Arab summit that recognised the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. In 2012 Rabat was listed as UNESCO World Heritage, its 20th-century modern city included.

Capital of the arts

The Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (2014), the Mawazine festival every spring, and the renowned patterns of Rbati embroidery.

The Rbatis

Rabat's old families, often of Andalusian origin, are known as discreet and attached to tradition: gold-thread embroidery, Rabat rugs, refined cooking. Today the city is mostly civil servants, diplomats and students from all over the country.

The capital's speech

Traditional Rbati darija, close to that of Fes and Salé, has a softened "r" and Andalusian turns of phrase. On the street you mostly hear the standard big-city darija, mixed with French.