Agadir

Agadir is a Moroccan town on the Atlantic coast, where the High Atlas meets the plain of Sus. Its harbour was a Portuguese fort, Santa Cruz, and then a Sa'di possession and a trading port.

The Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.), signed R. Le Tourneau, describes Agadir-Ighir as a town at the northern end of a large bay, under a fort on a hill of 800–900 feet. It is unclear whether a settlement existed before the Portuguese, although a letter of 1510 mentions an agadir there near which a travelling market was held. In 1505 the Portuguese nobleman Joao Lopes de Sequeira built a wooden castle at the spring below the hill, named Santa Cruz del Cabo de Aguer. The Portuguese presence caused a reaction among the Berbers of the Sus, and the Sa'dids, supported by the Dila'iyya order, rose under Muhammad al-Qa'im, who was proclaimed war leader about 1510. In September 1540 Muhammad al-Shaykh captured Santa Cruz after a siege that began on 16 February 1541 and ended with the surrender of the Portuguese governor. The Sa'di sultan 'Abd Allah al-Ghalib built a fort on the hill, and from then until 1773, when Mogador was founded, Agadir was a trading port. The German gunboat Panther anchored there in 1911, and the French occupied it in 1913. The town has since grown with agriculture, fisheries and mining. ¹