Background
Safi is a port and an important industrial centre. Its harbour has been important since pre-Roman times and it was one of the first areas of Morocco to receive Islam. Later it was the site of a ribat held by ascetic Muslim warriors.
The Almohads surrounded the city with ramparts and built the Zaouïa of Sheikh Mohammed Saleh. During their rule, Safi had an active intellectual and religious life. The first written mention of the town goes back to 11th-century geographer, El Bakri, who wrote that “the ships sail up along the coast from the Oued Souss to Marsa Amegdoul [today’s Essaouira] … and then to Marsa Kouz [the mouth of the River Tensift], which is the port of Aghmat, and thence to Marsa Asafi”. El Idrissi, writing in the mid-12th century, said that ships could load at Safi “when the Ocean of Shadows was calm”.
The Portuguese had had a trading centre at Safi since 1481 and took control of the town in 1508, building a citadel, repairing the kasbah and building the distinctive Dar el Bahr (Castle of the Sea) in 1523, to defend the northern entrance of the port and to be the official residence of the governor. Some of the cannon, cast in Spain and the Netherlands, remain today, ‘protecting’ the town. The Portuguese left in 1541. Under the Saâdians in the later 16th century, Safi developed a role as the port for the sugar produced at Chichaoua and for Souss copper, a strategic raw material much in demand in the foundries of Europe. The Saâdians also built the Grand Mosque in the médina.
In the 17th century, European countries had a significant trading presence in Safi, and Moulay Ismaïl was instrumental in developing the city in the early 18th century. Under Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdallah, trade intensified, with France, England, the Dutch Republic and Denmark all having agents. An indication of the effects of contact with Europe is given by a Dr Lempriere, an English visitor in 1789: “During the time I spent in the town, I lodged in a Jewish house where I saw two Arabs who had been to London, and who spoke a few words of English. They thought to please me greatly when they proffered a chair and a small table. Since I had left Tangiers, I had only seen this furniture, now completely indispensable to us, at the French consul’s house in Rabat”.
However, developments were cruel to Safi. Its position as the chief diplomatic port for the capital, Marrakech, was removed when Essaouira was rebuilt in the late 18th century. Between 1791 and 1883, no less than 18 natural catastrophes of various kinds hit the town. Nevertheless, not all was doom and gloom: in the mid-19th century, potters from Fès came to settle, bringing with them their craft skills. The Jewish community developed – it says much for the open-mindedness of Safi that there was never any walled-off mellah area – and a mixed Franco-Hispano-Portuguese commercial and fishing community gradually took root.
Safi was the base of a large sardine fishing fleet, which continues to this day, and, for many years, Safi was the biggest world sardine port. Large schools of sardines are present as a result of the currents of cold water bathing the coasts south of El Jadida in the summer, and more than 30,000 tonnes of fish now pass through the port annually – hence an important processing and canning industry, which provides considerable employment for women.
Under the French, Safi was developed as a port for exporting phosphate rock, connecting it by rail to the mines around Youssoufia. In 1964 a new processing complex for Maroc-Chimie to the south of the town came on line, allowing the export of phosphate fertilizers, as well as unprocessed phosphates, and established Safi as one of Morocco’s largest ports.
The development of Safi has been rapid, with the population rising from 40,000 in 1960 to over 400,000 today. The once bustling multinational sardine port has become a provincial city where a combination of factors have produced rather negative results. Chemical products poured into the sea have had a bad effect on the fish population. There are no useable town beaches, and scant respect has been paid to the town planning regulations. There is a huge sub-standard housing problem, especially in the médina. A few years ago, a large number of the urban poor of Agadir and Marrakech were apparently relocated to Safi, creating a climate of insecurity. Many former Safiots who grew up there in the 1950s and 1960s prefer not to go back. The town does have an interesting history and some sights, however, and although it will never be a major destination, it would be a pity if Safi’s tourist potential was totally neglected.
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