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Azemmour


Leo notes
Pirate notes
Cristel notes

Casablanca as we know it did not exist in Leo's days, and the small villages he describes in the vicinity did not presage the advent of the great metropolis we see today. Leo would have been more likely to expect the scene depicted above (a collapsed bridge in the Casa suburb and beach resort of Mohammedia) than the glories of the traffic infested economic capital of Morocco.

Perhaps Anfa, the luxurious residential suburb South of Casablanca still retains some of its 'Leo attributes':

"Anfa is a great town, built by the Romans on the coast. This town was very safe and very wealthy as it was built on fertile lands. It may well be located in the most beautiful place of Africa, as it is surrounded on all sides (except the Northern Ocean side) by plains.

Inside the city there were numerous mosques, elegant shops, grand palaces- as it can be divined in the ruins that remain. There were also plenty of gardens and vines. Still today one can pick a great many fruit, including melons and cucumbers which start to ripen towards mid-April. Merchants bring them to Fes, as the Fes fruit ripen later.

The people of Anfa were very well dressed as a result of their commercial ties to Portugal and England. Amongst them were very educated men. However, two factors brought about their downfall. The first is that they wanted to live freely, though they did not have the ability to do so. Secondly, they sent out small ships to plunder the island of Cadix and the Portuguese coast. Thus the King of Portugal decided to destroy Anfa. He sent a fleet of 50 ships, loaded with troops and artillery. When the inhabitants saw the fleet, they seized their most precious goods and fled to Rabat and Sale, abandoning their town behind them.

The Portuguese commander did not know this had happened and ordered his men to take position. Seeing that there was no response from the city he realized what had happened and disembarked his men, who pillaged all that was left. They also burnt most houses and destroyed part of the city walls.

Anfa has remained empty to this day. When I visited I could not keep my tears from flowing in front of this devastated city. I could see deserted groves, where some of the trees still yielded fruit. The ruin of Anfa is the result of the vices and weakness of the Sultans of Fes" (Leo, 161)

Even though Leo is writing in the 1520's at a time when the authority of the Sultan of Fes was being contested by the rising Saadian dynasty near Marrakech, such violent words concerning his Sultan would never have been written had he stayed in Morocco. The disrespectful tone with which he describes the Fassi ruler's actions is indicative of his opinionated personality and his ability to carry strong judgments on behavior and culture. This 'subjectivity' is probably one of Leo's most precious writing styles, as it provides a type of insight that we rarely find in official Muslim historiography.