From the Blue City to International Waters
By Simon Rabinovitch
Leaving Fes early on Monday, we set out on the last leg of our journey through Morocco. The final stretch would take us to Chefchaouen, a town known as the “Blue City” or “Blue Pearl,” and on the next day to Tangier and ultimately Seville. As we moved up into the Rif Mountains, the dusty yellows of the plateau and foothills gradually greened. Mountains that were distant shadows protecting Fes slowly enveloped the road. Chefchaouen is known for its blue painted homes, alleys, and doors, but it’s recognizable from a distance by the two craggy peaks for which it’s named. “Chaouen” means “horns” in Tamazigh, and since “chef” means “look,” the name seems to be a directive–“look, horns”–to find the village nestled between the peaks.
As we learned from Jaouad as he took us around Chefchaouen by foot, the fortress-town was founded by Sherif Moulay Ali Ben Rachid in 1471 as a mountainous redoubt from Portuguese expansion along the Atlantic coast. The Sherif built the kasbah and mosque that still stand at Chefchaouen’s center and absorbed their share of the Andalusians who fled (in the case of Muslims) or were expelled (in the case of Jews) from Iberia in the wake of the fall of Granada. Today, Chefchaouen is a well preserved and picturesque town with Instagrammable nooks and alleys around every corner.
Our Program Assistant (and the editor-in-chief of this here blog) Kaedyn Murphy–a veteran of our 2024 program and a recent History Department graduate–wrote her capstone thesis on the city of Tangier’s rather unique and understudied period when it was ruled cooperatively as an international zone. We were so fortunate to have a class with Kaedyn for some context on the city’s complexity so that we could make the most of our brief visit the next day. In Kaedyn’s fascinating talk she explained how the strategically located 144-square-mile enclave on the Atlantic side of the mouth to the Straits of Gibraltar was governed as an “international city” between 1923 and Morocco’s independence in 1956. The various European governments that took an interest in the port, commercial opportunities, and access to the Moroccan Sultan through what became his diplomatic capital, established consulates in the nineteenth century that increasingly undermined the Sultan’s authority and jurisdiction through parallel legal systems and at the same time created councils that took on basic governing functions. A busy port means disease, and the health commission created by several governments expanded to improve sewage, street maintenance, and other public works. When France and Spain carved up Morocco in the twentieth century (while leaving the Alawi sultan some nominal independence), Great Britain had an interest in preventing either of its rivals from claiming the Tangier’s spot opposite its own possession in Gibraltar. Through some halting and haphazard diplomacy, eventually an agreement for an internationally governed city emerged in 1923. Kaedyn explained to us how for thirty six years an international administration, legislative assembly, and mixed court system dominated by Europeans governed Tangiers, and its population that remained 75% Moroccan. Tangiers had three official languages–French, Spanish, and Arabic–and used three currencies. Disputes were settled according to a complex legal system that adjudicated according to the national law of the litigants, using appointed (titular) and irregular (adjunct) judges from a wide range of nationalities. The one group that did not have appointed judges in the mixed court system was Moroccans (both Muslims and Jews), though because most commercial disputes were with “international” citizens they had to use these courts regardless of the fact that the judges didn’t speak Arabic. Muslim and Jewish courts added another layer of complexity, and opportunities to look for what might be a more favorable ruling. Kaedyn finished her fascinating class by giving us a flavor for the lawless frontier atmosphere of Tangier that attracted non-conformists of all stripes (and also crime and a good share of exploitation)–a reputation the city kept well into the independence era.
A brave few finished out the day with a sunset hike led by Jaouad to the so-called “Spanish mosque” on a high hill about the town. We watched the sun dip below the mountains for our last time (for now) in Morocco, with a smattering of locals and tourists and a few goats for good measure.
Our final day in Morocco included a walking tour through the Kasbah of Tangier before heading to the terminal for our ferry to Algeciras on the other side. We gathered on deck to part ways with the Maghreb for now, quickly traversed the Straits, and floated past the Rock of Gibraltar, ready for the next phase of our adventure.
