Elilla: City of Citadels
Melilla: City Of Citadels “The sky saved me. If this land’s paths you know not, then by chance you found me; for I am off to Melilla.” ELILLA Juan Ruíz de Alarcón M O n the eastern part of the Moroccan Rif mountain chain, on the And Its Parador Mediterranean shores, on Africa’s frontier, Melilla gazes over to the Spanish coast. Some of the world’s first hominids walked here. Northern Africa was once a humid place. Hippopotami, rhinoceroses, elephants, and giraffes inhabited its forests and savannahs. Here those “pre-Neanderthal” races, whose culture and technology’s traces are still preserved in Casablanca, Rabat, and Tangiers, first evolved. The climate’s sudden change to a drier one caused an abrupt change in the ecosystem. Northern Africa remained isolated between the sea and the Sahara desert. Melilla’s most ancient settlements go back to that time, found in the immediate vicinities of Mt. Gurugú. Neolithic remains are found a little further on, at about 30 km. from the city, on Punta Negri. The Phoenicians, according to Homer, were that Mediterranean mercantile people intent on trading and plundering the islands’ towns, who first inaugurated the existence of Melilla. They brought the alphabet, wine, cedars, art of navigation...and they in turn came for the metals they found. The Phoenicians, called so due to the color purple that colored their robes, began colonizing the Mediterranean coasts, hailing from their homeland Phoenicia, in modern-day Lebanon, throughout the centuries between the year 1200 and 332 BCE. Until then, this ancient Semitic people expanded its maritime commerce by means of sturdy ships, from coast to coast, founding factories and colonies.
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