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. The Phoenician settlement of Melilla, surely founded after the V century CE, was basically, and on account of its geographical position, suitable as a coastal trading post. The enclave had, quite visibly, Cape Tres Forcas as a reference point. The dominant easterly and westerly winds allowed them to find the perfect anchorage in Melilla or Cazaza. The area’s attractions, to the Phoenicians’ eyes, were not simply its logistics potential. The Phoenicians practiced navigation by height, that is, by sailing along the coasts, various centuries before Melilla was founded. In fact, they sailed without any difficulty the 235 miles stretch between Oran and Gibraltar. Reason for which, if they chose to stop in Melilla, it must have been for something more than just staying overnight. Of their presence, time has left the necropolis on the peak of de San Lorenzo. Rusadir, as it was called, starting in the VI c., became a Carthagenian settlement. The Romans, later on, opened a coin mint. In the excavations of the Casa del Gobernador (open to visitors) alone, archaeologists have recently found the following: a patio with a central well, more than 50,000 fragments of ceramic material, 15 types of amphoras, a housed area from the II c. BCE, and a large number of coins. MELILLA AND ITS PARADOR 1 The excavations at Melilla la Vieja were begun on account of Melilla’s a second phase, in coincidence with the Beduins’ arrival in the XI c., and a past historical glory, when it was part of the province of Mauritania third phase, in the XV c., when a large number of Andalusi people arrive. Tingitana. It might soon become a sort of museum-town. But back to where we were. Melilla is now Muslim, it grows and gains wealth, and, even the Vikings are attracted by its coast’s position, The traces of history fade out when the Roman Empire fell, although devastating the area in the IX c. It takes about 100 years to rise once more, well known are the Vandals’ siege-and-burn campaigns in the year 429 after that terrible attack, until the troops of caliph Abderrahaman III, in the CE. Of its Phoenician past, only the city’s name endured the assaults and year 926, take the charge, and incorporate it into the Caliphate of Cordoba. decadence of history until the Islamic era. In the XIII c., the city falls under the Merinids of Fez. In the XIV and XV centuries, a series of disputes between the sultans of Tlemencen and Fez Arabs And Berbers destroy Melilla and take her to a new period of decadence and neglect. The Christian Occupation T he indigenous people’s resistance against the Arab invaders, at the end of the VII c. is well recorded. Chronicles from that time tell us about the people’s ferocity and the superhuman power of their T he chronicle writer of Casa Ducal (Ducal House) of Medina guide, Cahína, the sorceress. These people, the Berbers, probably Sidonia tells us that on a crisp September day in the year 1497, descended from the prehistoric population that inhabited the Sahara, the Spanish army sailors “stopped in the middle of the sea because the day reaching the coast when their homeland started to become a desert around had not come yet, and, as night fell, the first thing they did was to bring the year 6000 BCE. on shore a wooden structure of beams, that fit into each other and a wooden raft-like plank that they had brought over from Spain. And they They migrated to the Iberian Peninsula, where they left their cultural worked all through the night to put it up from the fallen wall to the heritage, traces to be found in the language and in schematic drawings. exterior, where the Arabs were...and when the next day came, the Moorish This means that before the Arab invasion, peninsular Spain already could Arabs who went about the fields, having seen Melilla the day before barren claim African features in its economical, social, cultural, and ethnic as ever, and they saw it with walls and towers the next morning, and filled genealogy. with the sound of drums and artillery shots, they thought that instead of Rusadir became Melilla, from the noun Melil (fever), that is, always the Feverish One. The defeated Berbers, escaping from Melilla at the dawn of the eighth century of our era, chose the Rif as their mountain refuge, a favorable highland whence their resistence could continue. They are known for their customs—shaving their head, wearing a jelibiyah, and eating cuscus. All their and others’ customs and languages, occupations, economical systems, however, are more of an accumulation of different and very numerous ethnic groups. The Amazigh (berber is a Greek term meaning barbarian), is—according to Guillermo Alonso Meneses—“equally an Almohad, an Almoravid, a Zenata, a Rif inhabitant, or a Kabylian; as much of a blond with light eyes, as dark or black-skinned and with curly hair.” However it may have been, starting in the VII century Islam begins to expand, while the cultural substrate of the Amazigh suffers significant transformations. After their first contact, their Arabization would undergo MELILLA AND ITS PARADOR 2 Christians, devils had landed there, and so they fled from the area The Campaign Of Melilla running off to tell the nearby towns what they had seen.” Captain Gómez Suárez, Melilla’s first Leader, and his successors, after I n 1902, Bou Hamara "El Rogui," challenges the authority of the conquest, concentrate all their efforts, and a large part of their sultan Abdelaziz, creating his own independent kingdom in the economical resources, in an effort to build up the city’s defenses. northeast part of Morocco. He relies on the Rif Kabylian forces, wanting to Investments in this area were such that in 1556, the Dukes gave up on the expel Spain and France from the land. This unstable political reality rises town’s plaza construction, in favor of the crown, because the expenses from the earth’s depths, near Melilla, when lead and iron ore mines are were too high. That is when, under the control of Venegas, Governor and discovered there. Immediately the Spanish government gets in touch with Embassador of the Prudent King, the extraordinary events of the El Rogui, who eventually grants Spain the permission to begin the land’s Morabits’ failed invasion occur. One of the Golden Century’s masters, Juan exploitation. The people of the Rif, however, interpret this concession as a Ruíz de Alarcón, recorded the events in his work, La Manganilla de betrayal on behalf of their leader and act on their own. The works on the Melilla mines are momentarily paralized. There are too many interests at play. Pimienta: If you are going to talk to the mayor The French, partners of Spain in this mining adventure, threaten to I think you have come too late. intervene. Thus Spain began its so-called campaign of Melilla. Salomon: How so? Pimienta: He has departed already, The mobilization of reserve troops called to fight in Morocco causes an Off, to Melilla, to save his Soul. unexpected popular reaction on the peninsula, resulting in a bloody revolt, going down in history as the Tragic Week of Barcelona. In the Barricade of the Wolf (Barranco del Lobo), not too far from the city of Melilla, things Sturdy And Indomitable do not seem to be going any better: the Mixed Brigade of Madrid suffers a Walls terrible defeat in which between 1000 to 1500 soldiers die. Hence, 40,000 soldiers land on Melilla and wait till September to act under Gen. Darío Diez Vicario’s orders, finally taking Mt. Gurugú. F rom that moment on, and up into the XIX c., Melilla’s history is written on fresh linen, battlements, saddles, towers, and the rest Once order was re-established in the area, the mining companies begin of the defensive engineering that went into and renovated the city’s walls.

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