Morocco has undertaken plans and studies since 1455 to expand its kingdom beyond Mauritania
Morocco cited maps and studies from 1455 to defend its claim that its sultanate extended beyond Mauritania. Nothing is said about the north of the country, particularly Ceuta (Spanish since 1580) and Melilla (1497). Or the Canary Islands (1478-1496). Includes the southern border of the Moroccan Empire, according to official cartographic documents and history books published in Portugal, Italy, France and Germany between 1455 and 1782. Arguments of great historical value that describe for the first time the brilliant deployment of the Moroccan Empire in Africa, up to Guinea.
According to Le360, on three ancient world maps from the archives of European countries, successive geographers have traced the borders of the Moroccan Empire from the 15th century to modern Mauritania. The entire territorial part today at the centre of the artificial conflict with the eastern neighbour, i.e. the area of Boujdour and Laayoune-Sakia el Hamra and Es-Semara, has always appeared at various levels under Moroccan mandate.
Thus, the Genoese cartographer Bartolomeo Pareto published a world map in Italy in 1455 (“Portulano map representing the eastern side of the North Atlantic Ocean, the Azores, the Canary Islands and the coasts of Ireland, Portugal and Morocco”, Archives of Portugal, facsimile in the BNF), where Morocco lies in its Saharan and Atlantic region. On the map we find the Moroccan territorial region of Bugeder (Boujdour), which extends far down from the Canary Islands into the Western Sahara.
In 1489, an anonymous geographer published navigational charts of Morocco in Portugal, later compiled by a collector in the “Cornaro Atlas”, which reappeared in Europe in 2011 at the BNF. There we find an updated map, 35 years after Bartolomeo Pareto, the first European explorer to reach the Atlantic coast of Morocco. The map shows, as beforeThe entire territory that Algeria occupies has never been anything but Moroccan and has always been a strategic part of the kingdom. He further states, We see that the line of knowledge of the geographers now descends within Mauritania, and the power of the Sultan extends further and further.
The third map, located on the southern border, undoubtedly the most important, shows that Mauritania definitely became part of the Moroccan Empire around the 17th century (Anville Collection, Archives de France, early 18th century). Its author Jean-Baptiste d’Anville locates the borders of the Moroccan Empire beyond Cap Blanc in Mauritania, an area that would give birth to the city of Nouadhibou and become the economic capital of the southern neighbor. According to this map, the territorial continuity at that time continued uninterrupted from Tangier to African lands under the protection of Moroccan royal authority until the 19th century.
This Moroccan domination of West Africa is well documented. We will find it described in particular in a Germanic travelogue in 12 volumes, translated into French by Berenger: “Geographie de Büsching. Africa and the islands dependent on it (…) equipped with a summary of the history of each kingdom”, Burgundy regional fund. Published in German in Lausanne between 1776 and 1782 by the Lutheran geographer and philologist Anton Friedrich Büsching, it is the first written evidence of a high-quality analysis on the expansion of the “Moroccan Empire” (as the author designated it) in Africa, which took root in Guinea, encompassing Senegal, Mali and whose influence reached the Ivory Coast. According to this source the Sultan of Morocco is called in Africa: “Emperor of Africa and King of the Four Kingdoms.” We find in the chapter entitled “The Kingdom of Morocco” how West Africa was governed by the Moroccan sultans: “The head of the Moroccan Empire is the Emperor of Africa, King of the Four Kingdoms, Lord of Gago and Dahra (these two ancient regions form the present Burkina Faso), and the great Sheriff of Guinea, the Prophet. His will makes a sacred law (…) His income is great: he has no particular domain, the whole empire is his domain. The states are governed by cadés (caids) or al faqís (faqihs) to whom they transfer the income of their governments and receive considerable sums annually; when rulers die, he seizes their property and entrusts it with civil or military responsibilities to his sons who are able to use them, he educates those who are still children, he marries his daughters. (pp.323-324)
This narrative already presents Morocco as an international center for European trade in this part of the world. The Dutch, English and French paid commercial duties to the sultans and used the financial and transport circuits of the Sherifian empire: “The merchants bought commercial rights and also the right to bring in foreign goods: the French, English and Dutch trade a lot in this kingdom (in the sense of doing business); they bring linens and other goods from their factories there; they exchange them for leather, wood, sugar, oil, gold and wax: they have consuls in some of these cities” (pp. 324-325).
On religious tolerance in the Moroccan Kingdom: “Mohammadism (Islam) is the religion of the inhabitants, but it differs in some points from the doctrine of the Turks: they believe that the decisions are those of the first caliphs, the interpreters of the law. There are only traditions, which have no force or authority (…) TThey also have somewhat different usages from the Turks: for example, the Turks prohibit the entry into their mosques of those who are not Muslims, and in the Kingdom of Morocco they allow Jews and Christians to attend their ceremonies, their assemblies, their solemnities.s; these little differences mean that they treat the Turks like people who are not of their religion.” (325-326)
Relations between Morocco and Africa are characterized by the great regional economic development that the German author praises, an “empire which produces a hundred times more than its inhabitants consume” (p. 326), he writes; a generous and modern offering. Citing as an example to nations the five-year reserves of wheat stored by the Moroccan sultans for Africa, or the fertility and diversity of agricultural land which provides several crops a year: “Customs and morals vary in different states. In this empire of Morocco; the soil is surrounded almost everywhere by plains and mountains, the fertility of which is very high, as it provides three crops of varying production each year, and, hyperbolically speaking, can produce a hundred times more than the inhabitants can consume: it is true that most of the land lies fallow (empty). No wheat is allowed to be exported and enough wheat is stored underground to feed the people for five years. The empire is rich in honey, wax, wool, cotton, ginger, sugar, indigo, etc. (p.326) An African Eden: “The valleys and mountain slopes abound with fruit, the mountains being mostly covered with trees and grasses.”
“We see that for at least 569 years, the Sahara has been a territory totally dependent on the state. The logic of Moroccan expansion in Africa required passage routes between north and south, which were ensured from the Atlantic coast. Roads from Tafilalt to Guinea. A beautiful empire recognized and feared by all, generous and fair to its population, of which we could be proud and that if another nation had existed for a moment in this region, it would have been known!, emphasizes the digital.