CHAPTER THE TEN TH
OPEN PORTS— 6
EL JADÍDA (MAZAGAN)
MA Z A G A N affords, perhaps, the only instance in
Morocco in which the European name preserves
the original appellation, while the native name is no
more than half a description, which might suit many
another place better, being simply “ The New,”
i.e., “ The New Little Fort,”— El Bóríjah el
Jadidah— the name by which the fortress built by the
Portuguese in 1506 became known to the Moors.1 The
older Word, Mazagan, * is itself in all probability only a
part of the original name of the spot, near to which
were in those days heaps of stones which marked a
ruined town, for it is evidently a corruption of the word
Imazighán, by which the Morocco Berbers describe themselves.
f In the New World, too, it has found a place
as the name of the colony established on the shores of
Pará, in Brazil, by the Portuguese who in 1769 abandoned
this Mazagan— officially known as Castilho Real t to
the Moors then besieging it with 100,000 men.
• The ^Marsa Márzighan ” of Idreesi.— Dozy’s Edition, p. 73?
t Some Portuguese writers derive the name from cc Má-a-cochon ” (u still
or quiet water ” ): 2 others from Má' zaghá, a common local term for water
in cisterns. |
i See Memorias par a a historia da prafa de Mazagao, by Da Cunha,
Lisbon, 1864.
1 Cf. E z-Zaíání, p. 144.
2 Vestigios d a ' lingua arabica em Portugal, 2nd ed., p. 147.
3 Antonio Caetano Peirara, Professor of Arabic.