Photograph by Herbert White,
CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH
CLOSED PORTS
i —AZ1LA or ASlLA* (ARZILLA).
SOME 27 miles, or a good day’s ride, south-west by
south of Tangier, lies the unfortunate port of Azila,
unfortunate because its situation and its rivals promise
it a future no brighter than its past, which has ^
been neither noteworthy nor glorious. Yet
even Azila has its place in history, and can look back
to Roman times, though in Morocco the sole patent of
nobility would seem to be a Carthaginian strain. To
the Romans Azila was known as Zilia, Constantia Zilia,
or Julia Traducta, according to the authority preferred,
but it was probably little more than a station on the
road from Tingis to Volubilis. It could never have been
much of a port, notwithstanding its fair road- Roadstead.
stead, so it never gained a reputation for
piracy. The little river of Azila which crosses the sands
to the north is of no importance, but a reef of rocks,
on which there once stood a dyke, affords indifferent
shelter for small boats when they are able to pass the
channel ; Spanish fishing fleets, which lie a short way
out to sea, are the only vessels which now frequent this
port, and then but for water. When in 1894» on the
death of Mulai el Hasan III., some of the European
Powers sent men-of-war down the coast,. the Spanish
* Spelled Asila by Ibn Batuta. An inhabitant of Azfla is known as
an Aztlashi'.