Punic & Roman North Africa

Minoan/Mycenaean palaces, the polis, Greek colonization and the Hellenistic world (incl. Etruscan/Phoenician Mediterranean).

1 chapter

700 - 1497

After the Umayyad conquest of the Maghreb, Melilla passed through Idrisid, Umayyad of Córdoba, Almoravid, Almohad, Marinid, and Wattasid rule. The city served as a fortified port on the western Mediterranean frontier, contested between competing Moroccan dynasties. By the late 15th century, internecine conflict between the Wattasid and Saadi dynasties left Melilla abandoned and in decline. The Berber moussem pilgrimage tradition that later anchored the Zawiya Alawiya has roots in this period's Sufi devotional landscape.

1497 - 1860

On September 17, 1497, Pedro de Estopiñán, acting for the Duke of Medina Sidonia, occupied the abandoned city virtually without fighting—not a military conquest of a living Muslim city, but the seizure of a depopulated fortress between warring Moroccan kingdoms. Melilla became a Spanish military presidio on the Barbary Coast, sustained by garrison troops and resupply from the peninsula. The Capilla de Santiago (1551) is probably the only Gothic building in continental Africa. The Purísima Concepción church (1657) doubled as the city cemetery. Fort Victoria Grande (1735–36) embodies the 18th-century fortress expansion. The Virgin of Victory became the city's patron saint, her September 8 feast marking the garrison's deliverance.

1860 - 1912

The 1860 war with Morocco and the 1863 free-port declaration transformed Melilla from a starvation-prone garrison into a booming entrepôt. Sephardic Jews from northern Morocco arrived in 1864—the first Jewish community on Spanish soil since the 1492 expulsion. Sindhi Hindu traders came via Gibraltar and the Suez route. Berber workers from the Rif hinterland supplied labor for the expanding port. By the early 20th century, Enrique Nieto's modernist architecture was reshaping the urban core into Spain's second-largest modernist ensemble after Barcelona. A city of four faiths was taking shape, each community building its own house of worship.

1912 - 1939

The 1912 Spanish Protectorate over northern Morocco made Melilla the logistical hub for the Rif War. The devastating Battle of Annual (1921) reshaped the city's military identity. Franco served here as an Africanist lieutenant colonel—a memory that would haunt the city for a century. The Zawiya Alawiya Sufi brotherhood, founded in Algeria in 1921, established its Melilla presence in 1926 with royal authorization from Alfonso XIII, installing on Cerro de Palma Santa and continuing the Berber moussem pilgrimage tradition. Enrique Nieto designed the Central Mosque (1938), built 1945–47—a rare example of Islamic religious architecture authorized under Spanish rule. The Hindu community constituted itself formally in 1948.