Tangier

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tangier (Tanja طنجة in Berber and Arabic, Tánger in Spanish, Tânger in Portuguese, and Tanger in French) is a city of northern Morocco with a population of 669,680 (2004 census). It lies on the North African coast at the western entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Spartel. It is the capital of the Tangier-Tétouan Region.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Ecclesiastical history 1.2 Espionage history 2 Culture 3 Economy 4 Education 4.1 Primary Education 4.2 International Primary Institutions 4.3 International High Schools 5 Tangier in popular culture 5.1 Literature 5.2 Magazines 5.3 Films 5.4 Music 5.5 Paintings 6 People born in Tangier 7 People who settled or sojourned in Tangier 8 People who died in Tangier 9 Trivia 10 Events 11 Landmarks 12 Town twinning 13 See also 14 Sources and external links 15 Maps

[edit] History

The modern Tanjah (Anglicised as Tangier) is an ancient Phoenician town, founded by Carthaginian colonists in the early 5th century BCE. Its name is possibly derived from the Berber goddess Tinjis (or Tinga), and it remains an important city for the Berbers. Ancient coins call it Tenga, Tinga, and Titga, Greek and Latin authors giving numerous variations of the name. According to Berber mythology, the town was built by Sufax, son of Tinjis, the wife of the Berber hero Antaios. The Greeks ascribed its foundation to the giant Antaeus, whose tomb and skeleton are pointed out in the vicinity, calling Sufax the son of Hercules by the widow of Antaeus. The cave of Hercules, a few miles from the city, is a major tourist attraction. It is believed that Hercules slept there before attempting one of his twelve labours.

The commercial town of Tingis came under Roman rule in the course of the 1st century BC, first as a free city and then, under Augustus, a colony (Colonia Julia, under Claudius), capital of Mauritania Tingitana of Hispania. In the 5th century CE, Vandals conquered and occupied "Tingi" and from here swept across North Africa. A century later (between 534 and 682), Tangier became part of the Byzantine empire, before coming under Arab control in 702.

The city had a chequered history from the late Middle Ages, being held by the Portuguese from 1471-1580; by Spain during the Portuguese unification with Spain, 1580-1640; and by Portugal again, 1640-1661. In 1661 it was given to Charles II of England as part of the dowry from the Portuguese Infanta Catherine of Braganza. The English gave the city a garrison and a charter which made it equal to English towns.

In 1679, Sultan Moulay Ismail of Morocco made an unsuccessful attempt to seize the town but imposed a crippling blockade which ultimately forced the English to withdraw. The British destroyed the town and its port facilities prior to their departure in 1684. Under Moulay Ismail the city was reconstructed to some extent, but it gradually declined until, by 1810, the population was no more than 5,000.

In 1821, the Legation Building in Tangier became the first piece of property acquired abroad by the U.S. government--a gift to the U.S. from Sultan Moulay Suliman. It was bombarded by the French Prince de Joinville in 1844.

Tangier's geographic location made it a centre for European diplomatic and commercial rivalry in Morocco in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By the opening of the 20th century it had a population of about 40,000, including 20,000 Muslims (with Berbers predominating over Arabs), 10,000 Jews, and 9,000 Europeans (of whom 7,500 were Spanish). The city was increasingly coming under French influence, and it was here in 1905 that Kaiser Wilhelm II triggered an an international crisis that almost led to war between his country and France by pronouncing himself in favour of Morocco's continued independence.

In 1912, Morocco was effectively partitioned between France and Spain, the latter occupying the country's far north (called Spanish Morocco) and a part of Moroccan territory in the south, while France declared a protectorate over the remainder. Tangier was made an international zone in 1923 under the joint administration of France, Spain, and Britain, joined by Italy in 1928.

After a period of effective Spanish control from 1940 to 1945 during World War II, Tangier was reunited with the rest of Morocco following the restoration of full sovereignty in 1956.

[edit] Ecclesiastical history

Tangier was a Roman Catholic titular see of former Mauretania Tingitana (the official list of the Roman Curia places it in Mauretania Caesarea).

Towards the end of the third century, Tangier was the scene of the martyrdom of St. Marcellus, mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on 30 October, and of St. Cassian, mentioned on 3 December. It is not known whether it was a diocese in ancient times.

Under the Portuguese domination, it was a suffragan of Lisbon and, in 1570, was united to the diocese of Ceuta. Six of its bishops are known, the first, who did not reside in his see, in 1468. In the protectorate era of Morocco Tangier was the residence of the prefect Apostolic of Morocco, which mission was in charge of the Friars Minor. It had a Catholic church, several chapels, schools, and a hospital.

Tangier is a host of the Anglican church of Saint Andrew.

[edit] Espionage history

Tangier has been reputed as a safe house for international spying activities. Its position during the Cold War and other spying periods of the 19th and 20th century is legendary. Tangier acquired the reputation of a spying and smuggling centre and attracted foreign capital due to political neutrality and commercial liberty at that time.

The city has also been a subject for many spy fiction books and films. (See Tangier in popular culture below).

[edit] Culture

The multicultural placement of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities and the foreign immigrants attracted writers like Paul Bowles, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Tennessee Williams, Brion Gysin and the music group the Rolling Stones, who all lived in or visited Tangier.

It was after Delacroix that Tangier became an obligatory stop for artists seeking to experience the colors and light he spoke of for themselves - with varying results. Matisse made several sojourns in Tangier, always staying at the Hotel Villa de France. "I have found landscapes in Morocco," he claimed, "exactly as they are described in Delacroix's paintings." The Californian artist Richard Diebenkorn was directly influenced by the haunting colors and rhythmic patterns of Matisse’s Morocco paintings.

Tangier also knew the rise of native authors such as Mohamed Choukri who is considered as one of North Africa's most controversial and widely read authors. Paul Bowles collaborated closely with Choukri on the translation and wrote the introduction for Choukri's autobiography For Bread Alone, described by Tennessee Williams as 'A true document of human desperation, shattering in its impact.'

In the 1940s and until 1956 when the city was an International Zone, the city served as a playground for eccentric millionaires, a meeting place for secret agents and all kinds of crooks, and a mecca for speculators and gamblers, an Eldorado for the fun-loving "Haute Volée".

William S. Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch in Tangier in the 1950s and the book's locale of Interzone is an allusion to the city.

As a great collector of lead soldiers, the American billionaire and publisher of Forbes magazine Malcolm Forbes brought together a total of 115,000 models in what was the Forbes Museum of Tangier. These figures re-enacted the major battles of history; from Waterloo to Dien Bien Phû, realistically recreated with lighting and sound effects. Entire armies stand on guard in the showcases, while in the garden, 600 statuettes bear silent homage to the Battle of Three Kings. The museum was closed after the death of Malcolm Forbes and is now used by the Moroccan government as a private residence for visiting dignitaries.

[edit] Economy

Tangier is the second industrial center of Morocco after Casablanca. The industial sectors are diversified: textile, chemical, mechanical, metallurgical and naval. Currently, the city has four industrial parks of which two have a statute of free economic zone (see Tangier Free Zone).

Tangier economy relies heavily on tourism. Seaside resorts have been increasing with projects funded by foreign investments. Real estate and construction companies have been investing heavily in touristic infrastructures. A bay delimiting the city centre extends on more than 7 km. Years 2007-2008 will be particular for the city because of the completion of the big projects like the second "Tangier-Mediterranean port" and its industrial parks; a stage of 45.000 places, business a district, tourist installations.

Agriculture in the area of Tangier is tertiary and mainly cereal. The small taxis are blue with a yellow bar while the big taxis are white.

The infrastructure of the city of the strait of Gibraltar consists of one port managing flows of goods and travellers (more than one million travellers per annum) integrating a marina and a fishing port.

The railroad connects the city with Rabat, Casablanca and Marrakech in the south and Fès and Oujda in the east. The service is operated by ONCF.

The Rabat-Tanger expressway is operational since the summer 2005 and connects Tangier to Fès via Rabat (250 km) and Settat via Casablanca (330 km).

The Ibn Batouta International Airport (formely "Boukhalef") is to 15 km in the south-west of the city center.

Artisanal trade in the old medina (old city) specializes mainly in leather working, articles out of wooden and silver, traditional clothing and shoes of Moroccan origin.

The city has been knowing a fast pace of rural exodus of other small cities and villages. The population has quadrupled during the last two decades (1 million inhabitants today against 250.000 in 1982). The exodus phenomenon has allowed the appearance of semi districts peripheral mainly inhabited by poor people where the infrastructure misses.

The city postcode is 90 000.

[edit] Education

Tangier offers five different types of educational systems: Moroccan, American, French, Spanish and English. Each of these systems offer classes starting from Pre-Kindergarten up to the 12th grade, Baccalaureat, or High school diploma.

[edit] Primary Education

There are more than a dozen Moroccan primary schools, each dispersed randomly in the city.

[edit] International Primary Institutions

• The American School of Tangier

• Ecole Adrien Berchet

• Colegio Ramon y Cajal (Spanish primary school)

• English College of Tangier

[edit] International High Schools

• The American School of Tangier

• Lycée Regnault (French High School)

• Instituto Severo Ochoa (Spanish High School)

• English College of Tangier

Many universities are located both inside and outside the city. Universities like the "Institut Superieur Internationale de Tourisme" (ISIT), which is a school that offers diplomas in various departments, offer courses ranging from business administration to hotel management. The institute is among one of the most prestigious tourism schools in the country. Other colleges such as the "Ecole Nationale de Commerce et de Gestion" (ENCG-T) is among the biggest business schools in the country.

[edit] Tangier in popular culture

Tangier was the subject of many artistic works, including novels, films and music.

[edit] Literature

• Silent Day in Tangiers by Tahar Ben Jelloun.
• Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs - relates some of the author's experiences in Tangier. (See also Naked Lunch (film))
• Interzone by Burroughs - It talks about a a fictionalized version of Tangier called Interzone.
• Let It Come Down is Paul Bowles's second novel, first published in 1952
• The Loom of Youth by Alec Waugh - a controversial semi-autobiographical novel relating homosexual experiences of the author in the city of Tangier.
• Two Tickets to Tangier by Francis Van Wyck Mason, an American novelist and historian
• Modesty Blaise; a fictional character in a comic strip of the same name created by Peter O'Donnell - In 1945 a nameless girl escaped from a displaced person (DP) camp in Karylos, Greece. She took control of a criminal gang in Tangier and expanded it to international status as "The Network".
• Carpenter's World Travels: From Tangier to Tripoli - a Frank G. Carpenter travel guide (1927)
• The Thief's Journal - a Jean Genet - Includes the protagonist's experiments in negative morality in Tangier (1949)

[edit] Magazines

• Antaeus (magazine) was first published in Tangier by Daniel Halpern and Paul Bowles before being shifted to New York
• Tangier Gazette was founded by William Augustus Bird (aka Bill Bird) in Tangier

[edit] Films

• The Living Daylights - a James Bond movie where he hunts Brad Whitaker down at his Tangier headquarters
• From Russia with Love - the fictional character in "James Bond", Red Grant was recruited by "SPECTRE" in Tangier in 1962, whilst on the run from the law
• Casino - Robert De Niro stars as Sam "Ace" Rothstein, a top gambling handicapper who is called by The Mob to oversee the day-to-day operations at the fictional Tangiers Casino in Las Vegas.
• Tangier Incident - an American agent posing as a black market operator, is in Tangier on a mission to stop the plans of three atomic scientists who are there to pool their secrets and sell them in a package to the Communists.
• Man from Tangier (a.k.a. Thunder Over Tangier) - 1957
• Tangiers, 1908 was one of the unaired Young Indiana Jones Chronicles episodes
• Flight to Tangier (Charles Marquis Warren) - 1953
• Tangier featuring Sabu Dastagir - 1946
• The Nautch of Tangier (aka The Witchmaker) - 1969
• Tangier featuring María Montez - 1946
• Espionage in Tangiers. A thriller of a secret agent out to snag a dangerous molecular ray-gun - 1966
• That Man from Tangier (in Spanish Aquel Hombre de Tanger) featuring Sara Montiel
• The Bourne Supremacy, an espionage movie featuring Matt Damon - After a boat ride in from Tangier, the character "Bourne" allows himself to be discovered as he turns up on the net in Naples, Italy. - 2006

[edit] Music

• Tangiers (band) - a Canadian Rock music band.
• Blood on the Tracks by Bob Dylan - If you see her say hello, she might be in Tangier.
• Savoy Truffle by The Beatles
• Sartori in Tangier by King Crimson - derives its title from beat generation influences including the Jack Kerouac novel Satori in Paris, and the city of Tangier, where a number of beat writers resided and which they often used as a setting for their writing.
• Waiting in Tangier - a track in the album Woman to Woman of Fem2fem band.
• Tangier by the Scottish musician Donovan Philips Leitch on his album The Hurdy Gurdy Man.
• Live At Tangiers - a solo by Michael Stanley

[edit] Paintings

• Window at Tangier by the French Matisse (1912 - The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow).
• Virtual Tangier: Visions of the City by Matisse (c. 1911-1916)
• Harvest of a journey to Spain and Tangiers, The Great Mosque, and Serpent Charmers of Sokko - a painting by Emile Wauters
• Market Day Outside the Walls of Tangiers by Louis Comfort Tiffany (1873 - Smithsonian American Art Museum)
• HMS Mary Rose and pirates by Willem van de Velde (a painting ascribed to Willem van de Velde, taken from the book: William Laird Clowes (ed.): The Royal Navy. A History From the Earliest Times to the Present, Vol. 2, London 1898)

[edit] People born in Tangier

• Ibn Battuta - an Arab explorer
• Shlomo Ben-Ami - an Israeli politician
• Ralph Benmergui - a Canadian TV and radio host at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
• Alexandre Rey Colaço - A Portuguese pianist
• Roger Elliott - the first British Governor of Gibraltar
• Sanaa Hamri - a Moroccan music video director
• Emmanuel Hocquard - a French poet
• Alexander Spotswood - an American Lieutenant-Colonel and Lieutenant Governor of Virginia
• Heinz Tietjen - a German music composer
• Ángel Vázquez - a writer in spanish.
• Abderrahmane Youssoufi - a former socialist prime minister of Morocco

[edit] People who settled or sojourned in Tangier

• Lancelot Addison - an English chaplain and the author of West Barbary, or a Short Narrative of the Revolutions of the Kingdoms of Fex and Morocco (1671).
• José Luis Alcaine - a Spanish born cinematographer
• Bill Bird - an American journalist and the founder of Tangier Gazette
• Paul Bowles - an American writer and composer. Died in Tangier.
• Jane Bowles - an American writer. Wife of Paul Bowles.
• William S. Burroughs - an American novelist, essayist, social critic, painter and spoken word performer
• William S. Burroughs, Jr. - an American novelist. Son of William S. Burroughs.
• Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac visited Burroughs, their fellow Beat in Tangier.
• João de Castro - a Portuguese naval officer and fourth viceroy of the Portuguese Indies.
• Ira Cohen - an American poet, publisher, photographer and filmmaker: She published the magazine Gnaoua in Tangier
• Eugène Delacroix - a French Romantic painter
• Jim Ede - a notable British art collector
• Malcolm Forbes - The publisher of Forbes magazine
• Brion Gysin - an American writer and painter
• Friedrich von Holstein - a German statesman
• Barbara Hutton - a wealthy American socialite dubbed by the media as the "Poor Little Rich Girl" because of her troubled life.
• Gavin Lambert - a British novelist and friend of Paul Bowles
• Henri Matisse - a notable French painter
• Mohamed Mrabet - a Moroccan storyteller
• Ion Perdicaris - a U.S.-Greek playboy who was the centre of the infamous Perdicaris incident, a kidnapping that aroused international conflict in 1904.
• George John Pinwell - a British painter
• Reichmann family (including Edward below) - a rich immigrant Jew family from Austro-Hungary
• Edward Reichmann - an Austro-Hungarian businessman
• David Roberts - a Scottish painter
• J. Slauerhoff - a Dutch poet and novelist

[edit] People who died in Tangier

• Mohamed Choukri - a Moroccan novelist.
• George Elliott - probably the illegitimate son of Richard Eliot. He was the "Chirurgeon to the Earl of Teviot's Regiment at Tangier"
• George Fleetwood - One of the regicides of Charles I. Brought to trial and sentenced to imprisonment in the Tower of London. He may have been transported to Tangier.
• Paul Lukas - a Hungarian actor.
• John Middleton, 1st Earl of Middleton - a commander-in-chief of the troops in Scotland under the reign of Charles II.
• Paul Bowles - American novelist and musician.

[edit] Trivia

• One of the Lathyrus tingitanus plants is called Tangier Pea.
• One of the inherited disorders of bloodstream is called the Tangier disease
• The name tangerine comes from Tangier from which the first tangerines were shipped to Europe. The adjective tangerine, from Tangier, was already an English word (first recorded in 1710).
• The poem called "Herb's Herbs" of unknown origin describes a capitonym:

A herb store owner, name of Herb, Moved to a rainier Mount Rainier.

It would have been so nice in Nice, And even tangier in Tangier.

[edit] Events

• Tanjazz - An annual international Jazz festival.
• Festival National du Film - An annual Moroccan film festival (8th edition in 2006).
• Le Festival International de Théâtre Amateur - An international amateur theater festival.

[edit] Landmarks

• American Legation
• Church of Saint Andrew

[edit] Town twinning

• Faro, Portugal (since 1954)
• Cádiz, Spain

[edit] See also

• List of Colonial Heads of Tangier
• Mauretania Tingitana
• List of cities in Morocco
• History of Morocco

[edit] Sources and external links

• History of Tangier and The American legation in Tangier
• The Authorized Paul Bowles Web Site Official site for writer and composer Paul Bowles, who lived 52 years in Tangier.
• Tangier free zone website
• Jewish history in Tangier
• Tanjazz: Tangier's Jazz Festival
• Entry in Lexicorient
• Beautiful images of Tangier
• Tangier at the Magic Morocco
• The American School of Tangier
• muslimphotos.net: High-res pictures from Tangier

Coordinates: 35°46′N 5°48′W

[edit] Maps

Maps of Tangier 35.8° N -5.8° E

• MapQuest: out 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 in
• Multimap: out 4M 2M 1M 500k 200k in
• MSN World Atlas: out 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 in
• Google satellite image