Al Jadida Mazagan Doukkala Morocco

Situated in the agricultural province of Doukkala , Mazagan was founded by the Portuguese who built a fort in 1502 and expanded the enclosure to its present dimensions. The water cistern was built around the same time and was not discovered till 1916 when a grocer next door tried to expand his store and found it still half-full with water. Mazagan withstood the Saadian siege of 1562 and all assaults until it fell to the Alawite sultan, Sidi Mohammed ben Abdellah, in 1769. The Portuguese escaped the siege by sea and may have blown up a tower on their way out (one out of five is missing). The captured town was renamed Al Jadida (The New) in 1815 and the enclosure turned into a Jewish quarter ( mellah ) . French colonials rebaptized the town Mazagan after 1912, but Moroccan renamed it again Al Jadida after independence in 1956. By that time, the Jews were departing for Europe and Israel . The town has the only five-sided minaret in the Islamic world and parts of Orson Welles' Othello were filmed in the cistern. Al Jadida is now a summer and weekend resort for the Casawi (residents of Casablanca ) middle class and is a thriving economic center.