Santa Cruz de la Mar Pequeña (literally ''Holy Cross of the Little Sea'') was a

15th century The 15th century was the century which spans the Julian calendar dates from 1 January 1401 (represented by the Roman numerals MCDI) to 31 December 1500 (MD). In Europe, the 15th century includes parts of the Late Middle Ages, the Early Re ...

Spanish settlement close to Akhfennir, in the Tarfaya Province, in

Morocco Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It has coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to Algeria–Morocc ...

History

Founded by the Canary Islands

lord Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power (social and political), power over others, acting as a master, chief, or ruler. The appellation can also denote certain persons who hold a title of the Peerage o ...

Diego de Herrera in 1478 as a trading and fishing post with a fortress. It was located close to a mouth bar (hence its name) across

Lanzarote Lanzarote (, , ) is a Spanish island, the easternmost of the Canary Islands, off the north coast of Africa and from the Iberian Peninsula. Covering , Lanzarote is the fourth-largest of the islands in the archipelago. With 163,230 inhabi ...

. The importance of the settlement was derived from its position in the

trans-Saharan slave trade The trans-Saharan slave trade, also known as the Arab slave trade, was a Slavery, slave trade in which slaves Trans-Saharan trade, were mainly transported across the Sahara. Most were moved from sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa to be sold to ...

, and captives were shipped to sugar plantations on the Canary Islands. The

Saadi dynasty The Saadi Sultanate (), also known as the Sharifian Sultanate (), was a state which ruled present-day Morocco and parts of Northwest Africa in the 16th and 17th centuries. It was led by the Saadi dynasty, an Arab Sharifism, Sharifian dynasty. ...

raided the place and the Spanish eventually left Santa Cruz, being completely abandoned by 1524. The exact location of what used to be Santa Cruz de la Mar Pequeña was forgotten. After the Treaty Between France and Spain Regarding Morocco (1912), in 1916 the Spanish gained control of the Cape Juby Strip which included the place. It was renamed officially Puerto Cansado, as that was the name given by the Canarian fishermen. On the other hand, in the mid-nineteenth century, after the Hispano-Moroccan War (1859–1860), the Sultanate of Morocco agreed to hand the place (of uncertain location) to Spain in the 1860 Treaty of Wad Ras. In the wake of the visit of a Spanish delegation to Fez in 1877, a joint Hispano-Moroccan committee was created in order to determine the location of Santa Cruz de la Mar Pequeña. This committee eventually misidentified Santa Cruz de la Mar Pequeña with

Ifni The Territory of Ifni () was a Spanish province on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, south of Agadir and across from the Canary Islands. It had a total area of , and a population of 51,517 in 1964. The main industry was fishing. The present-day Mor ...

, actually located about 480 kilometers north of the real fortress. (Note: 480 km distance must be a mistake. Ifni (Sidi Ifni) is about 240 km from Akhfennir and about 270 km from Khenifiss National Park(distance by air), even if one meant distance by car it'd still only be about 330 km distance.) The Moroccan sultan accepted the identification in 1883, even if the border delimitation did not take place at the time and the effective Spanish occupation did not take place until 1934.

Description

Located on the north bank of the Naila lagoon in the Khenifiss National Park. The only remains of the 15th century settlement are the foundations of an 8-meter side square fortified tower of Santa Cruz de la Mar Pequeña. In 2011 local archaeologists excavated the

Sahara The Sahara (, ) is a desert spanning across North Africa. With an area of , it is the largest hot desert in the world and the list of deserts by area, third-largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Ar ...

desert's sands in order to identify the tower, which is currently under the sand and called Foum Agoutir.

References

External links

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En busca de la torre perdida
Former Spanish colonies Geography of Laâyoune-Sakia El Hamra Colonial history of Morocco Spanish Africa Former populated places in Morocco Populated places established in the 1470s {{LaâyouneSakiaElHamra-geo-stub

History

Description

See also

References

External links