EnglishHouse of the Trading Post
Massa [Meça, Meças, Massas], North Africa, Marocco
Equipment and Infrastructures
The site of Massa, to the south of Agadir, was never occupied by the Portuguese, although it was under their possession for some time.
In effect, on the 11th January 1497, King Manuel I established an alliance with the residents of Massa, who acknowledged the king of Portugal as their lord. In exchange for protection against Castilians and the kingdom of Marrakesh, symbolized by the payment of two horses each year, the residents would authorize Portugal to build a fortress, in which they could establish a trading depot. Until it was built, they would give 15 hostages.
This connection has to be seen within the context of the rivalry between Portugal and Castile over the control of the African coast in the years that followed the Treaty of Alcáçovas and of Tordesillas and to the aggressive attitudes of the Adelantado of the Canaries that later occupied Agadir.
A few years later, on 6th July 1510, in a document signed by several inhabitants of Massa and addressed to the king of Portugal, they rejoiced at the the news of the dispatch by the king of a garrison of 50 horsemen to defend the Portuguese trading depot (which never came), and, in order to give a stronger guarantee to the king, they gave him the keys to a house, to serve as the seat of a new trading depot, as the fortress did not yet exist.
We have little information on the evolution of the Portuguese presence in Massa but we know for sure that, in 1541 the new shariff of Suz, who had already taken over Marrakesh in 1524, conquered definitively the whole region of the city of Agadir.
We also do not know much about the structure of the trading depot building that the Portuguese must have had in the city, and it is not known if any vestiges remain. However, the website of the Portuguese Embassy in Rabat confirms the existence of “uncertain structures” in Massa, possibly of Portuguese origin.