English
Military Architecture
Agadir [Santa Cruz do Cabo de Guer], North Africa, Marocco
Military Architecture
The main information on Santa Cruz do Cabo de Guer, present day Agadir, was gathered by Joaquim Figanier based on exchanges of contemporary correspondence, on Portuguese and Arab chronicles of the time, and above all on the anonymous narrative published by Pierre de Cénival, which begins stating that this is the origin and beginning and end of the village of Santa Cruz do Cabo de Gué dagoa de Narba. The few traces of the physical Portuguese presence at this southern point of the Moroccan coast which could still be found at the date of that publication were definitively destroyed by the violent earthquake of 1960.
It was the construction of a castle by João Lopes de Sequeira, in 1505, that placed Agadir irreversibly on the route of the history of the Portuguese foundations along this coast. The castle stood near the aduar (Muslim village) of Aite Funti, with direct access to the sea, and included a water source. Set between the kingdoms of Suz and Morocco, Agadir was an important piece in the game of influences with Castile; hence the private initiative by Sequeira had the secret author- ization of King Manuel I.
By the end of 1505, a pre-fabricated “wooden town” was established. In the seven following years, this provisional structure was gradually surrounded by stone buildings which protected it as well as the fresh water source within. The wooden castle was also included in the list of constructions that King Manuel I commissioned from Sequeira in 1513. There existed a castle protected by a low fence marked by small towers on the land side. However it appears that the castle had a square fortified tower raised over the water to which it was joined by a low wall. A roughly dug ditch reinforced the walled perimeter. Inside, neither the houses adjoining the fence nor the church were roofed. With the shift into the hands of the Portuguese crown, the strengthening of the military, civil and religious structures of Santa Cruz inherited from the epoch of Sequeira became urgent.
The campaigns of royal works focused mainly on two periods, the first of which began immediately with the captaincy of Francisco de Castro. In the Summer of 1516, King Manuel I ordered the construction of 30 houses for residents. The township was laid out beside the castle dominated by its keep. Contemporary iconography illustrates the prominence of the cylindrical roofed keep. The town was bordered by a wall interspersed with seven square towers or bastions, and surrounded by a dry moat.
The second important period of investment in construction took place with the arrival of Luís de Loureiro to the settlement in 1534. He undertook the construction of a bastion-like fort, filled with earth and furnished with heavy artillery. This new structure was the timid initiative with which Agadir responded to the chances of expulsion from the settlement in view of the growing movement of the Saadites in the region.
The shape of the settlement followed the coastline, like the walled area depicted on later maps (1852-1860), in which six square towers or bastions are still recognizable: the square tower of Tamaraque, which is on the present day site of Tamrhakht; the Facho, a solid bastion facing the peak under the shadow of which the modern day sanctuary of Sidi Bou Qnadel was built; the belluarte de S. Simão (Saint Simon’s Bastion), a square tower under the lime kilns facing northeast; a square tower in the Moorish quarter, pounded by the sea on the southeastern tip, towards the present day beach of the city of Agadir and of the former Moorish aduar; the tower of the castle, rebuilt by Luís de Loureiro in 1533, reinforcing a slight bend in the southern curtain wall; a small tower over the church of the castle or the Bell Tower.
Following the physical occupation of the peak by the Shariff of Suz, Portuguese efforts to maintain the settlement were in vain, resulting in a humiliating loss for the Portuguese crown in 1541. Nowadays, it is impossible to recognise any vestige of the settlement.