Safi, Morocco The Portuguese fortress built to protect the city is still there today. After 1541, the city played a major role in Morocco as one of the safest and biggest seaports in the country. Many ambassadors to the Saadian and Alaouite kings during the 16th–18th centuries came to Morocco via Asfi; its proximity to Marrakech, then capital of Morocco, helped expand the maritime trade in the city. Louis De Chénier, consul of the French court in Morocco in 1767, reported that the city was the only usable seaport at the time. A French Navy captive, Bidé de Maurville, who wrote the
History of Morocco with a new capital in Cairo. The Fatimids had assigned the Zirids, a Zenaga Berber clan centered in Ifriqiya, to watch their western dominions. The Zirids, however, were unable to prevent Morocco from spinning out of their control and crumbling into the hands of a collection of local Zenata Berber chieftains, most of them clients of the Caliph of Cordoba, such as the Maghrawa in the region of Fez and itinerant rivals, the Banu Ifran to the east. Morocco was at its most powerful under a series of Berber dynasties, which rose to power south of the Atlas Mountains and