Mauretania Tingitana

Provincia Mauretania Tingitana
Late Antiquity
• Incorporated into the Roman Empire as a full province	42 AD
• Vandal Conquest	430s AD
• Byzantine partial reconquest by Vandalic War	534 AD
• Muslim conquest	Early 8th century
Preceded by Succeeded by Mauretania Vandal Kingdom Vandal Kingdom Umayyad Caliphate
Today part of	Morocco Spain: Ceuta Melilla Plazas de soberanía

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History of Morocco
Prehistory Acheulean Mousterian Aterian Iberomaurusian Capsian
Classical to Late Antiquity (8th century BC – 7th century AD) Carthaginian Roman Mauretania Mauretania Tingitana Exarchate of Africa
Early Islamic (8th–10th century AD) Muslim conquest Umayyad Caliphate Berber Revolt Emirate of Nekor Emirate of Sijilmasa Barghwata confederacy Idrisid dynasty
Territorial fragmentation (10th–11th century AD) Caliphate of Córdoba Fatimid Caliphate Ifranids Miknasas Maghrawas
Empire (beginning 11th century AD) Almoravids Almohads Marinids Wattasids Saadis Alawis other political entities Zawiya Dila'iya Principality of Debdou Republic of Salé
Decline (beginning 19th century AD) Franco-Moroccan War Anglo-Moroccan Treaty of 1856 Hispano-Moroccan War Protégé system Treaty of Wad Ras Treaty of Madrid Tangier Crisis Treaty of Algeciras Agadir Crisis Hafidiya Bombardment of Casablanca (1907) French conquest of Morocco
Protectorate (1912–56) Treaty of Fez French protectorate Spanish protectorate French Conquest Zaian War Rif War Tangier Protocol Tangier International Zone Opposition to European control Revolution of the King and the People
Modern (1956–present) Ifni War Sand War Moroccanization in 1972 Moulay Bouazza plot Years of lead Madrid Accords Green March Western Sahara conflict 2011–2012 protests Hirak Rif Movement Abraham Accords
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Mauretania Tingitana (

After the death in 40 AD of

This was not a continuous line of fortifications: there is no evidence of a defensive wall like the one that protected the turbulent frontier in Britain at the other extremity of the Roman Empire. Rather, it was a network of forts and ditches that seems to have functioned as a filter. The limes – the word from which the English word “limit” is derived – protected the areas that were under direct Roman control by funnelling contacts with the interior through the major settlements, regulating the links between the nomads and transhumants with the towns and farms of the occupied areas.

The same people lived on both sides of these limes, although the population was quite small. Volubilis had perhaps twenty thousand inhabitants at most in the second century. On the evidence of inscriptions, only around ten to twenty per cent of them were of European origin, mainly Spanish; the rest were local.

Roman historians (like

Pliny the Elder described in some detail the area south of the Atlas Mountains, when Gaius Suetonius Paulinus undertook a military expedition in 41:

Suetonius Paulinus, whom we have seen Consul in our own time, was the first Roman general who advanced a distance of some miles beyond Mount Atlas. He has given us the same information as we have received from other sources with reference to the extraordinary height of this mountain, and at the same time he has stated that all the lower parts about the foot of it are covered with dense and lofty forests composed of trees of species hitherto unknown. The height of these trees, he says, is remarkable; the trunks are without knots, and of a smooth and glossy surface; the foliage is like that of the cypress, and besides sending forth a powerful odour, they are covered with a flossy down, from which, by the aid of art, a fine cloth might easily be manufactured, similar to the textures made from the produce of the silk-worm. He informs us that the summit of this mountain is covered with snow even in summer, and says that having arrived there after a march of ten days, he proceeded some distance beyond it as far as a river which bears the name of Ger (a northern affluent of the Niger river?); the road being through deserts covered with a black sand, from which rocks that bore the appearance of having been exposed to the action of fire, projected every here and there; localities rendered quite uninhabitable by the intensity of the heat, as he himself experienced, although it was in the winter season that he visited them.^[6]

Roman province

During the reign of the Numidian King Juba II, Emperor Augustus had already founded three colonias (with Roman citizens) in Mauretania close to the Atlantic coast: Iulia Constantia Zilil, Iulia Valentia Banasa and Iulia Campestris Babba.

This western part of Mauretania was to become the province called Mauretania Tingitana shortly afterwards. The region remained a part of the Roman Empire until 429, when the Vandals overran the area and Roman administrative presence came to an end.

The most important city of Mauretania Tingitana was Volubilis. This city was the administrative and economic center of the province in western Roman Africa. The fertile lands of the province produced many commodities such as grain and olive oil, which were exported to Rome, contributing to the province's wealth and prosperity. Archaeology has documented the presence of a Jewish community in the Roman period.^[7]

The principal exports from Mauretania Tingitana were purple dyes and valuable