Agadir

Agadir

Agadir (Amazigh: Agadir, ⴰⴳⴰⴷⵉⵔ, Moroccan Arabic: أڭادير) is a major city in southwest Morocco, capital of the Agadir province (MA-AGD) and the Sous-Massa-Draa economic region. A majority of its inhabitants speak Amazigh as a mother tongue.

Agadir in video:

A video of Agadir Ouflla or The Casbah ruins:

The Casbah or Agadir Oufella:
The Casbah (Agadir Oufella, Agadir le haut, Agadir N'Ighir, or Agadir de la colline) was, along with Founti by the sea, the oldest district of Agadir. An authentic fortress with winding streets and lively, the Casbah was built in 1572 by Moulay Abdallah al-Ghalib. Above the front door; today, the original inscription in Arabic and in Dutch reads: "Fear God and honour the King."

Of this fortress there remains, after the earthquake of 29 February 1960, a restored long high wall that surrounds land that is not buildable. The view, however, is exceptional over the bay of Agadir and the ports. The old people of Agadir remember the famous "Moorish café" of the Casbah and its panoramic view.

The hill bears the inscription in Arabic: "God, Country, King" which, like the walls, is illuminated at night.

Etymology
The word Agadir means in Amazigh language "wall, masoned wall enclosing a town, fortress, town".

Description
Agadir has a population of 678,596 (2004; census figures for the agglomeration include the nearby cities of Inezgane and Aït Melloul). The population of the city proper is estimated at 200,000. The mild winter climate (January average midday temperature 20.5°C/69°F) and good beaches have made it a major "winter sun" destination for Northern Europeans.
The city is located on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean, near the foot of the Atlas Mountains, just north of the point where the Souss River flows into the ocean.
Agadir is an important fishing and commercial port, the first sardine port in the world, (exporting cobalt, manganese, zinc and citrus).It is also a seaside resort with a long sandy beach. Because of its large buildings, wide roads, modern hotels, and European-style cafés, Agadir is not a typical city of traditional Morocco, but it is a modern, busy and dynamic town.
Agadir is famous for its sea food and agriculture.

The city's main neighborhoods are:
Secteur Touristique-Taddart-Hay Adrar-Founty-Iligh-Sonaba-Ihchach-Les Amicales-La ville nouvelle-Nouveau Talborjt-Cité Suisse-Lakhiyam-Dakhla-Extension Dakhla-Al Houda-Salam-Riad Assalam-Hay al Hassani-Anza-L'Erac (Bouargane).-Quartier Industriel Tasila-Tilila-Quartier Residentiel-Quartier Al mohammadi

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Morocco: Weather

Morocco: Weather

 One of the things that any visitor or tourist ask about before booking a tour or an excursion in Morocco is the weather. especially if they want to book a tour to the desert of Merzouga and do camel trekking, because it can be very hot there at times, especially in July and August. On the other hand tourists that are interested in visiting the beaches like Agadir are more into sun, while the ones interested in surf for example are looking for the wind that they usually find in Essauira. Lucky for all those visitors, Morocco has everything they want.


Weather in morocco is so mosaic too as morocco is, in one single day you can feel how cold is the atlas mountains then you can drive some hours to feel yourself too hot at the sahara dunes and oasis.

at the coasts reign the oceanic moderated climat, at the northen band the mediterranean cool climat sometimes cold.

weather at the atlas mountains (inland) is cold and very influenced by height with his snowfall winter, in the south reign the saharian hot climat.

sunshine levels are more than 10 in marrakech , fez , agadir and ouarzazate.

Depending on the places you want to visit in Morocco, make sure you pick the best time of year before booking your tour.

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Morocco: Origins

Morocco: Origins

“Morocco” in its various European forms is derived from the city of Marrakesh, which was built in the early eleventh century. The oldest surviving mention of it comes in an Italian document dated 1138.

“Marrakesh” is still used occasionally today, in informal Arabic, for the country as a whole, and Fez (Fas), the other great city, is the name modern Turks give to the state. In Arabic, the modern official language and that of most of its inhabitants, the country is called “Maghrib.” This is a confusing term since it is also used to describe the whole group of countries in north-western Africa (Morocco, Mauritania, Algeria, Tunisia and sometimes Libya). It means “the land of the setting sun,” the furthest westward point of the great Islamic empire founded by the Prophet Muhammad in the middle of the seventh century AD.

“Moors,” a rather outdated word now, and one with a distinct pejorative tinge, was popular in European languages in the late medieval and early modern periods. To eighteenth-century writers the Moors were the urban inhabitants of all north-western Africa, and sometimes all Muslims.

These were the traditional enemies of Christian Europe and, like Shakespeare’s Othello, most Moors were believed to be black. Finally, many inhabitants of Morocco are called “Berbers.” The term is largely a linguistic one, describing people who speak one of several dialects, spread over the whole of northern Africa, notably Morocco (forty per cent of the modern population) and Algeria (twenty per cent), with smaller groups in Tunisia, Libya and western Egypt. The Tuareg nomads of the Sahara also speak a Berber dialect, the one that is least contaminated by Arabic. The name itself is not, of course, a Berber word. It is a Graeco- Roman expression, referring to all those who did not speak Greek or Latin: they were barbari or “barbarians.” Applied to the people of northern Africa, it was popularised by the great fourteenth-century historian Ibn Khaldun. He used it as the title of his History of the Berbers and again in his great Introduction to History (the Muqadimma), which was one of the first attempts to explain the rise and fall of dynasties in theoretical terms.

The Berbers call themselves “Imazighen,” or something similar, depending on the dialect. It means “noble men” or “free men,” in the sense that they were free of external control, unlike the inhabitants of the towns, who belonged to no tribe. Those who could find no protection from kin were at the mercy of the powerful and were truly servile.

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