Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

Azemmour

Encyclopedia : A : AZ : AZE : Azemmour


Azemmour or Azamor (Arabic: ‎) is a Moroccan city, on the left bank of the Oum Er-Rbia River, 75km southwest of Casablanca. Although it was dependent of the King of Fez, Azemmour had great autonomy. In 1486 its inhabitants became vassals and tributaries of John II of Portugal. Manuel I of Portugal cofirmed the treaty in 1497 and the city paid 10.000 savéis every year. Later, unrest started to grow and thus Manuel sent a small fleet commanded by João de Meneses to conquer the city in 1508.

In 1513 Amemmour's governor Moulay Zayam, refused to pay the tribute and mustered a powerful, well-equipped army. Manuel I of Portugal responded to this challenge by sending a massive fleet of five hundred ships, fifteen-thousand soldiers (Bergreen, 19). James, Duke of Braganza led this army and on September 1 he conquered the city with no resistance from its inhabitants. Ferdinand Magellan, the famed man to lead the first-ever circumnavigation of the earth, was among the Portuguese soldiers there and lost his horse in skirmishes outside the city. However, Portuguese control of the city lasted for a short period as it was abandoned by John III of Portugal in 1541 due to economical difficulties.

Sources

 


From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: