Safi

Safi is one of the oldest ports on this coast. Carthaginian and later Roman traders are thought to have used the bay, and by the medieval period it was a Muslim town with a harbour trading along the Atlantic shore and inland to Marrakech. The Almohads and their successors valued it as an outlet for the southern plains, and religious scholarship and Sufi brotherhoods gave it a standing beyond its size.

The Portuguese took the town in 1488 and held it until 1541. A military occupation began in 1508, the shore was fortified from 1515 with the castle known as Ksar el-Bahr, a cathedral was begun and never finished, and Safi served as a base for trade and raids inland until John III gave up the stronghold under Saadian pressure. Under the Saadians and then the Alaouites the port kept working, and European consuls and merchants were stationed here when Safi was one of the few harbours open to foreign trade; it was also a point of departure for pilgrims and for the sugar and copper carried down from the interior.

The modern city was made by industry. French administration in the protectorate period developed the harbour, and the canneries that lined the quays made Safi the country's main sardine port, at their most prosperous between the end of the Second World War and the 1980s, after which falling catches closed many of them; in 1965 the OCP Group built a chemical complex here to process phosphate rock brought by rail from Benguerir. That brought work, migration from the countryside and rapid growth, together with pollution and the problems of a city dependent on a few large employers. The potters' hill has continued through all of it, largely unchanged in its methods.

Pottery is the city's identity. Potters have worked here since at least the 12th century, and a ceramics school founded around 1920 under Boujemâa Lamali renewed the trade; the workshops turn out tagine dishes, bowls, plates and tiles glazed in the blue and green that people around the country associate with the name, and decorated with geometric and floral patterns painted freehand. The trade is organised in family workshops on the hill above the medina, where clay is dug locally, thrown, dried in the sun and fired in domed kilns, and the national ceramics collection in the Kechla above puts that work in a longer context. In October 2025 Safi was named a UNESCO Creative City in the crafts and folk art category.

The sea gives the city its other rhythm. Fishing families, the auction, the canneries and the boatyards shape daily life, and Safi's reputation among surfers, drawn by a right-hand wave known for its length and its tubing shape, has added a small international layer to a city otherwise little visited. Religious life runs through saints' shrines and the moussems held at them.

Manners are those of a conservative provincial city: unhurried greetings, tea offered before business, male-dominated cafés in the evenings, and modest dress expected in the medina and the souks. Arabic is the everyday language, with French used in administration and business and some Tamazight heard from families who have come in from the interior. Football is followed intensely, and the local club is a fixture of city conversation.

Safi recorded a population of about 346,000 in 2024, which makes it one of the larger cities on the Atlantic coast and the capital of Safi Province. Work is concentrated in fishing and fish processing, the phosphate and chemical industries on the edge of the city, the port itself, and the pottery workshops, alongside the usual public sector of schools, hospitals and administration.

Most residents live in the districts spreading inland and north of the old city rather than in the medina, which is crowded and in parts run down. Mornings begin with the landing and auction of fish, the working day is broken by a long midday pause, and the avenues and cafés of the new town fill in the evening. Families head for the corniche, the beaches north of the bay and the cliffs at Sidi Bouzid at weekends and through the summer.

The city's difficulties are well known to its residents: industrial pollution and its effect on health and on the sea, fish stocks that no longer support the fleet as they once did, unemployment among the young, and the sense that the wealth generated by phosphates and sardines has not stayed locally. There is steady emigration to Casablanca and abroad, and equally steady argument about redeveloping the medina and the waterfront.

Fish is what Safi eats. Sardines above all — grilled whole over charcoal, fried in pairs with a chermoula filling of coriander, garlic, cumin and paprika, or tinned in the city's own canneries — along with sea bream, mackerel, sole, squid and, from the rocks, shellfish. A plate at the port is chosen from the display, weighed and cooked plainly with bread, tomato and onion salad and a wedge of lemon.

Cooked dishes follow the Moroccan pattern with a coastal accent. Fish tagine baked in a Safi-made clay pot with tomato, potato, peppers and preserved lemon is the local speciality, and tagines of chicken with olives or lamb with prunes appear at family tables. Couscous is the Friday dish, harira the soup that opens Ramadan evenings, and bissara, a thick purée of dried broad beans with olive oil and cumin, the cheap winter breakfast.

The medina souks sell olives, dates, preserved lemons, mint and spices, and bakeries turn out round khobz, layered msemen and honeyed pastries such as chebakia and briouats. Mint tea is drunk through the day, poured from height into small glasses; freshly squeezed orange juice is cheap; and coffee and pastries fill the cafés of the new town. Alcohol is served discreetly in a small number of hotels rather than in ordinary cafés.