Tangier (/tænˈdʒɪər/ tan-JEER; Arabic: طنجة, romanized: Ṭanjah, [tˤandʒa], [tˤanʒa]) is a city in northwestern Morocco, on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.

[6] Moroccan historian Ahmed Toufiq considers that the name "Tingi" has the same etymology as Tinghir, and is composed of "Tin", which is a feminine particle that could be translated as "owner" or "she who has", and "gi" which may have originally been "ig", meaning "high location".

Under the Romans other coins were issued, bearing Augustus and Agrippa's heads and Latin script obverse but an image of the Canaanite god Baal reverse.

[citation needed] Probably invited by Count Boniface, who feared war with the empress dowager,[19] tens of thousands of Vandals under Gaiseric crossed into North Africa in 429 CE and occupied Tingis[20] and Mauretania as far east as Calama.

[22] Medieval romance made his betrayal of Christendom a personal vendetta against the Visigoth king Roderic over the honour of his daughter,[23] but Tangier at last fell to a siege[24] by the forces of Musa bin Nusayr sometime between 707[25] and 711.

[26][27] While he moved south through central Morocco, he had his deputy at Tangier Tariq ibn Zayid, Musa's mawla[23][28] launch the beginning of the Muslim invasion of Spain.

[32][33] In the Battle of the Nobles on the city's outskirts a few months later, Maysara's replacement Khalid ibn Hamid massacred the cream of Arab nobility in North Africa.

English Tangier, fully occupied in January 1662,[41] was praised by Charles as "a jewell of immense value in the royal diadem"[20] despite the departing Portuguese taking away everything they could, even—according to the official report—"the very fflowers, the Windowes and the Dores".

[35] Lord Belasyse happened to secure a longer-lasting treaty in 1666:[44] Khadir Ghaïlan hoped to support a pretender against the new Alawid sultan Al-Rashid and things subsequently went so badly for him that he was obliged to abide by its terms until his death in 1673.

[46][47][48] Although funding was found for the fortifications, the garrison's pay was delayed until in December 1677 it was 21⁄4 years in arrears; Governor Fairborne dealt with the ensuing mutiny by seizing one of the soldier's muskets and killing him with it on the spot.

[50] Forces under Lord Dartmouth (including Samuel Pepys) methodically destroyed the town and its port facilities for five months prior to Morocco's occupation of the city on 7 February 1684.

[57] As part of its ongoing conquest of neighbouring Algeria, France declared war over Moroccan tolerance of Abd el-Kader; Tangier was bombarded by a French fleet under the Prince of Joinville on 6 August 1844.

[18] The city increasingly came under French influence, and it was here in 1905 that Kaiser Wilhelm II triggered an international crisis that almost led to war between his country and France by pronouncing himself in favour of Morocco's continued independence, with an eye to its future acquisition by the German Empire.

[55][6] In 1912, the Treaty of Fes established the French protectorate over most of Morocco and Spanish rule in the country's far south and north, but left Tangier's status for further determination.

[67] The European powers' creation of the statute of Tangier promoted the formation of a cosmopolitan society where Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived together with reciprocal respect and tolerance.

A town where men and women, with many different political and ideological tendencies, found refuge, including Spaniards from the right or from the left, Jews fleeing Nazi Germany and Moroccan dissidents.

With very liberal economic and fiscal laws, Tangier became - in an international environment full of restrictions, prohibitions and monopolies - a tax haven with absolute freedom of trade.

[68] The International Zone of Tangier had a 373 km2 (144 sq mi) area and, by the mid-1930s, a population of about 50,000 inhabitants: 30,000 Muslims; 12,000 Jews; and 8,000-odd Europeans, with a decreasing proportion of working-class Spaniards.

[70] A diplomatic dispute between Britain and Spain over the latter's abolition of the city's international institutions in November 1940 led to a further guarantee of British rights and a Spanish promise not to fortify the area.

[55] It nestles between two hills at the northwest end of the Bay of Tangier, which historically formed the best natural harbour anywhere on the Moroccan coast before the increasing size of ships required anchorage to be made further and further from shore.

[17] Tangier has a mediterranean climate (Köppen Csa) with heavier rainfall than most parts of North Africa and nearby areas on the Iberian Peninsula owing to its exposed location.

Among other improvements, the beach was cleaned and lined with new cafes and clubs; the new commercial port means cruise ships no longer unload beside cargo containers.

The years 2007 and 2008 were particularly important for the city because of the completion of large construction projects; these include the Tangier-Mediterranean port ("Tanger-Med") and its industrial parks, a 45,000-seat sports stadium, an expanded business district, and renovated tourist infrastructure.

Universities like the Institut Supérieur International de Tourisme (ISIT), which grants diplomas, offer courses ranging from business administration to hotel management.

It is a tale out of the Thousand and One Nights... A prodigious mix of races and costumes...This whole world moves about with an activity that seems feverish.When Count de Mornay traveled to Morocco in 1832 to establish a treaty supportive of the recent French annexation of Algeria, he took along the Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix.

Delacroix not only reveled in the orientalism of the place; he also took it as a new and living model for his works on classical antiquity: "The Greeks and Romans are here at my door, in the Arabs who wrap themselves in a white blanket and look like Cato or Brutus..."[97] He sketched and painted watercolours continuously, writing at the time "I am like a man in a dream, seeing things he fears will vanish from him."

He returned to his sketches and memories of North Africa for the rest of his career, with 80 oil paintings like The Fanatics of Tangier and Women of Algiers becoming legendary and influential on artists such as Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Picasso.

They were particularly struck by the quality of the light: to Cézanne, "All this luminous colour... seems... that it enters the eye like a glass of wine running into your gullet and it makes you drunk straight away".

Originally written in Classical Arabic, the English edition was the result of close collaboration with Bowles (who worked with Choukri to provide the translation and supplied the introduction).

Tangier acquired the reputation of a spying and smuggling centre and attracted foreign capital due to political neutrality and commercial liberty at that time.