[2] The Carthaginian navigator Hanno visited and established a trading post in the area in the 5th century BC, and Phoenician artifacts have been found on the island.

[2] Around the end of the 1st century BC or early 1st century AD, Juba II established a Tyrian purple factory, processing the murex and purpura shells found in the intertidal rocks at Essaouira and the Iles Purpuraires.

Mogador and the nearby Iles Purpuraires were tied[3] to Mauretania Tingitana by merchant ships in the first and second centuries of the Roman Empire.

Indeed, according to Roman Pliny the Elder, an expedition of Mauretanians sent by Juba II to the Canary archipelago visited the Cape Verde islands: when King Juba II dispatched a contingent to re-open the dye production facility at Mogador (historical name of Essaouira, Morocco) in the early 1st century AD, Juba's naval force was subsequently sent on an exploration of the Canary Islands, Madeira and probably the Cape Verde islands, using Mogador as their mission base.

[4] In 1866, the Moroccan Sultan Mohammed IV agreed, and issued a Dahir on 18 November, to use the island as a Lazaretto, for pilgrims who were returning from the Hajj and might be carrying any number of diseases prevalent in the world at that time.