The settlement below Jebel Musa was later renamed for the seven hills around the site, collectively referred to as the "Seven Brothers"[4] (Ancient Greek: Ἑπτάδελφοι, Heptádelphoi;[5] Latin: Septem Fratres).

The Phoenicians found a small Berber settlement on the Strait of Gibraltar at Ceuta but, because the extremely narrow isthmus joining the Peninsula of Almina to the African mainland makes the site imminently defensible, they swiftly made it their own.

Abyla was one of a number of settlements in the area—including Tinga (Tangiers), Kart (San Roque), and Gadir (Cadiz)—that helped the Phoenicians and Carthaginians control maritime trade between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

Claudius organized the new territories in 42, placing Septem in the province of Mauretania Tingitana (administered from Tingis, present-day Tangiers) and raising it to the level of a colony, which gave Roman citizenship to its residents.

Instead, the rapid Muslim conquest of Spain produced romances concerning Count Julian of Septem and his betrayal of Christendom in revenge for the dishonors that befell his daughter at the Visigothic court of King Roderick.

Allegedly with Julian's encouragement and instructions [citation needed], the Berber convert and freedman Tariq ibn Ziyad took his garrison from Tangiers across the strait and overran the Spanish so swiftly that both he and his Persian master Musa bin Nusayr fell afoul of a jealous caliph, who stripped them of their wealth and titles.

Septa subsequently remained a small village of Muslims and Christians surrounded by ruins until its resettlement in the 9th century by Mâjakas, chief of the Majkasa Berber tribe, who started the short-lived Banu Isam dynasty.

[13] The continuing existence of an embattled Christian community is attested by the martyrdom of St. Daniel Fasanella and his Franciscans in 1227;[14] it subsequently survived until the town's capture by the Portuguese reëstablished the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ceuta on 4 April 1417.