Tingi

It was eventually granted the status of a Roman colony and made the capital of the province of Mauretania Tingitana and, after Diocletian's reforms, the diocese of Hispania.

The Greeks claimed that Tingis had been named for a daughter of the titan Atlas, who was supposed to support the vault of heaven nearby.

Tingis grew in importance as a free city[clarification needed] under Augustus and then as a colony under Claudius, who made it the capital of Mauritania Tingitana.

[6] Called Colonia Iulia Tingi on its coins, governed most likely under Latin law and at first attached administratively to Spain, it became under Claudius a Roman colony and chief city of the province of Mauretania Tingitana after it was set up.

In 297 the city probably served Maximianus as a base during his campaign against the Moorish rebels, and it was very likely about this time that the Christians Marcellus and Cassienus were put to death.

The former belonged to a Spanish community, the latter, however, probably to a local church which funerary inscriptions show existed in the 4th-5th c. although there is no mention of a bishopric until the 6th c. The limits of the ancient settlement are clearly marked by the necropolis discovered to the northwest (that of Marshan and Avenue Cenario), to the west (Mendoubia) and south (Bou Kachkach).

Among the few antiquities that have been discovered, the only noteworthy finds, aside from inscriptions and a few mosaic fragments, are a statue of a woman of indifferent workmanship and a mutilated head of the emperor Galba.

Under Septimius Severus, two Roman roads were constructed from Tingis: one on the Atlantic coast to Sala Colonia and the second into the mountainous interior toward Volubilis.

Tingis fell under the control of the Umayyad Caliphate as part of the Muslim conquest of North Africa in 702, after which it was reduced to a small town more commonly discussed under the name Tangier.