Salé

In the early 17th century Salé won a new and more fearsome fame. Moriscos driven out of Spain, the first of them from Hornachos in Extremadura, settled across the river in the old medina of Rabat, which the English called New Salé, and made the mouth of the Bou Regreg the busiest corsair harbour on the Atlantic coast. European renegades joined them, a Dutch captain among the most famous, and the Salé rovers ranged across the Atlantic and deep into the Mediterranean. In 1627 the exiles drove out the sultan's governor and set up a virtually independent republic under a council of notables, which Spanish and French fleets bombarded in 1628 and 1629. Quarrels between the newcomers and the old townsfolk weakened it, and after 1640 a Berber Sufi lodge from the upper Moulouya valley held sway over both banks, until in 1668 the Alaouite sultan Moulay al-Rashid defeated it and ended the corsairs' independence.