Bab Dar Assinaa

In 1260 a Castilian fleet took Salé and sacked it. The Marinid sultan Abu Yusuf Yaqub ibn Abd al-Haqq retook the town and decided to rebuild it as the principal shipyard and commercial port of the kingdom of Fes, from which the war in al-Andalus could be resupplied. He gave the work to an Andalusi architect from Seville, Mohamed Ben Ali. Arabic sources put the gate at 658 AH — a Hijri year that ran from December 1259 to December 1260, not 1261 as it is usually glossed — while the arsenal as a whole is dated between 1260 and 1270. Bab Dar Assinaa — the Gate of the Arsenal, known locally also as Bab al-Farran and Bab Antar — opened onto the yard where ships and weapons were made and stored, which is what its name says. Its companion, the far larger Bab el-Mrissa, was vaulted over a canal so that galleys could be brought inside the walls. The pair are among the very few buildings anywhere in the medieval Maghreb whose architect is named rather than absorbed into an anonymous masons' guild.