Ceuta

Flag	Coat of Arms

Area
– Total
28 km² Population
– Total (2005)
– Density
75,276
2688.43/km² Demonym
– English
– Spanish
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ceutí Statute of Autonomy March 14, 1995 ISO 3166-2 ES-CE Parliamentary
representation
Congress seats
Senate seats 1
2 Mayor-President Juan Jesús Vivas Lara (PP) Ciudad Autónoma de Ceuta

Ceuta is a Spanish exclave in North Africa, located on the Mediterranean, on the southern coast of the Strait of Gibraltar, bordering Morocco. It is known in Arabic as سبتة Sebta and in Tamazight as Sibta. Its area is approximately 28 km².

Ceuta is dominated by a hill called Monte Hacho, on which there is a fort occupied by the Spanish army. Monte Hacho is one of the possible locations for the southern Pillars of Hercules of Greek Legend, the other possibility being Jebel Musa.

History

Ceuta's strategic location has made it the crucial waypoint of many cultures' trade and military ventures — beginning with the Carthaginians in the 5th century BC (They called the city Abyla). It wasn't until the Romans took control in about AD 42, however, that the port city (named Septem at the time) assumed an almost exclusive military purpose. Approximately 400 years later, the Vandals ousted the Romans for control, and later it fell to the Visigoths of Spain or to the Byzantines.

In 710, as Muslim armies approached the city, its Visigothic governor Julian (also described as "king of the Ghomara") changed sides and urged them to invade Spain (for personal reasons, according to the Arab chroniclers; the Visigothic King Roderick is said to have mistreated his daughter). Under the leadership of Berber general Tariq ibn Ziyad, Ceuta was used as a prime staging ground for an assault on Visigoth-ruled Iberia soon after.

After Julian's death the Arabs took direct control of the city; this was resented by the surrounding indigenous Berber tribes, who destroyed it in a Kharijite rebellion led by Maysara al-Haqir in 740. It lay waste until refounded in the 9th century by Majakas, chief of the Majkasa Berber tribe, who started the short-lived dynasty of the Banu Isam. Under his great-grandson they paid allegiance to the Idrisids (briefly); the dynasty finally ended when he abdicated in favour of the Umayyad Caliph of Cordoba Abd ar-Rahman III an-Nasir in 931. Chaos ensued with the fall of the Umayyad caliphate in 1031, but eventually it was taken over by the Almoravids in 1084, and again used as a base from which to invade Spain. They were succeeded by the Almohads in 1147, who ruled it, apart from Ibn Hud's rebellion of 1232, until the Hafsids took it in 1242. The Hafsids' influence in the west rapidly waned, and the city expelled them in 1249; after this, it went through a period of political instability. In 1309 was captured with Aragonese help.

Kingdom of Fez (1309-1415) In 1415, Ceuta was taken by the Portuguese during the reign of John I of Portugal. The primary aim of the conquest was to expel Muslim influence from the area and further promote Christianity.

In the Treaty of Lisbon (1 January 1668), Don Alfonso VI of Portugal formally ceded the area of Ceuta to Carlos II of Spain.

Culturally, modern Ceuta can be considered part of the Spanish region of Andalusia. Indeed, it was until recently attached to the province of Cádiz -the coasts of Cádiz being only 12 miles away. It is a very cosmopolitan city, with a large ethnic Berber Muslim minority as well as Jewish and Hindu minorities.

Administration

Ceuta is known officially in Spanish as Ciudad Autónoma de Ceuta, the Autonomous City of Ceuta, having a rank between a standard Spanish city and an autonomous community. Before the Statute of Autonomy, Ceuta was administratively part of the Cádiz province.

Ceuta forms part of the territory of the European Union. The city was a free port before Spain joined the European Union in 1986. Now it has a low-taxes system inside the European Monetary System. As of 1994 its population was 71,926.

The government of Morocco has called for the integration of Ceuta and Melilla, along with uninhabited islands such as Isla Perejil, into its national territory, drawing comparisons with Spain's territorial claim to Gibraltar. The Spanish government and both Ceuta's and Melilla's autonomous governments and inhabitants reject these comparisons on the ground that both Ceuta and Melilla are integral parts of the Spanish state whereas Gibraltar, a British Crown colony, is not and never has been part of the United Kingdom. Ceuta's Islamic past also roughly coincides with that of the rest of Southern Spain. Morocco, however, dismisses this argument as an irrelevant domestic technical distinction.

ISO 3166-1 reserves EA as the country code for Ceuta and Melilla. The amateur radio call sign used for both cities is EA9, and they count as one separate "entity."

Ecclesiastical history

By the Concordat of 1851 the diocese of Ceuta, a suffragen of the Andalusian archbishopric of Seville, was suppressed and incorporated with the diocese of Cadiz, whose bishop became regularly Apostolic Administrator of Ceuta.

There were in the early 20th century in Ceuta, 22 parishes, 26 priests, and 11,700 inhabitants.

Sources and external links

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Ceuta

History

Administration

Ecclesiastical history

See also

Sources and external links