The city's name as it is locally pronounced is "Asfi", which was Latinized as "Safi" and "Safim" under Portuguese rule. "Asfi" means flood or river estuary in Berber and comes from the Berber verbal root "ffey/sfi/sfey" which means to flood, to spill or to pour. 11th-century geographer Al-Idrisi gave an apparently false explanation to the origin the name "Aasafi" as he linked it to the Arabic word "Asaf" ; Asafi. He based this claim on a strange story about some sailors from al-Andalus who sailed to discover the other end of the Atlantic Ocean but got lost and landed on some island where the natives captured them and sent them back on their ships blindfolded. The ships eventually ended on the shores of "Safi" and locals helped the lost sailors and told them that they were two months away from their native land al-Andalus. Upon hearing this one of the sailors responded by saying: "Wa asafi". Al-Idrisi wrote that from that time the city carried the name "Aasafi". This story is thought to be a legend and unlikely explanation of the origin of the name.
Safi, under the name Safim, is one of the oldest cities in Morocco. According to historian Mohammed al-Kanuni, Safi must be identified with the ancient Thymiaterium or Carcunticus and was founded by the CarthaginianHanno during his Periplus as related by Pliny the Elder. Under the Almohads it functioned as an important port to the capital Marrakesh. The city was under Portuguese rule from 1488 to 1541; it is believed that they abandoned it to the Saadians, since the city proved difficult to defend from land attacks. The Portuguese fortress built to protect the city is still there today. After 1541, the city played a major role in Morocco as one of the safest and biggest seaports in the country. Many ambassadors to the Saadian and Alaouite kings during the 16th–18th centuries came to Morocco via Safi; its proximity to Marrakech, then capital of Morocco, helped expand the maritime trade in the city.
Louis De Chénier, consul of the French court in Morocco in 1767, reported that the city was the only usable seaport at the time.
A French Navy captive, Bidé de Maurville, who wrote the account of his stay in Morocco in his 1765 book Relations de l'affaire de Larache, reported the presence of an important number of foreign trading houses in the city : Dutch, Danish, British and French. After the Sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah built the city ofMogador, he banned foreign trade in all Moroccan ports except in his newly built city. Consequently, Safi stopped playing a leading role in the Moroccan trade. Safi's patron saint is Abu Mohammed Salih. In 1942 as part of Operation Torch, American forces attacked Safi in Operation Blackstone. During November 8-10, 1942 the Americans took control over Safi and its port and took relatively few casualties compared to the other operations at Casablanca and at Port Mehdia.
Population
The inhabitants are composed of Berbers and Arabs descendants. The Berber origin is related to:
The berbers who lived in the region before the foundation of the city.
The berbers who came later from the sous plains, south of the region.
Also note that Safi had a large Jewish community that emigrated to France today, Canada or Israel, which at the time represented more than 20% of the population.
The Rugby Union team of the same name is one of Morocco's best, having won the "Coupe du Trône" several times. There also is a little Tennis Sport Club with a couple of fields
There is a former European Cemetery field in Safi. It appears unfortunately partially abandoned and some of the marbles have drastically been asported from some of the richest tomb coverings: Russians; Portuguese; Spanish ; Italians ; French ; German and other people from other European nations. Some tomb "diciturae" appear as missing a/or asported. On the left side a tomb of a youngster died only 15 years old in the Sixties. Other mittle mausoleum-kind sepulchres include XIXth century tombs, but in general the most number of them appears of XXth century.
