Was Fez Once a River City and an Inland Port? "And on the sea we were daring pirates, sailing from Fez to Catania… and aboard the flagship there were eighty oarsmen."
These surprising words were written by the great French poet Victor Hugo in Les Orientales and later brought to life by the singer Claude Nougaro. For anyone who knows Fez, the verses seem almost absurd. Fez lies hundreds of kilometers from the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. There are no ships waiting outside Bab Boujloud, and no sailor has ever hoisted a sail from Bab Ftouh.
So was Victor Hugo simply taking poetic liberties?
Perhaps.
But perhaps not entirely. The more one explores the history of the Sebou River, the more one discovers that Fez once enjoyed a remarkable connection with the Atlantic Ocean. While it was never a seaport in the conventional sense, historical evidence suggests that during several periods of history, vessels were indeed able to navigate between the Atlantic coast and the outskirts of Fez.
The Forgotten River
The Sebou River, known to the Romans as Subur, rises in the Middle Atlas Mountains southeast of Fez before flowing more than 600 kilometers westward to the Atlantic Ocean at Mehdia. Nearly two thousand years ago, the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, described the Sebou as "a great navigable river." At first, this statement seems difficult to believe.
Yet Roman archaeology, medieval chronicles, and modern historical accounts all point in the same direction: the Sebou was one of the few rivers in North Africa that served as an important waterway for transport and commerce.
During the Roman period, ships could travel inland from the Atlantic to Thamusida and Banasa, where roads continued toward Volubilis, Tangier, and the fertile interior of Morocco. Goods produced throughout the province of Mauretania Tingitana eventually found their way to Rome, while caravan routes connected the region eastward through Taza toward present-day Algeria.
Ships Built in Fez
One of the most fascinating pieces of evidence comes from the Marinid period.
The French researcher Georges Colin, quoting a fourteenth-century historian of Fez translated by Alfred Bel, records that between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries ships were actually constructed near the city at the meeting point of the Oued Fez and the Sebou.
Among them was a two-masted vessel capable of transporting 120 warriors, alongside another carrying sixty soldiers. Once completed, these ships were launched into the river and sailed downstream to Mehdia, where the Sebou reaches the Atlantic.
It is a remarkable image.
Today we picture Fez as an inland city of scholars, artisans, and merchants. Centuries ago, it was also connected to the sea.
European Travelers Confirm the Route Historical accounts continued to support the navigability of the Sebou well into the sixteenth century.
In 1514, the King of Portugal secretly commissioned explorers to determine whether the river could be used for navigation.
Their conclusion was straightforward: "During the winter season, small boats can ascend the river all the way to the city of Fez." A few decades later, in 1560, the French traveler Geoffroy de Buade described leaving Fez aboard a merchant vessel carrying goods toward the Atlantic. After several days of navigation, the ship reached a coastal port before the passengers were unexpectedly captured. Although historians still debate the exact location of this port, the account provides another independent testimony that navigation between Fez and the Atlantic remained possible during that period.
The Last Great Experiment Interest in the Sebou revived in the early twentieth century.
As French forces prepared to enter Fez in 1911, military planners considered supplying the city by river. Several expeditions attempted to navigate upstream from Mehdia toward Fez. The most successful was led by the naval officer Le Dantec in the winter of 1911–1912. Using a small motorboat powered by a 25-horsepower engine, his team slowly worked its way upstream.
The journey was anything but easy.
Villagers living along the river were recruited to pull the boat through rapids and shallow sections. The vessel struck rocks repeatedly, leaked twice, and became stranded numerous times on sandbanks and fords.
After more than a month of effort, the expedition finally reached the Sebou Bridge near Fez on 29 January 1912, only a short walk from the city itself.
The expedition proved that the journey could be made. It also demonstrated why it would never become commercially practical. Maintaining a regular navigation route would have required enormous engineering works that far exceeded any economic benefit.
A Forgotten Chapter of Fez
Today the Sebou no longer serves as a transportation route to Fez. Reduced water levels, seasonal variations, and natural obstacles have erased much of this chapter from public memory. Yet history tells a different story. From Roman times through the Almohad and Marinid dynasties, from Portuguese explorers to French travelers and twentieth-century expeditions, the Sebou repeatedly linked Fez with the Atlantic world.
Fez was never a maritime city in the usual sense. But neither was it completely cut off from the sea. Its river was its highway.
Its boats carried soldiers, merchants, and goods. Its waters connected one of the world's greatest inland cities to the wider Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds.
Perhaps Victor Hugo knew none of this. Or perhaps, somewhere behind his poetry, there lingered an old historical memory.Either way, his famous verse no longer sounds quite so impossible: "We were daring pirates, sailing from Fez to Catania..." History, it seems, occasionally allows poetry to tell the truth.
