Mediterranean Oran

This chapter recounts Oran’s history over the longue durée. It speaks of a city situated on the northern coast of Africa, but also on the southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Oran was a creation of Spain and southern Europe as well as of Tlemcen, the Sahara, and the African sources of goods that lay beyond it. Indeed, in the first century or two of its existence, Oran owed its existence to its proximity to the Iberian Peninsula. The westernmost section of the Mediterranean, stretching from Cape Tenès in the east to the Straights of Gibraltar in the west, has been described as a medieval “Ibero-African English Channel,” linking North Africa and Spain with a constant flow of commercial ships. Oran’s dependence on larger circuits of western Mediterranean commerce would continue into the nineteenth century.