Arshgul

Arshgul was a Muslim town on the Algerian coast, between Oran and the Moroccan frontier, at the mouth of the Tafna, facing the island of Rachgoun. It took the place of Portus Sigensis, the port of Siga, capital of King Syphax, and is no longer in existence. ¹

It is first heard of at the beginning of the fourth/tenth century, when Idris I assigned it to his brother Isa ibn Muhammad ibn Sulayman. Ibn Hawqal, in the second half of the fourth/tenth century, says that an amir of the Miknasa Berbers, a vassal of the caliph al-Nasir at Cordova, had just rebuilt it. Some years later al-Bakri describes it as a harbour accessible to small vessels, surrounded by a rampart with four gates, with a seven-aisled mosque and two baths, one of them pre-Islamic, which shows that the Muslim town occupied the ancient site. ¹

In the middle of the sixth/twelfth century al-Idrisi saw it only as a populous place, recently a stronghold, where ships could take on supplies. During the struggle between the Fatimids of al-Qayrawan and the Umayyads of Cordova in the fourth/tenth century its Idrisid rulers were driven out and its inhabitants deported to Spain. Repopulated by Andalusians, it was laid waste again at the beginning of the fifth/eleventh century, and in the first half of the seventh/thirteenth century it fell prey to the Banu Ghaniya. It was finally abandoned at the end of the tenth/sixteenth century, at the time of the Spanish expeditions against the coast of Oran. ¹