Iles Purpuraires are a set of small islands off the western coast of Morocco at the bay located at Essaouira, the largest of which is Mogador Island. These islands were settled in antiquity by the Phoenicians, chiefly to exploit certain marine resources and as a promontory fort. (Hogan, 2007) Roman occupation of western Morocco beginning in the 1st century AD continued the use of the islets, principally for manufacture of a royal blue dye from the marine organisms Murex. Ile Purpuraires is associated with the color purple and Hanno the Navigator may have visited these islands. Neolithic archaeological studies in this area indicate indigenous peoples of western Morocco fished in this locale circa 3000 to 2000 BC. (Trakadas, 2002) The islands have been designated as a protected Ramsar site since 2005.
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👉 Iles Purpuraires in the context of Canary Current
The Canary Current is a wind-driven surface current that is part of the North Atlantic Gyre. This eastern boundary current branches south from the North Atlantic Current and flows southwest about as far as Senegal where it turns west and later joins the Atlantic North Equatorial Current. The current is named after the Canary Islands. The archipelago partially blocks the flow of the Canary Current (Gyory, 2007).
This wide and slow moving current is thought to have been exploited in the early Phoenician navigation and settlement along the coast of western Morocco and Old Spanish Sahara. The ancient Phoenicians not only exploited numerous fisheries within this current zone, but also established a factory at Iles Purpuraires off present day Essaouira for extracting a Tyrian purple dye from a marine gastropod murex species.
Iles Purpuraires in the context of Mogador Island
Mogador Island (Arabic: جزيرة موكادور, romanized: Jazīra Mūkādūr; Standard Moroccan Tamazight: ⴰⵎⴳⴷⵓⵍ, romanized: Amegdul; French: Ile Mogador) is the main island of the Iles Purpuraires near Essaouira in Morocco. It is about 3 kilometres (2 miles) long and 1.5 kilometres (1 mile) wide, and lies about 1.5 kilometres (1 mile) from Essaouira.