Abstract: Late medieval/early modern urban localities virtually undisturbed by later settlement and adaptation are relatively rare in the Maghrib. One such site is the small fortified town of Alcácer Seguer (Qasr al-Saghir), on the Moroccan shore of the Strait of Gibraltar. Having grown from a poorly documented late eleventh-century fort and small settlement into an Almohad town, Qasr al-Saghir was equipped with new Marinid fortifications in 1287-91, underwent at least one military refurbishing in the first half of the fifteenth century, was taken by the Portuguese in 1458, and became permanently deserted after almost 92 years of European occupation. The site has been partially excavated and the main results were published in the late 1970s and 1980s. The excavation left a number of unanswered questions, however, mainly owing to a lack of close integration between archaeology and archival research. The present study expands on the author’s previously published work to address some of these issues, with the help of manuscript sources from Lisbon’s Arquivos Nacionais/Torre do Tombo. The article sheds further light on Portuguese military architecture in Morocco at the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, on building contractors and labour force mobilization, and on tactical and structural solutions emerging at the intersection of royal government instructions (regimentos) and contractor/engineer local initiatives. Pragmatic considerations relating to firepower and garrison safety are shown to have been modulated not only by the shape and state of the original Muslim fortifications, but also by expediency, personality politics, ad hoc approaches, and discretionary prioritizing.

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