The city of Chefchaouen is a not-to-be-missed element of any tour of northern Morocco. Explore the ‘blue pearl’ of the Rif Mountains on a full-day tour from Tanger to Chefchaouen. The city was founded in 1471 as a small kasbah (fortress) by Moulay Ali ibn Rashid al-Alami, a descendant of Abd as-Salam al-Alami and Idris I, and through them, of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Al-Alami founded the city to fight the Portuguese invasions of northern Morocco.[2] Along with the Ghomara tribes of the region, many Moriscos and Jews settled here after the Spanish Reconquista in medieval times.[3] In 1920, the Spanish seized Chaouen to form part of Spanish Morocco. Spanish troops imprisoned Abd el-Krim el-Khattabi in the kasbah from 1916 to 1917, after he talked with the German consul Dr. Walter Zechlin (1879–1962).