MELILLA, chief town of a Spanish military circumscription and the seat of an important garrison, on the north-east coast of Morocco, south of Cape Tres Forcas and 135 m. E.S.E. of Ceuta. The old town is built on a huge rock connected with the main land by a rocky isthmus. The new town is built on the west and the south; it has an entirely European and modern aspect. The equipment of the port, completed in 1914, and the occupation of the country behind it by Spain have meant a rapid development of the town, which numbered hardly 3,00o inhabitants in 1895 and has to-day 40,000, of which 36,00o are Spaniards. The rich mines of Beni-bou-Ifrour, situated 16 km. from Melilla, with which they are linked by railway, give rise to an important trade (9oo, 000 tons of haematite and 7,000 tons of lead and zinc).
The Phoenicians, then the Carthaginians and the Romans, had a settlement at Melilla, which was called Rusaddir. A Berber town succeeded it ; it was conquered in 1470 by Spain, and has not ceased since then to belong to it. Melilla was, with Ceuta, the
most important of the ports or presidios which Spain revived on the coast of Morocco, but until the beginning of the 2oth century it remained closed and the history of the town is one long series of sieges, of which the last, that of 1893, necessitated an army of 25,00o men. In 1909, Gen. Marina, after a hard campaign, occupied the massif of Gorougou and the hinterland of Melilla, and the Spaniards made themselves masters of the whole region between Oued Kert and Moulouya. In 1921, the tribes of the Riff, in revolt under the leadership of Abd-el-Krim, inflicted upon them a costly defeat and pressed them back to the walls of Melilla. The east Riff was reoccupied in 1926 following the Franco Spanish campaign which determined the submission of Abd-el Krim.
See Gabriel de Morales, Datos Para la historia de Melilla (Melilla, 1909) ; Budgett Meakin, The Land of the Moors (19oi), ch. xix., and the authorities there cited.