Rusadir

Rusadir was an ancient Phoenician colony and later Roman town on the coast of the Maghreb, at the site now occupied by the city of Melilla, whose old quarter Melilla la Vieja was built over Roman Rusadir. Founded along Phoenician trade routes to the Strait of Gibraltar, it became a Roman colony in the province of Mauretania Tingitana by AD 46 and by the 3rd century was fully Christianized and prosperous, serving as the main port of the Mauro-Roman kingdom in the 4th century. It was captured by the Vandal king Gaiseric around 430, restored to Roman rule by the Byzantine general Belisarius around 533, and taken by Islamic forces by 700, after which it was resettled and eventually known as Melilla by the late 9th century, before Spain seized it in 1497 and formally annexed it in 1506.