Sayyida al Hurra

Morocco has another, even more extraordinary and unknown maritime history.

A few hundred years before the Saleh Pirate Republic, the last queen within the Islamic world, Saida al-Hurra, controlled the entire western Mediterranean from Morocco's northern port of Tatouane, where she commanded a fleet of pirate corsairs to take vengeance on Christian ships for her family's expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula.

Sayyida al-Hura is thought to have partially inspired the myth of Khalifa, which in turn inspired the place name where I was born, California.

But despite having nearly three times as much coastline as California, Morocco turned its back on the water.