The remote position and venerable antiquity of Tingi, or Tangier, have been decorated by the Greek and Arabian fables; but the figurative expressions of the latter, that the walls were constructed of brass, and that the roofs were covered with gold and silver, may be interpreted as the emblems of strength and opulence.

The provinces of Mauritania Tingitana, which assumed the name of the capital, had been imperfectly discovered and settled by the Romans; the five colonies were confined to a narrow pale, and the more southern parts were seldom explored except by the agents of luxury, who searched the forests for ivory and the citron-wood, and the shores of the ocean for the purple shell-fish.
The fearless Akbah plunged into the heart of the country, traversed the wilderness in which his successors erected the splendid capitals of Fez and Morocco, and at length penetrated to the verge of the Atlantic and the great desert.

The river Sus descends from the western sides of Mount Atlas, fertilizes, like the Nile, the adjacent soil, and falls into the sea at a moderate distance from the Canary, or Fortunate Islands.
Its banks were inhabited by the last of the Moors, a race of savages, without laws, or discipline, or religion; they were astonished by the strange and irresistible terrors of the Oriental arms; and as they possessed neither gold nor silver, the riches spoil was the beauty of the female captives, some of whom were afterwards sold for a thousand pieces of gold.

The career, though not the zeal, of Akbah was checked by the prospect of a boundless ocean.

He spurred his horse into the waves, and raising his eyes to heaven, exclaimed with a tone of a fanatic, "Great God! if my course were not stopped by this sea, I would still go on, to the unknown kingdoms of the West, preaching the unity of thy holy name, and putting to the sword the rebellious nations who worship any other Gods than thee." Yet this Mahometan Alexander, who sighed for new worlds, was unable to preserve his recent conquests.