Essaouira (Berber: ⵎⵓⴳⴰⴹⵓⵔ Taṣṣurt, , as-Ṣawīra) is a city in the western Moroccan economic region of Marrakech-Tensift-Al Haouz, on the Atlantic coast. The city was known in the time of 11th-century Geographer al-Bakri and, as he reported, was called Sidi Megdoul. In the 16th-century, a corruption of this name became known to the Portuguese as Mogador or Mogadore. The Berber and Arabic names mean the wall, a reference to the fortress walls that originally enclosed the city.