Morocco

Description

In the Commedia Dante uses the ancient form «Morrocco», attested in Inferno XXVI 104 in the celebrated list that measures the space covered by Ulysses' flight: «fin nel Morrocco, e l'isola d'i Sardi». The note to canto IV clarifies that the term here designates the extreme western edge of the inhabited lands, that is, the furthest tip of the emerged land, identified with the Strait of Gades (today Gibraltar), from which Ulysses' voyage sets out. The same commentary specifies that «Morrocco» is the ancient form of Marocco and that the toponym actually stands for Gades, namely Cadiz, the point that on medieval maps marked the extreme west. The occasion on which the name recurs in the note to canto IV is the astronomical and geographical description of the landscape: at the moment when on Purgatory the sun touches the meridian, night covers Morocco, so that to the western sunset corresponds noon on the mountain of Purgatory and, symmetrically, midnight in Jerusalem.