The Ben Zamirros were a Spanish-Portuguese mercantile family. As far back as the fourteenth century, members of the family were financiers and physicians in Seville and Badajoz. At the end of the fifteenth century the Ben Zamirros were living in southern Portugal near the Spanish border. Their wealth enabled them to migrate to North Africa after the Jews were expelled from Spain (1492) and Portugal (1496/97).

The family nucleus moved to Safi (Asfī), on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, after it was conquered by the Portuguese in 1508. When the army of the sharīf of Marrakesh besieged Safi in 15…