Meknes is the only city in Morocco where there were two mellahs: an old Mellah, the third of the country, built in 1682 during the reign of the Alawite Sultan Moulay Ismaïl, and a new Mellah, built in the 1920s.
At the Lisbon earthquake of November 1, 1755, which went on to ravage the Moroccan cities like Meknes, the population of Mellah established under Moulay Ismaïl was decimated.