Gibraltar forms the eastern shore of a bay that has been of commercial importance from earliest times and was possessed successively by the Phoenicians. Carthaginians, Romans and Visigoths, although it remained uninhabited till the Mohammedan invasion of the Iberian peninsula in 711 A.D. It has also been claimed that the port of Tharshish to which the fleets of Solomon resorted was situated here.

Gibraltar was but by Tariq-ibn-Zeyad from whom Gibraltar gets its name, Gibel Tariq (Tariq's Mountain) and the city itself was founded by the Almohad monarch, Abd el Mumin in 1160 A.D. The Spaniards finally captured Gibraltar from the Moors in 1462 and retained it until 1704. In that year it was surrended to an Anglo Dutch force during the war of the Spanish Succession, since when it has remained in British hands.