Casbah

The Casbah (French) or more correctly Kasbah (from Arabic kasbah, kasabah, 'citadel') is specifically the citadel of Algiers and the traditional quarter clustered round it. More generally, kasbah denotes the walled citadel of many North African cities and towns. The word made its way into English from French in the late 19th century (the O.E.D. says 1895), hence its conventional English spelling.

In Rabat, since 1912 the capital of Morocco, the Casbah of the Oudaya is the military barracks encircled by walls with gates, built in the 16th and 17th centuries on ancient foundations.

In the 1938 movie Algiers, (a remake of a French film of the previous year), Charles Boyer, as the master criminal Pepe le Moko, holed up in the narrow alleyways of the Casbah and pursued by the relentless French inspector, who waits for his first false move, falls for lovely American tourist Gaby (Hedy Lamarr, in her first Hollywood film). Though Charles Boyer never actually says "Come with me to the casbah", this was most Americans' introduction to the picturesque alleys and souks of the Casbah. In 1948 a musical remake, Casbah, was released.