Scarce map of the town of Sale, Morocco, immediately north of Rabat, which appeared in Francois de Belleforest's Cosmographie Universelle De Tout le Monde.

Sale dates back at least to Carthaginian times (around 7th century BC). The Romans called the place Sala Colonia, part of their province of Mauritania Tingitane. Pliny the Elder mentions it as a desert town infested with elephants!. The Vandals captured the area in the 5th century AD and left behind a number of blonde, blue-eyed Berbers. The Arabs (7th century) kept the old name and believed it derived from "Sala" (sic., his name is actually Salah), son of Ham, son of Noah; they said that Salé was the first city ever built by the Berbers