◙ The Dchar Jdid site is located 13 km northeast of the city of Asilah and east of the village of Had El Gharbia. It occupies, along with the suburban buildings, an area of 32ha, at the end of an east-west oriented advance of a plateau, which, to the west, gently descends towards the coastal plain.
◙ In 1977, a Moroccan-French team took over archaeological research at the site. Excavations undertaken on the "citadel" between 1977 and 1980 confirmed the idea of an occupation of the site in the pre-Roman period. An initial survey undertaken in 1977 found layers two meters above the modern soil containing only Campanian A ceramics and some fragments of painted ceramics. Two Mauretanian levels were thus determined. On the first level correspond the remains of a raw brick dwelling, it consists of two roughly rectangular rooms communicating through a door. The ceramic furniture discovered, crushed on the floor of the building is considered homogeneous, and it is sealed by a level of violent destruction. The dating of this level can be located at the second century BC. and more likely towards the end of the century.
◙ On the second level belongs a building complex of north-west-southeast orientation, bordered by a street. The walls are made of stone base and raw brick elevations. The material exhumed at this level, containing imported goods, makes it possible to locate the destruction and abandonment of the neighborhood in the third quarter of the 1st century BC. Between 33 and 25 BC.
◙ The city was destroyed and Emperor Augustus established one of the three Roman settlements in Western Mauretania, Iulia Constantia Zilil. According to a passage from Strabo, the inhabitants of this town were moved to Spain, with inhabitants of Tingis and Italian settlers to form the population of Iulia Ioza in Betic.
◙ Archaeological excavations undertaken on the site have not yet defined the urban aspect of this colonial settlement. Excavations on the site have freed up residential quarters, a large temple, a spa complex, an imposing four compartment cistern, fed by a partly underground aqueduct, will be built to supply it with water, later Hadrian. Finally, in the second half of the second century, like other cities of the Tingitane, Zilil acquired an enclosure, partially excavated near the north and west gates, but spotted on the majority of its route with electrical exploration.
◙ The city was destroyed, at an archaeologically indeterminate time, between 238 and the middle of the 4th century. The study of the coins from the excavations of Dchar Jdid shows that the reconstruction of the city is the result of an imperial decision and can be dated quite precisely from the years 355-360 after. J. The most spectacular creation is that of a paleo-Christian church, with three naves, equipped with a baptistery and various annexes, near the west gate of the enclosure, the only monument of this category cleared in Mauretania Tingitane. The city was destroyed at the beginning of the fifth century, but the date of the final stop of the occupation of the site has not yet been determined.
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