Morocco

• 1. Introduction

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  In Turkish, Morocco is called Fas, after the medieval city of Fes. In Persian, Urdu and Punjabi it is Murrakush, a name that points to Marrakesh. In Arabic, the country is al-Maghrib, which means the west. Each name looks toward a different city or direction. The English word Morocco comes from the Spanish Marruecos, which itself comes from Marrakesh.

  The Kingdom of Morocco sits in the Maghreb region of North Africa, with the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. About 37 million people live there. Its capital is Rabat, while its largest city is Casablanca. Islam is the official religion, and Arabic and Berber are the official languages.

  This documentary asks several questions about the country. How far back do human traces in this corner of Africa reach? How did a single country keep its independence while empires pressed in from every side? Who held the power when Europe divided it into protectorates? Why does a stretch of desert to the south still have no settled owner? And what do the land, the wildlife and the visitors reveal about daily life there today?

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• 2. Before Islam Arrived

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  Fossils found at Jebel Irhoud, near the Atlantic coast, were dated to roughly 315,000 years ago and belong to Homo sapiens. Hominin fossils from Thomas Quarry I in Casablanca, published in 2026, push the evidence back to about 773,000 years ago, near the root of the Homo sapiens lineage. During the Upper Paleolithic the Maghreb was more fertile than it is now, and it resembled a savanna.

  At Taforalt, DNA from people who lived around 15,000 years ago shows a distinctive Maghrebi ancestry. It blends Near Eastern and African roots and still survives in modern Northwest Africans. From about 7,500 years ago, Neolithic farmers arrived from the Iberian Peninsula, along with herders from the Levant. Both groups added to the ancestry of people in the region today.

  Excavations at Oued Beht uncovered a farming society dated to 3400-2900 BCE. It was the largest known agricultural complex in Africa outside the Nile Valley at that time. At Kach Kouch, near the Strait of Gibraltar, settled farming began from 2200 BCE, centuries before any Phoenician contact. By the 8th century BCE its people were choosing which Phoenician building methods and crops to adopt, while keeping their own material culture.

  The Phoenicians later founded trading settlements at Chellah, Lixus and Mogador. Mogador was a colony as early as the 6th century BC. Carthage then absorbed the region into its empire. The earliest known independent Moroccan state was the Berber kingdom of Mauretania, under King Baga, which flourished around 225 BC or earlier. This ancient kingdom should not be confused with the modern state of Mauritania.

  Rome made Mauretania a client kingdom in 33 BC, and Emperor Claudius annexed it directly in 44 AD. Christianity took root among Berber Christians in the province of Mauretania Tingitana. By the late 3rd century, direct Roman rule had shrunk to a few coastal cities. The Vandals devastated the area in 429 AD, and local Mauro-Roman kings took control of what Rome had lost. In the 530s the Byzantines restored imperial rule at Septum and Tingi, fortified Tingis and built a church. Septum is the city now known as Ceuta, which Spain still holds.

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• 3. Dynasties Of The West

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  The Umayyad Caliphate finished its conquest of the Maghreb by 709, after a campaign that began in the mid-7th century. It brought Islam and the Arabic language. It also started a stream of Arab migration that would last for centuries. Morocco was first a subsidiary province of Ifriqiya, with governors appointed from Kairouan. The Berber peoples adopted Islam but kept their customary laws, and they paid taxes and tribute to the new administration.

  In 710 Salih I ibn Mansur founded the Kingdom of Nekor in the Rif Mountains, the first independent Muslim state in the area. The Berber Revolt of 739 produced more, including the Miknasa of Sijilmasa and the Barghawata. Then came Idris ibn Abdallah, a great-grandson of Hasan ibn Ali. He fled to Morocco after the Abbasids massacred his family in the Hejaz. He persuaded the Awraba Berber tribes to break with the distant Abbasid caliphs, and in 788 he founded the Idrisid dynasty.

  The Idrisids made Fes their capital, and Morocco became a centre of Muslim learning and a major regional power. The Fatimid Caliphate and its Miknasa allies ousted them in 927. After that, the Miknasa fell out with the Fatimids and lost power to the Maghrawa of Sijilmasa in 980.

  From the 11th century a run of Berber dynasties took charge. Under the Sanhaja Almoravids and the Masmuda Almohads, Morocco dominated the Maghreb, al-Andalus in Iberia and the western Mediterranean. These two dynasties carried the country to its height as a regional power in the 11th and 12th centuries. The Zenata Berber Marinids of the 13th and 14th centuries then tried to repeat the Almohad successes with campaigns in Algeria and Spain.

  The Reconquista ended Muslim rule in Iberia in the 15th century, and Muslims and Jews fled across the strait to find refuge in Morocco.

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• 4. Sultans And Sharifs

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  In 1549 power passed to the Saadi dynasty, which claimed descent from the Islamic prophet Muhammad and ruled until 1659. The Saadis defeated the Portuguese Aviz dynasty at the Battle of Alcácer Quibir in 1578. The reign of Ahmad al-Mansur brought new wealth and prestige. In 1591 a large expedition to West Africa crushed the Songhay Empire. Managing territory across the Sahara proved too difficult, and after al-Mansur died the country was divided among his sons. Morocco was the only North African nation to escape Ottoman rule.

  The Alawi sultan al-Rashid reunited the country in the late 1660s. He took Fez in 1666 and Marrakesh in 1668. The Alawis, who rule to this day, are also known by names that stress their Sharifi heritage, including the Sharifian Empire. In French this became l'Empire chérifien.

  Ismail Ibn Sharif, who reigned from 1672 to 1727, built a unified state against the opposition of local tribes. With his Riffian army he retook Tangier from the English, who abandoned it in 1684. He drove the Spanish from Larache in 1689. The Portuguese gave up Mazagão, their last territory in Morocco, in 1769. A siege of the Spanish at Melilla ended in defeat in 1775.

  On the 20th of December 1777, Sultan Mohammed III declared that American merchant ships would be under the protection of the sultanate. American vessels in the Atlantic had been exposed to attacks by Barbary corsairs, and the declaration gave them safe passage. Morocco was the first nation to recognise the United States as independent, only a year after its founding. The Moroccan-American Treaty of Friendship, signed in 1786, stands as the oldest unbroken friendship treaty the United States holds.

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• 5. Protectorate And Independence

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  France showed a strong interest in Morocco as early as 1830. It wanted to protect the border of its Algerian territory, and it valued Morocco's coasts on both the Mediterranean and the open Atlantic. A dispute over the Spanish enclave of Ceuta led Spain to declare war in 1860. Spain won and received a larger Ceuta and a further enclave. In 1884 Spain created a protectorate in coastal areas, and in 1904 France and Spain carved out zones of influence.

  British recognition of the French sphere angered the German Empire, and a crisis loomed in 1905. The Algeciras Conference settled it in 1906. The Agadir Crisis of 1911 raised tensions again. Then the Treaty of Fez in 1912 made Morocco a protectorate of France and set off the Fez riots that same year. Spain kept running its coastal protectorate, and Tangier became an international zone. The Sultan stayed the formal sovereign with limited authority.

  Tens of thousands of colonists came. Some bought large areas of rich farmland, and others developed mines and harbours. The French administrator Marshal Hubert Lyautey sincerely admired Moroccan culture. He imposed a joint Moroccan-French administration and created a modern school system. Moroccan soldiers served in the French army in both World Wars and in the Spanish Nationalist Army in the Spanish Civil War. Slavery was abolished in 1925.

  Between 1921 and 1926 an uprising in the Rif Mountains, led by Abd el-Krim, created the Republic of the Rif. Spain lost more than 13,000 soldiers at Annual in July and August 1921 alone. The Spanish answered with bombing raids on civilians and with mustard gas. The Franco-Spanish military suppressed the Riffians by 1927. Casualties on the Spanish-French side reached 52,000, while approximately 10,000 Riffians died.

  The Istiqlal Party, or Independence Party, was founded in 1943 with discreet American support. It supplied most of the leadership for the nationalist movement, which lobbied heavily at the United Nations. France exiled Sultan Mohammed V to Madagascar in 1953 and replaced him with the unpopular Mohammed Ben Aarafa. That sparked active opposition, and the worst violence came in Oujda, where Moroccans attacked French and other European residents. France let Mohammed V return in 1955. Independence arrived in March 1956, and a month later Spain gave up its northern protectorate. Spain kept Ceuta and Melilla, which Morocco still claims.

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• 6. The Crown And Parliament

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  On the 3rd of March 1961, Hassan II became King of Morocco after the death of Mohammed V. The country held its first general elections in 1963. In 1965 Hassan declared a state of emergency and suspended parliament. Two attempts to depose him and establish a republic failed, one in 1971 and one in 1972.

  The decades from the early 1960s to the late 1980s are known as the Years of Lead, or les années de plomb. They included forced disappearances, assassinations of government opponents and protesters, and secret internment camps such as Tazmamart. King Mohammed VI later set up the Equity and Reconciliation Commission to examine abuses during his father's reign. A truth commission established in 2005 confirmed nearly 10,000 cases, ranging from death in detention to forced exile. It recorded some 592 people killed.

  Political reform came in the 1990s. In March 1998 Abderrahmane Youssoufi, a socialist and parliamentary opposition leader, formed a coalition government drawn largely from opposition parties. It was the first such government in the country's history. Hassan II died in 1999, and his son Mohammed VI succeeded him as a cautious moderniser.

  During the Arab Spring protests of 2011, thousands rallied in Rabat and other cities and demanded a new constitution that curbed the powers of the king. In July 2011 the king won a landslide in a referendum on a reformed constitution he had proposed himself. The moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party then won a plurality of seats, and Abdelilah Benkirane became head of government. Demonstrators still called for deeper reforms.

  Today the king is both the secular political leader and Amir al-Mu'minin, the Commander of the Faithful. He chairs the Council of Ministers and holds wide powers over the military, foreign policy and religious affairs. He can issue dahirs, decrees with the force of law. Parliament has two chambers: an Assembly of Representatives with 395 members and an Assembly of Councillors with 120. Morocco is classified as a hybrid regime.

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• 7. The Western Sahara Dispute

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  On the 6th of November 1975, King Hassan asked for volunteers to cross into the Spanish Sahara. Some 350,000 civilians were reported to have joined what became known as the Green March. A month later Spain agreed to leave and transfer the territory to joint Moroccan and Mauritanian control. Algeria objected and threatened military intervention. The Polisario movement, formed in 1973 to win an independent state there, fought both Morocco and Mauritania.

  Mauritania gave up its claim in 1979, but the war went on and drained Morocco's finances. In 1984 Morocco left the Organisation of African Unity in protest at the admission of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. Polisario claimed to have killed more than 5,000 Moroccan soldiers between 1982 and 1985. Algerian authorities estimate the number of Sahrawi refugees in Algeria at 165,000.

  A UN-monitored ceasefire began in 1991, and a mission called MINURSO was charged with organising a referendum on independence or recognition as part of Morocco. That vote has never happened. Morocco occupies about two-thirds of the territory and calls it the Southern Provinces. Polisario controls a largely uninhabited Free Zone, with administrative headquarters at Tindouf in Algeria. In 2007 Morocco presented an autonomy plan to the United Nations, and Polisario rejected it and offered its own.

  In 2020 the United States became the first Western country to back Moroccan sovereignty over the territory, in an agreement tied to Morocco normalising relations with Israel. In November 2020 Brahim Ghali, the Polisario leader, ended the 29-year ceasefire. On the 24th of August 2021, Algeria cut diplomatic relations with Morocco. The border between the two countries has been closed since 1994, and a short war over Moroccan claims to Algerian territory, the Sand War of 1963, ended with a peace agreement in February 1964.

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• 8. Land And Livelihood

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  Morocco is one of only three countries, along with Spain and France, that have both Atlantic and Mediterranean coastlines. The Rif Mountains run across the north, and the Atlas Mountains form the backbone of the country from the northeast to the southwest. Both ranges are mainly inhabited by Berber people. Most of the southeast lies in the Sahara Desert and is sparsely populated.

  The climate is a patchwork. The cold Canary Current and the central mountain ranges give Morocco a wide variety of vegetation, from lush forests in the north to desert in the south. Fes recorded -8 degrees Celsius in the winter of 2005. When the sirocco blows from the east, temperatures can rise by 7-8 degrees Celsius. Ski resorts such as Oukaimeden and Mischliefen operate in the alpine highlands. The Atlantic fir, a royal conifer endemic to Morocco, grows in the mountains.

  The last wild Barbary lion, a national emblem, was shot in the Atlas Mountains in 1922. The Atlas bear is now extinct and the Barbary leopard is critically endangered. The Barbary macaque, a primate found in Morocco and Algeria, is also facing extinction as forest shrinks. The country's bird list totals 454 species. Trade in native animals and plants continues despite laws against much of it.

  Tourism brought a record 14.5 million international arrivals in 2023, with receipts of MAD 104.7 billion. About 60% of visitors come for culture and heritage. In Marrakesh the Majorelle botanical garden, bought by Yves Saint-Laurent and Pierre Bergé in 1980, is a popular stop. The port of Tanger-Med is the largest in Africa and the Mediterranean. In 2018 the king inaugurated Africa's first high-speed railway, linking Tangier and Casablanca. In 2025 the African Development Bank named Morocco Africa's leading industrial economy.

  On the 8th of September 2023, a 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck about 70 km southwest of Marrakesh and killed more than 2,800 people. In 2025 protests rose against a backdrop of high youth unemployment, which official statistics placed at 35.8%.

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