Morocco
Capital: Rabat · North Africa
A kingdom of Amazigh dynasties, imperial cities and Andalusi heritage, stretching from the Rif and Atlas mountains to the edge of the Sahara.
Ethnic communities
- Amazigh (Berber)Indigenous peoples of the Atlas, Rif and Souss
- Arab MoroccansUrban and plains populations with Andalusi influences
- GnawaDescendants of West Africans; famed spiritual music brotherhoods
- SahrawiHassaniya-speaking nomadic communities of the far south
More communities of Morocco
- Tashelhit (Shilha) · Souss valley and Anti-Atlas Amazigh — argan groves and rrways poets
- Central Atlas Tamazight · Middle Atlas herders of cedar country and ahidous dance
- Tarifit (Rif) Amazigh · Northern mountaineers of Abd el-Krim's short-lived republic
- Jebala · Arabic-speaking hill folk of the northwest with Andalusi echoes
- Sahrawi (Hassaniya) · Desert nomads of the far south — tea, camels and poetry
- Haratin oasis communities · Draa and Tafilalt date-palm cultivators
- Aït Atta · Great Saghro-Atlas confederation of transhumant herders
- Aït Yafelman · Eastern High Atlas alliance of valley farmers
- Zayanes · Khenifra's Middle Atlas warriors and horse culture
- Doukkala & Chaouia · Atlantic-plains farming tribes of the grain belt
- Soussi merchants · Amazigh trading diaspora running groceries nationwide
- Filala · Tafilalt oasis lineages — the Alaouite dynasty's cradle
- Draa valley communities · Ksar-dwelling farmers of the date river
- Moroccan Jewish heritage · Millennia-old mellah communities, now mostly diaspora
Languages
Major languages: Arabic, Tamazight (Tashelhit, Central Atlas, Tarifit), French
Language families: Afro-Asiatic (Semitic, Berber)
Historical kingdoms & states
- • Almoravid Empire
- • Almohad Caliphate
- • Marinid Sultanate
- • Saadi and Alaouite dynasties
Heritage sites
- • Medina of Fez
- • Medina of Marrakesh
- • Ksar of Aït-Ben-Haddou
- • Volubilis
- • Essaouira
Cultural highlights
National heroes of Morocco
See all African heroesFigures widely honoured here, across politics, sport, the arts and public life.
- Science, business & activism1940–2015
Fatema Mernissi
Sociology
Sociologist whose rereading of early Islamic sources argued that the exclusion of women was a later political construction, not a religious requirement.
- Sportb. 1974
Hicham El Guerrouj
Middle-distance running
Holds the 1500m and mile world records set in 1998 and 1999 and won the 1500m and 5,000m double in Athens in 2004.
- Politics & liberation1909–1961
Mohammed V
Monarchy and independence
Sultan exiled by France in 1953 for backing the nationalist movement; his return in 1955 forced the end of the protectorate. Refused to hand over Morocco's Jewish citizens under Vichy pressure.
- Music & the artsfounded 1970
Nass El Ghiwane
Music
Group that rebuilt Moroccan popular song from Gnawa and Sufi roots and whose lyrics gave a generation its political vocabulary. Martin Scorsese called them the Rolling Stones of Africa.
- Sportb. 1962
Nawal El Moutawakel
400m hurdles
Won the inaugural women's 400m hurdles in Los Angeles in 1984, becoming the first woman from an African or Muslim country to take Olympic gold.
- Science, business & activismb. 1953
Rachid Yazami
Electrochemistry
Invented the graphite anode that made rechargeable lithium-ion batteries practical. Draper Prize, 2014.
- Music & the artsb. 1944
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Literature
Won the Prix Goncourt in 1987 for The Sacred Night and writes on migration, racism and the years of lead in plain language for young readers as well as adults.
Deep-dive community profiles
Aït Atta
Amazigh transhumants of the eastern High Atlas and the Saghro, governed by an annually rotating chieftaincy that no lineage could hold twice in succession, and the last Moroccans to surrender to the French, at Bougafer in 1933.
Open deep profile →Ait Lahsen
A Tekna-linked tribe of the Saguia el-Hamra — camel herders and caravan people of the northern Sahara whose sections ended up on opposite sides of the Western Sahara conflict, and whose territory holds the world's largest phosphate deposit.
Open deep profile →Amazigh (Berber)
The indigenous peoples of North Africa — 'Imazighen', the free people — whose Tifinagh script, mountain and desert civilizations, and millennia of continuous culture long predate the Arab arrival, stretching from the Canary Islands to the Siwa oasis.
Open deep profile →Chleuh (Ishelhiyen)
The Amazigh of the Souss and the western High Atlas — argan growers, collective-granary builders and the most successful commercial migrants in Morocco, whose village assemblies and written poetry tradition are among the oldest continuous institutions in the country.
Open deep profile →Figuig oasis communities
Seven walled ksour of an Amazigh oasis on Morocco's eastern edge, watered by a hand-cut irrigation network divided to the minute, and cut off from the palm groves that a closed border left on the Algerian side.
Open deep profile →Gnawa
The descendants of enslaved West Africans in Morocco — a brotherhood rather than a tribe, whose all-night lila ceremonies heal through possession, whose guembri and iron qraqeb built a music now played from Essaouira to the world's festivals, and who are named for the country they were taken from.
Open deep profile →Haratin
The Black population of the Saharan oases and Moorish society — descendants of enslaved people who worked the date gardens and the water tunnels, the largest single group in Mauritania, and the community at the centre of the world's longest-running struggle against chattel slavery.
Open deep profile →Jbala
The mountain people of Morocco's north-west — Arabic-speaking with an Amazigh substrate, growers of the country's cannabis and of its finest figs, keepers of the ayta jabaliya sung poetry and of the blue-washed town of Chefchaouen.
Open deep profile →Middle Atlas Amazigh (Zayane and Beni Mguild)
The transhumant herders of Morocco's cedar highlands — Tamazight speakers whose cavalry held French columns for two decades, whose ahidus dance fills the mountain nights, and whose seasonal movement between summer pasture and winter valley is now largely over.
Open deep profile →Moroccan Jews
The largest Jewish community the Arab world ever held — a quarter of a million people in 1948, present since Roman times, sustained in mellahs and Atlas villages, and reduced to a couple of thousand while their music, food and saints' festivals remain part of Moroccan life.
Open deep profile →Rifians (Irifiyen)
The Amazigh of Morocco's northern mountains — a people who defeated a Spanish army at Anwal in 1921, declared a republic, were bombed with chemical weapons, and whose region has remained the most politically restive in the kingdom ever since.
Open deep profile →Tekna
The confederation of the desert's northern edge — mixed Amazigh and Arab lineages who ran the caravan trade between Morocco and the Sahara from the port of Goulimine and the fortress of Guelmim, and whose position between Morocco and the Sahrawi movement has been contested ever since.
Open deep profile →