Kingdom of Morocco

Kingdom of Morocco المملكة المغربية ⵜⴰⴳⵍⴷⵉⵜ ⵏ ⵍⵎⵖⵔⵉⴱ
Flag Coat of arms
Occupied territory of SADR in light green
Capital	Rabat
Largest city	Casablanca
Official languages	Arabic Tamazight
Dominant mode of production	Capitalism
Government	Unitary parliamentary monarchy
• Monarch	Mohammed bin Hassan
• Prime Minister	Aziz Akhannouch
Area
• Total	446,300 km²
Population
• 2022 estimate	37,984,655

Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in northwest Africa bordering Algeria, as well as Mauritania through its occupation of Western Sahara. It receives 91% of its weapons from the United States and is a major non-NATO ally of the US. In 2020, with US backing, it recognized Israel despite major opposition from the Moroccan population.

History

Precolonialism

The earliest human habitation within Morocco is the Jebel Irhoud site which is also the earliest evidence of homo-sapiens that we currently know. The inhabitants of Jebel Irhoud were hunters who used Aterian and Iberomaurusian flint spears to hunt gazelle, zebra, and wildebeest, and who had the technology to control fire.

The indigenous populations of the Maghreb known to the antique world as Mauri (Moors) and Massaesyli organized into structured clan federations practicing a mixed economy. Semi-nomadic pastoralism in the mountainous interior, focused on wool, hides, leather, milk, and meat, coexisted with dense, settled agriculture along the fertile coastal plains. It was an adaptation of a society at a specific level of productive forces to a challenging environment geographically.

Phoenician and later Carthaginian merchants established trading factories along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts such as Lixus, Chellah and Mogador around the 6th century BCE. The indigenous Berber communities traded their surpluses of raw materials, agricultural products and Tyrian purple dye in exchange for Phoenician-Carthaginian manufactured goods and luxury items.

Kingdom of Mauretania

The indigenous Mauri formed the Kingdom of Mauretania in the 3rd century BCE, which became an Mediterranean power that minted its own currency, maintained diplomatic alliances, and exported grain, timber, marble, livestock, and the prized Tyrian purple dye though the kingdom's fate became entangled with the civil wars of the late Roman Republic. King Bocchus I of Mauretania acquired a massive territorial expansion by betraying his son-in-law, Jugurtha of Numidia, by siding with the Roman general Sulla in 105 BCE.

Bronze bust of a young Juba II, created around 25 BCE and discovered during excavations in the city of Volubilis, Morocco circa 1918.

The Kingdom of Mauretania became divided between the brothers Bocchus II and Bogud who co-ruled but which eventually created a proxy conflict in which the brothers backed opposing Roman factions Caesar against Pompey, and later Octavian against Antony as the Mauretanian ruling class had become a subordinate ally of Roman imperialism. Following Bocchus II's death in 33 BCE, he offered the kingdom to Augustus in which he briefly administered the kingdom directly before installing Juba II as a puppet king.

Juba II was a classic comprador monarch, raised in the household of Octavia the Younger alongside the children of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, and married to Cleopatra Selene II. He was Mauri but culturally Romanized, politically dependent on imperial power, and economically oriented toward the extraction of surplus for export to Rome. His reign reorganized the production of the kingdom to serve Roman grain requirements, backed by Roman military power, which created strong resistance from the interior, where the independent indigenous people such as the Baquates and Musulamii under the Berber leader Tacfarinas fought to preserve their autonomy against the puppet-monarchy and Rome.

In 40 CE, the Roman Emperor Caligula assassinated the son of Juba II, Ptolemy of Mauretania reportedly out of jealousy over his wealth and imperial lineage or as a political threat. This assasination created a massive rebellion led by Aedemon, a freed house-slave of Ptolemy. After he brutally suppressed the revolt, Claudius formally annexed the territory in 44 CE, partitioning it into the provinces of Mauretania Caesariensis and Mauretania Tingitana. Despite the annexation, Roman control was always weak, strictly confined to the coastal zones and agricultural plains while the vast interior remained under indigenous Berber governance.

By 285 CE, amid the Crisis of the Third Century within the Roman Empire led to them losing all control over Morocco and indigenous control establishing itself. The Roman Empire could extract tribute from the coast; it could not, and did not touch the interior.

Umayyad Caliphate

The Umayyad Caliphate expanded across the Maghreb and into the Iberian Peninsula, the Berbers (Mauri), who had accepted Islam became the vanguard of the conquest of Al-Andalus or Spain. But despite them being the islamic vanguard they were ostracized and exploited by the Arab aristocracy due to ethnic differences.

This contradiction created the foundation for the Kharijites, who preached a radical, puritanical egalitarianism in which any pious Muslim, regardless of ethnic lineage could lead the Islamic community as discrimination is a sin islamically. It was from the Kharijites and this contradiction that created the Great Berber Revolt, the first permanent secession from the Umayyad Caliphate. The Berber vanguard struck while the main Arab expeditionary force was away in Sicily with their heads shaven in the Sufri Kharijite fashion, with Qur'anic inscriptions tied to their lances seized Tangier, executed the exploitative Umayyad governor, and went down the western coast to the Sous valley.

At the Battle of the Nobles in late 740 CE, they ambushed the returning Arab vanguard near Tangier, killing over 10,000 troops including the majority of the Arab aristocratic elite of Kairouan. Caliph Hisham responded by dispatching a massive Syrian army under Kulthum ibn Iyad and his nephew Balj ibn Bishr. The two forces met at the Battle of Bagdoura between October and November 741 CE, near present Fes, Morocco. Despite the Berber being outnumbered and poorly equipped they secured a tactical victory against the armored Syrian cavalry.

The Battle of Bagdoura permanently severed the Caliphate's control over the western Maghreb. In its aftermath, the revolt split into different Berber states such as the Barghawata, the Miknasa, and more.

Sijilmassa

Sijilmassa was founded in 757 CE by the Midrarid dynasty in the Tafilalet oasis along the Ziz River in southeastern Morocco. Sijilmassa transformed into the northern endpoint of the trans-Saharan trade network. Massive camel caravans traversed the desert carrying West African gold dust, ivory, leather, and slaves northward, in exchange for Saharan salt slabs from mines like Taghaza, as well as European textiles, weapons, and spices moving south. It was a center of merchant capital, Sijilmassa's merchants grew rich on the difference between the price at which they bought gold in the Sahel and the price at which they sold it in the Mediterranean.

The wealth generated by this trade transformed Sijilmassa into having a reputation as a "city of gold.". The city minted its own currency and supplied the Islamic world with highly pure gold dinars. Its 8th-century mosque, capable of accommodating over 2,600 worshippers, is evidence that it served as a center of Islamic scholarship.

Idrisid Dynasty

While Berber city-states like Sijilmassa dominated the economic landscape of the 8th century, the political and spiritual nature of the Moroccan nation-state was created in the north by the Idrisid Dynasty. Following an failed Alid uprising against the Abbasid Caliphate at the Battle of Fakhkh, Idris ibn Abdallah, a great-grandson of Hasan ibn Ali fled Mecca from the brutal Abbasid reprisals and found refuge among the Awraba Berber confederation in Volubilis. Idris I expanded his authority and pushed the borders to Tlemcen, Algeria before being assassinated by poison by an Abbasid agent in 791 CE.

The Idrisid Dynasty survived and flourished under his son, Idris II who expanded the kingdom and founded the new capital of Fes in 808 CE in which he accepted waves of Arab migrants from Al-Andalus and Kairouan. Fes transformed into the intellectual, commercial, and spiritual hub of the western Islamic world, housing the University of Al-Qarawiyyin, founded in 859 CE which is one of the oldest continually operating educational institutions in the world.

The Idrisids created an Arab-Berber merge that would become a central part of Moroccan identity. Arabic served as the language of administration, religion, and scholarship, linking Morocco to the broader Islamic world, while indigenous Berber customs shaped daily life and local governance.

Almoravid, Almohad and Marinid Empires

The courtyard of the Bou Inania Madrasa also known as Medersa Bou Inania, a madrasa (Islamic school) located in the center of the old medina of Fez, Morocco. Constructed between 1350 and 1355 CE.

The rise of indigenous Berber empires by the 11th through 15th centuries projected Moroccan power far beyond its historical borders, transforming the Maghreb into a Mediterranean superpower. The Almoravids, a Sanhaja Berber empire originating from the Sahara, and the Almohads, a Masmuda Berber empire conquered the entirety of North Africa and the Islamic territories of the Iberian Peninsula. These trans-regional empires allowed for a notable cultural, economic, and intellectual exchange between North Africa and Spain, leaving Islamic architectural signatures such as the horseshoe arch and the Giralda in Seville.

Following the collapse of the Almohad Empire by the Christian Reconquista, resistance from rival Islamic factions and an internal fiscal crisis. The Marinid dynasty, a Zenata Berber group, seized power. The Marinids permanently transformed the structure of Fes. In 1276, Sultan Abu Yusuf Ya'qub constructed Fes el-Jdid ("New Fes"), an entirely separate, heavily fortified administrative citadel on higher ground west of the ancient medina of Fes el-Bali. Fes el-Jdid housed the Dar al-Makhzen (royal palace ), the administrative bureaucracy, and the military headquarters.

The Marinids undertook a massive architectural program, constructing numerous madrasas (Islamic colleges) in the vicinity of the Qarawiyyin mosque. Madrasas such as the Al-Attarine Madrasa and the Bou Inania Madrasa (completed in 1355 under Sultan Abu Inan Faris) represent the peak of Moorish architecture in that time period. Through these Maliki madrasas, the jurist Ahmad ibn Yahya al-Wansharisi created the Al-Miʿyar al-Muʿrib (13-volume encyclopedia of fatwa i.e. legal opinions) which addressed contemporary issues ranging from commercial disputes and land notarization to the threat posed by the Christian reconquest of Iberia.

Colonialism

Following centuries of European penetration and invasion, the French established a protectorate over Morocco on 30 March 1912 with the Spanish establishing their own protectorate over the parts of Morocco they controlled soon after. Morocco was divided into 3 zones: A French zone covering 80% of the land and 90% of the population, a Spanish zone with small sections of territory in north and south, and "an international zone" in Tangier. The Moroccan Caliph retained only formal authority whilst the Moroccan people reacted with a general uprising beginning in Fes in April 1912 that was forcibly suppressed by the French.

Following the October Revolution, the national liberation movement in Morocco experienced an upsurge. In July 1921 this led to the Rif tribes in the Spanish zone, led by Abd al-Karim, defeating the Spanish, driving them out of the Rif Zone, and establishing the independent Republic of the Rif. By 1924 the Spanish colonialists only controlled a few settlements but then France, fearing the movement spreading to its own colony, entered the war and along with the Spanish, crushed the Rif Republic in 1926, with France putting down several other rebellions over the next few years.

Neocolonialism

After years of struggle, on March 2, 1956, France was forced to abolish the protectorate of Morocco and recognise its independence, with Spain doing the same on April 7, 1956. On October 29, 1956, the international status of Tangier was ended with the territory also becoming part of Morocco on January 1, 1957.

Occupation of Western Sahara

Morocco invaded Western Sahara in the 1970s after its independence from Spain. In 1981, Morocco began construction of a 1,600-mile border wall. The UN brokered a ceasefire in 1991 between the two countries. In 2020, after meeting with US commanders Moroccan forces invaded the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and broke the ceasefire. Moroccan settlers are occupying 80% of the SADR's territory and make up two-thirds of the population.