Lonely Planet Morocco

by Lonely Planet

  Morocco in the early 21st century is a confident country, increasingly sure of its role as a stable link between Europe, Africa and the Arab world, and a place that welcomes tourists and investors alike. It sailed through the Arab Spring unscathed, and while the perennial question of Western Sahara shows no sign of resolution, the nation is taking big steps to cement its role as a regional player, and a leader in renewable energy and responses to climate change.

  Best on Film

  Casanegra (Nour-Eddine Lakhmari; 2008) A film about two friends growing up as hustlers on the gritty side of Casablanca.

  La Grande Villa (Latif Lahlou; 2009) Tale of a Franco-Moroccan couple moving from Paris to Casablanca.

  A Thousand Months (Faouzi Bensaidi; 2003) A family epic and winner of the 2003 Premier Regard at Cannes.

  Marock (Laila Marrakchi; 2005) A Muslim girl and a Jewish boy are star-crossed lovers in Casablanca.

  Behind Closed Doors (Mohammed Ahed Bensouda; 2013) Dramatic call to arms against the sexual harassment of Moroccan women.

  Best in Print

  The Sacred Night (Tahar ben Jelloun; 1987) This tale of a Marrakesh girl raised as a boy won France’s prestigious Prix Goncourt.

  Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood (Fatima Mernissi; 1994) The author's memoirs of 1940s Fez blend with other women’s stories.

  The Polymath (Bensalem Himmich; 2004) A fictionalised retelling of the life of 14th-century scholar Ibn Khuldun.

  For Bread Alone (Mohamed Choukri; 1973) A gritty autobiographical novel of growing up in extreme poverty, translated by Paul Bowles.

  Welcome to Paradise (Mahi Binebine; 1999) Explores the promise and trauma of migration across the Straits of Gibraltar.

  Do

  Conserve water Water is a scarce and valuable resource in this Sub-Saharan country.

  Cover your knees and shoulders Regardless of whether you’re a man or woman; it shows your respect for your Moroccan hosts.

  Learn basic greetings Learn a few words in Darija or Berber to delight your hosts, who will also make an effort to speak your language.

  Don't

  Give money, sweets or pens to children It encourages begging and shames families.

  Eat in public during Ramadan Or drink alcohol within view of a mosque.

  Skip pleasantries Say hello before asking for help or prices.

  The Tourist Dirham

  Tourism remains a key plank of Morocco's vision of the future. Tourism – through both direct and indirect jobs – is responsible for almost 18% of GDP and 16% of the nation's jobs. Around eight million tourists visit Morocco every year, a number that's doubled in the last decade, and would undoubtedly be higher were it not for the global economic downtown.

  Newly refurbished airports continue to attract low-cost European and Gulf airlines, while the 'Plan Azur' has seen the number of coastal resorts, aimed at servicing the increasing popularity of Morocco as a destination for Arab as well as European travellers, greatly increase – a sign of traditional Moroccan flexibility in adapting to changing global travel patterns.

  Regional Ambitions

  On the geopolitical front, the unresolved conflict in Western Sahara has continued to make headlines. Morocco briefly threatened to expel the UN peacekeeping mission there after the UN secretary general used the word 'occupation' in relation to Morocco's presence in the disputed territory. Tensions flared further in 2016 when Morocco deployed new troops to the border with Mauritania, ostensibly to crack down on smuggling but raising protests from Saharawis.

  Despite this, Western Sahara may no longer be the stumbling block to Morocco's regional ambitions that it once was. In July 2016 Morocco asked to rejoin the African Union, the regional body it had left in protest in 1984 when the Western Saharan government-in-exile was admitted. This move reflected Morocco's desire to flex its economic muscles in the region, and build on its growing economic influence in West Africa.

  Part of Morocco's economic plan is to become Africa's flagship for green energy. The government has invested heavily in renewable energy, and Morocco has both the continent's largest wind farm and solar power plant, powered by Atlantic breezes and Saharan sun respectively. These credentials were at the forefront when Marrakesh hosted the UN climate change conference in November 2016.

  Speeding Ahead?

  The construction of the high-speed TGV train line between Tangier and Casablanca has been Morocco's flagship infrastructure project, with the first trains due to start rolling out in 2017. It's part of the building boom that has occurred over the last 10 years, and seen major towns and cities receive much-needed facelifts, but while the train reflects an aspirational vision of the future, some Moroccans have criticised it as an extravagance when a sizeable proportion of the population scrape along near the poverty line with poor access to education and healthcare.

  Unemployment hovers around 45% for youth, while the regular blocking of internet communications apps such as Skype and WhatsApp by telecommunications companies speaks to a disconnect between the authorities and the populace (as well as the easy skirting of such regulations by an innovative populace). Although there have been modest improvements on free speech issues, social, Islamist and human-rights organisations have faced continued hurdles to operate without restriction, and direct political criticism of the palace remains a deep taboo.

  As Morocco's economy has slowed – an important issue in the most recent parliamentary elections – the statistic that around 40% of young Moroccans would emigrate if they were given the chance – continues to sting. As Morocco attempts to redefine itself for the 21st century, the challenges – and opportunities – are myriad.

  Population

  33,655,800

  Area

  446,550 sq km

  GDP Per Capita

  US$8200

  Life Expectancy

  76.9 years

  Adult Literacy

  68.5%

  History

  Morocco is an old nation. The current king, Mohammed VI, is part of the Alawite dynasty that has ruled the country since the 17th century. Before that, empires and invaders left their mark, from the Romans to the Arabs who brought Islam and made Morocco what it is today. Its ties across the Mediterranean to Europe and across the Sahara to the rest of Africa have given rise to a unique nation with a singular history.

  The symbol on the Berber flag is the Tifinagh letter ‘yaz’, and symbolises a free person (amazigh), the Berbers’ name for themselves.

  The Berbers meet the Romans

  Morocco's earliest inhabitants were ancestors of Morocco’s Amazigh (plural Imazighen, loosely translated as ‘free people’), who may have been distant cousins of the ancient Egyptians. They were joined by Mediterranean anglers and Saharan horse-breeders around 2500 BC, with Phoenicians showing up fashionably late around 800 BC and East Africans around 500 BC.

  When the Romans arrived in the 4th century, they didn’t know quite what to make of this multicultural milieu. The Romans called the expanse of Morocco and Western Algeria ‘Mauretania’ and the indigenous people ‘Berbers’, meaning ‘barbarians’. The term has recently been reclaimed and redeemed by the Berber Pride movement, but at the time it was taken as quite a slur.

  The ensuing centuries were one long lesson for the Romans in minding their manners. First the Berbers backed Hannibal and the Carthaginians against Rome in a protracted spat over Sicily known as the Punic Wars (264–202 BC). Fed up with the persistently unruly Berbers, the new Roman Emperor Caligula finally declared the end of Berber autonomy in the Maghreb (northwest Africa) in AD 40.

  Pre-Islamic Sites

  Carved Gazelle, Tafraoute

  Roman Diana mosaics at Volubilis

  Phoenician/Roman ruins at Lixus

  Prehistoric petroglyphs, Oukaïmeden

  Roman Sala Colonia, Chellah

  Defying Orders under Roman Noses

  True to his ruthless reputation, Caligula divided relatively egalitarian Berber clans into subservie
nt classes of slaves, peasants, soldiers and Romanised aristocrats. This strategy worked with Vandals and Byzantines, but Berbers in the Rif and the Atlas drove out the Romans with a campaign of harassment and flagrant disregard for Roman rules. Many Berbers refused to worship Roman gods, and some practised the new renegade religion of Christianity in open defiance of Roman rule. Christianity took root across North Africa; St Augustine himself was a Berber convert.

  Ultimately Rome was only able to gain a sure foothold in the region by crowning local favourite Juba II king of Mauretania. The enterprising young king married the daughter of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, supported scientific research and performing arts, and helped foster Moroccan industries still vital today: olive-oil production from the region of Volubilis (near Meknès), fishing along the coasts, and vineyards on the Atlantic plains.

  The Roman foothold in Mauretania slipped in the centuries after Juba II died, due to increasingly organised Berber rebellions inland and attacks on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts by the Vandals, Byzantines and Visigoths. But this new crop of marauding Europeans couldn’t manage Mauretania, and neither could Byzantine Emperor Justinian. Justinian’s attempt to extend his Holy Roman Empire turned out to be an unholy mess of treaties with various Berber kingdoms, who played their imperial Byzantine connections like face cards in high-stakes games. The history of Morocco would be defined by such strategic gamesmanship among the Berbers, whose savvy, competing alliances helped make foreign dominion over Morocco a near-impossible enterprise for more than a millennium.

  WHEN PURPLE WAS PURE GOLD

  The port that is today called Essaouira was hot property in ancient times, because it had one thing everyone wanted: the colour purple. Imperial purple couldn’t be fabricated, and was the one colour strictly reserved for Roman royalty. This helps explain the exorbitant asking price, which according to Aristotle was 10 to 20 times its weight in gold. The natural dye came from the spiky murex marine snails that clung to the remote Purpuraire (Purple) Islands – as though that could save them from the clutches of determined Roman fashionistas.

  Technically the Phoenicians were there first and discovered the stuff, but everyone wanted purple power. Savvy King Juba II established a coastal dye works in the 1st century BC to perform the tricky task of extracting murex dye from the vein of the mollusc, and kept his methods a closely guarded secret. The hue became wildly popular among royal celebrities of the day; Cleopatra loved the stuff so much that she dyed the sails of her royal barge purple before she went to meet Mark Antony.

  But violet soon turned to violence. Legend has it that Juba’s son Ptolemy was murdered by Emperor Caligula for having the audacity to sport a purple robe, making trendy Ptolemy possibly the world’s first fashion victim. The bright, nonfading dye was never successfully produced commercially, and the secret extraction methods were assumed lost in the siege of Constantinople in 1453. But in Essaouira the stuff is mysteriously still available, for a price. The mysteries of the colour purple are still passed down from one generation of murex collectors to the next, and are jealously guarded.

  Islam Arrives in Morocco

  By the early 7th century, the Berbers of Morocco were mostly worshipping their own indigenous deities, alongside Jewish Berbers and a smattering of local Christian converts. History might have continued thus, but for a middle-aged man thousands of miles away who’d had the good fortune to marry a wealthy widow, and yet found himself increasingly at odds with the elites of his Arabian Peninsula town of Mecca. Mohammed bin Abu Talib was his given name, but he would soon be recognised as the Prophet Mohammed for his revelation that there was only one God, and that believers shared a common duty to submit to God’s will. The polytheist ruling class of Mecca did not take kindly to this new religion, which assigned them shared responsibilities and took away their minor-deity status, and kicked the Prophet out of town on 16 July AD 622.

  This Hejira (exile) only served to spread the Prophet Mohammed’s message more widely. By the Prophet’s death in 632, Arab caliphs – religious leaders inspired and emboldened by his teachings – were carrying Islam east to Central Asia and west to North Africa. But infighting limited their reach in North Africa, and it took Umayyad Arab leader Uqba bin Nafi until 682 to reach the Atlantic shores of Morocco. According to legend, Uqba announced he would charge into the ocean, if God would only give him the signal. But the legendary Algerian Berber warrior Queen Al-Kahina would have none of Uqba’s grandstanding, and with her warriors soon forced Uqba to retreat back to Tunisia.

  Although an armed force failed to win the Berbers over to Islam, force of conviction gradually began to succeed. The egalitarian premise of Islam and its emphasis on duty, courage and the greater good were compatible with many Berber beliefs, including clan loyalty broadly defined to include almost anyone descended from the Berber equivalent of Adam and Eve. Many Berbers willingly converted to Islam – and not incidentally, reaped the benefits of Umayyad overland trading routes that brought business their way. So although Uqba was killed by his Berber foes before he was able to establish a solid base in Morocco, by the 8th century his successors were able to pull off this feat largely through diplomatic means.

  Key Islamic Sites Open to Non-Muslims

  Tin Mal Mosque, High Atlas

  Medersa Bou Inania, Fez

  Zawiya Nassiriyya, Tamegroute

  Hassan II Mosque, Casablanca

  Ali ben Youssef Medersa, Marrakesh

  Islam Stays, but Umayyads Must Go

  The admiration between the Berbers and the Arab Umayyads was not always mutual, however. While the Umayyads respected Jews and Christians as fellow believers in the word of a singular God, they had no compunction about compelling polytheist Berbers to pay special taxes and serve as infantry (read: cannon fodder). The Umayyads greatly admired Berber women for their beauty, but this wasn’t necessarily advantageous; many were conscripted into Umayyad harems.

  Even the Berbers who converted to Islam were forced to pay tribute to their Arab overlords. A dissident school of Islamic thought called Kharijism critiqued the abuses of power of the Umayyads as a corruption of the faith, and called for a new moral leadership. In the mid-8th century, insurrections erupted across North Africa. Armed only with slings, a special force of Berbers defeated the elite Umayyad guard. The Umayyads were soon cut off from Spain and Morocco, and local leaders took over an increasingly lucrative trade in silver from the Western Sahara, gold from Ghana and slaves from West Africa.

  Queen Al-Kahina had one distinct advantage over the Umayyads: second sight. The downside? She foretold her own death at the hands of her enemy.

  A Death-Defying Dynasty: The Idrissids

  Looking back on early Berber kingdoms, the 14th-century historian Ibn Khuldun noted a pattern that would repeat throughout Moroccan dynastic history. A new leadership would arise determined to do right, make contributions to society as a whole and fill the royal coffers, too. When the pursuit of power and royal comforts began to eclipse loftier aspirations, the powers that be would forfeit their claim to moral authority. A new leadership would arise determined to do right, and the cycle would begin all over again.

  So it was with the Idrissids, Morocco’s first great dynasty. A descendant of the Prophet Mohammed’s daughter Fatima, Idriss I fled Arabia for Morocco in AD 786 after discovering ambitious Caliph Haroun ar-Rashid’s plan to murder his entire family. But Idriss didn’t exactly keep a low profile. After being proclaimed an imam (religious leader) by the local Berbers, he unified much of northern Morocco in the name of Islam. Just a few days after he’d finally settled into his new capitol at Fez in 792, Haroun ar-Rashid’s minions finally tracked down and poisoned Idriss I. Yet death only increased Idriss I’s influence; his body was discovered to be miraculously intact five centuries later, and his tomb in the hillside town of Moulay Idriss remains one of the holiest pilgrimage sites in Morocco.

  His son Idriss II escaped Haroun’s assassins and extended Idrissid control across northern Moro
cco and well into Europe. In perhaps the first (but certainly not the last) approximation of democracy in Morocco, Idriss II’s 13 sons shared power after their father’s death. Together they expanded Idrissid principates into Spain and built the glorious mosques of Fez: the Kairaouine and the Andalous.

  Key Moroccan Dynasties

  Idrissid (8th–10th century)

  Almoravid (11th–12th century)

  Almohad (12th–13th century)

  Merenid (13th–15th century)

  Saadian (16th–17th century)

  Alawite (17th century–present)

  Warriors Unveiled: The Almoravids

  With religious leaders and scholars to help regulate trade, northern Morocco began to take shape as an economic entity under the Idrissids. But the south was another story. A dissident prophet emerged near Salé brandishing a Berber version of the Quran, and established an apocryphal Islam called Barghawata that continued to be practised in the region for centuries. The military strongmen who were left in control of trading outposts in the Atlas Mountains and the Sahara demanded what they called ‘alms’ – bogus religious nomenclature that didn’t fool anyone, and stirred up resentments among the faithful.

  From this desert discontent arose the Sanhaja, the pious Saharan Berber tribe that founded the Almoravid dynasty. While the Idrissid princes were distracted by disputes over Spain and Mediterranean Morocco, the Sanhaja swept into the south of Morocco from what is today Senegal and Mauritania. Tough doesn’t do justice to the Sanhaja; they lived on camels’ meat and milk instead of bread, wore wool in the scorching desert and abstained from wine, music and multiple wives. Their manly habit of wearing dark veils is still practised today by the few remaining Tuareg, the legendary ‘Blue Men’ of the desert (and the many tourists who imitate them in camel-riding photo-ops). When these intimidating shrouded men rode into Shiite and Barghawata outposts under the command of Yahya ibn Umar and his brother Abu Bakr, they demolished brothels and musical instruments as well as their opponents.