MoroccoGeography, History and Culture

Morocco

The name of the country comes from Marrakech, several times royal capital;

Marrakech, Amurrakech, AmurAkuch Amur means protection; Akuch: an ancient

berber name for God; The space on which Marrakech will be

founded was a land placed under the protection of God, perhaps first a market place with no hard constructions.

GEOGRAPHICAL CONTRASTS

Morocco is in the northwestern-most corner of Africa: strategic position linking the continent with the Mediterranean and Europe;

Diversity of natural lanscapes, climates, soils and coasts;

This shaped a peculiar relationship between humans and their environment and influenced the history and culture of the whole country.

The depth of history

Prehistory including the Neolithic period goes back to more than 2 M years b.p.

Hundreds of sites witness this presence of man in various areas of the country;

Some of these sites are known by the scientific community worldwide (the Mzora Chromlech here in front).

Mauretania

The kingdom of Mauretania extended over the northern part of present Morocco;

Under King Bocchus I, the country could maintain its independance from Carthago and Roma;

Under Juba II (25 B.C. – 23 A.D.) and his son and successor Ptolemy (23 – 40 A.D.), cities were extended and knew unprecedented growth: Lixus, Valobilis, Banasa, Tamuda;

Across from Essaouira (Mogador), the Purple islands were the site of production of a purple dye very famous in all the Mediterranean.

Under Roman occupation

Caligula assassinated Ptolemy in 40 A.D. because the Mauretanian Prince had the effrontery to wear, in the emperor’s presence, a fine garment dyed with purple;

Roma actually wanted to annex Mauretania but the Roman occupation was limited to the triangle between Tangier, Sala and Volubilis;

Cities were extended and a the population under occupation was romanized and later on christianized;

Around 285 A.D., under Diocletian, Roma evacuated the cities and lands of the interior.

Re-berberization and Arab conquest

Small berber kingdoms arose during the fifth and sixth centuries, one of them having its capital in Volubilis;

In late sevent century, the arab conquest began and berber resistance had to last more than half a century;

Islamization was very slow and far from being uniform;

Christanity would survive at least until the XIIth and XIIIth centuries, paganism at least until XIth century and Judaism still exists today.

Islamization and first Muslim States

Idriss I, a descendant of the Prophet’s son-in-law, arrived to Morocco, got married with a berber woman from the Awraba tribe and founded the idrisside principality in Volubilis and reigned from 788 to 791;

His son Idriss II moved the capital to Fez newly founded in 808;

Three Principalities were founded in other parts of the country: Sijilmassa in the South-East, Nokour in the North and Berghouata in the western Atlantic plains who promulgated a berberized islam.

States of the Moroccan empire

The Almoravids (1061-1147), Berbers from the Sahara declared religious reform and founded an empire stretching from the Senegal River to Andalusia and to the western Algeria with Marrakech, newly founded as capital;

The Almohads (1130-1266), Berbers from the Atlas moutains, moved them on and founded another dynasty unifying the whole Maghreb and Andalusia;

The Marinids (1258-1465), Berber herders from the eastern plateaus of the country, conquered the country and moved the capital to Fez but couldn’t maintain the unity of the empire, loosing Andalusia and the other parts of the Maghreb.

The decline of the Marinids and their weak successors the Wattassides encourages the Portuguese and Spanish to occupy Ceuta (1415) and later on other coastal cities.

The Sharifian States

The Saadians, originated from the South, conquered the country and liberated the coastal cities from the Iberian occupation, apart from Ceuta and Melilla, controlled the saharan trade routes and established their capital in Marrakech;

After the death of their great sultan Ahmed El Mansour in 1603, the country went through half a century of anarchy, diseases and wars;

Various movements tried to access to the political power ; the Alids prevailed and founded their dynasty in 1664.

The present dynasty: the Alids

The Alids unified the country under the reign of Moulay Rachid (1666-72) and Moulay Ismaïl (1672-1727) who founded a new capital, Meknès;

Following the death of Moulay Ismaïl, the army he attached to himself controlled the country for more than thirty years;

Moulay Abdellah (1745-57) succeeded in restoring calm and his son Mohammed Ben Abdellah (1757-90) strengthened the place of the central state, the Makhzen, and recognized the United States of America one year after their Declaration of Independance in 1776.

Modern Morocco

XIXth century: first European convetousness of North Africa, inaugurated by the capture of Algiers in 1830;

After the Death of Moulay Hassan I (1873-1894) and with financial difficulties, Morocco began to attract the colonial powers;

The French and Spanish Treaty of Protectorate was signed by Moulay Abdelhafid in 1912 but the country would not be wholly pacified until 1934 despite the superior weaponry of French and

Spanish armies.

From Protectorate to Independance

The colonial power built a double structured administration : the modern colonial one under the authority of the General Resident and the Makhzen under the authority of the Sultan;

Moroccan society was deeply affected, first in its material structures, then more slowly in its intangible ones;

The resistance moved from rural areas to the cities where a reform movement began to challenge the colonial authorities.

The contemporary Morocco

Access to the Independance in 1956 after the return of Mohamed V from three years exile in Madagascar;

Installation of the first governement of Independant Morocco;Death of Mohamed V and access of Hassan II (1961-1999) to

the throne for a long reign;Strengthening of the monarchy by a series of measures:

political pluralism, liberalism, agricultural plans, security and the Green March to the Sahara, war against the Polisario, etc.;

Profound changes on the demographic, socioeconomic, political and cultural levels;

From 1991: the beginning of a long process of opening of the regime: human rights, more political and social participation, liberation of political prisoners, etc.

The contemporary Morocco

1994: for the first time, the urban population with 51,4% superior to the rural one;

Political alternance in 1998 and death of Hassan II;

A new era with the access of Mohammed VI to the throne, an event that inspired an unprecedented enthousiasm in change ;

A decade of deep changes either social (fight against poverty), economic (tourism, services, industry, telecommunications, TIC, energy…) or cultural (literature, cinema, youth music, art…).

The depth of culture

Moroccan culture is deeply marked by these features: It is the expression of an old agricultural and pastoral

society nourished by the primodial relationship with the land, the herd and exchange of goods (with the sea, in a lesser degree);

Herders, peasants, merchants and craftsmen all exibit a love for work well done;

Work is a value and honesty is a virtue, a horizon of one’s life;

A widespread and deeply rooted religiosity, from pagan beliefs, through the africanized Roman Pantheon to the three monotheisms, mainly islam and judaism.

Features of Moroccan culture

The sacred’s function is to strengthen intense social relationships;

Human ingenuity compensates for nature’s deficiencies : lack of land or water, natural disaster;

A strong sense of family and social relations throughout blood ties and eating together and hospitality;

Wealth is sought for but ostentation is disapproved of.

But these values are changing in the Modern society.

Cultural diversity

Moroccan culture is rich and diverse as are the country’s contrasting geography and multi-millennial history;

The diversity is traditionnally cultivated, sought after, and defended;

A dynamic culture ready to adopt features from elsewhere, without denying its roots, this profoundly berber foundation enriched by thousands of years of African, Mediterranean, Jewish, Arab-Muslim, European, American, and other influences.

Cultural change

XXth century: deep and unprecedented changes;

Erosion of ancient social and cultural frameworks: the dwindling of the traditional structures, the disappearance of certain cultural features, the adoption of a new relationship to time and space, the progressive adaptation to new ways of being, thinking and acting, etc.

Consequences of cultural change

Progressive emergence of the individual, free from the oppression of the group, or aspiring to that;

New ways of being adopted, sometimes poured in existing moulds, others introduced in a less nuanced manner and ways refused by some milieus while accepted by others;

The main issue people are facing since a few decades is the gap between the desire of material change and the aspiration to an unchanging intangible culture;

The effervescence that Morocco is experiencing today is an accurate translation of its ambivalence among few perceptions of what it is to be the Moroccan society of the XXIst century.