Morocco historical timeline

Origins

Morocco’s first peoples were Amazigh, and they are still here: Tamazight has been an official language since 2011. Phoenician traders and then Rome reached the coast — the mosaics at Volubilis are Roman — but neither held the interior. Arab armies arrived at the end of the seventh century, and in 788 the Idrisid dynasty founded Fes. What followed was unusual: a succession of Amazigh dynasties, the Almoravids and Almohads, ruled from Marrakesh over an empire that reached deep into Spain, making Morocco a centre of the medieval Muslim world rather than a province of it.

Turning points

The Saadians stopped a Portuguese invasion at the Battle of the Three Kings in 1578 and pushed south across the Sahara to Timbuktu. The Alaouite dynasty took power in 1666 and still reigns, which makes it one of the oldest ruling houses anywhere. Alone among its neighbours, Morocco was never absorbed into the Ottoman Empire. European pressure ended that independence in 1912, when the country was divided into French and Spanish protectorates with Tangier governed internationally; independence was restored in 1956 under Mohammed V. The long reign of Hassan II brought stability and also the repression known as the Years of Lead, and in 1975 the Green March sent hundreds of thousands of civilians south into Western Sahara, a dispute still unresolved.

Influential people

Fatima al-Fihri, who endowed the mosque and teaching institution of al-Qarawiyyin in Fes in 859, often described as the oldest continuously operating university in the world. Yusuf ibn Tashfin, the Almoravid who founded Marrakesh. Ibn Battuta of Tangier, who travelled further than any other person of the medieval world and wrote it down. Mohammed V, who refused to hand over his Jewish subjects under Vichy pressure and led the country to independence, and Mohammed VI, king since 1999.

Cultural evolution

Arabic and Tamazight sit alongside French, which remains the language of business and higher education. The expulsions from Spain after 1492 brought Andalusi music, architecture and cooking that are still identifiable, along with a Jewish community that was among the largest in the Muslim world before most of it left in the mid-twentieth century. Sufi brotherhoods, craft guilds and the authority of the monarch as Commander of the Faithful continue to structure a great deal of ordinary life.

Present-day significance

Morocco holds most of the world’s phosphate reserves, exports agriculture and cars to Europe, and has built large solar and wind capacity. The earthquake of September 2023 in the High Atlas killed close to three thousand people and reconstruction continues. The national football team reached a World Cup semi-final in 2022, the first African side to do so, and the country is scheduled to co-host the tournament in 2030.