Morocco, or MAROCCO, known to the natives as Maghreb-el-Aksa, 'the farthest west,' is an empire or sultanate which, though at one time comprising a portion of Algeria in one direction, and exercising in the other a modified jurisdiction as far as Timbuktu, is now confined to that part of north-west Africa bounded on the E. (at the Wad Kiss) by Algeria, and on the S. by Cape Nun and the Wad Draa, though both here and on the Sahara side of the Atlas the limits of the empire are rather indeterminate. Very little of the country has been even roughly surveyed; but, according to the vague knowledge possessed, it contains about 314,000 sq. m., of which the 'Tell' or fertile region west of the Atlas contains 78,000, the Steppes or flat sterile upland pastures, 27,000, and the Desert or Sahara, 209,000 sq. m. Politically, Morocco comprises at present the old kingdoms of Fez and Morocco and the territories of Tafilet (Tafilalet) and Sus; but the two latter are almost independent, recognising the sultan only as the Prince of True Believers, an office which he holds as the most powerful of the Shereefs or descendants of Mohammed. These four principal governments are divided into seventeen primary provinces or 'amalats,' each presided over by a Kaïd or 'Bashaw,' as the Europeans call him, who again has under him various minor officials directing the affairs of the smaller districts, until the headman of the village is reached. Many of the Arab and most of the mountain tribes are practically independent, never being troubled by the Shereefian officers, and paying taxes only when an army enters their country. Over this region, living in a few moderately-sized towns, and numerous little stationary villages of stone or clay (dshars) or in the tent hamlets (douars) of wandering tribes, is scattered a population variously estimated from 2,500,000 to 13,000,000—the actual number being perhaps between three and four millions. But there is no census, and the country-people, in order to avoid the extortion of the troops and the 'mouna,' or gift of provisions to favoured travellers, prefer to live in retired spots at a distance from the ordinary routes through the country. Morocco is, as a rule, mountainous, the Atlas (q.v.) traversing it in several chains from south-west to north-east, and by various spurs both to the coast country and to the desert. There are, however, numerous level plains, some of which are of great extent, and very rich, the soil being in many places a deep, black loam, evidently the bed of an ancient lake or of a primeval forest. There are also numerous more or less level plateaus similar to those of Algeria. But with the exception of parts of the Atlas, the forest of Mamora, the date and argan groves of the south, and a few straggling copses around the burial-places of saints, Morocco has, in the course of the last thousand years, been almost denuded of timber, the palmetto (Chamaecrops humilis) scrub being about the most common representative of woodland. Consequently the country looks bald, rolling hills and monotonous plains, green in spring, brown during summer and autumn, being the most characteristic features of the north, though some of the glens and mountain-regions are extremely picturesque. Farther south, and on the other side of the Atlas, where long droughts, followed by famines, are common calamities, and the rainfall is at the best of times scanty and uncertain, sandy wastes are the prevailing characteristic; but in western Morocco, though the soil is sometimes thin and out of the river-valleys stony, actual desert is rare, and, except where the sand has been drifted inland by the winds, not unfitted for pasturage.
The central range of the Atlas forms the watershed separating the streams which flow into the Atlantic and Mediterranean from those which run southward toward the desert, where they are often lost in marshy 'sinks' or sebkhahs. And of the streams falling into the Atlantic and Mediterranean, many are in the hot season or after long droughts little better than a succession of pools connected by threads of water, though rolling in brown floods from bank to bank during the wet season, when they are dangerous to cross. None of them are navigable for any distance from their mouths, which are always impeded by bars and shoals. Yet before the 14th century vessels of considerable tonnage went 40 miles up the Sus to Tarudant, and stern-wheel steamers could even yet easily navigate the Sebou to within a few hours of Fez. But there are not even barges on them.
The climate of Morocco varies much, though the western slope, being tempered by the sea-breezes and protected from the hot desert-winds by the Atlas, is temperate, the thermometer seldom falling below 40° or rising above 90°. But in summer the interior valleys are very hot, and in winter snow often falls in Fez and Mequinez, where ice an inch thick is by no means uncommon. In Tangier there has been a slight snow-shower about twice in forty years, and in Mazagan even less frequently. Farther south extremes of heat and drought are more common, though as a rule the climate is equable, and, unless in swampy places during summer, extremely healthy. In the Sus country and the region of Taflet rain is scarce and in places almost unknown. But farther north, and on the Atlantic and Mediterranean slopes, it falls with tolerable regularity every year between October and April, the amount being at times so great that the low lands are flooded, the rivers impassable, and the mountain-sides, unprotected by wood, furrowed by torrents, sweeping the soil and debris before them into the valleys below. On the upper reaches of the Atlas there is all summer a June-like atmosphere; but in winter they are capped deep with snow.
Morocco is thus fitted for growing any crops of the temperate and tropical zones, and under a better government would become, as Barbary was in Roman times, the granary of Europe. Wheat and barley are grown largely, and were they allowed to be freely exported would be produced in immense quantities. Maize forms the chief export of Mazagan. Various gums, oranges, figs, almonds, lemons, and dates are among the other vegetable products. Cotton and hemp are grown for home consumption. Tobacco cultivation is prohibited and its use forbidden by the sultan, though both it and 'keef' (Indian hemp) are used. Most European fruits grow well, and among other products sugar has been raised. Cattle (under treaty arrangement with Gibraltar) are exported; but no animals can be sent out of the country without an imperial permit. The exports (maize, beans, chick-peas, olive-oil, wool, almonds, dates, fowls, eggs, hides, bones, esparto, cattle to Gibraltar, &c.) amounted to £1,286,723 in 1897, and the imports (cotton goods, cloth, tea, coffee, sugar, candles, hardware, &c.) to £1,258,354, of which £630,245 were from Great Britain. The interior of the country is so little known, and the Atlas so entirely unexplored, except hastily in isolated places, that little can be said with certainty regarding its mineral wealth. But enough has been ascertained to enable us to assert that gold (placer and in quartz), copper, tin, argenteriferous galena, nickel, antimony, iron, and manganese abound. Coal and petroleum have been indicated. Rich silver lodes exist at Gondofi near the head-waters of the Sus, and rock- salt is mined near Fez. But these mineral deposits are scarcely touched, and no European is allowed even to visit the mines.
The flora of Morocco is essentially European, so far as the western side of the Atlas is concerned, that of the Atlas generally being a southern extension of the temperate flora of the adjoining continent, with little or no admixture of southern types.
The fauna partakes of a similar character, the Barbary fallow-deer, wild boar, Barbary monkey (found also in Gibraltar), a species of porcupine, and wild cat being the most characteristic mammals; but the lion, once common, is now very rare in the inhabited parts of the country. The birds and fishes are those of southern Europe; of the forty species of reptiles and amphibians known, twenty-two also belong to Spain; and only eight of the Moroccan species, according to Böttger, inhabit the Ethiopian region—facts all pointing to a time when the Strait of Gibraltar did not divide Europe from Africa. Ostriches are seen only in the extreme south. Locusts often devastate the country. The Barbary horses have sadly deteriorated; while in agriculture, oxen, donkeys, camels, and even women yoked with them, are commonly employed to drag the rude one-stilted plough and the harrow, which consists of a bunch of thorns.
The inhabitants consist of six principal groups. The (1) Berbers (Braber) or Kabyles, of whom the Amazigh, Shelluh, and Tuareg are only branches, are the aborigines. They inhabit for the most part the mountain regions, and are still only half subdued. (2) The Arabs are descendants of the invaders who came in the 7th century. (3) The Jews were very early settlers, semi-independent colonies still subsisting in the Atlas and the Sus country, though most of them in the towns are refugees driven out of Spain and Portugal. (4) A few thousands of Europeans, chiefly Spaniards, are almost entirely confined to the coast towns. (5) The 'Moors,' a term vaguely applied to all the Mohammedan inhabitants, are really Arabs with a large admixture of Spanish and other European bloods, and the name ought properly to be restricted to the inhabitants of the cities. (6) The Negroes, of whom there are large numbers, were brought from the Soudan as slaves. Most of the latter are still in this condition, though the descendants of some of them now occupy high places in the army and the government. The Jews, though sorely oppressed when not under the protection of some 'Christian' power, prosper amazingly, and are allowed a certain autonomy in their own affairs, but are confined in the cities to a 'mellah' or Jews' quarter. In spite of many indignities, some have managed to hold offices of profit in the court.
The sultan, who is the last independent sovereign in the Barbary States (of which Tripoli is now directly under the sultan of Turkey), is one of the most perfect specimens of an absolute monarch existing. He is 'the state.' His so-called ministers are simply the favourites of the hour. Everything must pass through his hands. He receives the entire revenue, believed to be about £1,800,000 per annum, and spends as little or as much of it as he pleases. Every office is directly or indirectly purchased, small salaries or none are paid, the holders recouping themselves by plunder and oppression, tempered by the fact that at any moment they may be forced to disgorge to the sultan, or in default be left to rot in the loathsome Moroccan dungeons, or be beaten or tortured to death. All justice is bought and sold. Yet, owing to the religious fanaticism of the people, and the mutual jealousies of the European powers, whose representatives reside at Tangier, the political equilibrium is preserved, and the long-expected débâcle postponed. The only European nation which at present has any territory in Morocco is Spain, which maintains a fortress at Ceuta, and four convict settlements, and a fishing-station at Ifni. But independently of the sacred chiefs of Sus, the Grand Shereef of Wazan, as the nearest descendant of Mohammed, governs that city and is lord paramount or proprietor of a large territory in the neighbourhood; the Shereef who died in 1892 was, before he became a French subject and adopted Frankish ways, almost as powerful as the sultan himself.
Education is at a low ebb. Few of the people can read or write, a capacity to repeat by heart passages of the Koran or of Al Bekkhari's commentaries upon it, and the traditions being almost the sum of what is taught in the village schools. The so-called 'university' of Fez is nowadays merely a seminary attached to the chief mosque for the training of religious acolytes. Printing is still an unknown art, save amongst the Europeans of Tangier. There are no roads except bridle-paths, and no wheeled carriages in the interior except the sultan's state coaches. The chief industry besides the rude agriculture of the Berbers and Arabs, and the breeding of horses and mules, is the making of 'morocco' leather, harness, slippers, red 'Fez' caps, cloth for native apparel, the chiselling of brass trays, the making of rough pottery and of inlaid flint-lock muskets, and the weaving of carpets (principally in Rabat). The best mechanics and the jewellers are Jews.
The army has of late years been reorganised under European officers, a Scotsman (Kaid Maclean) taking the chief part in this task, so that at present there is a force (the Askar) of about 10,000 men, drilled, armed, and clothed after an approach to the European fashion, the rest being mainly undisciplined native levies. Altogether, the sultan is believed to be able to mobilise upwards of 100,000 men, and double that number should the Faith be in danger. There is now no navy—imperial or mercantile—a single steam-transport representing the once-dreaded 'Sallee rovers.'
Morocco is connected with Spain by telegraph, and the telephone is in use in Tangier, Casablanca, and other coast towns. The posts also are confined to the Europeans. Morocco has three capitals or imperial residences, at one of which the sultan and his army reside at uncertain intervals and for indeterminate periods. These are Fez (q.v.), Makinas or Mequinez (q.v.), and Marakesch, better known as the City of Morocco (q.v.). Beside these the principal coast towns are Tangier (20,000 to 25,000 people); Tetuan (25,000), a little way up the Martil River; Larache (El-Arish), with 10,000 people (1800 Jews and 200 Europeans); Rabat and Sallee, on opposite sides of the Bu-Ragreb River (21,000); Casablanca, or Dar-al-Baida (8000); Mazagan (5000); Saffi (8000); and Mogador (q.v.). But all of them are decaying, most of them in partial ruins, and without any exception filthy, undrained, and insanitary to the last degree. When not mere collections of flat-roofed or thatched huts, of sundried bricks, around a kasbah or walled fortress, they are congeries of narrow intricate lanes, often covered over with vines or reeds to keep out the sun. These lanes are lined with shops which look like large packing-boxes, with the lids raised as a penthouse and padlocked at night, or else with whitewashed windowless walls, over which here and there rise the square towers of a mosque. But within these is often a pleasant courtyard shaded by oranges and palms and cooled by a fountain, into which open gaily Arabesque-painted rooms, furnished with the rich carpets that constitute the principal furniture of a strictly Moorish house. The sole accommodation for travellers is caravanserais, with a yard for beasts and unfurnished rooms for their owners.
After being for more than four centuries a part of the Roman empire, and in the latter period of its sway veneered with a corrupt Christianity, 'Manritania Tingitana' fell (429 A.D.) into the hands of the Vandals, who held it until 533, when Belisarius having defeated them it became subject once more to the Eastern Empire. But in the year 680 the Arab invasion began, and with little intermission the Arabs have ever since been possessors of the country, and the entire population are now the most fanatical adherents of Mohammedanism. At first, with Spain, part of the califate of Bagdad, it became divided into several independent nomarchies, and during this period the country enjoyed a prosperity to which it has ever since been a stranger. After seeing the successive dynasties of the Edrisite (789 A.D.), Mahditi, Zeiridi, Almoravidi, Almohadi, Beni Marini, Uatasi, Shereefi-Elhohseini, and Shereefi El-Fileli (or Alides), and almost unbroken civil and foreign wars and revolutions, Muley (Mulâi = 'My Lord') Ismail (1692–1727) united the entire country under his sway, and as one empire it has, with occasional rebellions, continued ever since. Morocco though now more contracted than formerly, has at present, with the exception of the Spanish 'presidios,' no foreign strongholds on its coast, as there were up to the year 1769, when the Portuguese evacuated Mazagan; and since the unsuccessful war with Spain in 1859–60 the country has not been disturbed by foreign hostilities. But it is still very backward. A passive resistance is offered to every improvement, and, though Christian slavery and piracy by government vessels have been abolished since 1817–22, and foreign traders have nominally had access to all parts of the empire, the interior is not much different from what it was a thousand years ago, and many cities and districts are still dangerous or impossible to visit. The slave-trade is as brisk as ever, negroes being openly hawked about the streets of the ports, and systematically offered for sale in the markets of the larger towns of the interior. The sultan's chief complaint against the European representatives is that some of them sell 'protections' wholesale to his subjects, and that thus whole villages are passing from under his sway; while they justly insist that every obstacle, short of absolute abrogation, is offered to the carrying out of the treaty obligations, and that owing to the long distance of the court from Tangier and the almost continual absence of the sultan during his punitive and tax-collecting expeditions it is hard to transact any business with him.
The city of Morocco (Arab. Marakesch, by which name it is usually known among European residents), the southern capital of the empire of the same name, is situated in 31° 37' 28" N. lat. and 7° 36' 30" W. long., between 4 and 5 miles from the left bank of the Tensift, at the northern end of an extensive and fertile plain dotted with date-palms, 1447 feet above the sea, about three and a half days' journey from Mogador and Mazagan, and two and a half from Saffi. It is surrounded by a lime and earth ('tabia') wall, once strong, but now dilapidated, more than five miles in circumference, between 20 and 30 feet high, flanked at regular intervals by square towers, and pierced by seven gates, some of which are said to have been brought piece by piece from Spain. The town is squalid and ill-built, though it bears the marks of former grandeur, the mean, flat-roofed, windowless houses on either side of the narrow, irregular, unpaved, filthy streets, being mostly one-storied and half in decay. A large portion of the immense space within the walls is occupied by ill-kept gardens, open areas, and 'soks,' or market-places; the eight large cemeteries are outside the walls. In the bazaar and merchants' quarter—the 'Kaiseria,' a partially-covered area—a considerable local trade is carried on with the country-people, the mountaineers from the neighbouring Atlas, and with Sus, Taflet, Mazagan, Saffi, and Mogador, though the commercial importance of Morocco is much less than that of Fez. Morocco possesses many mosques, one of which, the Kutubia, has a tower after the model of the Hassan in Rabat and the Giralda in Seville, 230 feet high. There are several tanning and leather-dyeing establishments of considerable extent, though of late years European goods have been gradually displacing native manufactures. The population varies according to the presence or absence of the sultan, his court, and army. In ordinary times it does not exceed 60,000, of whom from 7000 to 8000 are Jews, living in a 'mellah,' or Ghetto, under the most degrading physical, political and moral conditions. But no Europeans reside permanently in the city. On the south, outside the walls, stands the imperial palace, an irregular conglomeration of gardens and buildings covering about 180 acres. But of late the sultan has resided very little here, a year or more often elapsing without his setting foot in the place.
Morocco was founded in 1072 by the Emir Jusef ben Tachefyn, and reached the summit of its prosperity in the 13th century. In those days it is affirmed to have contained more than 700,000 inhabitants. But for several centuries, owing to civil wars, during which the rebellious Berbers more than once sacked it, the city, like all the interior towns of Morocco, has been rapidly retrograding. However, owing to its excellent situation in sight of the Atlas, from which cool streams are always flowing, its genial healthy climate, and its command of the trade routes across the mountains, Marakesch is safe to have a great future when Morocco knows other masters than the Moors.
See Chenier, Recherches historiques sur les Maures (1787); Godard, Description et Histoire du Maroc (1860); Renou, Description géographique de l'Empire de Maroc (1846); Tissot, Rech. sur la Géog. comparée de la Mauritanie Tingitane (1877); Hooker and Ball, Tour in Morocco (1878); Castellanos, Descr. hist. de Marruccos (1878); Lenz, Timbuktu (vol. i. 1884); De Kerdec-Chény, Guide du Voyageur au Maroc (1888); Erckmann, Le Maroc Moderne (1885); Thomson, Travels in the Atlas and Southern Morocco (1889); De Foucauld, Reconnaissance au Maroc (1888); Stutfield, El Maghreb (1886); Harris, The Land of an African Sultan (1889); De la Martinière, Morocco (1889); De Campou, Un Empire qui croule (1886); works by Bensal (1893), Montbard (1894), and Harris (1896); and the works and papers noted in the bibliographies of Renou, De la Martinière, and of Playfair and the present writer (1894). See also MOORS, BERBERS, BARBARY.