MOROCCO

Set off on your next adventure

Morocco, a mountainous country in western North Africa, lying directly across the Strait of Gibraltar from Spain.

Morocco has been subject to extensive migration and has long been home to urban communities that were originally settled by peoples from outside the region. Controlled by Carthage from an early age, this region was later the westernmost province of the Roman Empire. After the Arab conquest in the late 7th century AD, the wider area of North Africa became known as the Maghrib (Arabic for "the West"), and most of its inhabitants embraced Islam. Successive Moroccan kingdoms enjoyed political influence extending beyond the coastal regions, and in the 11th century the first indigenous North African Amazigh dynasty, the Almoravids, took control of an empire stretching from Andalusian (southern) Spain to parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Attempts by Europeans to establish permanent footholds in Morocco beginning in the late 15th century were largely repelled, but the country later became the focus of great power politics in the 19th century. Morocco was established as a French protectorate in 1912 but regained its independence in 1956. Today it is the only monarchy in North Africa.