The history of Morocco in fourteen moments
From a Roman town in the hills to the alphabet that became official in 2011. Fourteen short pieces, in order, and everything in them has been checked. For children from about eight — and for the parent who never learnt it either.
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± 200
Walili, the mosaic town
Near Meknes lie the remains of Volubilis — Walili in Arabic. Two thousand years ago thousands of people lived here, with baths, olive presses and paved streets. The floors were covered in mosaics, and some of it is still there.
Did you know? The olive presses of Walili work on the same idea as the ones still used in Morocco today.
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711
Tariq ibn Ziyad
Tariq ibn Ziyad was an Amazigh commander from North Africa. In 711 he took his army across the strait to southern Spain, by the great rock that rises out of the sea there.
Did you know? That rock still carries his name: Jabal Tariq, 'Tariq's mountain' — worn down over the centuries into Gibraltar.
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789 – 808
Fes becomes a city
Idris I founded a small village by the river around 789; his son Idris II turned it into a real city. Families from Kairouan and from Córdoba settled there, each in their own quarter.
Did you know? The old city of Fes is one of the largest car-free areas in the world — everything goes on foot or by donkey.
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859
Fatima al-Fihri
Fatima al-Fihri inherited money from her father and spent every bit of it on one thing: a mosque with a school attached, the Qarawiyyin in Fes. Mathematics, medicine, language and astronomy were taught there.
Did you know? UNESCO calls the Qarawiyyin the oldest university in the world that has never closed — eleven hundred years of teaching, without a break.
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± 1070
Marrakesh and the name of the country
The Almoravids built Marrakesh on the plain below the Atlas, and Yusuf ibn Tashfin made it his capital. To keep the city alive they dug miles of underground water channels, called khettara.
Did you know? Morocco, Maroc, Marruecos: all of those names come from Marrakesh. Europe named the whole country after that one city.
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11th century
Zaynab an-Nafzawiyya
Zaynab was an Amazigh woman from a merchant family, and she married Yusuf ibn Tashfin. The chroniclers of the time describe her as his adviser: she knew the trade, she knew the money, and she knew who was better left alone.
Did you know? In an age when almost nothing was written down about women, she is in the books by name.
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1154
Al-Idrisi draws the world
Al-Idrisi was born in Ceuta and travelled through North Africa and Spain while still a boy. At King Roger's court in Sicily he made a map of the world out of everything sailors and travellers had told him.
Did you know? On his map, south is at the top. That there is a 'right' way up is only an agreement — and that agreement was turned over later.
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1325 – 1354
Ibn Battuta
Ibn Battuta left Tangier at twenty-one, on his own, and did not come back for almost thirty years. He saw Mali, Egypt, Persia, India and China, and afterwards had his account written down.
Did you know? He covered some 120,000 kilometres — three times around the Earth, on foot, on horseback and by ship.
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± 1520
Hassan al-Wazzan
Hassan al-Wazzan grew up in Fes and travelled across Africa as a diplomat. On the way he was captured by pirates and ended up in Italy, where he wrote a book about everything he had seen.
Did you know? For three hundred years Europe mostly read his book when it wanted to know anything about Africa — written by a boy from Fes.
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1578 – 1603
The Badi Palace
Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur had the Badi Palace built in Marrakesh, with courtyards, pools and marble from Italy. Badi means 'the marvellous', and that was exactly the idea.
Did you know? The story goes that the marble was paid for in Moroccan sugar, kilo for kilo — sugar was worth more than stone back then.
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1777
The first country to say yes
The United States were a brand-new country and hardly anybody wanted anything to do with them. Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Abdallah was the first to open his ports to American ships.
Did you know? The friendship treaty signed afterwards still stands — the oldest treaty the United States has never broken.
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19th century
The lion of the Atlas
A lion with a dark, heavy mane lived in the Atlas mountains. He was bigger than most lions, and he was the only lion anywhere that lived not on the savannah but in the mountains.
Did you know? In the wild he is gone, but his descendants still live in Rabat zoo — and the national team is named after him: the Atlas Lions.
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1956
Independent
From 1912 Morocco was under French and Spanish administration. After years of resistance, strikes and negotiation the country became independent again in 1956, with Mohammed V as king.
Did you know? The star on the flag is drawn with one unbroken line that crosses itself five times — it is called the khatim, the seal.
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2011
Tamazight, in black and white
Amazigh — Tamazight — has been spoken across North Africa for thousands of years and has an alphabet of its own: Tifinagh. In 2011 the constitution made it an official language of Morocco, alongside Arabic.
Did you know? The letter you see everywhere in Morocco is called yaz. Amazigh means 'free person'.
These fourteen stories are in the app as well: after every test your child gets one, read aloud in their own language.
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