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Far bigger than Tunisia, potentially much richer than Algeria. Morocco (pop. 9,000,000) is the most variegated of the three countries that once constituted French North Africa. In Morocco's north there are sweeping coastal plains and fertile valleys; in the south, the snow-capped Atlas Mountains soar 14,000 ft. above arid desert. Its cities range from modern Casablanca (pop. 700,000) with its bustling port and gleaming white apartment buildings, to the walled Arab city of Fez (pop. 180,000) with its ancient university buildings and its twisting casbah streets too narrow for automobiles, to the sprawling desert town of Marrakech (pop. 215,000) where ragged Berbers bring their camels to market, and snake charmers pitch their brown tents in the city square.
Morocco has been French only since 1912. Before that, for eleven centuries, it had been a free and sovereign state since the time when a dissident leader of the all-conquering Arabs declared his independence of faraway Baghdad in the 8th century. For centuries, rulers alternated between Arab dynasties and the indigenous Berbers. The empire waxed and waned but was never conquered. While medieval Europe fought and languished, the university of Fez gathered scholars from all over the known world. The Moorish empire reached into Spain, building aqueducts, huge irrigation systems, and the great Alhambra at Granada. The present Sultan is of a dynasty founded in 1660, claims direct descent from the Prophet's only daughter, Fatima. This gives him baraka, the spiritual quality that makes it lucky just to kiss his garments and gives him special title to spiritual (as well as temporal) leadership of his people.
The French Presence. France grabbed Morocco from the weak Sultan Moulay Habid in that grand African divvy on the eve of World War I in which Britain got a free hand in Egypt, Spain a piece of northwest Morocco, and Germany a slice of Africa south of the Sahara.
As first governor of its new protectorate, the French sent the revered Marshal Louis Hubert Lyautey to Morocco. Lyautey's policy: "Do not offend a single tradition or change a single habit." He ordered French towns built alongside but separate from the Moroccan towns, put all mosques off limits to unbelievers, and met the Moroccans as friendly equals. When he sent the Foreign Legion to subdue rebellious chiefs, he warned his commanders: "Always show your force in order to avoid using it. Never enter a village without thinking that the market must be opened the next day."