Morocco

Morocco- The Land of God

Morocco is situated in North Africa, but at its northernmost point lies only 12 km (8 miles) from mainland Europe, across the Strait of Gibraltar. The northern regions have a Mediterranean climate, while the south comprises semiarid desert. The late King Hassan's international prestige gave Morocco status out of proportion to its wealth. The main issues facing the country are the internal threat of Islamist militancy and the stalled political process in Western Sahara, the former Spanish colony occupied by Morocco since 1975. Key economic strengths are tourism, phosphates, and agriculture.

Country in northwest Africa, 279,400 square miles (723,600 sq km) in size, bordering the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Neighboring countries of present-day Morocco include Algeria and Western Sahara. Because of Morocco's key position at the crossroads of Mediterranean and Saharan trade routes, European colonial powers occupied the region during the 19th and 20th centuries (Parker, 15-31).

Morocco occupies the site of the old Mauretania Tingitana and a small portion of the Caesarian Mauretania. This region was subjected to Roman rule in 33 BC. JC, and finally, in 42 AD. She later became the prey of Vandals at the beginning fifth century, then passed under the sway of the Greeks of Byzantium And finally the Arabs (from the eighth century). The Edrisites (Idrissites), founded in 788, an independent state of caliphs of Baghdad, Which Fez was the capital, and who was overthrown in 925 by the first Fatimid Caliph of Egypt . While the Fatimids and the Umayyads of Spain disputed the possession of the kingdom of debris Edrisites, the Almoravids created, Morocco, from 1051, a new state, who extended his conquests in Spain to the River Tagus and the Ebro. The power of the Almoravids collapsed as quickly as it had risen, and was replaced between 1120 and 1145, Africa and Spain, by the AImohades, who herself died in 1212 in Spain and Africa in 1218. The Almohads were supplanted by Mérinites or Merinids (1270), which followed from 1550 the Sharifs, who claimed from Mohammed. Dynasty Alawi Sharifs (Saadian) of Tafilet, the empire of Morocco gained its greatest extent, and successfully resisted the Portuguese armed attack which in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Morocco ceased to be under threat after the bloody battle of Alcaçar-Quivir, where King Sebastian died (1578). It grows so later than the beginning of the eighteenth century; it still extended its authority to Timbuktu (Waterbury, 74-86).

The feuds of the last alouites had at that time already left the throne to a dynasty that had replaced theirs in 1648. This dynasty, the output also Tafilet, had the founder Moulay Sherif, who died in 1652. The reign of the most brilliant sovereigns of this dynasty is that of Moulay Ismail, (1672 - 1727), Prince ruthless but energetic. The king succeeded to the throne in 1822, Moulay Abderrahman, restless ambition of France in North Africa since taking of Algiers in 1830, teamed up in 1844 in the holy war of Abd el-Kader (The history ...