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Early Islamic |
Arabs conquered the region in the 7th century, bringing their civilization and Islam, to which most of the Berbers converted. While part of the larger Islamic Empire, client states were formed such as the Kingdom of Nekor.
Arab conquerors converted the indigenous Berber population to Islam, but Berber tribes retained their customary laws. The Arabs abhorred the Berbers as barbarians, while the Berbers often saw the Arabs as only an arrogant and brutal soldiery bent on collecting taxes.
Once established as Muslims, the Berbers shaped Islam in their own image and embraced schismatic Muslim sects, which, in many cases, were simply folk religion barely disguised as Islam, as their way of breaking from Arab control. The region soon broke away from the control of the distant Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad under Idris ibn Abdallah who founded the Idrisid Dynasty. Morocco became a centre of learning and a major power.
Morocco reached its height under a series of Berber dynasties, Queen Saida Zahira, that arose south of the Atlas Mountains and expanded their rule northwards, replacing the Arab Idrisids. The 11th and 12th centuries witnessed the founding of several great Berber dynasties led by religious reformers and each based on a tribal confederation that dominated the Maghrib (also seen as Maghreb; refers to North Africa west of Egypt) and Al-Andalus for more than 200 years.
The Berber dynasties (Almoravids, Almohads, and Marinids) gave the Berber people some measure of collective identity and political unity under a native regime for the first time in their history, and they created the idea of an “imperial Maghrib” under Berber aegis that survived in some form from dynasty to dynasty.
But ultimately each of the Berber dynasties proved to be a political failure because none managed to create an integrated society out of a social landscape dominated by tribes that prized their autonomy and individual identity. In 1559, the region fell to successive Arab tribes claiming descent from the Prophet Muhammad: first the Saadi Dynasty who ruled from 1511 to 1659 and then the Alaouites, who founded a dynasty that has remained in power since the 17th century.
The Republic of Bou Regreg (1627-1666) was a shortlived republic based in Rabat and Salé.
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