The indigenous peoples of North Africa are ordinarily designated by the name of Berbers. The Arab population forms only a thin layer, on top of a newly modified and easy to trace substrate. This is very evident in Morocco where the decidedly Berber populations form the great majority of the residents, and occupy almost the whole country. We must therefore consider the Moroccans as Berbers (see) more or less Arabized.
The anthropometric information on the indigenous people of Morocco is very scarce; according to Verneau’s opinion, in addition to the types commonly called Berbers and Arabs, there is a third type which is not to be approached either to Arabs or Berbers or even to Negroes, despite the usual existence of a very pronounced prognathism; this type would be characterized by smooth hair and a very dark skin color and would have its own cephalic characters: studying 23 skulls from the Muslim cemeteries of Mogador and its surroundings, Verneau distinguished three types: 1. With weak capacity, small pentagonal face, never clearly dolichocephalic (6 ♂ 76.4; 4 ♀ 77.7), not very tall (ind. v. long. 77.7), with a high and narrow nose, leptorine (♂ 47.7; ♀ 47.4); this type is called by the Moroccan Verneau, and it would be less distant from the Berber than from the Arabic. 2. Weak capacity, small face, not pentagonal, frankly dolichocephalic (73,21), rather low (ind. it is essentially the result of three frankly leptorian indices and one platyrin alone); it would be an attenuated Arab type. 3. Not homogeneous, with strong capacity, frankly dolichocephalic, very high, with strong facial development; it would be a mixed Arab-Berber type. In the series of the Berbers and Arabs of Africa of the 3. Not homogeneous, with strong capacity, frankly dolichocephalic, very high, with strong facial development; it would be a mixed Arab-Berber type. In the series of the Berbers and Arabs of Africa of the 3. Not homogeneous, with strong capacity, frankly dolichocephalic, very high, with strong facial development; it would be a mixed Arab-Berber type. In the series of the Berbers and Arabs of Africa of the Crania Ethnica the two groups have long and tall skulls (dolicortoipsicefali) and with tall and narrow nasal and facial shapes (leptoprosopes and leptorini). For Morocco political system, please check politicsezine.com.
The indigenous people of Morocco are divided into sedentary, nomads and citizens. The residents of the northern mountain ranges are mostly sedentary; in the massifs of the Middle Atlas and the High Atlas the Berbers are partly nomads and their nomadism is reminiscent, in some respects, of that of the Alpine populations, since they use in the summer the pastures that the snow covers during the winter. The tribes of Morocco practice a semi-nomadism rather than a true nomadism, since they travel for short distances; only the residents of eastern Morocco practice extensive migrations. As for the nomads of the Sahara, they do not generally cross the southern side of the High Atlas and often not even the Anti Atlas.
The sedentary populations have their homes built in pisé or uncut stones, or they live in huts made with tree branches covered by a thatched roof or in species of conical kiosks that resemble Sudanese huts. In the south there are castles-fortresses built in pisé or qaṣbah of a remarkable architecture. In the Atlas, the indigenous people keep their cereals and other provisions in the castles-warehouses called tirremt, or in the fortified villages, called agadir. As for the tent of the Moroccan nomads, it does not differ from that of the Algerians: two pegs support a tent made up of strips sewn together.
The indigenous people derive almost all the essentials for life and food from agriculture and livestock.
The basis of their nourishment is barley flour, with which they make bread and couscouss or taâm. For the Yebala, the national dish is bissara, consisting of pounded and boiled broad beans; legumes, broad beans, turnips, artichokes, aubergines, milk, sorghum, acorns in forest regions, enter for a large part in the diet; wheat flour is the privilege of cities and rich populations, and it is up to women to grind the grain and handle the bread. Nomadic populations do not eat very differently from sedentary people, they only consume more milk and dates and much less oil. Ox, mutton and goat meat is reserved for special occasions; the main drinks are water and milk, and, as an exciting drink, tea, which is used in abundance, whenever possible, with lots of mint and sugar.
Moroccans are almost always bare-headed and have their hair shaved; the residents of the Rif keep a small braid, which they let hang on one side; the Berbers of the Atlas wear locks of falling hair on their temples, called nouader. The most generally used headdress is the turban, or rather a twisted piece of cloth that leaves the top of the head uncovered; the burnhs or Selham is little used; it is a sign of wealth or high social position. Moroccans wear a simple woolen shirt and a jellaba, a kind of dress that falls from the shoulders, with very short sleeves; the residents of the countryside often wear only the kaik or the shirt with the kaik. In the south, instead of the shirt, the kechchaba, a strip of red cotton cloth, is used, which in France is called guinée and in Morocco khent ; above the kechchaba some wear a white wool kaik, others a brown burnus (kheidons), still others the khenifi, a kind of short burnus of black wool with a large orange patch in the lower part of the back. The footwear used everywhere is the belza, a kind of very wide slipper in foldable leather, with thin soles and without heels. Women dress with the greatest simplicity, covering themselves with a piece of cotton cloth held on the shoulders by clips; generally they are veiled only in the cities. The richness of the jewels, rather than the difference in costume, indicate the greater or lesser degree of wealth.
In Moroccan society, which is a patriarchal society, unity is not the individual, as in European societies, but the family, the gens, which includes all male relatives in the male way. The principle on which the indigenous family is founded is that of the complete subordination of each member to its head: the father is a domestic judge who has the right of life and death over his women and children, and since the man is allowed polygamy and repudiation, the condition of women is entirely subordinate. The degree of cohesion of the family emerges from the concept of the right and duty it has to avenge the insults and even more the assassinations; revenge, which the natives call rekba, is considered a sacred duty.
The tribe is the political unity of the indigenous people, just as the family is the social unity: the tribe is a reunion of families, of clans and the solidarity that binds the members of the tribe is the same as that that binds the members of the family. As the father, the grandfather, the sheikh governs the family, so the meeting of the heads of the family forms the council, the djemaâ that governs the tribe: here, however, the authority of each is limited by that of the other sheikhs who are his the same. Gl’indigen) have never had a broader notion than that of the family, of the village, of the land they walk; they have never risen to the concept of state or country.
Religion alone has been able to unite the natives, albeit very superficially and in an incomplete way. The Moroccans all belong to the Mālikite rite of Orthodox Islam; but many of the natives are very little Islamized, since often ignorance of the Arabic language allows them only a very rudimentary knowledge of the religion of the prophet. The cult of the saints, although unorthodox, has taken a great development in Morocco: thus of a universal religion, of a rigid monotheism above all others, these populations have made a religion of tribes, of local saints, of small chapels proper to a given village or of a given social class. The religious practice is in the hands of the marabouts, to whom a certain magical power is attributed, the barakn ; sheriffs descended from the prophet, sheikhs and mokaddems belonging to religious brotherhoods. The official clergy is of insignificant importance, while the scholars charged with professing in the mederse or university are held in high esteem; today however this teaching is completely null and void.
The Jews, who number 125,000, form a population absolutely separate from the others; they came to the region at different times; we distinguish the Plichtim or Palestinians, who settled more anciently, and the Spanish forasteros or Jews, refugees in Morocco after their expulsion from Spain in the century. XVI; the former speak Berber or Arabic, the latter Spanish. They mostly live in cities, where they were confined to separate neighborhoods, but many live in tribes.
