Customs and Cuisine of Morocco
By Sheila Dunn and Vinola V. Munyon
Location: The Kingdom of Morocco is located in Northwestern Africa directly south of the Strait of Gibraltar. Morocco is a coastal country and has the distinction of being the only African nation that has borders with the Mediterranean Sea (in the North) and the Atlantic Ocean (in the West). Its land borders are Algeria to the east, Spain to the north (a water border through the Strait and land borders with two small Spanish autonomous cities, Ceuta and Melilla), and a disputed border with Western Sahara to the south.
Morocco maintains de facto control of about 80% of Western Sahara including all the major cities and most of the natural resource reserves. Twenty percent of the territory is controlled by the Polisario Front, an independence movement that represents the indigenous Sahrawi, and is known as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. Sovereignty over Western Sahara is contested between Morocco and the Polisario Front and its legal status remains unresolved. The Polisario Front, and not Morocco, is recognized by the United Nations as the legitimate representative of the Sahrawi.
Excluding Western Sahara, Morocco is slightly larger than the U.S. state of California. The Atlas Mountains form a central spine in the country, and to the west are flat, fertile agricultural regions stretching along the Atlantic coast, and home to the major cities of Rabat and Casablanca. To the east of the Atlas Mountains lie semi-arid plateaus transitioning into the beginnings of the Sahara desert.
Morocco is known for its distinct architecture, seen especially in its legendary cities, such as Casablanca, which was the economic capital of Morocco under the French rule in the early 1900s. The site of the allied invasion in 1942 and of the conference between Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in 1943, Casablanca has been romanticized in books and movies. Marrakech is Morocco’s capital and Fez is home to the oldest and largest Medina, characterized by medieval, walled enclosures, very narrow and often car-free alleyways, traditional courtyard houses, and local markets (souks).
Name Origins: The Arabic name, Al Mamlakah al Maghribiyah (short form: Al Maghrib) means “far west” or “where the sun sets” and harkens back to the first Arabic settlers who recognized it as the western most part of Africa. The English name, Morocco is a variant of “Marruecos” (Spanish) and “Marrocos” (Portuguese), which are in turn thought to have derived from the Latin name for Morocco’s capital, Marrakesh.
Population: Almost 39 million people (2026) call Morocco home and 99% of the population falls into two ethnic groups, Arabs and Berbers, who now prefer to be called “Amazigh.” Arabs make up 65% to 80% of the population and live mostly in coastal and major urban centers. Amazigh, the Indigenous peoples of North Africa, make up about 30% to 35% (with some estimates higher) of the population. About 68% of Moroccans are urban dwellers, while 32% live in rural areas (2026).
Language: Morocco’s two official languages are Arabic and Amazigh, but almost all Moroccans speak and understand French, which is considered the language for business. In addition, Spanish is spoken widely and variations of Amazigh – Tamazight, Tashlhit, and Tarifit- are spoken in distinct regions.
Religion: The dominant religion is Islam, with about 99 percent of the population identifying as Muslim (2026). Of those, virtually all ascribe to the Sunni branch of the faith with a scant 0.1 percent identifying as Shia. The remaining 1 percent identify as Christian, Jewish, or Baha’i.
Government
Morocco was colonized by France and Spain from 1912 until its freedom in 1956. Currently, Morocco is a constitutional monarchy with democratic elements, such as a multi-party parliament and elections. King Mohammed VI, who has ruled Morocco since the death of his father King Hassan II in 1999, has ultimate authoritarian control.
As a majority-Muslim country, Morocco employs Islamic values and principles in its judicial system, notably in the Moudawana, a Family Code that determines the rights of men and women in the private sphere and, by extension, the degree of gender equality. It specifically includes the laws for marriage, divorce, inheritance, child custody, and guardianship, as well as general protections for women and children.
The ongoing evolution of the Moroccan Family Code has been the talk of kitchen tables and cafe terraces throughout the country. The current version leaves women vulnerable in matters of divorce and guardianship as well as land ownership. A new issuance is expected in 2026 but is not yet available at this writing (September 2026). Refer to the section on Women’s Rights (below) for a more detailed discussion of Morocco’s Family Code.
Human Rights
Despite democratic elements, Morocco’s government gives ultimate authoritarian control to the monarch King Mohammed VI and anyone critical of the king, such as
journalists, activists, social media commentators, and artists can be arrested and imprisoned.
Youth ages 15-34 make up nearly a third of Morocco’s population and are the group most affected by unemployment (rates reached 35% at times in 2025) and underemployment. Between a quarter and one-third of youth were neither working nor in school or training.
In late 2025, a youth movement called GenZ212 (212 is Morocco’s area code) took to the streets and demanded an end to government corruption and labor market exclusion. They asked for more funds to be allocated for public health care and education systems. Police forcibly dispersed protesters, killed three people, and injured dozens. Around 2,400 people were arrested and formally charged. Today, the GenZ212 movement remains leaderless and decentralized (late 2026) but its digital platform has 250,000 active members who debate, address each other’s questions, and clarify rumors in instant chat and voice rooms.
In Western Sahara, Moroccan authorities attempt to prevent protest gatherings of activists supporting the Sahrawi self-determination movement.
Consensual same-sex sexual relations are criminalized under the Moroccan Penal Code and punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine. LGBTQ individuals face arbitrary arrests, harassment, and prosecution.
Women’s Rights
The journey toward closing the gender gap in Morocco is far from over, especially in rural areas. The 2025 Global Gender Gap Report places Morocco at 137th out of 148 countries, just barely escaping the bottom ten performers in the survey.
Gender equality was enshrined in the Moroccan Constitution in 2011, yet the lived reality is that most rural areas are marginalized and continue to enforce cultural traditions when a new set of laws is introduced. For example, in the rural provinces of the Atlas Mountains and the Souss valley, women sustain the cooperatives and the agricultural plots that feed the nation, yet these same women are mostly excluded from land ownership, formal credit, and agricultural subsidies. While Morocco has enacted reforms and initiatives to strengthen women’s rights to access and inherit land, persistent social norms and registration practices continue to limit women’s formal land ownership.
Rural women intend to change this by gaining leadership positions. The last major election cycle saw the proportion of women elected to prefectural and provincial councils rise to 36%, up from just 4.5% a decade ago.
Urban women are also pursuing and winning leadership positions. Women now occupy a quarter of the seats in Morocco’s parliament, a percentage only slightly less than female representation in the US Congress.
Literacy among adult women climbed from about 38 percent in 2003 to 65 percent today, and women comprise over half of university students. In rural Morocco, though, between 61 and 74 percent of girls are not in school, due to both lack of access and social stigmas. The cultural emphasis on female virginity encourages rural families to marry off their daughters as young as possible.
Despite comprising about half the population, women make up just 25% of the labor force in Morocco. Over a third of women hold higher education degrees, yet they do not work outside the home. Reasons that well educated women fail to enter or remain in the workforce are many. First, women earn an average of 23% less than their male counterparts – a gap that jumps to over 42% in certain industries. Second, perpetrators of sexual harassment in the workplace are not punished, and third, women are generally not promoted into management. Finally, Morocco lacks reliable childcare, and women are responsible for all matters related to the home, including child rearing.
Over the past 40 years, feminist advocacy has driven policy reform to reduce gender inequality through amendments to the Family Code. Until as late as 2004, women who divorced were abandoned with their children and with no resources. After the 2004 amendments, the code forbade forced marriage, made polygamy more difficult and moved divorce proceedings to secular courts rather than religious ones. But the 2004 law continues to stipulate that divorced women lose custody of their children if they choose to remarry, while men are welcome to remarry.
Also, while women typically get custody of their children, men are awarded legal guardianship, meaning that a woman with custody of her children still needs her ex-husband’s signature for matters as simple as enrolling the children in school.
Unfortunately, the latest amendments to the Family Code that were proposed in 2024 have yet to be approved (September 2026). If the latest reforms are passed as proposed, both custody and guardianship will be a shared responsibility between the mother and father during and after their marriage. This will allow divorced women to remarry while maintaining custody and make decisions for their children without their former husbands’ permission. Also, the legal age of marriage would rise from 15 to 18, and daughters would be allowed to inherit land.
More than 50% of Moroccan women report experiencing gender-based violence at least once in their lives, yet few women report it to authorities. Police generally treat domestic violence as a social rather than criminal matter. Moroccan law classifies such violence as high-level when a survivor’s injuries result in 20 or more days of disability and low-level when injuries last for less than 20 days. The latter are misdemeanors, rarely prosecuted by courts. Further, police are slow to act in domestic violence cases, and the government generally does not enforce the law and sometimes returns women against their will to abusive homes. Physical abuse is legal grounds for divorce, but few women report such abuse to authorities.
Rural Women and Climate Change
Almost 9 in 10 rural women in Morocco rely on climate-sensitive activities like agriculture, livestock, and crafts and therefore their success literally rises and falls with the rain……”and rain is a resource that has become painfully unreliable”. (World Bank, 2023)
Rural women across Morocco are demonstrating remarkable resilience in the face of climate shocks by adjusting their work patterns, sharing resources through cooperatives, and innovating with low-cost, practical solutions such as rainwater harvesting, crop rotation, and solar drying.
While rural women in Morocco demonstrate ingenuity and grit, access to financial services remains elusive. Only about 35% of rural women have a bank account (versus 55% for men), and only a small fraction has access to credit or insurance products (Findex survey, World Bank, 2025). Most rural women see climate insurance as difficult to understand or altogether inaccessible, so they rely on informal savings groups or solidarity lending within cooperatives. Others keep their earnings literally under the mattress.
Moroccan Society
Among the Islamic nations, Morocco is considered to be moderate, yet there are aspects of life and living that are considered criminal by the cultural mores, including homosexuality and pre-marital sex. Women are also expected to “protect” their modesty and dress conservatively, wearing loose fitting clothing. Some of these traditional mores are changing in Morocco, but slowly.
In modern Morocco, devotion to Islam and loyalty to the king are still cornerstones of national identity, but Moroccan society is nevertheless highly stratified. A strong belief that fate determines which family (and thereby social status) one is born into enables social stratification to be accepted and abided. Those who inherited wealth or prestigious occupations are by default in the “top tier” of society and include the royals, government officials, and wealthy Moroccans. Merchants, entrepreneurs, and business owners occupy the next tier. The language one speaks is another marker of social status, with fluency in French equated with sophistication. Fluency in Arabic is considered respectable, while knowing only the Amazigh (Berber) language is seen as a lack of sophistication. Headgear and clothing are yet another way to signal status. The quality, craftsmanship, and the embellishments on one’s headgear translate to one’s status in Moroccan society.
The identity of a Moroccan individual is closely tied to the identity of the extended family (as social standing is dependent on it) so the honor of an individual who has incurred “shame” or “dishonor” is incurred by the entire extended family. This often leads to excess pressure to conform to societal mores.
Roles within the family are gender-based, and the hierarchy of power within a family is age and gender-based. The males and boys within the family thus enjoy greater freedom of choice and access to education. On the other hand, female children within a family, even as young as 5 years old, are expected to help with childcare and household chores. They have, traditionally, less access to education and to freedom of choice. Women and female children care for the home and the children while men have traditionally been the source of income.
Marriages are typically agreed to by families and orchestrated between them. Religion, social standing, level of education, wealth, etc. are all criteria that inform matches. Islamic law requires Muslim women to only marry a Muslim man, while men are permitted to marry women who do not adhere to the same faith. Divorce is initiated almost always by the man in the marriage, as while men have little to no hurdles to getting remarried, divorced women are shunned and have little prospects of remarriage. This is likely to change if the proposed Family Code of 2024 is made law.
MOROCCAN CUISINE
Moroccan cuisine is renowned the world over for both its diversity and complexity of flavor. A fortunate confluence of factors – the fertility of the Moroccan soil, the richness and variety of its produce, and the diverse influences – has resulted in a cuisine that is well loved. The Berber and Arab influences dominate, and the staples rely on locally abundant and fresh ingredients such as olives, figs, dates, prunes, lamb, and spices. The Arabs are credited with introducing spices such as cinnamon, cumin, caraway, ginger, and saffron to the Berber repertoire of spices. The pickling and preservation techniques used in Moroccan cuisine are traced to the arrival of Jews who had migrated to North Africa. One of Morocco’s famous dishes, the b’stillah (or pastilla), is credited to the Moors of Southern Spain.
Among the many spices that are found in the Moroccan pantry, Ras El Hanout is likely one that is uniquely Moroccan. The name literally translates to “head of the shop” and means “top shelf.” It is a mix of salt and seven spices: cinnamon, cumin, coriander, cayenne, cloves, allspice, black pepper, and ginger. Harissa, a hot chili pepper paste/sauce that is Tunisian in origin, has a Moroccan version. The word “harissa” is derived from the Arabic “herass” and refers to the crushing of the dried chilies that are made into the paste containing the crushed chili peppers, red peppers, garlic, salt, and olive oil. The following are some of the most well-known Moroccan dishes.
Couscous: Often referred to as Morocco’s national dish, couscous is a rolled wheat –semolina grain that is steamed. Often likened to tiny pasta, couscous is a staple and served with stewed vegetables and meats. Couscous is used in salads and entrees and even the occasional dessert.
Tagine: The name of both the earthen pot it is cooked in and the resultant dish, Tagine is probably one of Morocco’s well-known dishes. Tagine is a meat and vegetable stew, braised slowly at a low temperature. Dried fruits, such as apricots and prunes, and nuts, such as almonds, are mixed in with lamb or chicken and vegetables and braised. The resulting dish has extremely tender meat and vegetables in a spiced, savory, and sweet sauce. It is served with crusty Moroccan bread.
Harira: A tomato, lentil, and chickpea soup that also sometimes incorporates meat and vegetables. Rice or broken pieces of vermicelli may also be added. It is a popular soup that is eaten year around.
B’stillah: A savory and sweet pie, the B’stillah was traditionally prepared using pigeon meat. Now it is more commonly made with chicken. Shredded chicken is mixed in with eggs and layered with roasted, crushed almonds and wrapped with phyllo dough.
Moroccan meals are eaten family style. Everyone gathers around low, round tables and sits on cushions on the floors. Silverware is eschewed and food is eaten only with the right hand, as the left hand is considered unclean. Everyone eats from the communal bowl or plate, reaching only into the portion of the bowl or plate that is directly in front of them.
Every Islamic person in Morocco observes a fast from dawn until dusk during the 30 days of Ramadan, and those seen publicly eating or drinking during daylight hours may be arrested. During Ramadan, hearty, nutrition-packed harira soup is eaten as the first meal to break the fast when the sun goes down. Late at night, a main meal with several dishes is also served.
THE MOROCCAN WAY OF LIFE
The Moroccan way of life centers around family and community. Religion is central to the way of life, and it governs most aspects of everyday living. This is especially so during the holy month of Ramadan. Community cafes are a popular gathering place for men. Drinking mint tea and catching up over a game of football at the café is a preferred way to pass time. The souk or the open-air market and hanouts (akin to bodegas) are a bustling blur of activity where people of all ages shop for various goods and commodities.
Moroccans are known to be extremely warm, generous people who are quick to open up their homes to guests and are enthusiastic to share their culture. It is traditional custom for Moroccans visiting another’s home to take milk, sugar cubes, or fruit as presents for the hosts.
The siesta or afternoon nap is observed by most and in deference to that, most stores and businesses close the during hours of 2 p.m. to 4 or 5 p.m. Likewise, on Friday afternoons, stores tend to be closed during hours of prayer (noon to 2 p.m.).
Sources:
General References:
https://www.everyculture.com/Ma-Ni/The-United-Kingdom-of-Morocco.html#ixzz7Pmt4z7AQ
https://www.britannica.com/place/Morocco/Settlement-patterns
https://letrouaumur.com/blog/moroccan-cuisine-history/
https://www.internations.org/morocco-expats/guide/living-short
Gender Equality
https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2025/07/morocco-family-law-moudawana-reform-governance
Human Rights
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2026/country-chapters/morocco-and-western-sahara
https://www.state.gov/reports/2023-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/morocco/
https://www.hrw.org/middle-east/north-africa/morocco/western-sahara
https://carnegieendowment.org/middle-east/diwan/2025/10/moroccos-genz-uprising
Climate Change
