Casablanca — All about Casablanca

Anfa, city of the Tamesna

The site was inhabited by Berbers from the 7th century BC and served as a port for the Phoenicians, then the Romans. In the 16th century Leo Africanus described ancient Anfa as a great town of the Tamesna, linked to the Barghawata kingdom, which he considered the most prosperous on the Atlantic coast thanks to its fertile land.

The Barghawata kingdom stayed independent until conquered by the Almoravids in 1068. After its fall, Arab tribes of Hilal and Sulaym descent settled in the region and mixed with the Berbers. Under the Marinids, in the 14th century, Anfa became an important port.

Casa Branca and Dar el-Beida (1468-1790)

In the 15th century Anfa became independent again and served as a corsair haven. In reprisal the Portuguese bombarded and ruined it in 1468. The small town that grew back bore a Portuguese name: Casa Branca, "white house".

Between 1756 and 1790 Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Abdallah rebuilt the town and its port, probably after the Portuguese left Mazagan in 1769, to fortify the coast between Rabat and El Jadida. He gave it the Arabic name ad-Dar al-Bayda, a translation of Casa Branca: today's old medina.

The port of wool and tea

In the 19th century the town grew by exporting wool from the surrounding plains to British mills; in return English ships brought "gunpowder" green tea, which became the base of Moroccan mint tea.

Casablanca had about 5,000 inhabitants in the 1860s, 10,000 in the late 1880s and about 12,000 in the early 20th century: a modest port, far behind Fes, Marrakech or Essaouira.

The 1907 bombardment

The Algeciras Conference (1906) put French officers in charge of the port's customs and a French company in charge of building it. In June 1907 a railway was laid to a quarry, crossing the Sidi Belyout cemetery. Chaouia tribesmen attacked the train and killed nine European workers.

In August 1907 the French navy bombarded the city and landed troops. The toll was very heavy: 600 to 3,000 Moroccans killed according to estimates, and the Mellah was looted and burned. With the occupation of Oujda a few months earlier, this marked the start of the French conquest of Morocco, made official by the Treaty of Fes in March 1912.

The protectorate's boomtown

France made Rabat the administrative capital and Casablanca the economic capital. Lyautey commissioned the planner Henri Prost to design a European new town outside the medina, as well as a "new medina", the Habous quarter, for Moroccans arriving from other towns. The centre filled with Art Deco buildings, and the port became the country's busiest.

The population exploded: from 12,000 around 1907 to 110,000 in 1921, largely in shanty towns, and Europeans made up almost half the inhabitants. In 1937-1938 a typhoid epidemic was used as a pretext to move Moroccans from the centre to the Carrières Centrales.

1942-1943: war and the Anfa Conference

On 8 November 1942 General Patton's American troops landed in Morocco in Operation Torch. Casablanca, held by the Vichy regime, fell on 11 November; the naval battle went on until the 16th. Berrechid airfield, later Mohammed V airport, became a major American base.

In January 1943 Churchill and Roosevelt met at the Anfa hotel, with Generals de Gaulle and Giraud. The Allies adopted the principle of the Axis's "unconditional surrender". Roosevelt met Sultan Mohammed ben Youssef privately and expressed support for Moroccan independence after the war, which encouraged the nationalists.

Towards independence (1947-1956)

In the 1940s and 1950s Casablanca was a centre of the struggle against the protectorate. On 7 April 1947, on the eve of the sultan's Tangier speech, colonial army riflemen killed residents of working-class districts. On 7 and 8 December 1952 the city rose up after the assassination of Tunisian trade unionist Farhat Hached.

After Mohammed V's exile on 20 August 1953, the resistance fighter Mohammed Zerktouni organised the Central Market bombing on 25 December 1953. Morocco won independence in 1956, and major boulevards in the city now bear these resistance fighters' names.

Metropolis of independent Morocco

In January 1961 Mohammed V hosted African leaders in Casablanca, including Nasser, Nkrumah and Modibo Keita: the "Casablanca group". The city was also the main departure point for emigrating Moroccan Jews, notably between 1961 and 1964. It saw serious riots in March 1965 and June 1981, harshly repressed.

The Hassan II Mosque, with its 210-metre minaret, was inaugurated in 1993. In March 2000 tens of thousands of women marched here to reform women's legal status, a reform adopted with the new Moudawana in 2004. On 16 May 2003 suicide bombings killed 33 civilians. Casablanca joined UNESCO's Creative Cities Network in 2023.

Raja versus Wydad

The Casablanca derby, between Wydad (founded 1937) and Raja (1949), is one of the most passionate in Africa. The tifos of the two ends, red against green, take weeks to prepare.

A city of every Morocco

Having come from the Souss, the Rif, the Chaouia or the Sahara, Casablancans invented a fast Darija full of French and Spanish words. This is where trends, Moroccan rap and new places are born.

The Bidaouis

Casablanca was built by migrants from all over Morocco, from Doukkala, Chaouia, the Souss and the Rif, over the past century. Bidaouis are known as hurried, direct and enterprising: it's the economic capital, where people come to "make a living".

Casa darija

Casablanca darija, fast and full of slang and French words, has become the country's "standard" darija thanks to TV, rap and social media.