40 Interesting Facts About Morocco, Checked and Sourced

Morocco’s oldest university has taught without a break since the year 859, and a woman paid for it. Morocco’s famous tree-climbing goats are mostly lifted into the branches by hand so that drivers will stop and photograph them. And the country sits on roughly two thirds of the world’s phosphate reserves, the rock that phosphate fertiliser is made from.

Those three are the short answer to what makes this country strange. Below are 40 facts about Morocco, each traced to a named source: UNESCO, Guinness World Records, Britannica, the US Geological Survey, National Geographic and Morocco’s own ministries. Where a claim is genuinely disputed, this page says who claims what rather than picking a winner.

The 10 Most Surprising Facts About Morocco

The most surprising facts about Morocco are the ones that sound invented and are not. The 10 below are listed with the least-known first.

1. The world’s oldest university has been running in Fez since 859, and a woman founded it. Guinness World Records lists the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez as the oldest existing and continually operating educational institution in the world. Fatima al-Fihri, who inherited her merchant father’s money, paid for the building. It still teaches Islamic law and theology.
2. Morocco opened its ports to American ships in 1777, before any other state had acknowledged the new republic. Sultan Muhammad III declared on 20 December 1777 that vessels flying the American flag could enter Tangier, Salé, Larache and Essaouira on the same terms as any friendly nation, according to the US embassy in Rabat. Britannica calls that de facto recognition and ranks France second, while noting a rival Dutch claim from a gun salute at Sint Eustatius in 1776. The State Department’s Office of the Historian dates formal Moroccan recognition to the 1786 treaty instead.
3. The treaty the two countries signed in 1786 is still in force and is the longest-lasting one the United States is party to. It was agreed for 50 years, renewed with no end date when that term ran out in 1836, and has never lapsed. Full diplomatic relations only began in 1905.
4. Tangier holds the only US National Historic Landmark outside the United States. Sultan Moulay Slimane gave the building to the Americans in 1821, the first public property the United States owned abroad. It served as a diplomatic post until 1956 and is now the Tangier American Legation museum.
5. Morocco’s tree-climbing goats are usually put in the trees by hand. National Geographic found herders along the road from Marrakech to Essaouira carrying goats up into argan trees each morning, lifting them back whenever they jumped down, and taking tips from drivers who stopped to photograph them. Goats do climb argan trees on their own to reach the fruit, so the behaviour is real; the roadside version staged for the camera is not.
6. Morocco holds about 68% of the world’s phosphate reserves. The US Geological Survey puts them at 50 billion tonnes against a world total of 74 billion, and ranks the country second only to China as a producer.
7. Morocco is the only African country with a coast on both the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. Britannica states it flatly. In Europe only Spain and France manage the same pairing.
8. The largest concentrated solar power plant in the world sits outside Ouarzazate. The Noor Ouarzazate complex covers about 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) and reaches 580 MW across four plants, most of it from mirrors rather than photovoltaic panels.
9. The Moroccan dirham (MAD) is one of the few currencies you cannot legally take home. It is a closed currency, bought and spent inside the country, and travellers may carry out no more than 2,000 MAD (about €180, $200, £160). Change what is left before you reach the airport, because customs can take the excess.
10. Morocco exports more canned sardines than any other country. It shipped 152,137 tonnes of them in 2022, and sardines account for the bulk of the national catch.

Historical Morocco Facts

Morocco’s historical facts start at a Roman provincial capital called Volubilis and end at the only monarchy left in North Africa. Morocco has been governed from three different capitals along the way, which is where most of the muddled dates in older write-ups come from. The 12 historical facts are listed below.

11. The country’s official name is the Kingdom of Morocco, and it is the only monarchy in North Africa. Britannica states the second half of that plainly. The head of state is King Mohammed VI, who took the throne in 1999 after the death of his father, King Hassan II.
12. The Alaouite dynasty has held the throne since the 17th century. Earlier rulers included the Almoravids, the Almohads, who built the Koutoubia minaret, and the Marinids, who gave Fez its madrasas.
13. Morocco was a French protectorate from 1912 to 1956. France recognised Moroccan independence on 2 March 1956, Spain followed the next month, and the United States sent congratulations on 7 March, per the Office of the Historian.
14. Rabat has been the capital since 1912, not since the 1950s. UNESCO’s entry for the Medina of Fez records the political capital moving to Rabat in 1912, with Fez keeping its standing as the country’s cultural and spiritual centre. Older guides often give a date in the 1950s, which is the independence date rather than the capital move.
15. Fez had taken the capital off Marrakesh three centuries before that. UNESCO dates the city’s height to the 13th and 14th centuries under the Marinids, when it replaced Marrakesh as capital of the kingdom. Marrakesh was founded in 1070-72 by the Almoravids.
16. Morocco has nine UNESCO World Heritage sites and every one is cultural rather than natural. The nine are the medinas of Fez, Marrakesh, Tétouan and Essaouira, the Ksar of Ait-Ben-Haddou, Meknes, Volubilis, the Portuguese city of Mazagan at El Jadida, and Rabat.
17. Jemaa el-Fna in Marrakech is protected for what happens on it, not for what stands on it. UNESCO lists the square’s cultural space, meaning its storytellers, musicians and acrobats, and notes that Morocco has protected it as artistic heritage since 1922.
18. The star on the Moroccan flag was added under French rule in 1915. Britannica records the plain red flag Moroccan ships had flown being modified on 17 November 1915, when the green pentagram known as the Seal of Solomon was placed in the centre. Morocco kept the design after independence in 1956.
19. The oldest sculpture in Morocco may not be a sculpture at all. The Venus of Tan-Tan, a 6 cm quartzite figure found in 1999 on the north bank of the Draa river, is dated to between 300,000 and 500,000 years ago. Robert Bednarik argues a hominin deepened its natural grooves with a stone tool and added red ochre; Stanley Ambrose and others read the same marks as weathering. Nobody has settled it.
20. A sand and stone wall roughly 2,700 km (1,700 mi) long runs down Western Sahara. Morocco built it in stages between 1981 and 1987, and the belt of landmines alongside it is widely described as the longest continuous minefield in the world. The territory’s status is disputed and has been since 1975.
21. Morocco walked out of the Organisation of African Unity in 1984 and stayed out for 33 years. It left when the body admitted the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, and rejoined the African Union on 31 January 2017 as the 55th member.
22. The Barbary lion on the coat of arms has been gone from the wild since roughly the 1960s. Two of them hold up the shield and the national football team is named after them. The survivors are descendants of the sultans’ private collection, most of them now at Rabat Zoo.

Interesting Facts About Morocco

The interesting facts about Morocco below are the ones a first-time visitor meets in person rather than in a history book. Morocco fits ski slopes, Atlantic surf and Sahara dunes into about 446,000 km² (172,000 sq mi), slightly larger than California. The 12 facts are listed below, geography first and street level last.

23. Morocco has two official languages, Arabic and Amazigh. Amazigh, written Tamazight in English, became official in the 2011 constitution, the first time Amazigh identity was recognised at that level. French is spoken widely and Spanish is common in the north, but neither is official.
24. Moroccans get three New Years. The Gregorian one falls on 1 January, the Islamic one at Fatih Muharram moves with the lunar calendar, and Yennayer, the Amazigh New Year on 14 January, became a paid public holiday and was marked as one for the first time in January 2024.
25. Africa’s highest ski resort is 78 km (48.5 mi) from Marrakech. Oukaïmeden tops out at 3,268 m (10,722 ft) in the High Atlas, and people have skied there since the 1930s. There is no snow-making, so the season usually runs January into March.
26. Casablanca’s Hassan II Mosque is built out over the Atlantic. Its minaret stands 210 m (689 ft) high with a laser at the top aimed towards Mecca, the cedar roof slides open, part of the prayer-hall floor is glass above the water, and the site holds 105,000 worshippers. Finished in 1993, it is one of the few mosques in Morocco that non-Muslims may enter, on a guided tour.
27. The Sahara is the largest hot desert on earth, which is not the same as the largest desert. Britannica gives it about 8,600,000 km² (3,320,000 sq mi) across ten countries plus Western Sahara, and puts its northern edge at the Atlas Mountains. Morocco’s share therefore begins south and east of the Atlas. Antarctica is a desert too, and a larger one.
28. Morocco was the first African and the first Arab team to reach a World Cup semi-final, knocking out Spain and then Portugal on the way there in 2022. It will co-host the 2030 World Cup with Spain and Portugal.
29. Morocco is the most visited country in Africa. Its tourism ministry counted a record 19.8 million arrivals in 2025, up 14% on the year before and ahead of Egypt.
30. 38 Moroccan sites fly the Blue Flag in 2026, a national record made up of 33 beaches, four marinas and one mountain lake, awarded through the Mohammed VI Foundation for Environmental Protection.
31. Ouarzazate has stood in for half the ancient world on screen. David Lean shot Lawrence of Arabia there in 1962, Atlas Studios opened in 1983, and Gladiator, Game of Thrones and Black Hawk Down have all used the same stretch of desert since.
32. Spain is 14 km (8.7 mi) away at the narrowest point of the Strait of Gibraltar, close enough to see on a clear morning. Morocco shares a land border with Spain twice over, at the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla.
33. A riad is a house built around its own courtyard. The windows face inwards onto a garden or a fountain and almost nothing faces the street, which is why a plain door in the medina opens onto a room three storeys high. The word comes from the Arabic for gardens.
34. The snake charmers in Jemaa el-Fna work with defanged cobras. The snakes have their fangs pulled and their venom glands pierced, which causes infections and shortens their lives, and they are on the square because visitors pay to be photographed with them. Paying keeps the trade running.

Two of those facts are bookable. Ferries cross the Strait of Gibraltar from Spain most days of the year, and the crossings, operators and ports sit on the ferry routes to Morocco page. Riads fill the medinas of Marrakech, Fez and Essaouira, and the riads and hotels in Morocco listings show which have a roof terrace.

Moroccan Food Facts

Moroccan food facts start with the two things every household shares: couscous on Friday and mint tea at any hour. Moroccan cooking comes with rules attached about which hand you use and when you may turn a glass down. The 6 food facts are listed below.

35. Couscous is on UNESCO’s intangible heritage list, and four countries share the entry. Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia had it inscribed jointly in 2020. In Morocco it is the Friday dish, eaten as a family meal after midday prayers, which is why Friday lunch fills the kitchens and thins out by three.
36. Mint tea is poured from as high as the arm will reach. The drop aerates the tea and puts a head of foam on the glass, and the same leaves are served three times. Refusing the first glass reads as a refusal of the host, so take it even if you leave it.
37. The right hand does the eating and the left one does not. Bread, shared dishes from a communal plate and handshakes all go right-handed, because the left hand is reserved for washing. Left-handers get a pass from most hosts and looks from a few.
38. Argan oil comes from one corner of one country. The argan tree grows in the Arganeraie Biosphere Reserve in south-west Morocco and almost nowhere else, and UNESCO added the women’s know-how behind pressing the oil to its intangible heritage list in 2014.
39. Morocco makes roughly 40 million bottles of wine a year. About 60% of it comes from the Fès-Meknès region, on ground the Romans were already planting around Volubilis. Alcohol is sold in licensed restaurants, hotels and some supermarkets rather than openly.
40. A tagine is the pot, not the dish. The cone-shaped clay lid traps steam and drips it back onto the food, which is how a cheap cut of lamb turns soft in a country short of fuel and water. Whatever goes inside takes the pot’s name, so a lamb tagine and a chicken tagine are two different dishes cooked in the same vessel.

How Many Fun Facts About Morocco Did You Know?

Most readers know three or four of these 40 facts about Morocco and are caught out by the rest. The practical ones catch travellers out more often than the record-breaking ones: the currency you cannot take home, the Friday couscous, and the ski resort an hour and a half from a city where you expected only heat.

Wonderful Wanderings’ Morocco writing picks up where this list stops. The three guides that turn these facts into a trip are listed below.

• The Morocco travel guide covers costs, safety, entry rules, money and getting around.
• The one week in Morocco itinerary turns these facts into a route through Marrakech, the Atlas foothills and Essaouira.
• The December packing list for Morocco deals with the part the photographs never show, which is how cold an Atlas night gets.

Prices on flights to Morocco move a long way between the shoulder seasons and the school holidays, so watch a route for a few weeks before you book.

WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips

The 4 tips below are the facts on this page that change what you do on the ground, rather than what you know.

1. Change your dirhams before you reach the airport. The dirham is a closed currency and travellers may carry out no more than 2,000 MAD (about €180, $200, £160), so anything above that can be taken at customs. Banks and exchange desks in town give a better rate than the last counter before security.
2. Decide about the tree-climbing goats before you slow down. On the road from Marrakech to Essaouira the goats in the argan branches are lifted up by hand each morning and put back whenever they jump down, and the herders take tips from drivers who stop. Goats really do climb argan trees for the fruit, so if you want the photograph without paying for a staged one, look away from the roadside.
3. Check the calendar for Yennayer if you travel in January. The Amazigh New Year on 14 January became a paid public holiday and was marked as one for the first time in 2024, so offices and many businesses close on a date that older guidebooks do not list at all.
4. Ski Oukaïmeden between January and March or not at all. Africa’s highest resort sits at 3,268 m (10,722 ft), 78 km (48.5 mi) from Marrakech, and it has no snow-making, so the season depends entirely on what falls.

About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the first-hand notes in this post come from her December trip to Marrakech and Essaouira. The team covers Morocco for independent travellers, including the riads, food tours, ferries and flights worth booking, and updates this page when the underlying figures change.