casablanca morocco

Main sights



Hassan II Mosque.


Casablanca Cathedral
The French period Ville Nouvelle (New Town) of Casablanca was designed by the French architect Henri Prost, and was a model of a new town at that time. The main streets radiate south and east from Place des Nations Unies, previously the main market of Anfa. Former administrative buildings and modern hotels populate the area. Their style is a combination of Hispano-Mauresque and Art Deco.
Casablanca is home to the Hassan II Mosque, designed by the French architect Michel Pinseau. It is situated on a promontory on the Atlantic. The mosque has room for 25,000 worshippers inside, and a further 80,000 can be accommodated in the mosque's courtyard. Its minaret is the world's tallest at 210 metres. The mosque is also the largest in North Africa, and the third largest in the world.[38]
Work on the mosque was started in 1980, and was intended to be completed for the 60th birthday of the former Moroccan king, Hassan II, in 1989. However, the building was not inaugurated until 1993. Authorities spent an estimated $800 million in the construction of the building.
The Parc de la Ligue Arabe (formally called Lyautey) is the city's largest public park. On its edge is the Casablanca Cathedral (Cathédrale Sacré-Coeur). It is no longer in use for religious purposes, but it is open to visitors and a splendid example of Mauresque architecture. The Old Medina (the part of town pre-dating the French protectorate) attracts fewer tourists than the medinas of cities like Fes and Marrakech. However, it has undergone some restoration in recent years. Included in this project have been the western walls of the medina, its skala, or bastion, and its colonial-period clock tower.
A popular site among locals is the small island Marabout de Sidi Abderrahmane. It is possible to walk across to the rocky island at low tide. This outcrop contains the tomb of Sidi Abderrhamane Thaalibi, a Sufi from Baghdad and the founder of Algiers. He is considered a saint in Morocco.[39] Because of this, many Moroccans make informal pilgrimages to this site "to reflect on life and to seek religious enlightenment". Some believe that the saint possessed magical powers and so his tomb still possesses these powers. People come and seek this magic in order to be cured. Non-Muslims may not enter the shrine.


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casablanca morocco

Today Casablanca is a large, modern city, but the former French colonial post still allows myriad movie moments for those who want to revisit love in the medina and Old City. Casa (as locals call it) isn’t too touristy, but it’s the most cosmopolitan and Western-feeling city in Morocco. Visit The King Hassan II Mosque and Casa's Medina.

 original name in Berber: ⴰⵏⴼⴰ Anfa) is a city in western Morocco, located on the Atlantic Ocean. It is the capital of the Grand Casablanca region.
Casablanca is Morocco's largest city as well as its chief port. It is also the biggest city in the Maghreb region. The 2004 census recorded a population of 3,500,000 in the prefecture of Casablanca and 4,000,000 in the region of Grand Casablanca. Casablanca is considered the economic and business center of Morocco, while the political capital city of Morocco is Rabat.
Casablanca hosts headquarters and main industrial facilities for the leading Moroccan and international companies based in Morocco. Industrial statistics show Casablanca retains its historical position as the main industrial zone of the country. The Port of Casablanca is one of the largest artificial ports in the world,[1] and the largest port of North Africa.[2] It is also the primary naval base for the Royal Moroccan Navy.



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Moroccan teenager's

Moroccan teenager's suicide after she was forced to marry her rapist
A Moroccan teenager committed suicide after her family forced her to marry her rapist in a tragedy that has sparked outrage among Moroccan activists and demands for changes to the nation's laws.

Hamida, Right, and Souad, the sister and mother of Amina Al Filali sit at her grave in Larache Photo: AFP/Getty Images
By Paul Carsten, and agencies2:50PM GMT 15 Mar 2012
Amina Filali, 16, drank rat poison last week in order to kill herself because she had been made to marry the man who raped her when she was 15 years old.
Activists have set up a Facebook group called "We are all Amina Filali", with almost 1,000 members. A petition was started which already contains more than 1,000 signatures, and hundreds of tweets detail people's horror at the tragedy.
Nabil Belkabir, an activist, implored people on Twitter to "Join the group 'We are all Amina Filali' if you don't want this drama to happen again."
According to the president of Morocco's Democratic League for Women's Rights, Fouzia Assouli, Miss Filali's rapist married her to avoid receiving a sentence for rape.
In Morocco this is punishable by five to ten years in prison, but the sentence rises to between ten and twenty years if the victim is a minor.
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Article 475 of the Moroccan penal code, which purports to defend family values, states that if a rapist marries his victim he is then exonerated of his crime. Ms Assouli attacked the article, saying it "does not uphold the rights of women".
In many societies, including within the Middle East, a woman losing her virginity before marriage is considered a dishonour to her family. For this reason, families will often make arrangements for rape victims to marry their rapists, so as to restore their lost honour. The Book of Deuteronomy in the Old Testament contains a similar injunction.
"Amina, 16, was triply violated, by her rapist, by tradition and by Article 475 of the Moroccan law," activist Abadila Maaelaynine wrote on Twitter.
Miss Filali's father, Lahcen Filali, told an online Moroccan newspaper that his daughter only told her parents of the rape two months after it had occurred. When they reported it, the prosecutor advised his daughter to marry.
Although the rapist had initially rejected the proposal to marry Miss Filali, he agreed once threatened with prosecution.
The manager of the Adala Association for legal reform, Abdelaziz Nouaydi, said that a judge can only encourage the victim and rapist to marry when there is agreement from the victim and both families.
Mr Nouaydi said that although it isn't a common occurrence, the victim's family will sometimes assent to the marriage due to worries she will be unable to find a husband if her rape becomes common knowledge.
Ms Assouli said that the victim is then forced to marry in order to avoid scandal for her family.
Despite Morocco changing its family code in 2004 in an attempt to improve women's rights, the practice continues. "It is unfortunately a recurring phenomenon," she said. "We have been asking for years for the cancellation of Article 475 of the penal code which allows the rapist to escape justice."
Legislation to outlaw all forms of violence against women, which includes rape within marriage, has failed to move beyond government debate since first being proposed in 2006.
Mr Filali said his daughter had complained to her mother that her husband beat her repeatedly throughout the five months they were married. Her mother advised her to be patient.
According to a government study conducted last year, almost one quarter of Moroccan women have been sexually assaulted at least once in their lives.



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morocco news

Charlotte Aitken: daughter of Rushdie's literary agent 'died after drugs cocktail'

Gillon Aitken’s only child Charlotte, was “extraordinarily stricken” by the death of her Swedish-born mother Cari Margareta Bengtsson, west London coroners court was told.
The 27 year-old had taken a cocktail of drugs to relieve the stress of her mother’s death.
She died in the arms of her half brother, John Svanberg, the morning after they had buried their mother in Tangiers, in the country’s north.
The aspiring literary agent, who had a history of cocaine and cannabis abuse, had recently moved from London to live with her mother and “renew herself”.
While the exact cause of the death could not be established after her body was flown home, a pathologist concluded the most likely explanation was the "highly dangerous" combination of alcohol and drugs she had consumed.
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On Thursday at the inquest into her death, Mr Aitken, one of Britain’s most influential literary agents, said he had thought his daughter had overcome recent difficulties with alcohol and drugs.
Mr Aitken, whose list of authors includes Sir Rushdie, Sebastian Faulks and the Queen's biographer Sarah Bradford, was told of his wife’s death on August 9 last year and boarded the first flight to Morocco to be with his daughter.
Asked by Alison Thompson, the coroner, if his wife of 18 years had not died, she would not have died, he replied: "I have not the slightest doubt that she would have come through”.
Mr Aitken, who separated from his wife in 2000 before she moved to the North Africa in 2010, added: "I say this without bitterness, but I do not think that her mother had prepared her for her death.”
The court heard that Miss Aitken, who also had a history of self-harming, had attempted to harm herself following her mother's death, but Mr Aitken said she had been looking forward to the future and had no intention of taking her own life.
"She was extraordinarily stricken by the news, but also it was a complicated position as her relationship with her mother was not entirely straight forward,” he said.
"There was a sense of anger with her and also love. These contradictory forces caused her great confusion."
"Charlotte was alternating between stoicism and great grief, it was very stressful."
Despite many "appalling difficulties" in arranging the funeral it had gone smoothly on August 15.
That night they had a drink and Miss Aitken, who had trouble sleeping, then took a combination of drugs to calm herself and "find peace" after the funeral, the court heard.
Mr Aitken, 73, said the next morning her half brother called him to say she was not breathing and by the time he rushed to the house she was dead.
"They (the drugs) were taken for relief from the stress of the situation, I have no doubt about that,” he said.
"In a way the stress was indomitable. The tragedy in a way is that Charlotte went to Tangier to renew herself and in that process she had felt freer than she had in London."
Mr Svanberg, who lives in London, told the court that when he went around to her mother’s rented house the dog was crying at the door and he immediately knew “something was wrong”.
He climbed the wall and onto her balcony where he saw her “lying on the bed sweating and her lips were blue”.
"She was barely breathing. I tried to wake her, but I couldn't,” he said. "I tried to revive her, but I didn't know how. So I phoned an ambulance and waited and I held her in my arms as she took her last breath."
Dr Olaf Biedrzycki, a Home Office pathologist, could not establish the exact cause of death but the drugs "would act to slow the breathing down”.
The cause of her mother's death was not disclosed in court. But reports at the time suggested she had fallen down the stairs in a horrible accident and died a few days later.
Mrs Thompson recorded a verdict of death by misadventure. "She has died from probable complications of alcohol or drug use,” she said.
The family declined to comment outside court.


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Morocco bus crash leaves 42 people dead

Morocco bus crash leaves 42 people dead
A bus plunged into a ravine in the Atlas Mountains of southern Morocco early on Tuesday killing at least 42 people, a security official said, in the worst such accident recorded in the kingdom.

Moroccan rescuers carry the body of a passenger who was killed in a bus crash near Marrakesh Photo: AFP/Getty Images
1:58PM BST 04 Sep 2012
All the victims were Moroccan, a local official said. "But we are still in the process of identifying the bodies, as well as the injured," he added.
The accident took place at around 2:00am (0100 GMT) when the vehicle fell off a main road in Haouz province, around 60 miles south of Marrakesh, one of Morocco's top tourist destinations.
The crash also left some 25 people injured, who were taken to different hospitals in the region, according to a local official.
The official MAP news agency, which said the bus fell 165 yards, gave the same death toll of 42, saying that five of the victims died in hospital, and that 24 people were injured in the crash, four of them critically.
The cause of the accident was not immediately clear.
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An official in Haouz province said an inquiry had been launched and a crisis group set up. The provincial governor Younes El Bathaoui arrived at the site of the crash to supervise the rescue operation, according to MAP.
The tragedy occurred as the bus was heading towards Marrakesh, after crossing the Tizi-n-Tichka pass, the highest in Morocco.
The road, linking the central Moroccan city with the Sahara gateway town of Ouarzazate, winds through the mountains for dozens of miles.
It was the worst bus crash recorded in Morocco, which has a poor road safety record. In November 2010, 24 people drowned when a bus carrying workmen tumbled into a river near the capital Rabat.
And in late July, 12 people were killed in central Morocco when a lorry driver lost control of his vehicle after one of its tyres was punctured and crashed into a bus.
Road accidents in Morocco claimed 4,200 lives last year, a rise of around 12 per cent on 2010, according to figures from the transport ministry.



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Royal Palace, Rabat morocco

Royal Palace, Rabat
Rabat is an administrative city, it does not have many shopping districts, but many residential neighborhoods. Geographically spread out neighborhoods as follows:
The heart of the city consists of three parts: the Medina (old town), the Oudayas and Hassan, both located to meet the Bou Regreg and the Atlantic Ocean.
To the west, and along the waterfront, there is a succession of neighborhoods: First, around the ramparts, the old quarters of the ocean and orange (popular and middle class). Beyond that, a succession of mostly popular neighborhoods: Diour Jamaa, Akkari, Yacoub El Mansour, Massira and Hay el Fath are the main parts of this axis. Hay el Fath, which ends this sequence, evolves into a kind of middle class attendance.
To the east, along the Bouregreg,the Youssoufia region Mabella,Taqaddoum, Hay Nahda, Aviation, Rommani (working and middle classes).
Between these two axes, going from north to south, there are 3 main areas (middle class to very weatlhy): Agdal (Ward Building lively mixing residential and commercial functions, predominantly habitants are upper middle classes), Hay Riad (affluent villas which has been a surge of momentum since the 2000s), and Souissi (residential neighborhood ). On the outskirts of Souissi, as one goes further we get into less dense regions mainly constituted of large private houses to areas that seem out of the city .morocco culture,moroccan food,morocco food,moroccan cuisine,morocco beaches,moroccan meal,beaches in morocco,moroccan culture,hercules cave,hercules cave morocco

rabat morocco

the capital and third largest city of the Kingdom of Morocco with a population of approximately 650,000 (2010). It is also the capital of the Rabat-Salé-Zemmour-Zaer region.
The city is located on the Atlantic Ocean at the mouth of the river Bou Regreg. On the facing shore of the river lies Salé, the city's main commuter town. Together with Temara the cities account for a combined metropolitan population of 1.8 million. Silting problems have diminished the Rabat's role as a port; however, Rabat and Salé still maintain important textile, food processing and construction industries. In addition, tourism and the presence of all foreign embassies in Morocco serve to make Rabat one of the most important cities in the country.
Rabat is accessible by train through the ONCF system and by plane through the nearby Rabat-Salé Airport.


Rabat has a relatively modern history compared to the ancient city of Sala. In 1146, the Almohad ruler Abd al-Mu'min turned Rabat's ribat into a full scale fortress to use as a launching point for attacks on Spain. In 1170, due to its military importance, Rabat acquired the title Ribatu l-Fath, meaning "stronghold of victory," from which it derives its current name.
Yaqub al-Mansur (known as Moulay Yacoub in Morocco), another Almohad Caliph, moved the capital of his empire to Rabat.[4] He built Rabat's city walls, the Kasbah of the Udayas and began construction on what would have been the world's largest mosque. However, Yaqub died and construction stopped. The ruins of the unfinished mosque, along with the Hassan Tower, still stand today.
Yaqub's death initiated a period of decline. The Almohad empire lost control of its possessions in Spain and much of its African territory, eventually leading to its total collapse. In the 13th century, much of Rabat's economic power shifted to Fez. In 1515 a Moorish explorer, El Wassan, reported that Rabat had declined so much that only 100 inhabited houses remained. An influx of Moriscos, who had been expelled from Spain, in the early 17th century helped boost Rabat's growth.
[edit]Corsair republics
Rabat and neighboring Salé united to form the Republic of Bou Regreg in 1627. The republic was run by Barbary pirates who used the two cities as base ports for launching attacks on shipping. The pirates did not have to contend with any central authority until the Alaouite Dynasty united Morocco in 1666. The latter attempted to establish control over the pirates, but failed. European and Muslims authorities continued to attempt to control the pirates over many years, but the Republic of Bou Regreg did not collapse until 1818. Even after the republic's collapse, pirates continued to use the port of Rabat, which led to the shelling of the city by Austria in 1829 after an Austrian ship had been lost to a pirate attack.
[edit]20th century
[edit]French invasion
The French invaded Morocco in 1912 and established a protectorate. The French administrator of Morocco, General Hubert Lyautey,[5] decided to relocate the country's capital from Fez to Rabat. Among other factors, rebellious citizens had made Fez an unstable place. Sultan Moulay Youssef followed the decision of the French and moved his residence to Rabat. In 1913, Gen. Lyautey hired Henri Prost who designed the Ville Nouvelle (Rabat's modern quarter) as an administrative sector. When Morocco achieved independence in 1956, Mohammed V, the then King of Morocco, chose to have the capital remain at Rabat.

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