Traditional dress of Morocco

Morocco is the gem of the North Africa having coastlines on both the North Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. Morocco has tremendous culture due to the inhabitation of the multi-ethnic population. While traveling to Morocco, the colors of indigenous Berber community and Jewish and Muslim populace can easily be observed. The country is a reasonably huge country and its every part has its own cultural recognition. A Berber woman in her traditional dress ( Image: Angelas Travels ) A Berber woman in her traditional dress ( Image: Angelas Travels ) The Moroccan society is not conservative because Morocco is a peaceful and tourist friendly country. Morocco has no particular rules and regulation about the clothing but the Moroccans have kept alive the custom to wear the traditional dress of Morocco. A random capture of the Moroccons in their traditional dresses- Allan Old's Image Moroccans are overall a stylish and smart nation and they prefer to dress up with fashionable and impressive clothing. Both men and women wear a same traditional attire which is called djellaba; a long, loose, hooded garment with full sleeves.

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A Moroccon girl wearing traditional dress - Angelas Travels

The women of Morocco also wear Caftan or Kaftan which is without a hood unlike the djellaba. This dress is particularly decorated with the typical woman embroidery upon the dress openings and arms. Kaftan is usually worn on the festive occasions and wedding ceremonies by the Moroccan women.

Another traditional cloak made with a delicate fabric and mostly in white color is known as “Haik” which is used by the Moroccan village women. In addition to thatGandora is also used by the Moroccan women which have heavy and fancy stitching and adornments.

A pretty Moroccon woman dressed up with the ceremonial dress - ReebA's photo

For all of the Moroccan women the bright colored silks and other dainty fabrics are favorites. The craftsmen and tailors apply their special skills to make the women dresses attractive and graceful. The women of high class also use a traditional belt which has golden embroidery and exquisite decorations along the edges.

A Moroccon man wearing the traditional outfit and Fez - Grete Howard's Image

 Abernousse is a traditional red cap for the Moroccan men which they normally use in special occasions. Abernousse is commonly referred to as a Fez. Both men and women use Balgha, the typical Moroccan slippers without heels and often dyed with yellow.

A Moroccon water seller in his traditional costume - Richard Sharrocks image

The traditional dress of Morocco is the true reflection of the charming and fascinated Moroccan heritage. People of every class in Morocco are very conscious about their dress codes. The traditional loose fitting outfits are commonly worn by the folk artists during their presentations while the modern Moroccan population is also much influenced with the Western style of dressing.

A Moroccon Belly Dancer in her traditional dancing costume - Thomas Grim's Image

The Typical Image of Moroccan Women

Psychology has proved that all its branches agreed upon the fact that a person’s environment affects the upbringing and personality of that person. The environment molds and shapes one’s personality. A person is affected by his parents doctrines, bias, stereotypes held toward different things and people. The same thing is proved to be true by the theory of Mustapha Hijazi.

The theory is called “The psychology of depressed people.” It states that a depressed person yields to the things ascribed to him. If the person, for example, is labeled stupid and less successful by his family, with time he will take it for granted and assume that the claim is true. The fact is also true with Moroccan women. They are regarded as inferior; henceforth, they surrender and made themselves weak and margin. Accordingly, the environment affects much on a person’s personality than the biological and inherited features.

Women in some Moroccan areas are very marginalized. Men use some degrading slogans and words while speaking about or addressing women. To mention but only a few, the saying which is deeply disgracing and degrading women is “Lamra hashak.” This phrase is used in the south east of Morocco. However, it is too distinct nowadays thanks to many factors.

Moroccan women are known by many characteristics that make them so special. One of these typical images on women in general and on Moroccans in particular is Satanism. Demonism, foxiness and lack of faith are ascribed characteristics to women since ancient times.

The most known religions admit that woman is the origin of the sin. They are the cause for man to be dispelled from God’s mercy. Christians believe that the French word “femme” from the Latin language refers to “Fe Minus.” The word means “carence de foi,” a French phrase that means lack of faith. Accordingly, Jews claim the same thing as Christians. So do pious Islamists who assume that men outweigh women in terms of hygiene, mental and corporal ability. They base their judgments on menstruation and some preachers’ teachings. Furthermore, the recipes used by women to beautify themselves or to heal casual sicknesses are not wanted by men. They send out a stink of smells. But this does not mean that women have poor standards of hygiene.

The standing point of outside observers is completely different from the one of the target or observed people. To the people of Gulf and some other countries, Moroccan women are prostitutes. The European and American people believe that Muslims are terrorists and their wives are fortunetellers and sorceresses. I should admit that there is prostitution and sorcery in Morocco and like other areas of the world. But, the degree varies from one country to another. The outsiders tend to over-generalize to the extent that quick judgments on women on the street overflow.

Because of this over-generalization, girls in the street face sexual harassment from Moroccans and tourists who fail to distinguish between innocent women and prostitutes.

The first thing a visitor may notice on Moroccan women is art. They are artists in their society, more so than men. The Arabic and especially the amazigh women shape the Moroccan identity per se. They decorated their faces with tattoo dyed their hands and feet with henna and painted their faces with saffron. They also embroider their clothes and scarves and head coverings with brightly colored arabesque motifs. They sew their clothes by themselves. They are creative in essence that they find solutions to small troubles they encounter in life.

A big discrepancy is clearly seen, however, in some stereotypes on Moroccan women. An example would be, if a woman is characterized by foxiness, then she is cleaver. Her mental capabilities are great since she can deceive smart people. Another discrepancy is that women are deemed to be untidy and not clean. But, they pass all day long doing homework, cleaning, ironing, washing clothes and catering for their offspring. Women are the driving force for a nation’s development. If a mother, sister, cousin and daughter are very weak in all domains, no nation will ever develop, because women are half of the society.

Women in Morocco

Following independence from France in 1956, Moroccan women were at the forefront of knowledge production and artistic expression—all of which nuanced the conception and perception of a post-colonial Moroccan identity. Fatima Mernissi, for example, emerged as a critical figure in the knowledge production on gender studies in Morocco. Laila Lalami has also become a popular figure in literature on Morocco, being the first Moroccan author to publish a book of fiction in English. Other Moroccan women who gained prominence through their published work include Leila Abouzeid, Latifa Baka, Khnata Bennouna, Farida Diorui, and Bahaa Trabelsi.

Moroccan women artists also gained regional and international popularity, including Lalla Essaydi, Samira Said, Amel Bent, Najat Aatabou, Dounia Batma, and Naima Samih, among others.

In addition to art and literature, Moroccan women have been publicly present in shaping contemporary politics. In 1961, the Union Progresiste des Femmes Marocaines emerged as one of the first exclusively female organizations in Morocco. Princess Lalla Aicha, the late sister of the late King Hassan II was the president of another woman's organization called the Union Nationale des Femmes Marocaines. Various other woman's organizations in Morocco were created after independence with the aim of advancing the cause of women’s rights, such as the Democratic Association of Moroccan Women and the Union de l’Action Feminine.

Various Moroccan women have held positions in the ruling government, cabinet, and high ranks in political parties, including Asma Chaabi, Nawal El Moutawakel, Bassima Hakkaoui, Nouzha Skalli, and Mbarka Bouaida, among others. Contrarily, Moroccan women have also been in the forefront of dissent and the opposition, who oftentimes faced jail and harassment from the Moroccan government. Among those are Nadia Yassine and Khadija Riyadi. During the beginning of Morocco’s version of the Arab Uprisings that began in December 2010 following the self-immolation of Tunisian fruit vendor, Mohammed Bouazizi, a single Moroccan mother, Fadoua Laroui, set herself on fire in front of a municipal office in protest of her public housing application getting rejected. Laroui has been dubbed by some as the “Moroccan female Bouazizi.”

Bassima Hakkaoui, Moroccan Minister for Solidarity, Women, Family and Social Development at the G8 Deauville Partnership: Women in Business Conference in London.

Bassima Hakkaoui, Moroccan Minister for Solidarity, Women, Family and Social Development at the G8 Deauville Partnership: Women in Business Conference in London.
Despite the fact that Morocco ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the political representation of women in Morocco remains relatively low. Following the November 2011 elections, only one woman was appointed minister. Like other neighboring countries, Morocco introduced Law n° 59-11 in 2011, which created a quota system that allocated one-third of the seats in the Lower House of Parliament to women.As a result, 66 of the 395 seats in the Lower House of Parliament belong to women as of the November 2011 elections.

Due to this increased political voice, women’s representation in parliament has increased dramatically, from 1% in 2003 to 17% in 2015; Morocco’s 2004 Family Code is one of the most progressive in the Arab world; in 1993, Morocco ratified an international agreement on gender equality that has provided leverage for further progress in domestic legislation.

Following the increase in representation, Morocco has seen improvements in women's health and social outcomes: the fertility rate is now one of the lowest in the region; the maternal mortality rate fell by two-thirds in just two decades; girls’ primary school enrolment rose from 52% in 1991 to 112% in 2012 (due to re-enrolment); and just under 23% of women are in formal employment (2011).

Outside the realm of formal politics, Moroccan women have been active in various advocacy projects and legal reforms. Most notably, following the suicide of Amina Filali, a young girl who was forced to marry her rapist, various Moroccan woman organizations, such as Union de l'Action Feminine, pushed for the reform of Article 475 from Morocco's penal code. Prior to the national campaign, Article 475 was the law cited by the judge in Amina Filali's case that stated a rapist may be acquitted of charges if he marries his victim.The campaign led to the repeal of Article 475 on January 2014.

Moroccan women have also been active in lobbying for reforms to the personal status code laws (Mudawana). The Mudawana was initially codified following Morocco's independence from France and was used as a tool for the state's immediate consolidation of power. Following Mohammed VI's accession to the throne in 1999, reforming the Mudawana was a major platform that guided the early years of his reign. Various women's organizations supported these measures, such as l’Union de l’Action Féminine (UAF) and Association Marocaine pour les Droits des Femmes (ADFM). In 2004, some of the reforms included stricter measures for men wanting to marry additional wives, greater leniency for a divorce initiated by the wife, more equitable inheritance rights for women, and the increase in the legal age of marriage for women. The reception of these reforms to the Mudawana varied across class lines and the political spectrum. While members of the aforementioned UAF and ADFM championed these measures, various groups, such as the Islamist Al Adl Wa Al Ihsanne opposed these measures, claiming the reforms were "Western-inspired" and rooted in the neoliberal feminist measures of the World Bank.


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Women in Morocco

Prior to the spread of Islam into Morocco, which brought along with it the Arab conquest, Morocco was part of a region inhabited mostly by a non-Arab Amazigh population.Various Amazigh tribes during the 4th, 5th, and 6th century were noted to have been matrilineal, such as the Tuareg tribes of North Africa. As such, Amazigh women were noted to have taken on significant roles in local communities. This was especially evident through the figure of Kahina, who was a noted Amazigh female military leader who fought against the Arab and Muslim expansion into North Africa.
As part of a broader French imperialist project that justified the colonization of Morocco and the Maghreb region in general, European narratives on Moroccan women were fixated on Orientalist images. Dominant narratives described Moroccan women as docile, oppressed, and in need of being saved. Consequently, Moroccan women’s experience of life under colonialism was a result of multiple intersections of power and patriarchy. For example, following a growing trend of French land expropriation, which drove rural Moroccan families out of their homes and land, many Moroccan women migrated to the urban areas in search of economic opportunity, especially in Casablanca.Upon migrating to Casablanca, many Moroccan women were forced into prostitution, namely due to their lack of formal identification documents—a policy that the French instituted.



Just as Moroccan women were subject to a gendered form of colonialism, their resistance was gendered as well. The oral traditions of Moroccan women were a unique form of disseminating stories of resistance, oftentimes inspired by existing Islamic oral traditions of female warriors who fought in early Islamic history, such as the stories of Hind and Sukayna. Moroccan women, especially those involved in the armed resistance primarily in the northern Rif region, adopted their own experiences of fighting against colonialism to existing frameworks of oral traditions that address women in war. The storytelling of these events played a significant role in shaping memories and conceptualizing post-colonial identities among women.

In addition to the oral traditions of women involved in armed resistance, a role that mostly lower class women took up, upper class Moroccan women were heavily involved in the nationalist politics of resisting colonialism. The Istiqlal Party was the primary mobilizing political force in Morocco that rallied against French colonial rule. The party included the participation of various elite Moroccan women from wealthy and educated families, such as Malika Al-Fassi, from the still influential Al-Fassi family.There was a close collaboration between women like Malika Al-Fassi, who were important figures in the political resistance, and women such as Fatima Roudania, a working-class armed resistance fighter. The wealthier women involved with the Istiqlal Party provided educational services to lower class women involved in the armed resistance, assisted in the proliferation of nationalist literature and knowledge production, and provided protection by hiding women who were fighting against the French.

Many of the Moroccan women involved in resisting French colonialism oftentimes looked to the public presence of women in other struggles of resistance in the region for inspiration, such as in Algeria and Palestine, including women like Djamila Bouhired and Leila Khaled.
Amazigh women have had a lasting position in Moroccan folklore, a position that predates the Arab and Muslim conquest of the Maghreb region. It is believed that the tale of Aisha Qandisha has existed since at least the 7th century.[6] There are several variations of Aisha Qandisha’s name, among which include Lalla Aicha and Aicha Hamdouchia. Stemming from the pre-Islamic era of Morocco, Aisha Qandisha is said to have been a female demon that takes the shape of multiple beings, including a half-goat.Aicha Qandisha, unlike other demons in Moroccan folklore, appears mostly in men’s dreams and is said to make a man impotent. Such folklore remains widely popular in Morocco today.


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Traditional dress of Morocco

Morocco is the gem of the North Africa having coastlines on both the North Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. Morocco has tremendous culture due to the inhabitation of the multi-ethnic population. While traveling to Morocco, the colors of indigenous Berber community and Jewish and Muslim populace can easily be observed. The country is a reasonably huge country and its every part has its own cultural recognition.

The Moroccan society is not conservative because Morocco is a peaceful and tourist friendly country. Morocco has no particular rules and regulation about the clothing but the Moroccans have kept alive the custom to wear the traditional dress of Morocco.


Moroccans are overall a stylish and smart nation and they prefer to dress up with fashionable and impressive clothing. Both men and women wear a same traditional attire which is called djellaba; a long, loose, hooded garment with full sleeves.


The women of Morocco also wear Caftan or Kaftan which is without a hood unlike the djellaba. This dress is particularly decorated with the typical woman embroidery upon the dress openings and arms. Kaftan is usually worn on the festive occasions and wedding ceremonies by the Moroccan women.


Another traditional cloak made with a delicate fabric and mostly in white color is known as “Haik” which is used by the Moroccan village women. In addition to that Gandora is also used by the Moroccan women which have heavy and fancy stitching and adornments.


For all of the Moroccan women the bright colored silks and other dainty fabrics are favorites. The craftsmen and tailors apply their special skills to make the women dresses attractive and graceful. The women of high class also use a traditional belt which has golden embroidery and exquisite decorations along the edges.

 Abernousse is a traditional red cap for the Moroccan men which they normally use in special occasions. Abernousse is commonly referred to as a Fez. Both men and women use Balgha, the typical Moroccan slippers without heels and often dyed with yellow.

The traditional dress of Morocco is the true reflection of the charming and fascinated Moroccan heritage. People of every class in Morocco are very conscious about their dress codes. The traditional loose fitting outfits are commonly worn by the folk artists during their presentations while the modern Moroccan population is also much influenced with the Western style of dressing.

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Moroccan cuisine

Moroccan cuisine is typically a mix of Mediterranean, Arabic, Andalusian and Berber cuisine.

Morocco produces a large range of Mediterranean fruits and vegetables and even some tropical ones. Common meats include beef, goat, mutton and lamb, chicken and seafood, which serve as a base for the cuisine. Characteristic flavorings include lemon pickle, cold-pressed, unrefined olive oil and dried fruits. As in Mediterranean cuisine in general, the staple ingredients include wheat, used for bread and couscous, and olive oil; the third Mediterranean staple, the grape, is eaten as a dessert, though a certain amount of wine is made in the country.


Spices are used extensively in Moroccan food. Although spices have been imported to Morocco through the Arabs for thousands of years, many ingredients — like saffron from Talaouine, mint and olives from Meknes, and oranges and lemons from Fes — are home-grown. Common spices include qarfa (cinnamon), kamoun (cumin), kharqoum (turmeric), skinjbir (ginger), libzar (pepper), tahmira/felfla hemra (paprika), sesame seeds, qesbour (coriander), zaafran beldi (saffron), massia (mace), qronfel (cloves), basbas (fennel), Nnafaâ (anise), elgouza (nutmeg), zaâter (oregano), felfla soudania (cayenne pepper), and Ourka sidna moussa (bay laurel). 27 spices are combined to form the "celebrated" Moroccan spice mixture ras el hanout.

A typical lunch meal begins with a series of hot and cold salads, followed by a tagine or Dwaz. Bread is eaten with every meal. Often, for a formal meal, a lamb or chicken dish is next, followed by couscous topped with meat and vegetables. A cup of sweet mint tea usually ends the meal. Moroccans either eat with fork, knife and spoon or with their hands using bread as a utensil depending on the dish served. The consumption of pork and alcohol is not common due to religious restrictions.

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Cuisine of Morocco

Moroccan cuisine is home to Berber, and Moorish, . It is known for dishes like couscous, tajine, pastilla, and others. Spices such as cinnamon are used in Moroccan cooking
Moroccan cuisine is extremely diverse, thanks to Morocco's interaction with other cultures and nations over the centuries. Moroccan cuisine has been subject to Berber, Moorish, Mediterranean, and Arab influences. The cooks in the royal kitchens of Fez, Meknes, Marrakesh, Rabat and Tetouan refined it over the centuries and created the basis for what is known as Moroccan cuisine today.




Ingredients
Morocco produces a large range of Mediterranean fruits and vegetables and even some tropical ones. Common meats include mutton and lamb, beef, chicken, camel, rabbit and seafood, which serve as a base for the cuisine. Characteristic flavorings include lemon pickle, cold-pressed, unrefined olive oil and dried fruits. It is also known for being far more heavily spiced than Middle Eastern cuisine.

Spices and other flavorings
Spices are used extensively in Moroccan food. Although spices have been imported to Morocco for thousands of years, many ingredients, like saffron from Tiliouine, mint and olives from Meknes, and oranges and lemons from Fez, are home-grown. Common spices include karfa (cinnamon), kamoun (cumin), kharkoum (turmeric), skinjbir (ginger), libzar (pepper),tahmira (paprika), anise seed, sesame seeds, qesbour (coriander), and zaafran beldi (saffron). Common herbs include mint and 'maadnous'(parsley.)

Structure of meals
The midday meal is the main meal, except during the holy month of Ramadan. A typical meal begins with a series of hot and cold salads, followed by a tagine. Bread is eaten with every meal. Often, for a formal meal, a lamb or chicken dish is next, followed by couscous topped with meat and vegetables. A cup of sweet mint tea usually ends the meal. Moroccans usually eat with their hands and use bread as a utensil. The consumption of pork and alcohol are considered Haraam, and are prohibited per Muslim dietary restrictions.

Sweets like halwa are popular, as well as other sweets. Cuisines from neighboring countries also influence the country's culinary traditions.


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