In the far north is the Er Rif highlands. Southwest of that is a coastal plain, fronting the Atlantic Ocean. Southeast of that--partly beyond this area--is the series of the ranges of the Atlas, southwest to northeast. On the edge of this area is Irhil M'Goun, over 4000 meters tall, in the High Atlas. Farther inland from the High Atlas is the Sahara(4) Desert.
This is within the part of north Africa in which speakers of Maghrebi Arabic(5) and Sunni Moslems are the majority. The chief minority language is Tamazight spoken in the Middle Atlas mountains.
There are three cities with a million or more people: Casablanca, Rabat and Fes.
Thousands of years ago, according to Christopher Ehret, speakers of the Boreafrasian dialects of Afroasiatic moved here when the climate was wetter, giving rise to the Berber languages. These remain the principal minority languages in northern Morocco.
The Punic people's colonized cities along the seashore as did the Greeks in Libya. Later the Roman conquerors introduced Latin and their conquerors introduced a Germanic language. All ethnic traces of these peoples has vanished. These people introduced new religions: the Punic people worshipped gods under generic names like Baal, El or Meloch; the Greeks worshipped gods like Zeus, Athena, Aphrodite and Poseidon; the Romans initially worshipped gods like Jupiter, Juno and Apollo, and later became Christians. North African Christian had great diversity in belief and so the Roman and Byzantine Empire treated them viciously as heretics, setting the stage for a big switch.
The Arabs conquered the region in the eighth century and changed the majority language and religion.
Moors, speaking a Berber language, later moved into Morocco from the south.
Turks ruled the coasts loosely in the early 19th century but have left no traces.
Euopeans conquered the area by the early 20th century, but largely departed in the second half, leaving only handfuls of native French and Spanish speakers, but the French language persists in administration and international relations. Portuguese is spoken on the Madeira Islands and Spanish within the Presidios.
Jews settled here during the Roman Empire and increased when fleeing the Christian conquest of Spain, then left for the most part when Israel(6) was founded.
north, from near Tanger and Ceuta
north, from east of Ceuta
east
southwest
west
(1) al-Maghreb (the West) in transliterated Arabic. Maghrebi means western.
(2) Dar-el-Beida in transliterated Arabic.
(3) España in Spanish.
(4) Translates from Arabic as wilderness.
(5) Some would consider this several languages, others would subsume it under Arabic.
(6) Yisrael in transliterated Hebrew.