Oujda & the Oriental

The Oriental has long been a frontier. People lived in its caves in the Stone Age: the Grotte des Pigeons at Taforalt in the Beni Snassen has yielded some of the oldest known shell beads and a large cemetery of Iberomaurusian hunter-gatherers. The Moulouya river, which crosses the region to the Mediterranean, was in antiquity the boundary between the kingdom of the Mauri and its eastern neighbour.

Oujda was founded in 994 by the Zenata chief Ziri ibn Atiyya and was fought over for centuries by dynasties based in Fès and Tlemcen, and later by the Ottoman regency of Algiers and the Moroccan sultans. After France conquered Algeria, a French army defeated the Moroccan sultan's forces at the battle of Isly near Oujda in 1844, and the French occupied Oujda in 1907, before the protectorate was declared. Nador and the Rif coast fell into the Spanish zone, and in 1921 Riffian fighters under Abd el-Krim destroyed a Spanish army at Annual, in today's Driouch province.

During the Algerian war of independence, Oujda was a base for the Algerian National Liberation Front, and future Algerian leaders, including Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who was born in Oujda, were associated with it. Relations between Morocco and Algeria have since been poor; the land border closed in 1994 and Algeria broke off diplomatic relations in 2021. The coal mines of Jerada, once a major employer, closed in 1998, and deaths in informal mine shafts sparked protests in 2017–18.

The Oriental shares much with western Algeria across the border. Oujda's Arabic dialect, its cuisine and its music are closer to those of Tlemcen and Oran than to Casablanca: the city is known for gharnati, the Andalusian classical tradition associated with Granada, and for raï, the popular music of the Oran region, which has its own festival in Oujda. The Beni Snassen and the plains around Berkane are known for reggada, a dance of shoulder movements and rifles to the sound of drums and pipes.

The population is part Arabic-speaking and part Amazigh. Nador and Driouch belong to the Riffian world and speak Tarifit, the Beni Snassen mountains have their own Amazigh communities, and Figuig's ksour speak an Amazigh dialect of their own. Many families have relatives in Europe, especially in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Spain, and summer weddings bring the diaspora home.

Football is followed intensely: RS Berkane has won African club competitions, and Mouloudia of Oujda is one of Morocco's old clubs. Traditional crafts are modest compared with Fès or Marrakech, but weaving, carpets and palm-leaf work survive in the mountain villages and in Figuig.

The Oriental has around 2.3 million people. Oujda, with over half a million, is the regional capital and a university city; Nador, with its surrounding towns, is the second centre, and Berkane, Taourirt, Guercif, Jerada and Figuig are smaller.

The closed border shaped the economy for decades. Informal trade across the frontier has long been part of the local economy, and Morocco closed its customs post at Melilla in 2018. The region now relies on farming in the irrigated Moulouya plains — citrus above all, with Berkane's clementines known across Morocco — as well as sheep herding on the high plateaux, remittances from Europe, and government investment in roads, a university and industrial parks. The Nador West Med port under construction is meant to become a major new gateway.

Unemployment is high, and many young people emigrate. Oujda's days follow a quieter rhythm than the big western cities, with cafés on the Boulevard Mohammed V and busy markets in the evening. In Figuig, farmers lost access to land at El Arja, beside the border, in 2021 after the Algerian army told them to leave.

Oujda's cooking reflects its eastern ties. Karan, also known as garantita, is a baked chickpea-flour and egg custard sold in slices from street carts, seasoned with cumin and harissa, and a speciality shared with Oran. Tagines and couscous are cooked with the lamb of the high plateaux, and mechoui is a centrepiece at weddings. Berkouks, a large-grained couscous cooked in a vegetable broth, is eaten in winter.

The irrigated plains of Berkane and the lower Moulouya produce clementines and oranges, and the region grows olives and almonds. The coast around Nador and Saïdia supplies sardines, sea bream and shellfish, and the Marchica lagoon is farmed for fish and shellfish.

Figuig is famous for its dates, harvested in autumn from its dense palm groves. Mint tea is drunk everywhere, often with a sprig of wormwood in winter, and Oujda's pastry shops sell honeyed sweets for Ramadan and weddings.

Oujda has a compact walled medina with gates such as Bab Sidi Abdelwahab, covered markets, the Great Mosque, and the leafy Lalla Aicha park. The spring and shrine of Sidi Yahia lie on its outskirts.

North of the city, the Beni Snassen mountains are the region's most rewarding landscape: the road through the Zegzel valley winds through forest and farmland, and the prehistoric Grotte des Pigeons at Taforalt lies above it. On the coast, Saïdia has one of Morocco's longest sandy beaches, a marina resort and the protected wetlands at the mouth of the Moulouya, which attract migrating birds.

Further west, Nador sits on the shore of the Marchica lagoon, with the Cap des Trois Fourches headland to the north and the Spanish city of Melilla on the neighbouring peninsula. In the far south, Figuig's seven ksour and its palm groves, irrigated by old spring-fed channels, make one of the most unusual oases in Morocco, set among bare mountains on the Algerian border.