Who ruled Casablanca?

Casablanca lies on Morocco's Atlantic coast, on a low shore between the Bou Regreg and Oum Er-Rbia rivers, with the wheat lands of the Chaouia plain behind it. For most of its history it was a small port called Anfa, rebuilt more than once after destruction. Its real growth began only in the 20th century, when the French made it the main harbour of their Moroccan protectorate. In a few decades a town of some 20,000 people became the largest city in Morocco and its economic capital.

The coast was home to Berber peoples, and Phoenician and Roman traders called at the anchorage, but the town lay beyond the southern edge of Roman control in Morocco, which stopped near modern Rabat. After the Berber revolt of the 740s the area belonged to the Barghawata, a Berber state with its own heterodox religion, until the Almoravid dynasty conquered it in the 1060s. Under the Almohad Caliphate and then the Marinids, Anfa grew as a port for the grain of the plain.

In the 15th century, as central power weakened, Anfa became largely independent and a base for corsairs who raided Iberian shipping. A Portuguese fleet destroyed it in 1468. The Portuguese came back in 1515 and built a fort among the ruins, and a settlement known as Casa Branca, "White House", grew up around it. After the great earthquake of 1755 wrecked the town, the Portuguese left for good. Around 1770 Sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah rebuilt the walls and mosque and resettled the place, which was known in Arabic as Dar al-Bayda, a translation of its Portuguese name; Spanish merchants later made the form Casablanca familiar.

During the 19th century the town exported wool and grain to Europe, and its population reached around 10,000 by the late 1880s. In 1907 local attacks on European workers building a railway across a Muslim cemetery led French warships to bombard the city, and French troops landed and occupied it. When the protectorate over Morocco was established in 1912, the resident-general Hubert Lyautey chose Casablanca as its economic centre and Rabat as its capital. A great artificial port was built, and the planner Henri Prost laid out a European city of boulevards around the old medina. Migrants poured in from the countryside, many of them settling in shanty towns known in French as bidonvilles. In 1914 Europeans made up about 40 per cent of the population.

During the Second World War American troops landed nearby in November 1942, and in January 1943 Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met in the suburb of Anfa, where they agreed to demand the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers. In the following years Casablanca's workers' districts became strongholds of the nationalist movement, and violent clashes in December 1952 sharpened the struggle against France.

Morocco regained its independence in March 1956. Casablanca hosted a conference of African leaders in 1961, saw student protests turn into riots in 1965 and bread riots in 1981, and in 2003 suffered suicide bombings that killed dozens of people. The Hassan II Mosque, completed in 1993 partly over the sea, has one of the tallest minarets in the world. With well over three million people in the city and more in its region, Casablanca remains the kingdom's main port and financial centre.