Identifier: africa00johnrich (find matches)
Title: Africa
Year: 1878 (1870s)
Authors: Johnston, Alexander Keith, 1804-1871 Keane, A. H. (Augustus Henry), 1833-1912
Subjects: Africa -- Description and travel Africa -- Social life and customs
Publisher: London : Edward Stanford
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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ance to theStraits of Gibraltar, which here divide Europe from Africa.On the Atlantic are Tangier (Tanja) with 20,000 inhabit-ants, El Arish, Rabat, Asamor, and Mogador. 4. Inhabitants.—Indigenous and Foreign Races. All these towns are inhabited by Arabs, Berbers,Jews, and Negroes, races winch constitute the mainelements of the population in Marocco. The basis orlowest stratification is formed by the Berbers, directdescendants of the old Numidians, who till about the year650 were almost the sole inhabitants of the whole ofnorth Africa. But about this time began those immigra-tions of the Arabs, which by means of the Mohanunedanreligion gave a new and special character to the social andpolitical relations of these regions. In Marocco, however, the Berbers proper still faroutnumber the Arabs, and are much more widely diffusedthroughout the country. The only purely Arab region isthat of the coast plain which extends from Tangier to themouth of the Wacly Tensift; elsewhere only isolated
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PEOPLES OF MAROCCO. 39 colonies of Arabs are met with, excepting in the largetowns, in which they always predominate. Two-thirds ofthe people of Marocco are Berbers, and they possessalmost four-fifths of the land, living chiefly in tents andsupporting themselves by husbandry. Eohlfs points outthat the distinctions which most travellers make betweenArabs and Moors are worthless. The Moors are the de-generate descendants of the Arabs who in the eighthcentury, after establishing the kingdom of Fez, overran alarge part of Spain, whence they were expelled in thefifteenth century, and differ from the Arabs, sprung fromthe same race, only in being essentially townsmen andtraders, as distinguished from agriculturists of the plains.The Jews of Marocco are descended from those of theirrace who were driven at various periods from Europeancountries, but chiefly from those who were expelled fromSpain and Portugal between 1492 and 1496 ; they forma large and important section of the population, but

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