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The Maghreb (; ), also known as the Arab Maghreb () and Northwest Africa, English for Students: Northwest Africa english-for-students.com is the western part of the Arab world. The region comprises western and central North Africa, including Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. The Maghreb also includes the disputed territory of Western Sahara. As of 2018, the region had a population of over 100 million people.
The Maghreb is usually defined as encompassing much of the northern part of Africa, including a large portion of the Sahara, but excluding Egypt and the Sudan, which are considered to be located in the Mashriq — the eastern part of the Arab world. The traditional definition of the Maghreb — which restricted its scope to the Atlas Mountains and the coastal plains of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya — was expanded in modern times to include Mauritania and the disputed territory of Western Sahara. During the era of al-Andalus on the Iberian Peninsula (711–1492), the Maghreb's inhabitants — the Muslim Maghrebis — were known by Europeans as the "Moors"."The Moors were simply Maghrebis, inhabitants of the Maghreb, the western part of the Islamic world, that extends from Spain to Tunisia, and represents a homogeneous cultural entity", Titus Burckhardt, Moorish Culture in Spain. Suhail Academy. 1997, p.7 The Greeks referred to the region as the "Land of the Atlas", referring to its Atlas Mountains.
Before the establishment of modern nation states in the region during the 20th century, the Maghreb most commonly referred to a smaller area, between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlas Mountains in the south. It often also included the territory of eastern Libya, but not modern Mauritania. As recently as the late 19th century, the term "Maghreb" was used to refer to the western Mediterranean region of coastal North Africa in general, and to Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia in particular.Elisée Reclus, Africa, edited by A. H. Keane, B. A., Vol. II, North-West Africa, Appleton and company, 1880, New York, p.95
The region comprising the Maghreb was somewhat unified as an independent political entity under the kingdom of Numidia. This period was followed by one of the Roman Empire's rule or influence. The Germanic invaded after that, followed by the equally brief re-establishment of a weak Roman rule by the Byzantine Empire. The Islamic came to power under the Umayyad Caliphate, the Abbasid Caliphate and the Fatimid Caliphate. The most enduring rule was that of the local Arabs empires of the Aghlabids, Idrisid dynasty, Salihids, Sulaymanids, Umayyads of Cordoba, Hammudid dynasty, Nasrid dynasty, Saadi Sultanate, Alawites and the Senusiyya, as well as the Berber empires of the Ifranid dynasty, Almoravids, Almohads, Hammadid dynasty, Zirid dynasty, Marinid dynasty, Zayyanid dynasty, Hafsid dynasty and Wattasid dynasty, extending from the 8th to 13th centuries. The Ottoman Empire also controlled parts of the region for a period.
Centuries of Arab migrations to the Maghreb since the 7th century shifted the demographic scope of the Maghreb in favor of the Arabs. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the region was ruled by European powers: France (French Algeria, Mauritania, Tunisia, and most of Morocco), Italy (Italian Libya), and Spain (northern Morocco and Western Sahara). Italy was expelled from North Africa by the Allies in World War II. Decolonization of the region continued in the decades thereafter, with violent conflicts such as the Algerian War, the Ifni War, the Rif War, and the Western Sahara War.
Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia established the Arab Maghreb Union in 1989 to promote cooperation and economic integration in a common market. The union implicitly included Western Sahara under Morocco's membership. However, this progress was short-lived, and the union is now largely dormant. Tensions between Algeria and Morocco over Western Sahara re-emerged, reinforced by the unresolved border dispute between the two countries. These two conflicts have hindered progress on the union's joint goals.
Medieval Muslim historians and geographers divided the Maghreb region into three areas: al-Maghrib al-Adna (the near Maghrib; also known as Ifriqiya), which included the lands extending from Alexandria to Tarabulus (modern-day Tripoli) in the west; al-Maghrib al-Awsat (the middle Maghrib), which extended from Tripoli to Bijaya (Béjaïa); and al-Maghrib al-Aqsa (the far Maghrib), which extended from Tahart (Tiaret) to the Atlantic Ocean. Historians and geographers disagreed, however, over the definition of the eastern boundary. Some authors place it at the sea of Kulzum (the Red Sea) and thus include Egypt and Barqa (Cyrenaica) in the Maghreb. Ibn Khaldun does not accept this definition because, he says, the inhabitants of the Maghreb do not consider Egypt and Barqa as forming part of Maghrib. The latter commences only at the province of Tripoli and includes the districts of which the country of the Berbers was composed in former times. Later Maghribi writers repeated the definition of Ibn Khaldun, with a few variations in details.
The term Maghrib is used in opposition to Mashriq in a sense near to that which it had in medieval times, but it also denotes simply Morocco when the full al-Maghrib al-Aqsa is abbreviated. Certain politicians seek a political union of the North African countries, which they call al-Maghrib al-Kabir (the grand Maghrib) or al-Maghrib al-Arabi (the Arab Maghrib).Hassan Sayed Suliman (1987). 9789171062666, Scandinavian Institute of African Studies. . ISBN 9789171062666
Phoenicians and Carthaginians arrived for trade. The main Berber and Phoenician settlements centered in the Gulf of Tunis (Carthage, Utica, Tunisia) along the North African littoral, between the Pillars of Hercules and the Libyan coast east of ancient Cyrenaica. They dominated the trade and intercourse of the Western Mediterranean for centuries. Roman Republic's defeat of Carthage in the Punic Wars (264 to 146 BC) enabled Rome to establish the Province of Africa (146 BC) and to control many of these ports. Rome eventually took control of the entire Maghreb north of the Atlas Mountains. Rome was greatly helped by the defection of Massinissa (later King of Numidia, ) and of Carthage's eastern Numidian Massylii client-allies. Some of the most mountainous regions, such as the Moroccan Rif, remained outside Roman Empire control. Furthermore, during the rule of the Romans, Byzantines, Vandals and Carthaginians the Kabyle people were the only or one of the few in North Africa who remained independent.9781857431322, Psychology Press. . ISBN 9781857431322 The Kabyle people were incredibly resistible so much so that even during the Arab conquest of North Africa they still had control and possession over their mountains.
The pressure put on the Western Roman Empire by the Barbarian invasions (notably by the Vandals and Hispania in Iberia) in the 5th century AD reduced Roman control and led to the establishment of the Vandal Kingdom of North Africa in 430 A.D., with its capital at Carthage. A century later, the Byzantine emperor Justinian I sent (533) a force under General Belisarius that Vandalic War the Vandal Kingdom in 534. Byzantine rule lasted for 150 years. The Berbers contested the extent of Byzantine control.
After the advent of Islam in Mediterranean Africa in the period from 639 to 700 AD, Arabs took control of the entire Maghreb region.
The invasion of the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym Arabs in the 11th century played a major role in spreading Bedouin Arabic to rural areas such as the countryside and steppes, and as far as the southern areas near the Sahara. It also heavily transformed the culture in the Maghreb into Arab culture, and spread Bedouin nomadism in areas where agriculture was previously dominant. These Bedouin tribes accelerated and deepened the Arabization process, since the Berber population was gradually assimilated by the newcomers and had to share with them pastures and seasonal migration paths. By around the 15th century, the region of modern-day Tunisia had already been almost completely Arabized. As Arab nomads spread, the territories of the local Berber tribes were moved and shrank. The Zenata were pushed to the west and the Kabyle people were pushed to the north. The Berbers took refuge in the mountains whereas the plains were Arabized.9783902966148, Museum With No Frontiers, MWNF (Museum Ohne Grenzen). . ISBN 9783902966148 These Arabs had been set upon the Berbers by the in punishment for their Zirid former Berber clients who defected and abandoned Shiism in the 11th century. Throughout this period, the Maghreb most often was divided into three states, roughly corresponding to modern Morocco, western Algeria, and eastern Algeria and Tunisia. The Maghreb region was occasionally briefly unified, as under the Almohad Caliphate, Fatimids and briefly under the Zirid dynasty. The Hammadid dynasty also managed to conquer land in all countries in the Maghreb region.
Today, more than two and a half million Maghrebi immigrants live in France, many from Algeria and Morocco. In addition, as of 1999 there were 3 million French of Maghrebi origin (defined as having at least one grandparent from Algeria, Morocco, or Tunisia). A 2003 estimate suggests six million French residents were ethnic Maghrebi."Estimé à six millions d'individus, l'histoire de leur enracinement, processus toujours en devenir, suscite la mise en avant de nombreuses problématiques...", « Être Maghrébins en France » in Les Cahiers de l’Orient, n° 71, troisième trimestre 2003
Historically, the Maghreb was home to significant historic communities called Maghrebim, who predated the 7th-century introduction and conversion of the region to Islam. The earliest recorded Jewish settlement in the region dates back to the third century BCE under Ptolemaic rule in what is now Libya, although Jewish presence may have begun even earlier. Jewish communities continued to develop throughout the Roman period in present-day Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, with evidence of their existence during the early centuries CE. During the early Muslim era, Jews flourished in major urban centers such as Kairouan, Fez, and Tunis, despite facing intermittent persecution, notably under the Almohads. The influx of Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal, fleeing pogroms, forced conversions and expulsions in the 14th to 16th centuries, further augmented the Jewish presence in North Africa.
Africans from south of the Sahara joined the population mix during centuries of trans-Saharan trade. Traders and slaves went to the Maghreb from the Sahel region. On the Saharan southern edge of the Maghreb are small communities of black populations, sometimes called Haratine.
In Algeria especially, a large European minority, known as the "pied noir", immigrated to the region, settling under French colonial rule in the late 19th century. As of the last census in French-ruled Algeria, taken on 1 June 1960, there were 1,050,000 non-Muslim civilians (mostly Catholic, but including 130,000 Algerian Jews) in Algeria, 10 per cent of the population. They established farms and businesses. The overwhelming majority of these, however, left Algeria during and following the war for independence.
In comparison to the population of France, the Maghrebi population was one-eighth of France's population in 1800, one-quarter in 1900, and equal in 2000. The Maghreb is home to 1% of the global population as of 2010.Brunel, Claire, Maghreb regional and global integration: a dream to be fulfilled, Peterson Institute, 2008, p.1
DNA studies of Iberomaurusian peoples at Taforalt, Morocco dating to around 15,000 years ago have found them to have a distinctive Maghrebi ancestry formed from a mixture of and African ancestry, which is still found as a part of the genome of modern Northwest Africans. A 2025 study sequenced individuals from Takarkori (7,000 YBP) and discovered that most of their ancestry was from an unknown Ancestral North African lineage, related to the African admixture component found in Iberomaurusians. According to the study, the Takarkori people were distinct from both contemporary sub-Saharan Africans and non-Africans/Eurasians. They had "only a minor component of non-African ancestry" but did "not carry sub-Saharan African ancestry, suggesting that, contrary to previous interpretations, the Green Sahara was not a corridor connecting Northern and sub-Saharan Africa."
Later during the Neolithic, from around 7,500 years ago onwards, there was a migration into Northwest Africa of European Neolithic Farmers from the Iberian Peninsula (who had originated in Anatolia several thousand years prior), as well as pastoralists from the Levant, both of whom also significantly contributed to the ancestry of modern Northwest Africans. The proto-Berber tribes evolved from these prehistoric communities during the late Bronze Age- and early Iron Age ages.Mário Curtis Giordani, História da África. Anterior aos descobrimentos. Editora Vozes, Petrópolis (Brasil) 1985, pp. 42f., 77f. Giordani references Bousquet, Les Berbères (Paris 1961).
Recent genome-wide analysis of North Africans found substantial shared ancestry with the Middle East, and to a lesser extent sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. The recent gene flow caused by the Arab migrations to the Maghreb increased genetic similarities between Maghrebis and Middle Easterners. Haplogroup J1-M267 accounts for around 30% of Maghrebis and has spread from the Arabian Peninsula, second after E1b1b1b which accounts for 45% of Maghrebis. A study from 2021 has shown that the highest frequency of the Middle Eastern component ever observed in North Africa so far was observed in the Arabs of Oueslatia in Tunisia, who had a Middle Eastern component frequency of 71.8%. According to a study from 2004, Haplogroup J1 had a frequency of 35% in Algerians and 34.2% in Tunisians.
Historic records of religion in the Maghreb region show its gradual inclusion in the Classical World, with coastal colonies established first by Phoenicians, some Greeks, and later extensive conquest and colonization by the Romans. By the 2nd century of the common era, the area had become a center of Phoenician-speaking Christianity. Its bishops spoke and wrote in Punic, and Emperor Septimius Severus was noted by his local accent. Roman settlers and Romanized populations converted to Christianity. Carthage subsequently exercised informal primacy as an archdiocese, being the most important center of Christianity in the whole of Roman Africa, corresponding to most of today's Mediterranean coast and inland of Northern Africa. The region produced figures such as Christian church writer Tertullian (c. 155 – c. 202); and Christian martyrs or leading figures such as Perpetua (martyrs, c. 200 CE); Cyprian (+ 258); St. Monica; her son the philosopher St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo I (+ 430) (1); and St. Julia of Carthage (5th century). Donatist Christianity mainly spread among the indigenous Berber people population, and from the late fifth and early sixth century, the region included several Christian Berber kingdoms.
From the end of the 7th century, over a period of more than 400 years, the region's peoples converted to Islam. Many left during this time for Italy, although surviving letters showed correspondence from regional Christians to Rome up until the 12th century. Christianity was still a living faith. Although there were numerous conversions after the conquest, Muslims did not become a majority until some time late in the 9th century. During the 10th century, Islam became by far the dominant religion in the region. Staying Roman, Jonathan Conant, pp. 362–368, 2012 Christian bishoprics and dioceses continued to be active and continued their relations with the Christian Church of Rome. As late as the reign of Pope Benedict VII (974–983), a new Archbishop of Carthage was consecrated. From the 10th century, Christianity declined in the region.Insoll, T. (2003) "The Archaeology of Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa", Cambridge World Archaeology, [4] By the end of the 11th century, only two bishops were left in Carthage and Hippo Regius. Pope Gregory VII (1073–85) consecrated a new bishop for Hippo. Christianity seems to have suffered several shocks that led to its demise. First, many upper-class, urban-dwelling, Latin-speaking Christians left for Europe after the Muslim conquest. The second major influence was the large-scale conversions to Islam from the end of the 9th century. Many Christians of a much reduced community departed in the mid-11th century, and remnants were evacuated in the 12th by the Norman rulers of Sicily. The Latin-African language lingered a while longer.
There was a small but thriving Jewish community, as well as a small Christian community. Most Muslims follow the Sunni Maliki school. Small Ibadi communities remain in some areas. A strong tradition of venerating and saints' tombs is found throughout regions inhabited by Berbers. This practice was also common among the Jews of the region. Any map of the region demonstrates the tradition by the proliferation of "Sidi"s, showing places named after the marabouts. This tradition has declined through the 20th century. A network of traditionally helped teach basic literacy and knowledge of Islam in rural regions.
Prior to independence, Algeria was home to 1.4 million pieds-noirs (ethnic French who were mostly Catholic), and Morocco was home to half a million Europeans,De Azevedo, Raimondo Cagiano (1994) Migration and development co-operation. . Council of Europe. p. 25. . Tunisia was home to 255,000 Europeans, and Libya was home to 145,000 Europeans. In religion, most of the pieds-noirs in Maghreb are Catholic. Due to the exodus of the pieds-noirs in the 1960s, more North African Christians of Berber or Arab descent now live in France than in Greater Maghreb. Prior to independence, the European Catholic settlers had historic legacy and powerful presence in Maghreb countries.
Recently, the Protestant community of Berber or Arab descent has grown significantly as additional individuals convert to Christianity, especially to Evangelicalism. This has occurred in Algeria,* Sadek Lekdja, Christianity in Kabylie, Radio France Internationale, 7 mai 2001 especially in the Kabylie,Lucien Oulahbib, Le monde arabe existe-t-il ?, page 12, 2005, Editions de Paris, Paris. Morocco, and in Tunisia. "International Religious Freedom Report 2007": Tunisia . United States Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (14 September 2007). This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain. The Catholic population in Libya is estimated to number 100,000, The Catholics are the largest Christian denomination, followed by 60,000 Copts and a small number of Anglicans.
A 2015 study estimates 380,000 Muslims converted to Christianity in Algeria. The number of Moroccans who converted to Christianity (most of them secret worshipers) are estimated between 40,000-150,000. Morocco: No more hiding for Christians , Evangelical Focus Osservatorio Internazionale: "La tentazione di Cristo" April 2010 The International Religious Freedom Report for 2007 estimates thousands of Tunisian people Muslims have converted to Christianity. A 2015 study estimate some 1,500 believers in Christ from a Muslim background living in Libya.
In 2019, the proportion of Melillans that identify themselves as Roman Catholic was 65.0%, the Roman Catholic churches in Melilla belong to the Diocese of Málaga. Roman Catholicism is the largest religion in Ceuta, in 2019, the proportion of Ceutans that identify themselves as Roman Catholic was 60.0%. The Roman Catholic churches in Ceuta belong to the Diocese of Cádiz y Ceuta.
Among other cultural and artistic traditions, jewellery of the Berber cultures worn by Berbers women and made of silver, beads and other applications was a common trait of Berber identities in large areas of the Maghreb up to the second half of the 20th century.See, for example, Rabaté, Marie-Rose (2015). Les bijoux du Maroc: du Haut-Atlas à la vallée du Draa. Paris: ACR ed. and Rabaté, Marie-Rose; Jacques Rabaté; Dominique Champault (1996). Bijoux du Maroc: du Haut Atlas à la vallée du Draa. Aix-en-Provence: Edisud/Le Fennec, as well as Gargouri-Sethom, Samira (1986). Le bijou traditionnel en Tunisie: femmes parées, femmes enchaînées. Aix-en-Provence: Edisud.
In 2020, couscous was added to UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list.
| List by the International Monetary Fund (2013) | List by the World Bank (2013) | List by the CIA World Factbook (2013) |
| { class="wikitable sortable" style="margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto" | ||
| 285,541 | ||
| 179,240 | ||
| 108,430 | ||
| 70,386 | ||
| 8,241 | ||
| 421,626 |
| 241,757 |
| 132,695 |
| 120,755 |
| 11,835 |
| 284,700 |
| 180,000 |
| 108,400 |
| 73,600 |
| 8,204 |
| List by the International Monetary Fund (2019) | List by the World Bank (2017) | List by the CIA World Factbook (2017) |
| { class="wikitable sortable" style="margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto" | ||
| 681,396 | ||
| 328,651 | ||
| 149,190 | ||
| 61,559 | ||
| 19,811 | ||
| 631,150 |
| 298,230 |
| 137,358 |
| 125,142 |
| 17,458 |
| 629,300 |
| 300,100 |
| 135,900 |
| 63,140 |
| 17,370 |
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