Who were the original inhabitants of Morocco? Rock carvings in the High Atlas Mountains and in the south support the theory of black-skinned Neanderthal man arriving there some 50 thousand years ago. Permanent settlement had been established in the North African coastal regions by the15th century B.C., when the Phoenicians began to set up trading ports there. The Phoenicians remained until the fall of Carthage in 146 B.C., and Rome was to dominate the area which they originally named Numidia until 428 A.D., with outposts in Tangier, Lixus, and Volubilis among others. Hot on the heels of Roman rule came the East Germanic Vandals of Gaiseric in 428 A.D., who sacked Rome with an army Vandals and Moors in 455 A.D., to be followed by the Eastern Roman Byzantine Empire in 548 A.D., when Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus (known in English as Justinian I or Justinian the Great), sent his general Flavius Belisarius with an army of some 15,000 men including some 2,000 ‘black-skinned’ ‘Barbari’ cavalry to reclaim the former province from the Vandals. It wasn’t until the mid 7th century A.D., however, that an Arab force powerful enough to sustain lasting reign would come.

To the ancient Carthaginians and Greeks the Moors were Maurisi “a black or dark people” and to the Romans Maurus, “a black woolly-haired people”, known synonymously as Aethiops (Ethiopian or Arabian Peninsular including the Nile Valley), Niger (Negro) and Afer (African). As late as the 6th century A.D., a prominent Eastern Roman Empire scholar and historian Procopius of Caesarea (modern Israel) had called the people of what is now Morocco “black.” Tanjah (Anglicised to Tangier) was first known as a Phoenician trading port in the 15th century B.C., and later to become a Carthaginian settlement. Or perhaps it was founded by the Masaesyli Numidians in 215 B.C., ancestors of the nomadic dark-skinned Imazighen (Berbers). Its name is possibly derived from the Berber goddess Tinjis (or Tinga). Ancient coins call it Tenga, Tinga, and Titga, Greek and Latin authors giving numerous variations of the name. After the defeat in 146 B.C. of Carthage by the Romans in the 3rd Punic War, Numidia now became the Roman client kingdom of Mauretania Tingitana which extended from the northern peninsula opposite Gibraltar to Chellah (or Sala Colonia) near Rabat to the southwest, to Tetouan in the east and Volubilis to the south with Tingis as its capital.

In 684 A.D., Sidi Uqba ibn Nafi was the first to bring the Islamic faith from the east to the northern coast of Morocco which he named “El Maghreb al Aqsa” (“the Land Farthest West”). This Arab general in the Umayyad Dynasty centred in Damascus, came with a conquering force of some 10 thousand cavalry; although he made no attempt to rule, he managed to pass the faith on to the resistant indigenous people, the hardy dark-skinned Azilah (‘beautiful’ in Tamazight, the language of the Imazighen). The Imazighen, or "free humans" or "free men", are known to the world as Berbers, from the ancient Greek bárbaro or from the Latin ‘barbari’, though this word is still offensive to these ancient inhabitants of North Africa and the Sahara, for the name "Berber" either described a foreign individual or tribe whose first language was not Greek or a Greek individual or tribe speaking Greek crudely, or a spoken language neither the Greeks nor Romans could understand - hence the word Barbarian. Sidi Uqba ibn Nafi is best known for having founded the city of Kairwan to the south of Tunis and for having built the first ever mosque here in North Africa. He died in 683 when he was ambushed and killed near Biskra in what is now southern Algeria.

In the French epic ‘La Chanson de Roland’ (The Song of Roland), written after the Moors had invaded France in 718 A.D., the invaders are described as “blacker than ink with large noses and ears” and with “nothing white except the teeth”. The Chanson de Roland states that the Moorish army was 50,000 strong and led by Marganice, Emperor of Ethiopia and Carthage - “But Marsilion's uncle Marganice remains with his Negro army”. And “But what avail? Though fled be Marsilies, He's left behind his uncle, the alcaliph Who holds Alferne, Kartagene, Garmalie, And Ethiope, a cursed land indeed; The blackamoors from there are in his keep, Broad in the nose they are and flat in the ear, Fifty thousand and more in company. These canter forth with arrogance and heat, Then they cry out the pagans' rallying-cheer;”. Their most valiant figure was the Saracen Abisme (i.e. Abyssinian), “Their martyrdom, his men's, Marsile has seen, So he bids sound his horns and his buccines; Then canters forth with all his great army; Canters before a Sarrazin, Abisme, More felon none was in that company; Cankered with guile and every felony, He fears not God, the Son of Saint Mary; Black is that man as molten pitch that seethes; Better he loves murder and treachery Than to have all the gold of Galicie;”.

The Muslim Amir Abderrahman I., who founded the independent kingdom of Cordova in Hispania, was born at Damascus in 731 A.D., to die in 787. Surnamed the Wise, he became the first ruler of the family of the Umayyad Dynasty in Spain. The second of the four Islamic caliphates established after the death of the Prophet Mohammed, the name derives from Umayya ibn Abd Shams, the great-grandfather of the first Umayyad caliph who made Damascus his capital. After the massacre of his family in the East Abderrahman fled to what is now Mauritania in West Africa, where he remained until he was called to Spain by a group of alarmed and angry citizens who were tired of an ongoing anarchy. With a handful of relatives, Berber and Moorish agile light horsemen and infantry garnered from southern Morocco, Mauritania, Nigeria and Senegal, he landed in 755 at Almunecar on the coast of southern Spain between Malaga and Granada to soon find himself at the head of a much larger army whereupon he entered Seville to be acknowledged as sovereign. Next he advanced against Yusuf el-Feri, the most powerful of the rival emirs, whose army of greatly superior numbers he entirely defeated, thus firmly establishing himself on the throne of Cordova. The eastern caliphs of Babylonia, who always kept up the idea of maintaining the right of spiritual and temporal rule over the Hispanic Moors, vainly despatched two expeditions against him. In 785 Abderrahman I ordered the construction of the magnificent Cathedral Mosque of Cordova on the ruins of the old Visigoth church of St. Vincent in the historic heart of the city. Designed by himself, at which he is said to have laboured an hour a day with his own hands together with his Moorish subjects, this is one of the most beautiful examples of Muslim art in the whole of Spain. He also planted the first palm tree in Cordova, from which derive all those now in Spain.

This conquest of Spain and Portugal in the early 8th century, and later the greater part of Western Europe, was orchestrated by the Arabs who had in the main conquered North Africa; but the actual conquest of Iberia was carried out by armies of Berber and black African adherents of Islam. It is also noteworthy that these ‘Moors’ were in Europe as conquerors and served as a “civilizing force”. These same Moors, just 1% of the population in Spain, had a tremendously positive impact on European cultural, socio-economic and political institutions for some 700 years; a civilization that was not only artistic, scientific and commercial, but also incredibly tolerant of other races and cultures and many of their cultural and intellectual influences are still in evidence today. An enlightened Europe, brought out of the Dark Ages when subjects were enslaved by the eastern Europeans, to usher in the Renaissance period. The bodyguards of Moorish Sultans were specially chosen for their size - “Negroes, jet-black and of immense strength, recruited from the Atlas, Tumbuctoo, and Nigeria."

The Berber Muslim general Tariq ibn Ziyad from Tlemcen, a town in Morocco close to the now border with Algeria, known in Spanish history and legend as Taric el Tuerto (Taric the one-eyed), led the conquest of Visigoth Hispania (Spain and Portugal) during their civil war. Supposedly invited by the heirs of the Germanic Visigoth king, Witiza, against the Visigoth usurper king Roderic, on April 29th, 711 with an army of 3,000 Berbers and 7,000 black soldiers from the bilad al-Sudan (Arabic for Land of the Blacks) under the orders of an Umayyad Caliph ruling from Damascus, he crossed the straits to land at the edge of an escarpment known then as Mons Calpe. Since King Roderick and most of his military forces were engaged in a battle with the Basques in the north of Spain, Tariq ibn Ziyad and his army had little opposition as they conquered all the small towns in close proximity to Mons Calpe. When King Roderic heard of the invasion of Spain by these Moors, he amassed an army six times that of Tariq Ibn Ziyad’s and moved south to defend his kingdom. Wasting no time to relish his victory over Roderic who was killed during the bloody Battle of Guadalete on July 19th, Tariq pushed on with his dauntless and seemingly tireless Moorish and Senegalese cavalry mounted on ‘Barb’ horses - a crossbreed of Arab and Berber stock - to the Spanish city of Toledo and within a month had effectively terminated European dominance of the Iberian Peninsula. Tariq left a garrison at the foot of Mons Calpe, which the Africans renamed in a compliment to their general Gibr Tariq, meaning rock of Tariq, or more probably Jbel al Tariq, which means mountain of Tariq, now known as Gibraltar. Tariq ibn Ziyad is considered to be one of the most important military commanders in Iberian history, though this was probably not his real name for he was a Berber with probably a Berber non-Arab name. Musa ibn Nusaïr, Arab governor of North Africa, joined Tariq now made Governor of Hispania, and helped complete the conquest of Iberia with an army now of 18,000 men. The two commanders met in Talavera, where the Moors were given the task of subduing the northwest of Spain and with vigour and speed they set about their mission so that, within three months, the entire territory north of the Ebro River as far as the Pyrenees Mountains and the turbulent Basque country. In the aftermath, thousands of Moors flooded into the Iberian Peninsula. So eager were they to come that some are reputed to have floated over on tree-trunks. Tariq had his illustrious military career cut short, for he was called to Damascus by the jealous Caliph Al Wahid I where he spent the rest of his life in prison, there to die in 720.

The name for Arabia in the earliest Old Testament writings - in Christianity, the entire Hebrew Bible is called the "Old Testament" - is either Ismael or Ishmael, or Madian or Midian (Genesis Chapter 25). In the 1st century B.C., the name ‘Arabia’ was applied to the entire peninsular as defined by Diodorus Siculus of Sicily in the 40 books comprising his Bibliotheca Historica and by the Greek geographer and historian Strabo in his Geographika. The meaning of the term Arab can be either that of “nomad,” or “the Land of the Setting Sun,” i.e. the West, or anywhere situated to the west of Babylonia and Assyria, which was considered to be where the Biblical record of Genesis was complied. The ancient Hebrews, however, called the land of Arabia “the Country of the East,” and the Arabs were termed “Children of the East,” as the Arabian Peninsula lay to the east of Palestine. In older writings the term Arab is used only as an appellative, meaning “desert,” or “people of the desert,” or “nomad” in general. About three-quarters of all present-day Moroccans are of Berber descent. Arabs, who constitute the bulk of the inhabitants of the larger cities, form the second largest ethnic group. Differences among ethnic groups have broken down through intermarriage among Arabs, Berbers and the country´s small number of black Africans, with the exception of areas in the High Atlas Mountains.

It would appear the Old Testament concurs with the report that the original Arabs were Black Africans. The name given this civilization is to be found in the Old Testament where, according to the genealogical table of Genesis (10.6), Ham’s first-born was Kush who was to settle with his tribe in Northeast Africa. Kush is another word for Black and, according to certain bible scholars, the archetypal father figure of Black African people. The word was also used to indicate the Black Africans who then lived in the Nile Valley region of Kush. The Nubian Kingdom of Kush, an ancient African state centered on the confluences of the Blue and White Niles and the River Atbara in what is now Sudan, was one of the earliest civilizations to develop in the Nile River Valley, a region later to become known as the Land of the Pharaohs. Referred to as “Nubia” and as “Aethiopia” in ancient Greek records, the Kushites were to leave their indelible mark on various aspects of the ancient world. In the Bible also and at different times after, this Nile Valley region was referred to as "Cush". Moses’ wife, Tzipporah, is described as a Kushite in the Book of Numbers (12:1).

In Arabia, the teachings of a man named Mohammed (meaning “Praiseworthy”) Ibn Abdullah Banu Hashim (Mohammed, son of Abdallah – servant of Allah - of the Banu Hisham tribe) were spreading quickly ever westward. Mohammed himself, who was to unite the whole of Arabia, appears to have had a prominent African-Kushitic lineage for, according to Abu Uthman Amr Ben Bahr Al-Fuqaymi al-Basri, (nicknamed ‘al-Jahiz’ meaning "with projecting eye" as a result of his startling appearance) a renowned Arab writer, satirist, humorist, theologian and philosopher who was born in Basra in 776 A.D. of African descent who had lived in Baghdad, “…the guardian of the sacred Kaaba-Abd al-Muttalib, “fathered ten Lords, Black as the night and magnificent.” One of these men was Shaiba ibn Hashim also known as Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Muttalib, the father of Mohammed. J. A. Rogers, one of the most pre-eminent of Black African historians, had the following to say of Mohammed (pbuh – peace be upon him): “Mohamet, himself, was to all accounts a Negro. A contemporary of his describes him as ‘large mouthed,’ and ‘bluish-colored, with hair that was neither straight nor curly’. Mohammed’s mother Āminah bint Wahab (Āminah meaning trustworthy and bint, daughter of) was also African and his paternal grandfather and guardian, Abd al-Muttalib ibn Hashim, who brought him up after he became fully orphaned, is spoken of as being “very dark”.

The Prophet Mohammed’s tribe of the Quraish claimed to have descended from Ishmael, (Ismaïl) the Prophet Abraham’s oldest son and heir born to his Nubian Egyptian concubine called Hagar. Sarah, Abraham’s wife was childless at the time, yet desired a son and offered her enslaved maidservant Hagar to Abraham as a surrogate. At Sarah’s final bidding, with only a gourd of water and some unleavened bread, Abraham exiled Hagar and her son to the Desert of Par’an or Wilderness of Par’an in central Arabia near Mecca - quite likely the place where the Israelites subsequently spent part of their 40 years of wandering. Hagar is associated with the Mosaic Covenant (also referred to as the Sinaitic Covenant, the Mosaic Law, or the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures - the Law/Torah) which refers to the covenant between Yahweh (mistakenly transcribed to Jehovah) and the nation of Israel, itself playing a pivotal role in defining the Kingdom of Israel. Ishmael had 12 sons through his Egyptian wife who became twelve tribal chiefs. These twelve sons were named Nebaioth, Kedar, Abdel, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadad, Tema, Ietur, Napish and Kedemah. Ishmael is said to have had two wives, one of them named Aisha whose name corresponds to the Muslim tradition for the name of Mohammed's wife. The tribe stressed its Black African lineage with much pride, remaining closely connected with the southern tribes of Kush who had originated the worship of the Al-hajar Al-aswad - the Black Stone - the eastern cornerstone of the Kaaba at Mecca. Reverently draped in black cloth throughout the year, it beckons to every Muslim of the world to come to its sacred ground. The Kaaba, also known as the Ka’bah, Kabah and Caaba, from the Arabic for a cube-shaped home or room, was built by the Prophet Abraham as a landmark for the House Of God (Allah) for the purpose of worshipping one God alone now in the centre of the holiest place of worship in Islam (meaning submission) - the sacred Mosque Al Masjid al-Haram in Mecca.

This Black Stone is a Muslim object of reverence dating, according to Islamic tradition back to the time of Adam and Eve. According to Islamic belief, God ordained a place of worship on Earth to reflect a house in heaven and that Adam, the first man, was the first to build such a place of worship. Muslims say that the Stone was found by Abraham (Ibrahim) and his son Ishmael (Ismail) when they were searching for stones with which to build the Kaaba; that they recognised its worth and made it one of the building's cornerstones; that it has the power to cleanse worshippers of their sins by absorbing them into itself and that the Black Stone was once a pure and dazzling white and it has turned black because of the sins it has absorbed over the years. Secular historians point to the history of stone worship, and especially meteorite worship in pre-Islamic Arabia but there is no way to test this hypothesis without removing and examining the Stone, which would doubtless never be permitted by its guardians. Many consider it to be a tektite - natural glass rocks up to a few centimeters in size, which most scientists argue were formed by the impact of large meteorites on Earth’s surface. The Stone is roughly 30 cm in diameter, and placed 1½ meters above the ground. During the conflict between Ibn Zubayr of Mecca and the Umayyad Caliph Mu'awiyah in the Middle Ages, the Kaaba was set on fire and the Black Stone broke into three pieces, its parts to be reassembled with silver by Ibn Zubayr and held together by a silver frame fastened by silver nails to the Stone. Ibn Zubayr also ordered the rebuilding of the Kaaba in stone in accordance with the original dimensions believed to have been set by Abraham, and paved the open space around it. The shrine at this time had two doors and a wooden staircase for roof access. When devout pilgrims now circle the Kaaba as part of the Tawaf ritual of the Hajj, many of them try, if possible, to stop and kiss the Black Stone, emulating the kiss that it received from the Prophet Mohammed. If they cannot reach it, they are to point to it on each of their seven circuits around the Kaaba.

Tradition also holds that Mohammed’s predecessors, through certain of Ishmael’s sons, came from the stronghold of Black Arabian inhabitants of Marib in Yemen, a civilisation called Saba in Arabic and Sheba in the west which was part of the Kingdom of Kush. When the dam in Marib was breached in 450 A.D., a resultant drought, hunger and political unrest led to a consequent population movement north from the fortified city. Mohammed himself was persecuted and harassed and he and his followers eventually migrated to Medina in 622 A.D. In 630 A.D., Mohammed and his followers returned to Mecca as conquerors and rededicated the Kaaba as an Islamic house of worship. Henceforth, the traditional annual pilgrimage was to become a Muslim rite, known as the Hajj. Researchers have noted that the Kaaba is accurately aligned on two heavenly phenomena - the cycles of the moon and the rising of Canopus, the brightest star after Sirius. In 692, after taking over Mecca, Umayyad Caliph Abdul Malik demolished the Kaaba and rebuilt it based on the Quraishi version. The Abbasid Caliphs contributed the kiswa, a black cloth covering brought from Tanis in Egypt comprised of eight curtains (a pair on each side of the cube) embroidered with gold.

But just who were the Moors anyway? As early as the Middle Ages and as late as the 17th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary - The Moors were commonly supposed to be mostly black or very swarthy, and hence the word is often used for negro. The American Dr. Chancellor James Williams – son of a former black slave - writer, university professor, and historian, author of The destruction of Black Civilization: Great issues of a Race between 4500 B.C. and 2000 A.D, a book which has become a cornerstone of the field of academics known as Afrocentrism, wherein he states that "The original Moors, like the original Egyptians, were Black Africans."

The Baroque era sculptor Pietro Tacca, at the foot of Baccio Bandinelli’s statue of Ferdinand I de Medici erected at Leghorn (Livorno in Tuscany) in 1623, has four Moors in chains, which were modelled from original Barbary pirates captured between 1620-24), one of whom is instantly recognizable as a Negroid. Ferdinand I called Leghorn "his mistress" and to increase its population he showered favours on it and on those who went to live there, to make it a town of refuge for men from every nation, including Greeks, Jews and the Moors driven out of Spain.

Whilst no serious research has been done about the existence in England of the so-called 'Moors' who ruled the Iberian Peninsula for some 700 years, yet the Close Rolls of King John, July 1205, gives a 'mandate to the constable of Northampton to retain Peter the Saracen, the maker of crossbows, and another with him, for the King's service, and allow him 9 pence a day'. And in 1600 the Sultan of Morocco Ahmad I al-Mansur sent his Secretary Abd el-Ouahed (the first) Ben Messaoud as ambassador of the Barbary States to the Court of Queen Elizabeth to negotiate an alliance against Spain. He arrived with a retinue of fifteen 'Moors' to be given a warm reception by her. Nevertheless, the 15 appeared to have had trouble obtaining housing and, when they did find accommodation, they lived alone and were 'strangely attired and behavioured', reputedly slaughtering their own animals, presumably to fulfil religions requirements.

Few documents portray the ethnicity of the Moors in medieval Europe with more clarity than the epic of Sir Morien, a metrical romance rendered into English prose from an early 14th century Dutch manuscript version of some 5000 lines. Though neither the date of the original poem nor the name of the author is known, it relates the story of a splendidly heroic Moorish knight, possibly a Christian convert, the nephew of Sir Perceval and son of a Moorish princess who comes to Britain on a quest to find his father. He first challenges, then battles and finally wins the unqualified respect and admiration of Sir Lancelot. He is joined on his quest by Sir Lancelot and Sir Gawain, two of the Knights of the Arthurian Round Table. Sir Morien is described as: "He was all black, even as I tell ye: his head, his body, and his hands were all black, saving only his teeth. His shield and his armour were even those of a Moor, and black as a raven." Initially Morien is simply called "the Moor” and as being extremely forthright and articulate. Sir Gawain, whose life was saved on the battlefield by Sir Morien, is stated to have "harkened, and smiled at the black knight's speech." It is noted that Morien was as "black as pitch; that was the fashion of his land….Moors are black as burnt brands." And again: "His teeth were white as chalk, otherwise was he altogether black."…. "Morien, who was black of face and limb," was a great warrior, and it is said that: "His blows were so mighty; did a spear fly towards him, to harm him, it troubled him no whit, but he smote it in twain as if it were a reed; naught might endure before him." Thus, ironically, Sir Morien did this black knight come to personify all of the finest virtues of the knights of the European Middle Ages. In the 16th century Tudor England, the (now degrading) name blackamoor (black Moor) - a term later to come into use in the United States of America as “piccaninny” - is often mentioned. This term is still in use to describe a specific type of statue and/or jewellery. In 1527, Thomas Windham gave passage to 'two Moores being noblemen whereof one was the king's blood' to North Africa. In 1577, Queen Elizabeth I of England issued an order for a 'Garcon coate of white Taffeta, cut and lined with tincel, striped down with gold and silver ... pointed with pynts and ribands', for her 'lytle Blackamore'. But was the Queen alone in having a Black servant, or were there black people in other princely households and maybe even in the households of the less exalted? Were all black persons there only servants? Were black people, however defined, a relatively common sight in England in the 16th century? It would appear so for, in 1596, Elizabeth I also decreed that all “Negars and blackamoors should be sent back to Spain or Portugal as they were disturbing local labour markets. It became very fashionable for the wealthy to have blackamoor page boys and personal servants, as their complexions set off the pale-skinned beauty of the women of the family." 89 such were deported.

After his death in 1598 the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum - the "first modern atlas" - of Abraham Ortelius (Abraham Ortels), geographer to the king Philip II of Spain, was re-published. This is a series of now precious maps with commentaries wherein he described some of the characteristics of the male inhabitants of “Barbarie’' as: "generalye all tawney, moores, verye sturdye and stronge of bodye... They are very jealous of theyr wyves... and very hardlye can they forget any iniurye offered them... The countrye swaynes are better, more lovinge, and patiente, but so simple that they will beleeve any incredible fiction."

On first publication in 1601 of William Shakespeare’s Othello, the Moor of Venice - believed to have been based on the Italian short story Hecatommithi “Un Capitano Moro” by Giovanni Battista Giraldi, first published in 1565 which itself closely resembles the earlier tale of “The Three Apples”, a story related by Scheherazade in the One Thousand And One Nights (The Arabian Nights) - this man is depicted as a proud, heroic military general and noble Moor in the service of the Venetian State whose marriage to a white woman used appears to confirm the then society’s racist values. The term 'Moor' for a Jacobean audience may simply have signified Othello being different to the norm and to mark him as an outsider so as to create dramatic tension, someone other than human, someone satanic. In the first scene Iago, Othello’s brown-skinned scheming ensign, and Roderigo, a rich and dissolute gentleman who lusts after Desdemona, exchange racist insults to later pass them on to Brabantio, Desdemona’s father. Iago constantly refers to Othello not by name, but as “the Moor”, as a “Barbary horse” and elsewhere uses the term “barbarian”, thus constantly reducing him to a racial stereotype: later he calls him “the thicklips”, reducing that stereotype even further to a single anatomical feature. Brabantio says to the effect that for Desdemona, a “fair” young Venetian woman, to fall in love with a Moor is a perversion of nature; the only explanation he can think of is that Othello has used some hellish love potion, to enchant her. Throughout this scene their focus is on blackness and a considerable amount of racist sexual innuendo which had no apparent effect on the audience, perhaps due to the discovery of the ‘New World’ where new forms of animals, plants, and forms of humanity were presented, many of which were regarded as the equivalent of what we would now call the ‘missing link’.

In 1930, in an interview with the New York Times, the African American singer and actor Paul Robeson - the part of Othello was almost always previously played by white actors blacked up - said: "There are very few Moors in Northern Africa without Ethiopian blood in their veins, but I am approaching the part as Shakespeare wrote it and am playing Othello a man whose tragedy lay in the fact that he was sooty black."

There are two other Moors in Shakespeare's plays: In The Merchant of Venice, the Prince of Morocco, a dignified ruler who hopes to marry Portia, a stage direction reads “Enter Morochus a tawnie Moore all in white” to suggest he was olive-skinned and not black. In Titus Andronicus, Aaron the Moor is described as “coal-black” with a “fleece of woolly hair who the Romans call “the incarnate devil”. The Roman nurse calls his son “A devil, a joyless, dismal, black and sorrowful issue….as loathsome as a toad amongst the fair-faced breeders of our clime”. Aaron the Moor also refers to his son as a “thick-lipped slave”. It has even been suggested Caliban, in The Tempest, Prospero’s dark, earthy slave, the son of a witch-hag frequently referred to as a monster by the other characters represented the Moors. Caliban, from the dark soil - wild, deformed, irregular, neither man nor brute, the essence of grossness without vulgarity. Caliban’s swarthy appearance, his forced servitude, and his native status on the island have led many readers to interpret him as a symbol of the cultures occupied and suppressed by the Spanish colonial society, represented by the power of Prospero. "Caliban" is an anagram of the Spanish word canibal, from Christopher Columbus’ designation Caniba for the Amerindian Caribs and also the source of the English word “cannibal.

The Moroccan Sultan Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansour Billah, also known as Moulay Yacoub, recorded as “the son of a Negro woman”, born around 1160 to reign from 1184 until his death in Marrakech in 1199, was the third Almohad Amir (Emir). The Almohades were a confederation of the dark-skinned Berber Sanhaja, Zanata and Masmouda tribes.

The powerful black Moroccan Berber Almoravid Dynasty leader, Yusuf Ibn Tachfin, is described by an Arab chronicler Abou Mohammed Salah ibn Abd Allah el-Halim in his Roudh el-Kartas (History of the Rulers of Morocco), published in 1326, 218 years after Tachfin’s death (he lived, some say, to be 101), as being of " brown colour, middle height, thin, little beard, soft spoken, black eyes, straight nose, lock of Mohammed falling on his top of his ear, eyebrow joined, woolly hair", and is generally accepted to have come from what is now Nigeria, had brought in an army composed largely of “pure Negroes” to completely subject what is now known as Morocco, the Western Sahara and Mauritania. The mixed racial make-up of the Moors is confirmed by their own writing for he also wrote that the Moorish Sultan Mohammed Ben Idriss was “blond”.

The Moroccan Merinid Dynasty “el Sultan Aswad” or “Black Sultan”, Abu el Hassan Ali el Saïd who reigned from 1331-1351, the most famous of the Merinides rulers of Morocco, got his name and his dark skin from his mother, an Abyssinian enslaved Nubian described as “dark and of mixed blood”.

The Moroccan Saâdi Dynasty, originated from the Bani Zaydan tribe in south-western pre-Saharan region of Morocco, began with the reign of the dark-skinned Sultan Mohammed ash-Sheikh al-Draâoui (“the Black”) al-Tagmadert in 1554.

Of all three Moorish kings killed in the Battle of Ksar el-Kbir (Alcazar)( the Battle of the Three Kings) in 1578, when the invading armies of King Sebastiao of Portugal and Abu Abdallah Mohammed II (son of Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik) were defeated by the army of the Saâdien Dynasty Sultan Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik, two were mulattoes (Sebastiao and Abu Marwan) and one, Abu Abdallah, an unmixed Negro, (Muley Moharnet qui fut surnommé ’le Negre’ parce qu’il ‘était fils d’une Negresse).

The late 19th century Bahia Palace in Marrakech - its name translates as 'The Brilliant' - was built by craftsmen from Fes to house the family retinue of 4 wives, 24 concubines and countless offspring of the black slave Si' Ahmed Ben Musa (or Bou Ahmed) ‘The Iron Chancellor’ after he had risen to power and wealth as the Grand Vizier of Sultan Moulay al-Hassan.

Even more interesting is how the Moors described their European foes: a Muslim teacher Saïd al-Andalusi (Saïd of Andalusia (1029-1071)) wrote the following of his White Iberian opponents in his Kitab Tabakat al Umam or “Book of Categories”: They “are nearer animals than men . . . They are by nature unthinking and their manners crude. Their bellies protrude; their colour is white and their hair is long. In sharpness and delicacy of spirit and in intellectual perspicacity, they are nil. Ignorance, lack of reasoning power and boorishness are common among them.” The original Black Berbers (Garamantes), known as the ‘Mores’ - known in Morocco today as the Haratin, dark-skinned oasis farmers of the Zenagha of southern Morocco - were the North African ancestors of today’s dark-brown and black-brown inhabitants of the Sahel and Sahara, such as the Touareg, the Fulani; the Kunta of the Sahel, the Trarza of Mauritania and Senegal and the Chaamba of Chad. There are still two types of Black Moors in West Africa: the 'Abd-el-tilad’ (those slaves who belong to the tents and are part of the family), and the 'Abd-el-tarbiya’ (acquired slaves). Even though slavery is now against the law, it continues to be a fundamental part of the social and economical structure of the Moors in certain countries south of the Sahara but certainly not in Morocco.

There are “white” or “tawny” Moors, especially due to their ‘Libyan’ Berber ancestry - and latterly those so called after they had lived in Europe for centuries and had been ‘whitened’ by mating with Europeans - called Tamahu by the black Garamantes from the Sahara (‘tama’: people and ‘hu’: light ivory). Some have red hair, some red beards. A White Moor is ethnologically defined as "a nomad of Berber-Arab origin" – such as the current ruling class of Mauritania called the Beydanes - representing the two upper classes of Moorish society: the 'Adma’ (nobility) and the ‘Lahma’ (commoners). The Adma is further sub-divided into two groups: the Hassan and the Zaouia (warriors and religious leaders). The responsibility of the warriors is to protect the religious leaders who in turn provide moral, spiritual, legal, and political services for their protectors; instruct their children; minister to their sick and wounded; act as intercessors between God and man; chase away evil spirits; prevent curses; and settle disputes. The Lahma are also grouped into classes, which act as servants to either the warriors or the religious leaders and are only allowed to marry within their own social class. A very proud people, they convey a sense of superiority to others in the area and within their society, the Koran is faithfully followed, marriages are still pre-arranged by the parents - a Moorish woman does not marry against her family's wishes - with the groom's father requesting the hand of the bride. If the potential groom is approved, she is given a dowry of money or property upon marriage, as is the bride’s father. When Moors from different nomadic tribes meet, there are rigid customs that are followed which are a consequence of the long history of raids in the desert used by the groups to regulate the meeting. For example, when conversing, several mannerisms are used to indicate their involvement in the conversation. Should a Moor blow on his hand during a conversation, it means he does not believe anything that is being said, or if he puts his finger in his ear, it means that he is not interested in what is being said, just so’s you know.

In Morocco, race varies from fair-skinned to very dark, indicating Morocco's position in the world as bridge between Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Moreover, the blues from black Africa have a relation here - the Gnaoua (pronounced ga-now-wa), so named for their origin in Guinea, now heirs to a musical and spiritual tradition brought north across the Sahara centuries ago by black slaves who arrived at Morocco’s Atlantic seaboard in the 15th century with the gold and salt camel caravans, to enjoy today new fame as their hypnotic rhythms fascinate listeners from across the world. The Gnaouas gathered into brotherhoods which continue to practice rituals of hypnotism and exorcism, borrowing as much from pre-Islamic culture as from the rituals of their original African divinities. Both their music and dress indicate their origins in Black Africa. Their religious and therapeutic ceremonies, accompanied by the bass of the great hajhouj lute, the crackling of the metal castanets and the heavy beat of the drums, call for the mlouk, the beneficial genie who will come down upon the dancer at the acme of his trance. You will doubtless see Gnaouas in pairs to entertain tourists, for a few dirhams, in the squares of Fes and Marrakech, but the true Gnaouas are to be found in Essaouira where they also have, usually in June, an annual World Music Festival.

The leaders of Spanish expeditions to the New World called themselves conquistadores, a name derived from reconquista, the Christian desire to (re)conquer their land from the Muslim Moors. They also evoked the name of Santiago Matamoros (“Saint James the Moor Killer” from Campostela and the Patron Saint of Spain). To this day, reference to ‘Moor’ is found, for example, in the Spanish word ‘mora’, a blackberry (originally a mora was the name given to a Moorish woman); a brunette or dark tanned is ‘moreno’. ‘Morapio is a humorous name for pure unadulterated wine. They also use the term and think of it as neutral in local slang such as "no hay moros en la costa" - literally, "There are no Moors on the coast", meaning "the coast is clear". Cimarrón means wild and unruly. In French, ‘mauricaud’ means dark-skinned; a ‘morillon’ is a black grape. ‘Marron’ is a chestnut. In Italian, a ‘moraiola’ is a black olive and so on. Incidentally the "Ole" of the bullring originated from the Arabic "Wallah", "By God"; just try saying that word during the Spanish Inquisition and see how far you’d have been stretched.