Demographics

morocco's population pyramid-2012

Most Moroccans are of mixed Arab-Berber, Arab, Berber and Niger-Congo ethnic background. Arabs and Berbers make up about 99.1% of the Moroccan population.

Berbers are the indigenous people and still make up the bulk of the population (although largely Arabized). A sizeable portion of the population is identified as Haratin and Gnawa (or Gnaoua), black or mixed race. Morocco's Jewish minority (265,000 in 1948) has decreased significantly and numbers about 5,500.

Most of the 100,000 foreign residents are French or Spanish. Some of them are colonists' descendants, who primarily work for European multinational companies, others
are married to Moroccans and preferred to settle in Morocco. Prior to independence, Morocco was home to half a million Europeans.

The largest concentration of Moroccan migrants outside Morocco is in France, which has reportedly over one million Moroccans of up to the third generation. The Netherlands hosts about 360,000 Moroccans and Belgium hosts about 300,000 Moroccans. There are also large
Moroccan communities in
Spain (about 700,000 Moroccans), Italy, Israel, Canada and the United States. Moroccan Jews are thought to constitute the second biggest Jewish ethnic subgroup in Israel.

Religion:

The population of Morocco is 98.7% Muslim, 1.1% Christian, and 0.2% Jewish. According to Jewish community leaders, there are an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 Jews, approximately 2,500 of whom reside in Casablanca and are the remnants of a much larger community that has mostly emigrated. The most recent estimates put the size of the Rabat and Marrakech Jewish communities at about 100 members each. The remainder of the Jewish population is dispersed throughout the country. This population is mostly elderly, with a decreasing number of young persons.

The predominantly Roman Catholic and Protestant foreign-resident Christian community consists of approximately 5,000 practicing members, although some Protestant and Catholic clergy estimate the number to be as high as 25,000. Most foreign resident Christians reside in the Casablanca, Tangier, and Rabat urban areas. Various local Christian leaders estimate that there are 4,000 citizen Christians (mostly ethnically Berber) who regularly attend “house” churches and live predominantly in the south. Some local Christian leaders estimate that there may be as many as 8,000 Christian citizens throughout the country, but many reportedly do not meet regularly due to fear of government surveillance and social persecution.

There are an estimated 3,000 to 8,000 Shia Muslims, most of them foreign residents from Lebanon or Iraq, but also a few citizen converts. Followers of several Sufi Muslim orders across the Maghreb and West Africa undertake joint annual pilgrimages to the country. The Baha’i community, located in urban areas, numbers 350 to 400 persons.

Genetics:

Recent studies make clear no significant genetic differences exist between Arabic and non-Arabic speaking populations, HLA DNA data suggest that most Moroccans are of a Berber origin and that Arabs who invaded North Africa and Spain in the 7th century did not substantially contribute to the gene pool. The Moorish refugees from Spain settled in the coast-towns. According to a 2000 article in European Journal of Human Genetics, Moroccans from North-Western Africa were genetically closer to lberians than to West Africans  and Middle Easterners .

The different loci studied revealed close similarity between the Berbers and other North African groups, mainly with Moroccan Arabic-speakers, which is in accord with the hypothesis that the current Moroccan population has a strong Berber background.

Largest city:

Morocco - Largest Cities

	Name	Population	Latitude/Longitude
1	Casablanca  , Grand Casablanca	3,144,909	33.588 / -7.611
2	Rabat  , Rabat-Salé-Zemmour-Zaër	1,655,753	34.013 / -6.833
3	Fes, Fès-Boulemane	964,891	34.037 / -5
4	Salé  , Rabat-Salé-Zemmour-Zaër	903,485	34.053 / -6.798
5	Marrakech  , Marrakech-Tensift-Al Haouz	839,296	31.634 / -8
6	Agadir  , Souss-Massa-Drâa	698,310	30.42 / -9.598
7	Tangier  , Tanger-Tétouan	688,356	35.767 / -5.8
8	Meknes  , Meknès-Tafilalet	545,705	33.894 / -5.547
9	Oujda  , Oriental Region	405,253	34.681 / -1.908
10	Kenitra  , Gharb-Chrarda-Beni Hssen	366,570	34.261 / -6.58