Morocco

Morocco, the Alaouite kingdom in Africa's northwest corner, has been ruled by one family since Moulay Rashid reunified it in 1666. His brother Moulay Ismail, the half-century sultan of 1672–1727, built imperial Meknes, raised the Black Guard of enslaved soldiers, and retook most of the Portuguese and Spanish coastal forts, making Morocco the corsair terror of two seas. After Ismail the court sank into thirty years of succession anarchy, and the 19th century brought unequal treaties: defeat at Isly in 1844, Spanish seizure of Tetouan in 1860, then the 1912 Treaty of Fes that split the country into French and Spanish protectorates. Abd el-Krim's Rif republic humiliated Spain from 1921 to 1926 before France crushed it. Mohammed V, exiled for backing independence, returned to free Morocco in 1956; his son Hassan II staged the 1975 Green March into Western Sahara and ruled hard for 38 years. Mohammed VI, crowned in 1999, has loosened the system — family code, Berber official status, new ports — while the Sahara question stays frozen.