It is commonly believed that Morocco was invaded by a great Arab horde which carried all before it, and that the Modern Moroccans are descended from these invaders. This is quite erroneous. It is true that in 682 the country was invaded by the great Arab conqueror, Sidi Okba, who gave it its name of Maghreb-el-Aska because it was to him the Farthest West. Though Sidi Okba’s stay in Morocco was of brief duration, it was long enough to have a profound effect on the country’s Berber inhabitants. Yet the Arabs and the Berbers, with a common religion, a common government, and with the same tribal groups, have failed to amalgamate to any great extent, the Arabizing of the Berbers being limited to little beyond their conversion to Islam. The Arab, transported to a soil which does not always suit him, and always a nomad at heart, so far from thriving, tends to disappear, whereas the Berber becomes more and more aggressive and yearly increases in numbers, at present forming at least four fifths of the population of Morocco. When Arabic is mentioned as the language of Morocco it is seldom realized how small a proportion of the country’s inhabitants use it as their mother-tongue. Berber is the real language of the empire, Arabic that of its creed and court. The third race which may be considered native is the Jewish, consisting of two different branches: those settled among the Berbers from time immemorial, speaking their language and in addition Arabic in a hideously corrupted form; and those expelled from Spain and other European countries during the Middle Ages, most of whom have got little farther than the ports. These latter, who usually speak Spanish and Arabic with equal fluency, are the most progressive and prosperous of all the inhabitants of Morocco; they own banks and shops, they lend money at usurious rates of interest to the less thrifty Berbers and Arabs, and in their hands is most of the empire’s foreign trade. To these white races—Berber, Arab, and Jew—constant additions of a negro element have been made as a result of the slave-trade which Morocco until very recently carried on with the western Sudan. The introduction of negro slave-girls into Berber and Arab harems has produced a certain proportion of mulattos, whose dark skins and negroid features tend to confirm the European visitor in his misconception that the people of Morocco belong to a non-Caucasian race.