Ksar el-Kebir

Ksar el-Kebir lies on the Loukkos, near the junction of the routes between Fez, Rabat and Tangier, and is the main market of the irrigated Loukkos valley.¹ The town belongs to Larache province in the Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima region.²

At the 2024 census the municipality had 124,701 inhabitants, compared with 126,617 in 2014, making it the second-largest municipality in the province after Larache.³ In 1982 Ksar el-Kebir had 73,541 inhabitants. In 1986 the geographer Jean-François Troin described the town and Larache, 36 kilometres away, as an urban pair.⁴

Roman ruins attest to earlier settlement on the site; the Arab town was founded in the 8th century. Its mosque is among the oldest in western Morocco and was built with inscribed stones from an earlier church.⁵

On 4 August 1578, on the Oued al-Makhazin near Ksar el-Kebir, between the Loukkos and one of its tributaries, the battle known in Europe as the Battle of the Three Kings took place. King Sebastian of Portugal and the former sultan al-Mutawakkil died in it, and Sultan Abd al-Malik died the following morning; he was succeeded by his brother Ahmad al-Mansur.⁶

In 1912 the town came under Spanish administration and was rebuilt; since 1956 it has been part of the independent Kingdom of Morocco.⁷ In 1986 Troin described it as a market town for farmers within a radius of 50 kilometres, which benefited from the new food-processing plants in the Loukkos irrigation area, where sugar beet, sugar cane, tea and citrus fruit were grown.⁸

The irrigation areas of the Office régional de mise en valeur agricole du Loukkos in the Loukkos plain cover 50,000 hectares.⁹ Near Ksar el-Kebir lies the Oued El Makhazine dam, in operation since 1979 and listed as the sixth-largest dam in Morocco; its hydroelectric plant generates more than 36 megawatts, and its water is released into the Loukkos.¹⁰

The climate figures come from the Larache weather station on the coast, 47 metres above sea level: there, mean daily maximum temperatures rise from 16.7 °C in January to 28.7 °C in August. Of 700.5 millimetres of annual precipitation, an average of 0.8 millimetres falls in July and 129.1 millimetres in November (WMO climate normals 1991–2020).¹¹