Midar

Midar belongs to the province of Driouch in the Oriental region.¹ The province was added to the administrative divisions by Decree No. 2-09-319 of 11 June 2009;² before that, Midar was in the province of Nador.³ The list of municipalities issued the same day names three urban municipalities in the new province: Driouch, Ben Taïeb and Midar.⁴ At the 2004 census Midar was still recorded as a rural municipality with 16,022 inhabitants.⁵

In 2014 the urban municipality of Midar had 15,021 inhabitants in 3,306 households, an average of 4.5 people per household, and accounted for 7.12 per cent of the province’s population.⁶ In 2024 there were 15,391 inhabitants in 3,975 households, placing Midar between Driouch (15,661) and Ben Taïeb (15,002).⁷

In 2024 the province of Driouch had 188,191 inhabitants, 58,347 in towns and 129,844 in the countryside. Its urban share rose from 26.5 per cent in 2014 to 31.0 per cent, more than in any other province of the region; even so, it remains the least urbanised province of the Oriental.⁸

In 2014, 65.1 per cent of people in Midar spoke Darija and Amazigh in everyday life, 27.2 per cent Amazigh only and 6.4 per cent Darija only.⁹ Across the province, 89.6 per cent used Tarifit and 59.8 per cent Darija in 2024; in the Oriental as a whole, the share of Tarifit is 31.1 per cent.¹⁰

The eastern Rif is a succession of basins and ranges shaped by tectonic movements in the late Neogene; most of the basins are drained by the Oued Kert.¹¹ A few kilometres west of Midar, on the middle course of the Kert at Iméhoutène, a Messinian sequence crops out over less than half a square kilometre: conglomerates, fossil-rich fine sands and algae-rich limestones that form a clearly visible bank in the landscape. Above them lie more than ten metres of conglomerates assigned to the Pontian.¹²

The geographer Hassan El Abbassi describes the basins and mountains of the eastern Rif as a transition zone between the high, humid central Rif to the west and the steppe basins with an arid climate to the east. Sheltered by the central Rif, the climate is semi-arid to arid; the number of rainy days rarely exceeds 50, yet daily falls of more than 50 millimetres are frequent.¹³

Of the people in work in Midar in 2014, 51.8 per cent were employees, 37.1 per cent self-employed and 4.7 per cent employers. 2,552 of the 3,306 households lived in a modern Moroccan house, 71.2 per cent in their own home; 95.7 per cent had electricity and 85.1 per cent running water.¹⁴

The local hospital in Midar has 45 beds and 90 staff; it offers general and specialist consultations, care for mothers and children, and surgery.¹⁵ The national road RN2 from Al Aroui via Midar and Driouch to Kassita is being upgraded to a dual carriageway over 70 kilometres for 820 million dirhams.¹⁶

The nearest station with WMO normals is Al Hoceima on the coast, 12 metres above sea level. There, mean daily maximum temperatures rise from 17.4 °C in January to 28.9 °C in August; of 335.4 millimetres of annual precipitation, an average of 1.7 millimetres falls in July and 45.8 millimetres in November (WMO climate normals 1991–2020).¹⁷