Last reviewed 1 October 2026 · A two-minute read · 999 BC–1958
Casablanca grew from the ancient city of Anfa into a port shaped by bombardment, colonial rule and later independence, bearing hospitals, churches, a mosque and a courthouse from different eras, and, near Al Fida – Mers Sultan, a refuge founded in 1985 for mothers rejected by their families.
The short answer
Casablanca is the site, ninety metres from this point, where the nurse Aïcha Chenna founded Association Solidarité Féminine, a refuge and training scheme for single mothers rejected by their families, beginning with a small group in 1985 and a first centre in Tizi Ouasli in 1988. By 2024 it had helped over 21,000 women.
1985 to 1988
A restaurant and bathhouse trained shunned mothers to earn wages
The association started small. In 1988, it opened its first real center, in a neighborhood called Tizi Ouasli. The idea was not charity. Chenna wanted the women to earn a wage and keep it. Within a few years the group was running a restaurant and a pastry shop in Casablanca. Both were staffed by the mothers it trained. The training came with a real job attached to it.
By 2005 the group had added a fitness center with a hammam, a traditional bathhouse. It employed 26 women. It had also taken over running the cafeteria at the French Cultural Center in Casablanca. Chenna's own honors piled up as the work grew. King Mohammed VI gave her the Medal of Honor in 2000. Germany gave her the Elisabeth Norgall Prize in 2005. In 2013, France made her a Knight of the Legion of Honour.
A woman who could not get hired anywhere else was serving a hundred meals a day under her own name.
September 2022 to 2025
The association kept helping single mothers after its founder died
Aïcha Chenna died in September 2022. The association did not stop. Naima Ame took over as president. The work kept going under her. In 2025, Ame said Solidarité Féminine had helped 21,715 single mothers between 2003 and 2024. The help included legal aid, childcare, literacy classes, and job training in food service and hospitality.
That same year, a joint study with two other Moroccan organizations looked at 1,359 women the groups had supported. It found 66 had landed formal jobs with full access to Morocco's social security system. Most of the rest were still working informally. This was a sign of how far the women had come. It also showed how far there still was to go.
5–7 August 1907
French warships killed thousands of civilians in Casablanca
The women Chenna later served were not the first in Casablanca to pay for a decision they had no part in. In 1907, French warships opened fire on the city during the colonial conquest of Morocco. The Bombardment of Casablanca killed somewhere between 1,500 and 7,000 civilians. Streets near the port were leveled in two days. The attack opened four decades of French rule, and it fell hardest on people who had never chosen a side.
That pattern did not end with the French leaving.
7 April 1947
Colonial troops shot 180 people listening to the Sultan
Forty years later, a crowd gathered in Casablanca to hear Sultan Mohammad V speak for independence. French colonial forces sent Senegalese troops into the crowd. They opened fire. The 1947 Casablanca massacre killed 180 people who had come only to listen. It was not a battle. It was a crowd of civilians, and soldiers sent to control them with guns.
Twice in the same city, ordinary people paid for a fight they did not start.
16 May 2003
Twelve suicide bombers struck five Casablanca targets in minutes
That vulnerability resurfaced nearly sixty years later, in peacetime, in the middle of the day. Twelve suicide bombers from the group Salafia Jihadia struck five targets across Casablanca within minutes of each other. They hit a Spanish restaurant, a hotel, a Jewish community center, and the area near the Belgian consulate and an old Jewish cemetery. The 2003 Casablanca bombings killed 45 people, including the bombers. Most of the dead were Moroccans going about an ordinary evening.
It is against that record, bombardment, massacre, bombing, that a nurse opened a door for women the city itself had shut out. Casablanca's violence came from outside forces and armed men. The harm done to single mothers came from neighbors, employers, and families. Chenna built something to answer the second kind, on ground that had already absorbed so much of the first.
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Prehistoric
999 BC
Wikidata records Anfa as an ancient city dating back to around 999 BC, roughly 2.4 kilometers from this spot, the settlement whose name later attached to the wider Casablanca region.
Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes Church, a Catholic church built under French rule, stands about 670 meters northeast and is listed as Moroccan cultural heritage.
This spot lies within Al Fida – Mers Sultan, one of the districts that make up central Casablanca, bordering the older Mers Sultan quarter about 1.1 kilometers southwest.
A French naval bombardment on 5–7 August 1907 destroyed much of the city and killed between 1,500 and 7,000 civilians during the colonial conquest of Morocco.
On 7 April 1947, Senegalese soldiers serving under French colonial command shot into a civilian crowd trying to disrupt Sultan Mohammad V's independence speech, killing 180 people.
The Russian Orthodox Church in Casablanca, built in 1958 and now protected as Moroccan cultural heritage, stands about 560 meters away, a trace of the Russian emigre community that settled here after the revolution.
What was here before Solidarité Féminine was founded?
Before the association formed in 1985, Casablanca had already endured the 1907 bombardment, the 1947 massacre of a crowd gathered to hear Sultan Mohammad V, and decades in which single mothers were shunned by families, neighbours and employers with no institution built to help them.
What happened at Solidarité Féminine's first centre?
Opened in 1988 in the Tizi Ouasli neighbourhood, the centre trained single mothers for paid jobs rather than offering charity, and the association went on to run a restaurant, a pastry shop and later a fitness centre and hammam staffed by the women it trained.
Who founded Association Solidarité Féminine?
Aïcha Chenna, a nurse, founded the association, building it from a small group in 1985 into an organisation recognised with Morocco's Medal of Honour, Germany's Elisabeth Norgall Prize and France's Legion of Honour before her death in September 2022.
How many women has Solidarité Féminine helped?
By 2025 the association's president, Naima Ame, reported that it had helped 21,715 single mothers between 2003 and 2024, offering legal aid, childcare, literacy classes and job training in food service and hospitality.
What violent events has Casablanca experienced?
Casablanca endured a French naval bombardment in August 1907 that killed between 1,500 and 7,000 civilians, a 1947 massacre of 180 people at an independence rally, and the 2003 suicide bombings that killed 45 people across five targets in the city.