What is Morocco's longest river?

Morocco's longest river is the Draa (sometimes spelled Drâa), which stretches around 1,100 kilometres — though 'river' needs an asterisk here, because for much of its course and most of the year it's a riverbed and an oasis rather than the broad flowing water that word conjures. It begins high in the Atlas, gathers from the Dadès and other tributaries near Ouarzazate, then bends south toward the Sahara.

The stretch that travellers fall in love with is the Draa Valley, the green ribbon that unspools south of Ouarzazate toward Zagora and M'Hamid. After hours of arid mountain road, you suddenly drop into a corridor of date palms, mud-brick kasbahs and small farmed plots, all sustained by the river's water threading through the desert. It's one of the most photogenic drives in the country and the classic overland approach to the dunes of the deep south.

Hydrologically the Draa is a desert river, and that's the fascinating part. As it pushes south and west it loses most of its flow to irrigation and evaporation, often vanishing into the sand long before the coast. Only after exceptional rains does water actually complete the journey to the Atlantic near Tan-Tan. So the Draa is less a continuous waterway than a lifeline — a string of oases that made human settlement, trade caravans and agriculture possible at the edge of the Sahara.

For your trip, the Draa Valley is best enjoyed as a journey rather than a destination: a day's drive that doubles as a slow reveal of how Morocco transitions from mountain to desert. Stop at a kasbah, walk into a palm grove, buy dates at a roadside stall, and you'll understand why these green corridors were prized for centuries. It pairs naturally with a Sahara itinerary heading toward Zagora or Erg Chigaga.