History of Casablanca control of Casablanca was not formalised until 1910. It was especially during the years of military governor Hubert Lyautey that Casablanca became Morocco's economic center and Africa's biggest harbour. The famous 1942 film "Casablanca" underlined the city's colonial status at the time—depicting it as the scene of a power struggle between competing European powers, carried out without any reference to the local population, and with the film's vast cosmoplitan cast of characters (American, French, German, Czech and some other nationalities) including not a single Arab. During the 1940s and 1950s, Casablanca was a major centre of anti-French rioting. A terrorist
Casablanca which is "Ad-dar Al Baidaa"', although Arabic also has its own version of Casablanca (كازابلانكا, "Kāzāblānkā"). The city is still nicknamed "Casa" by many locals and outsiders to the city. In many other cities with a different dialect, it is called "Ad-dar Al-Bida", instead. The area which is today Casablanca was founded and settled by Berbers by at least the seventh century BC. It was used as a port by the Phoenicians and later the Romans. In his book Description of Africa, Leo Africanus refers to ancient Casablanca as "Anfa", a great city founded in the Berber kingdom of Barghawata