By the Treaty of Fez (), signed March 30, 1912, sultan Abdelhafid gave up the sovereignty of Morocco to the French, making the country a protectorate. By the agreement signed with France and Spain in November that year, Spain assumed a protectorate over Tangiers and the Rif, Ifni on the Atlantic coast in the southwest, as well as over the Tarfaya area south of the Draa river, where the sultan remained nominally the sovereign and was represented by a vice regent at Sidi Ifni under the control of the Spanish high commission.Harold D. Nelson, "Morocco, a country study" Foreign Area Studies, The American University, DA Pamphlet No.550-49 (Washington, DC 1985), p 43, quoted in GlobalSecurity.org: "The United Nations Failure in Southern Morocco" 1997

Private agreements among the United Kingdom, Italy and France in 1904, without consulting the sultan, had divided the Maghreb into spheres of influence, with France given Morocco as its responsibility. In Morocco, the young sultan Abdelaziz acceded in 1894 at the age of ten, and Europeans became the main advisors at the court, while local rulers became more and more independent from the sultan. The sultan was deposed in 1908, and Moroccan law and order continued to deteriorate under his successor, Abdelhafid. He abdicated in favour of his brother Yusef after signing the Treaty of Fez.

The two zones of the Spanish protectorate had few paved roads and were separated by the Bay of Al Hoceima, which the Spanish called Alhucemas; the Treaty of Fez granted the concession for exploitation of the iron mines of Mount Uixan to the Compañía Española de Minas del Rif, which was also given permission to build a railroad to connect the mines with Melilla.

The treaty was perceived as a betrayal by Moroccan nationalists and led to the War of the Rif (1919–26) between the Spanish and the Moroccan Rif and Jibala tribes, where the leader Abd el-Krim soon emerged and founded a short-lived nationalist Republic of the Rif.

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