The Rifians, in their own language Iriffiyen, are the Tamazight-speaking population of the Rif mountains of northern Morocco. Their variety, Tarifit, is the northern branch of Tamazight, with several internal dialects (Beni Iznasen, Aith Waryaghar, Aith Touzin among them) and an estimated five million speakers including the diaspora.
The Rifian social order has long been characterised by acephalous segmentary organisation, with feuding lineages mediated through customary law and through religious lodges. The classic ethnographic descriptions are those of David Hart and Edmund Burke; recent revisions emphasise the variability of the system across the central, eastern, and Jbala-adjacent western Rif.
The defining modern political memory is the Republic of the Rif of Muhammad ibn Abd el-Krim al-Khattabi (1921–1926), which inflicted on the Spanish army at Annual one of the heaviest colonial defeats of the early twentieth century before being crushed by a combined Spanish and French campaign that included the use of chemical weapons.
The Rifian diaspora in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany is among the largest and most economically dynamic Moroccan communities abroad. The Hirak movement of 2016–2017 was the largest popular mobilisation in Morocco since 2011.