A traditional Berber dish. Kouscous is known as 'the North Africa national dish' shared by Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Mauritania, Egypt and Libya.

First reference to Kuskus was in the 13th-century North African Cookbook: Kitāb al-tabǐkh fǐ al-Maghrib wa'l-Andalus "The cookbook of the Maghreb and Al-Andalus".

In the levant, a version of kouscous is called Maftool among Palestinians or Mughrabiyah among Lebanese.