Susan Gilson Miller

A History of Modern Morocco
Morocco is notable for its stable and durable monarchy, its close ties
with the West, its vibrant cultural life, and its centrality to regional
politics. This book, by distinguished historian Susan Gilson Miller,
offers a richly documented survey of modern Moroccan history. The
author’s original and astute interpretations of the events, ideas, and
personalities that inform contemporary political life are testimony to
her scholarship and long association with the country. Arguing that
pragmatism rather than ideology has shaped the monarchy’s response
to crisis, the book begins with the French invasion of Algeria in 1830 and
Morocco’s abortive efforts at reform, the duel with colonial powers and
the loss of independence in 1912, the burdens and benefits of France’s
forty-four-year dominion, and the stunning success of the nationalist
movement leading to independence in 1956. In the postindependence
era, the book traces the monarchy’s gradual monopolization of power
and the resulting political paralysis, ending with the last years of Hassan
II’s reign, when Moroccan society experienced a sudden and radical
opening. A postscript brings events up to 2012, covering topics such as
Morocco’s “war on terror,” the détente between the monarchy and the
Islamists, and the impact of the Arab Spring. This concise, readable book
will inform and enthrall students coming to the history of North Africa
for the first time, as well as those in other disciplines searching for the
background to present-day events in the region.
Susan Gilson Miller is Professor of History at the University of California,

Davis. Her research interests focus on Islamic urbanism, travel and migra-
tion, minorities in the Muslim world, and the historiography of colonialism
and nationalism, with a special emphasis on North Africa. Her most recent
publications are The Architecture and Memory of the Minority Quarter of
the Muslim Mediterranean City (2010) and Berbers and Others: Beyond
Tribe and Nation in the Maghrib (2010).
CAMBRIDGE
A History of Modern Morocco
SUSAN GILSON MILLER

University of California, Davis
cambridge university press
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© Cambridge University Press 2013
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First published 2013
Printed in the United States of America
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Miller, Susan Gilson.
A history of modern Morocco / Susan Gilson Miller.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-521-81070-8 (hardback) – isbn 978-0-521-00899-0 (paperback)
1. Morocco – History. I. Title.
dt324.m545 2012
964–dc23 2012014471
isbn 978-0-521-81070-8 Hardback

isbn 978-0-521-00899-0 Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or

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in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such
Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Contents
List of Maps and Illustrations page viii

Acknowledgments xi
Note on Transliteration and Translation xiii
Chronology xv
Who Is Who? xxiii
Introduction 1
1 The Closing of the Era of Jihad (1830–1860) 7

Rebuilding the Moroccan state 8
The fall of Algiers and the people of Tlemcen 12
Morocco and qAbd al-Qadir’s resistance 14
The revolt of the Wadaya 15
The battle of Isly and the wages of defeat 17
Engagement with the outside world 21
The war of Tetuan and its burdensome legacy 24
2 Facing the Challenges of Reform (1860–1894) 28

The contours of reform 28
Economic policies 30
Administrative reform 33
Integrating the national space 35
Military reform 37
Diplomacy and the problem of protection 42
v
vi Contents
The rise of an assertive bourgeoisie 49

The balance sheet of reform 52
3 The Passing of the Old Makhzan (1894–1912) 56

An age of crisis 56
Portrait of a misguided ruler 58
The economy in transition 60
Internal politics: Mahdis, insurgents, and rebels 63
Diplomacy and war 69
The Hafiziyya 76
Signs of modernity: Changes in culture and material life 82
4 France and Spain in Morocco: The Early Years of the

Protectorates (1912–1930) 88
A troubled beginning 88
Lyautey lays the foundations of the French Protectorate 89
Modernizing Morocco’s cities: The work of Henri Prost 92
Tracing the pathways of resistance 94
Education for the elites, work for the masses 99
World War I: The Moroccan role 102
qAbd al-Karim al-Khattabi and the Rif War 104
The growth of colonial capitalism 111
The end of the proconsulship of Lyautey 117
5 Framing the Nation (1930–1961) 120

The origins of Moroccan nationalism 120
The “Berber dahir” electrifies the nation 125
The nationalists mobilize 129
The Spanish zone follows a separate path 136
The substance of everyday life: Health, society, work 138
World War II and the radicalization of the nationalist cause 142
Postwar developments: The uneasy alliance between the sultan
and the Istiqlal 146
A dramatic finale to French rule 151
The dissolution of the nationalist consensus 153
Contents vii
6 The First Age of Hassan II: The Iron Fist (1961–1975) 162
The new king tightens his grip on power 162
Plots, counterplots, and the alienation of the left 166
An economy in disarray 171
A season of coups 174
The war in the Western Sahara and the “Sacred Union” 180
Hassan the Unifier 184
7 The Second Age of Hassan II: The Velvet Glove (1975–1999) 187
The rise of modern political Islam 188
The politicization of women’s issues 191
Berber cultural revival 194
New voices: The press, literature, and the cinema 197
Opening the door to the secret garden 201
The royal road to reform 204
Morocco in the world 207
8 Summation: In Search of a New Equilibrium 214
9 Postscript: The Long Decade of Muhammad VI (2000–2011) 221
Key Abbreviations 237

Glossary 239
French Résidents Généraux in Morocco, 1912–1956 241
Sultans and Kings of the qAlawite Dynasty, 1664–2012 243
Notes 245
Bibliography of Works Cited 275
Index 295
Maps and Illustrations
maps
1 Morocco and Its Major Cities page xxviii
2 The French Conquest of Morocco, 1907–1927 97
3 The Western Sahara in 1979 179
illustrations
1 The Amir qAbd al-Qadir in Exile, 1865 20
2 J. H. Drummond Hay and Muhammad IV, 1868 26
3 Portrait of Sultan Hassan I 48
4 The Main Street of Tangier, 1890 54
5 Man on a Bicycle, Southern Morocco, 1897 59
6 The “Civil War” in Morocco, 1903 64
7 Kaiser Wilhelm, “The Dreaded Guest,” 1905 71
8 Entry to the Main Market in Casablanca, 1907 73
9 Victims of the Casablanca Riots, 1907 75
10 Conscripts for the Army of Sultan qAbd al-qAziz, 1908 77
11 Ex-Sultan qAbd al-Hafiz Arrives in France, 1912 79
12 Ex-Sultan qAbd al-Hafiz Meets French Ecclesiasts, 1912 82
13 The Moroccan Embassy to France, 1909 84
14 The Moroccan Embassy to France at the St. Étienne Arms
Factory, 1909 85
15 French Colonial Infantry Departing for the Moroccan War,
1912 95
16 Sultan Mawlay Yusuf Entering Casablanca, 1913 98
17 King Alfonso XIII of Spain Directs Operations in the Rif, 1911 105
viii
Maps and Illustrations ix
18 Rifian War Hero qAbd al-Karim al-Khattabi On His Way to

Exile, 1926 109
19 A Rest Station of the Moroccan Bus Company CTM, 1919 112
20 Sultan Muhammad V Arriving at the Élysée Palace, 1930 124
21 Grand Vizier Muhammad al-Muqri, 1930s 128
22 Nationalist Leader Ahmed Balafrej, 1950s 132
23 French President Gaston Doumergue at the Royal Palace,
Rabat, 1930 134
24 Colonial Health Officials Vaccinating Residents of the
Casablanca Mellah, 1920s 139
25 U.S. Vice President and Mrs. Nixon Greeted by Muhammad V,
1957 158
26 King Muhammad V Publicizing “Operation Plowshare,”
1960 172
27 The Skhirat Coup, 1971 176
28 Women Arriving by Train to Join the Green March, 1975 180
29 Moroccan Volunteers in the Green March, 1975 182
30 Crown Prince Sidi Muhammad Addressing Volunteers in the
Green March, 1975 183
31 Hassan II Welcomes Algerian President Boumedienne, 1972 210
32 Street Protests by Unemployed University Graduates, 2008 230
CAMBRIDGE
Acknowledgments
Friends, colleagues, and family have helped me over the years and made
the writing of this book possible.
Moroccan scholars provided me with the informal education necessary
to study the history of their country. I especially want to thank Jamaa
Baïda, Khalid Ben Srhir, Mohamed Kenbib, Abdelahad Sebti, Mohamed
El Mansour, Ahmad Taoufik, Mohamed Kably, Maâti Monjib, Mohamed
Dahbi, Mohamed Hatimi, Nadia Erzini, Simon Lévy, Mina Elmghari,
Mokhtar Ghambou, Halima Ferhat, Rahma Bourqia, Mohamed
Mezzine, Abdelfattah Kilito, and Fatima Sadiqi for generously sharing
their deep knowledge of Moroccan state and society with me. My first
Moroccan mentor was the impeccable Si Muhammad al-Manuni, who
introduced me to the intricacies of modern Moroccan historiography.
Special thanks to Said Mouline and Mia Balafrej, who offered me superb
hospitality during my many visits to Rabat, and to Sonia Azagury and
Rachel Muyal, my sentinels in Tangier.
I am grateful to the Moroccan American Commission for Educational
and Cultural Exchange, Jim Miller, Director, which provided funding
support via successive Fulbright grants, as well as to former MACECE
Director Ed Thomas. In Tangier, Elena Prentice and Thor and Elizabeth
Kuniholm, former directors of the Tangier American Legation Museum,
provided a friendly and welcome base.
A host of North African specialists have been advisers and collaborators
over the years: Wilfred Rollman, Julia Clancy-Smith, William Granara,
Jonathan Katz, Michael Willis, Susan Slyomovics, Kenneth Brown,
Norman Stillman, Katherine Hoffman, James McDougall, Thomas Park,
Harvey Goldberg, John Entelis, Mark Tessler, Dale Eickelman, André
xi
xii Acknowledgments
Levy, Susan Ossman, Joelle Bahloul, Daniel Schroeter, Gregory White,

Lucette Valensi, Yolande Cohen, Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, and Michel
Abitbol have at one time or another come to my aid. My thanks to one
and all.
Former students, now colleagues, shared their work with me, enriching
my own. Their friendship is especially treasured: Sahar Bazzaz, Jonathan
Smolin, Emily Benichou-Gottreich, Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, Lisa Bernasek,
Amira Bennison, Hannah Louise Clark, Amy Young, Tom de Georges,
Jessica Marglin, Eric Calderwood, Aziza Chaouni, Etty Terem, Moshe
Gershovich, Stacy Holden, Abby Krasner Babale, and Lamia Zaki are at
the center of a new generation of Maghribi scholars who are changing the
state of the field. David Stenner and Lily Balloffet, history graduate stu-
dents at UC Davis, have more recently lent a hand.
My warmest appreciation to Gérard Lévy of Paris, who generously gave
me unpublished photos from his personal archives, and to the Center for
Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, my platform for pursuing
Moroccan studies for nearly twenty years. My heartfelt thanks to a series
of supportive CMES directors who made a place for Maghribi studies at
Harvard: William Graham, Cemal Kafadar, and Steven Caton among
them. In a special category of her own is Susan Kahn, Associate Director
of CMES.
My new colleagues in the History Department at UC Davis have been a
source of unstintingly warm encouragement. I am also grateful to the
interlibrary loan section of Shields Library, UC Davis, always receptive
to my requests, and to the faceless and nameless heroes of the Widener
Library Scan and Deliver service. My thanks, too, to Marigold Acland of
Cambridge University Press, a woman of infinite patience, and Joy Mizan
and Sarika Narula, who have ushered me though the final stages of the
editorial process.
Finally, thanks to my family, which has put up with my historical
passions over the years with patience and good humor: Daphne, Ross,
Arlen, Emet, Sam, and Max, and most of all, to David, to whom this book
is dedicated.
Note on Transliteration and Translation
The transliteration of Moroccan personal and place names poses difficult

problems. French spelling is predominant throughout the Maghrib, but
unfortunately, it does not always render well into English. Generally
speaking, I have used the French spelling for place names, making use of
the glossary of toponyms found in J-F. Troin, ed., Maroc: Régions, pays,
territoires (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 2002). Exceptions to this rule
are place names that are commonly found in English: Marrakesh, Tetuan,
Tangier, Fez.
Personal names call for a different approach. When the name has a
common French spelling and the individual may be otherwise difficult
to identify, I use the French spelling (Laroui, for example, instead of
al-qArawi). When a name gains greater clarity by using the International
Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (IJMES) method of transliteration from
Arabic, that method is applied: qAbd al-Qadir instead of Abdel Kader,
Muhammad instead of Mohamed. Admittedly, this is often a matter of
personal choice.
Arabic terms are transliterated using the IJMES method, with the
modification that I have dropped all diacritical marks except for the qayn (q)
and the hamza (p), indicating the latter letter only when it is in the middle of
the word. (Hence Qurpan but not shurafap.) In some cases, I write the plural
of an Arabic word by adding an “s” to the singular, such as fatwas. Finally,
Arabic words that now appear in the Oxford English Dictionary – for
example, ulama – are spelled accordingly.
All translations from Arabic and French to English are my own, unless
otherwise indicated.
xiii
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Chronology
1830, July 5 French landing in Algiers

1844, August 14 Moroccan defeat at the Battle of Isly
1859–1860 Tetuan War against the Spanish
1863, December 11 British Jewish philanthropist Sir Moses
Montefiore arrives in Tangier
1873 Sultan Hassan I enthroned
1880, May 19–July 3 Conference of Madrid affirms the legal right of
protection
1894 Sultan qAbd al-qAziz enthroned
1900, May 13 Death of the regent Ba Ahmad
1904, April 8 French-British agreement giving France a free
hand in Morocco
1905, March 31 Emperor Wilhelm II lands at Tangier
1906, January 7–April 6 Algeciras Conference places conditions on
Moroccan independence
1907, August 7–12 Bombardment of Casablanca by the French
1907, August 16 Sultan qAbd al-Hafiz proclaimed in Marrakesh
1908, January 4 Bayqa of Sultan qAbd al-Hafiz at Fez
1909, May 4 Death of Shaykh Muhammad b. al-Kabir
al-Kattani
1911, November 4 Franco-German treaty; Germany concedes
Morocco to France
1912, March 30 Treaty of Fez, French Protectorate begins
1912, April 27 Lyautey is named Résident Général of the
Protectorate
1912, August 13 Proclamation of Sultan Yusuf
xv
xvi Chronology
1912, November 27 French-Spanish treaty institutes Spanish

control in the north
1914, November 13 Middle Atlas Berbers defeat French at Battle of
el-Herri
1921–1925 Rif War and declaration of the “Ripublik” of
the Rif
1925, September 24 Lyautey is replaced by T. Steeg and departs
Morocco
1927, November 18 Sultan Muhammad V is enthroned
1930, May 16 Berber Dahir
1933, 18 November First Throne Day celebrated
1934, December 1 Reform Plan of the CAM (Moroccan Action
Committee)
1937, September Meknes riots lead to pro-nationalist
demonstrations
1942, November 8 Allied landings in North Africa
1943, January 22 Anfa Conference, Roosevelt–Muhammad V
meeting
1943, December 10 Creation of the Istiqlal Party
1944, January 11 Manifesto of Independence
1945, November 14 Creation of PCM (Moroccan Communist
Party)
1946, June 20 qAllal al-Fasi returns to Morocco from Gabon
to head Istiqlal
1946, September 11 Istiqlal founds party newspaper al-qAlam
1947, April 9 Sultan Muhammad V’s speech at Tangier
1952, December 5–8 Anti-French riots in Casablanca
1953, August 20 Sultan Muhammad V deposed and exiled to
Madagascar
1954, November 1 Start of Algerian war of independence
1955, March 20 Creation of UMT (Moroccan Workers’
Union)
1955, August 22 Conference of Aix-les-Bains
1955, November 16 Sultan Muhammad V returns to Morocco
1956, March 2 French-Moroccan declaration of
independence
1956, May 14 Foundation of the FAR (Royal Moroccan
Armed Forces)
1956, October 8 Tangier is reintegrated into Morocco
Chronology xvii
1956, December 26 First congress of the UNEM (Moroccan

Students’ Union)
1957, January 21 Revolt of Addi Ou Bihi in the Tafilalt
1957, July 9 Crown Prince Hassan declared heir to the
throne
1957, August Muhammad V takes the title of King
1957, December 21 Creation of University Muhammad V in Rabat
1958, May 12 Istiqlal government headed by Ahmed Balafrej
1958, May–November Rif Rebellion repressed by FAR under Crown
Prince Hassan
1958, October Morocco joins the Arab League
1958, December 24 Government of Abdallah Ibrahim
1959, September 6 Istiqlal splinters; left-wing forms UNFP
1960, February 14 Arrests of UNFP militants accused of plotting
against the Crown Prince
1960, February 29 Earthquake in Agadir
1960, May 27 King Muhammad V takes over the
government
1960, May 29 First municipal elections
1961, February 26 Death of Muhammad V
1961, March 3 Hassan II becomes King
1962, July 5 Algerian independence declared
1962, December 7 First Moroccan Constitution adopted
1963, January 2 The Istiqlal leaves the government and joins
the opposition
1963, February 6 Death of qAbd al-Karim al-Khattabi in Cairo
1963, May 13 First legislative elections
1963, June–July Arrests of UNFP; Ben Barka flees Morocco
1963, August 21 Birth of Sidi Muhammad, future King
Muhammad VI
1963, October 15 “War of the Sands” with Algeria
1963, November 9 Mehdi Ben Barka is condemned to death in
absentia
1964, March 14 Trial and death sentence for leaders of UNFP,
later commuted
1965, March 22 Casablanca uprising of students and workers
1965, March 29 Hassan II amnesties political prisoners
1965, June 7 Constitution of 1962 suspended, state of
emergency declared
xviii Chronology
1965, October 29 Ben Barka kidnapped in Paris

1967, June 5 Morocco sends troops to aid Arab side in
Six-Day War with Israel
1967, June 5–11 Anti-American demonstrations; attacks on
Jews in Meknes
1969 Agreement of association with the EEC
1970, July 31 Second Constitution ends the state of
emergency
1970, August Ila al-Amam splits from Communist Party
(PCM)
1971, July 10 Attempted coup at Skhirat palace is subdued
by Oufkir
1971, July 13 Ten ranking army officers are executed by
firing squad
1972, February 12 Trial of soldiers implicated in the Skhirat coup
opens in Kénitra
1972, March 1 Third Constitution is promulgated
1972, August 16 Second failed coup, death of Oufkir
1972, November 6 Execution of 11 detainees accused of planning
the August coup
1973, January 24 Arabization of the Faculty of Letters, Rabat
1973, March 3 King announces the program of
“Moroccanization”
1973, May 10 Founding of the Polisario
1973, October Arab-Israeli war; price of oil and phosphates
soars
1974, May 13 Death of qAllal al-Fasi
1974, June Shaykh Yassine’s letter to Hassan II, “Islam or
the Deluge”
1974, November 6 The Green March begins
1975, December 18 USFP leader Omar Benjelloun is assassinated
1976, January 27 War with Algeria in the Sahara
1976, May 20 SARD is declared (Sahrawi Arab Democratic
Republic)
1977, May Trial of members of Ila al-Amam
1977, November 26 CDT created (Democratic Confederation of
Workers)
1979, January Tan-Tan is seized by the Polisario
1979, March Driss Basri becomes Minister of the Interior
Chronology xix
1979, June 24 AMDH (Moroccan Association of Human

Rights) is created
1980, July Amnesty of members of USFP jailed since
1973–1974
1981, June 6 Casablanca bread riots
1981, September Foundation of Shaykh Yassine’s al-qAdl
wa-l-Ihsan
1984, August Treaty of Oujda, Moroccan-Libyan Union
1984, November 13 Morocco quits the OAU after SARD is
admitted
1985, August 19 Visit of Pope John Paul II to Casablanca
1986, July 22 King Hassan II and Israeli PM Shimon Peres
meet in Ifrane
1988, May 6 Diplomatic relations with Algeria are resumed
1988, December 10 OMDH (Moroccan Organization of Human
Rights) is created
1988–1993 Construction of the Hassan II mosque in
Casablanca ($600 m.)
1989, February 17 Creation of the UMA (Maghreb Arab Union)
1990, May 8 CCDH formed (Consultative Committee of
Human Rights)
1990, August 2 Persian Gulf War begins
1990, September Notre ami le roi is published in Paris
1991, February 3 Massive pro-Islamist demonstrations in
Rabat
1991, August 5 The Charter of Agadir is signed by six
Amazigh associations
1991, September 6 Cease-fire in the Saharan war
1991, September 13 Abraham Serfaty is freed and exiled from
Morocco
1991, October 23 Liberation of the survivors of Tazmamart
prison
1992, August 21 New Constitution is presented for referendum
1993, February 6 Arrest of Police Commissioner Tabit
1993, September 15 Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin visits Rabat
1994, August Closing of the border with Algeria after
Marrakesh bombing
1995, December 24 “Cleanup” campaign of Minister of the
Interior Basri
xx Chronology
1996, September 13 Constitutional revision calling for a bi-cameral

legislature
1998, March 14 Government of “Alternance” under
A. Youssoufi
1999, July 23 Death of Hassan II
1999, July 30 Muhammad VI is enthroned
1999, September 30 Abraham Serfaty returns from exile
1999, November 9 Minister of the Interior Basri is fired
2000, March 1 The Berber Manifesto
2001, October 17 Dahir of Ajdir creating the IRCAM
2002, March 21 Marriage of Muhammad VI and Salma
Bennani
2002, September 27 Parliamentary elections, PJD emerges as main
opposition party
2003, May 8 Birth of heir-apparent, Prince Hassan
2003, May 16 Casablanca bombings followed by mass
arrests
2003, May 31 Banning of satirical Doumane, editor Ali
Mrabet jailed
2003, December ERC formed, headed by human rights lawyer
Driss Benzekri
2004, January New Family Code (Mudawwana) is enacted
into law
2004, February 24 Earthquake in El Hoceima (seven hundred
killed, fifteen thousand homeless)
2004, June 15 Free trade agreement with the United States
signed
2004, December 15 Public testimony of victims of “years of lead”
by ERC begins
2006, January 6 King announces termination of the work of
the ERC
2006, December 16 Closing of the magazine Nichane for attacking
“Islamic values”
2007, March Suicide attacks on targets in Casablanca
2007, June Morocco and Polisario hold talks at UN but
fail to reach agreement
2007, September 7 Parliamentary elections, only 37 percent of
eligible voters take part; Abbas El Fassi
(Istiqlal) named Prime Minister
Chronology xxi
2009, July 30 Celebration of tenth anniversary of

Muhammad VI on the throne
2010, August Tension with Spain over border incidents near
Melilla
2011, February 20 Mass rallies for political reform and a new
constitution
2011, April 28 Bomb blast in a Marrakesh café kills fifteen,
including ten foreigners
2011, July 1 New constitution approved in a referendum,
winning 98 percent of the vote
2011, November 25 PJD wins a plurality in parliamentary
elections, Abdelilah Benkirane is named
Prime Minister
Who Is Who?
Ababou, M’hamed (d. 1971) Head of military academy at Ahermoumou,

leader of cadets in abortive Skhirat coup
qAbd al-Aziz, Sultan (d. 1943) Reigned 1894–1908, deposed by his
brother qAbd al-Hafiz
qAbd al-Hafiz (d. 1937) Reigned 1908–1912; signed Treaty of Protec-
torate with France, 1912
qAbd al-Qadir al-Jazapiri (d. 1883) Hero of resistance to French in
Algeria, 1832–1847
qAbd al-Rahman, Sultan Reigned 1822–1859; modernizer and reformer
Aherdane, Mahjoubi Berber military chief, leader of 1957 Rif uprising;
founder of the Mouvement populaire (MP)
Arslan, Shakib (d. 1946) Druze pan-Islamist, visited Morocco in 1930,
inspired young nationalists
Azoulay, André Counselor to Hassan II and Muhammad VI on financial,
political, and Jewish affairs
Azziman, Omar Legal expert, human rights advocate, Minister of Justice
1997–2002
Balafrej, Ahmed (d. 1990) French-educated leader of Istiqlal, Secretary-
General of the party (1944), Prime Minister (1958); served in other top
posts before retiring from public life (1977)
Basri, Driss (d. 2007) Minister of the Interior 1979–1999, dreaded
symbol of the “Years of Lead,” removed by Muhammad VI
Bekkaï, M’barek (d. 1961) Head of the first government of independent
Morocco, appointed December 1955
Belarbi, Aïcha Sociologist, diplomat, author, women’s rights activist
xxiii
xxiv Who Is Who?
Ben qArafa, Mawlay Muhammad (d. 1976) Puppet ruler imposed by

French, 1953–1955
Ben Barka, Mehdi (d. 1965) A founder of UNFP, condemned to death
in absentia, “disappeared” in Paris.
Benaïssa, Mohamed Journalist, politico, Ambassador to United States
(1993–1999); Minister of Foreign Affairs (1999–2007)
Benjelloun, Omar Trade unionist, head of USFP, assassinated 1975
Benkirane, Abdelilah Head of PJD, appointed Prime Minister in
November 2011
Benlyazid, Farida Filmmaker, director of A Door to the Sky (1989)
Bennani, Salma Wife of Muhammad VI (2002), known as Princess Lalla
Salma; mother of Prince Hassan (b. 2003), heir to the throne
Berrada, Hamid Student leader, journalist, condemned to death in
absentia 1963
Bouabid, Aderrahim (d. 1992) Economist, founder and leader of USFP
Bu Himara (El Rogui) Rebel chief and royal pretender in the Taza
region, 1902–1909
Chraïbi, Driss (d. 2007) Author, voice of postcolonial generation
Daure-Serfaty, Christine French human rights activist, reported on secret
prisons during the “Years of Lead”
Dawud, Muhammad (d. 1984) Historian, nationalist, author of multi-
volume A History of Tetuan
Dlimi, Ahmed (d. 1983) Security head, Hassan II’s right-hand man
after death of Oufkir; died in auto crash
al-Fasi, qAllal (d. 1974) Founder, chief architect of the Istiqlal party,
coauthored Plan of Reforms, favored a constitutional monarchy
al-Fasi, Malika (d. 2007) An author of the 1944 Manifesto of Indepen-
dence; nationalist; symbol of early political activism for feminist
movement
el-Fassi, Abbas President of UGEM (1961); human rights activist; head
of Istiqlal (1998); Prime Minister 2007–2011
Ghallab, Abdelkrim Leading author, novelist, political commentator,
editor of Istiqlal newspaper al-qAlam
al-Glawi, Thami (d. 1956) Pasha of Marrakesh, allied with French in
colonial period, opposed Muhammad V and then relented, famous
for his venality
Guedira, Ahmed Reda (d. 1995) Lawyer, adviser to Hassan II, held
many government posts; organized pro-royalist FDIC as alternative
to Istiqlal (1963)
Who Is Who? xxv
al-Hajwi, Muhammad (d. 1956) Religious scholar, reformer, propa-

gandist for Protectorate
Hassan I, Sultan Reformer and consolidator; reigned 1873–1894
Hassan II, King (d. 1999) As Crown Prince, chief of FAR; after
enthronement in 1961, wielded near-absolute power
al-Hiba, Ahmad (d. 1919) Son and successor of Ma al-qAynayn, led
unsuccessful 1912 revolt against French occupation
Hicham b. Abdallah el-Alaoui, Prince Pro-democracy intellectual, cousin
of King Muhammad VI, lives in the United States
El-Himma, Fouad Ali Technocrat, close adviser to Muhammad VI,
founder of PAM (2008)
Ibn Musa, (Ba) Ahmad (d. 1900) Grand Vizir and Regent for young
q q
Sultan Abd al- Aziz
Ibrahim, Abdallah (d. 2005) Head of opposition government 1958–
1960, a founder of the UNFP
Jamaï, Abubakr Economist, political activist, editor of Le Journal (now
defunct)
Jettou, Driss Technocrat, Minister of Interior (2001); Prime Minister
2002–2007
al-Kattani, qAbd al-Hayy (d. 1962) Scholar, bibliophile, ally of al-Glawi,
favored deposition of Muhammad V, disgraced and died in France
al-Kattani, Muhammad b. qAbd al-Kabir (d. 1909) Sufi shaykh and
political rival of Sultan qAbd al-Hafiz, accused of treason and flogged
to death
al-Kattani, Muhammad b. al-Jaqfar (d. 1927) Sufi shaykh, author of
Salwat al-Anfas, history of the notables of Fez
al-Khattabi,qAbd al-Karim (d. 1963) Berber chief, journalist, head of
Rifian Republic 1922–1926; hero of anti-colonial resistance
Laâbi, Abdellatif Poet, founder of Souffles, political prisoner in the 1970s
Laanigri, Hamidou Security chief abruptly removed from power in 2006
Laroui, Abdallah Public intellectual and nationalist historian
Lyautey, Louis Hubert Gonzalve (d. 1934) French aristocrat, first
Résident Général of the Protectorate (1912–1925), preserver of the
makhzan, and architect of Moroccan modernity
Lyazidi, Mohamed Ahmed (d. 1990) Chief propagandist of the pre-
independence Istiqlal
Ma al-qAynayn (d. 1910) Saharan religious scholar, leader of resistance
to French occupation before 1912
al-Madghari, Muhammad (d. 1892) Chief of Darqawa brotherhood,
called for jihad against French in the 1880s
xxvi Who Is Who?
el-Malki, Habib Economist, minister, member of USFP

al-Manabhi, al-Mahdi (d. 1937) Minister of War under qAbd al-qAziz,
exiled to Tangier after 1912
el-Mandjra, Mahdi U.S.-trained economist, diplomat, human rights
advocate
Medbouh, Gen. Mohamed (d. 1971) Chief of Royal Household, killed
after failed Skhirat coup
Moutiq, qAbd al-Karim Founder of Islamic radical group al-Shabiba
al-Islamiyya in 1969; in 1975, accused of killing labor leader Omar
Benjelloun
Muhammad V, Sultan and King Reigned 1956–1961; revered as liber-
ator of Morocco from colonial rule
Muhammad VI, King Current ruling monarch, son and successor to
Hassan II, enthroned July 1999
al-Muqri, Muhammad (d. 1957) Makhzan official
al-Nasiri, al-Makki (d. 1994) Member of CAM, journalist for nation-
alist press
Noguès, Charles (d. 1971) Résident Général of the French Protectorate
in Morocco, 1936–1943; implementer of Vichy-inspired race laws
during World War II
al-Ouezzani, Mohammed Hassan (d. 1978) Founder of PDI, rival of
qAllal al-Fasi
Oufkir, Mohamed (d. 1972) General, Minister of Interior, died in
mysterious circumstances after 1972 failed coup
Rachid b. Hassan, Prince brother of King Muhammad VI and second-
in-line in succession to the throne
al-Raysuni (Raisuli), Ahmed (d. 1925) Local chieftain and sharif of the
Jebala region; mounted campaign of kidnapping Europeans, 1903–
1904, that received world attention
Sbihi, Abdellatif (d. 1965) Leader of “Young Moroccans”; organized
resistance to the Berber dahir, 1930
Serfaty, Abraham (d. 2010) Mining engineer, founder of Ila al-Amam,
jailed during the “Years of Lead”; released in 1991 and exiled;
returned home in 2000
Taoufik, Ahmed Historian, novelist, Minister of Islamic Affairs (2002–),
architect of a reformed religious establishment
Torres, Abdelkhalek (d. 1970) Nationalist leader in the Spanish zone
Yassine, Abdessalam Royal admonisher, founder in 1987 of al-qAdl wa-
l-Ihsan pro-Islamist Party
Who Is Who? xxvii
Yata, qAli (d. 1997) A founder of the PCM (Communist Party) in 1943
and later its head; in 1974, founded the socialist PPS
Youssoufi, Abderrahmane Founding member of the UNFP; Prime
Minister of the government of “Alternance,” 1998–2002
Yusuf, Mawlay, Sultan (d. 1927) Reigned 1912–1927; father of
Muhammad V
m a p 1 Morocco and Its Major Cities
Introduction
The present work retells the story of state-societal relations in Morocco

over the long expanse of nearly two hundred years, beginning with the
French conquest of Algeria in 1830 and ending with the death of King
Hassan II in 1999. This history is arranged chronologically and falls into
three large tranches: the period 1830–1912, before the coming of the
French Protectorate; the period of the Protectorate between 1912 and
1956, when Morocco was a dependency of France; and the post-1956
years, when Morocco became an independent state under a monarchy.
Writing across this broad swath of time has necessitated painful choices
about what to include and what to leave out. While the desire to be
comprehensive is a worthy one, it is in reality a losing cause: the pertinent
fact, the delicious quotation, the choice observation, the nutty conclusion,
all selected at the discretion of the author, may not always satisfy the
reader. The expert will undoubtedly find many inexcusable absences in
this book. The sweeping optic has opened the way for integrating the
results from many different areas of social science research that might
otherwise not have found a shared home.
This narrative presents a “writing against” earlier histories of modern
Morocco, whether they are in French, English or Arabic. It is inspired by
recent and profound changes within the field of Moroccan historiography,
in turn influenced by the political opening of the 1990s that motivated
Moroccan intellectuals to “liberate” their own history from the strictures of
an earlier period. Furthermore, the exposure of the crimes of the “years of
lead” via testimony given to the Instance Equité et Reconciliation
(the ERC, or Commission of Equity and Reconciliation) in the first years of
the twenty-first century has not only seized the public mind, but also forced
2 A History of Modern Morocco
people to confront a past they might have preferred to forget. Suddenly the
historical profession in Morocco has become a vortex of ideas about
what constitutes “authentic” history, and who is responsible for writing it.
The personal histories and memories of ordinary people that welled up in the
context of the ERC are valuable historical sources of the first order, filling in
yawning gaps in the official record. But they are also controversial, and have
set in motion a heated debate within Moroccan society about how and to
what extent memory (in the absence of more conventional sources of doc-
umentation) ought to be mobilized for producing history. As a further con-
sequence of the revelations of the “years of lead,” the need to write
contemporary history, or l’histoire du temps present, has been foregrounded
as a major concern of Moroccan historians who have finally acknowledged
that the recent past – and especially the period since 1956 – is practically a
blank slate. Moreover, when considering the existing corpus, it becomes clear
that earlier historical production – both native and foreign – is badly in need
of revision, augmentation, and reinterpretation.
What are some of the problems that have bedeviled the writing of recent
Moroccan history? What are the presuppositions that have informed it?
What are the blockages that inhibit the production of a viable contempo-
rary history? Silences that are politically motivated, myths about the
sanctity of the nationalist cause, the inviolability of the monarchy, the
state monopoly over representations of authenticity, the violence of state-
societal relations, the occultation of sources, fears of retribution, all have
played a role in shaping the contours of contemporary historical discourse.
The identification of those blockages and the effort to overcome them is the
endeavor that inspired this book. An overriding difficulty stems from the
fact that the long middle period of the present account, the Protectorate
years, have been a source of contention, included within the grand narra-
tive of Moroccan history only on the condition that they be recognized as a
time of deviation, a kind of historical “mistake.” This point of view is
primarily a product of the immediate postindependence years when the
fervor to write a “national” history cut loose from the weight of colonialist
thinking was a driving force, but it has inexplicably endured beyond its
time. Various intellectual positions have converged around the idea that
the Protectorate was an aberration not especially worthy of study; in fact,
for many years, it was shunned by Moroccan researchers (with one or two
exceptions) as a contaminated subject to be placed in isolation. The enor-
mous impact of the Protectorate years organizationally, administratively,
culturally, and politically on the postcolonial state has been minimized,
or even denied. Moreover, the deep connecting currents between the
Introduction 3
precolonial and the colonial periods have also been obscured, which is
ironic, given the fact that many of the outstanding Moroccan political
personalities of the interwar period were born and schooled in the nine-
teenth century and their intellectual formation was decidedly of that era.
As a consequence, the continuities that tie one stage of modern historical
development to the next have not come together, making for a fragmented
and disjunctive history rather than a cohesive, nuanced, and contextual-
ized one. This blockage is not only a methodological error but also a
conceptual one, preventing us from seeing modern Moroccan history as
an unfolding, variegated, often discontinuous and textured canvas, yet all
of one piece. Our critique does not constitute an argument in favor of
teleology, for the errors of that approach are amply clear; rather, it is a plea
for recognizing the ill effects of a discourse of total rupture, the reasons
why it came about, and why it should be overcome.
A second blockage we have encountered relates to the practice of
imagining the monarchy as the main symbol and arbiter of Moroccan
“authenticity.” In this scenario, the Protectorate period is seen as a waste-
land from which the Moroccan people emerged unscathed because of the
mantle of protection thrown over them through their mystical identifica-
tion with a spiritualized monarchy. This position asserts that despite its
immense intrusion into every aspect of Moroccan life, colonization had
little effect on Moroccans, who came out of the experience with their “pure
and essential” qualities intact. The danger here is manifold. First of all,
when Moroccan history is subsumed under monarchical history, other
institutions in society are deprived of their agency; tribal loyalties, religious
loyalties, bonds to work, to neighborhood, to other social organizations,
become subsumed under the monarchical principle, where they are sub-
merged and eventually forgotten. Moreover, the hybridity that was a by-
product of the colonial experience is lost. Many of the examples we give in
this account of the interpenetration of two worlds that colonialism
brought about – in social customs, laws, politics, in intellectual life – are
invalidated by adopting such a narrow perspective. Also filtered out are the
luxuriant varietals produced by the colonial experience – social deviants,
border-crossers, and experimenters of all types who enliven historical
studies. Alternatively, denying the importance of the exportation of
Moroccan influences abroad that were unmediated by the royal center –
through expositions, world fairs, architecture, migration, and other forms
of diasporic activity – is the other side of this constricting narrative. Seeing
Moroccan history solely through the prism of monarchical history is a
distorting practice that begs to be superceded.
A third blockage concerns the nationalist movement and the tight grip
the political parties have held on recent Moroccan historiography. There
are many reasons for this: the hegemony of the nationalist parties over the
daily press, the myth of an all-encompassing national “unity,” the concept
of nationalists as “heroes of the revolution.” Nationalist leaders, especially
those on the left, have been enveloped in a cloud of hagiography that is
difficult to penetrate, and the closer one gets to the relationship between
Muhammad V and the nationalists, the thicker is the wrap. Myths sur-
rounding the history of the nationalist movement are deeply embedded in
the popular imagination: for example, the misleading idea that Fez domi-
nated the nationalist movement in the 1930s and 1940s dies hard, as does
the contention that the nationalists made no headway in rural areas, or
that its leadership was of a single mind. Studying the regional basis of
nationalist organizations, the role of women in the resistance, the relations
between nationalists and communists, between nationalism and Berber
ethnicity, and other pertinent topics would help us understand the inces-
sant infighting, personality clashes and violence engendered by the nation-
alists among themselves and later, in the late 1950s, between the liberation
armies and the state’s forces of order. These topics are only now emerging
from the halo of mythologizing that surrounds the nationalist movement
allowing them to be explored in greater depth.
The question of violence that is a subtheme of the nationalist endeavor
must also be examined more carefully. The tendency toward violence in
the Moroccan state is not necessarily explained by the struggles that
accompanied its birth; rather, violence in itself calls for explanation,
particularly in light of the connection between the war of liberation, the
growth of a security apparatus in the independent state, and the eventual
emergence of all-powerful police and intelligence services in Hassan II’s
makhzan. The history of institutions of violence, like any other history, is
best understood through an analysis of the events that surrounded their
formation, and by placing less emphasis on ideologies of domination, or on
suspected character flaws in the Moroccan “personality,” or on culturally
learned behaviors, and more emphasis on the specific circumstances, fears,
and assumptions of decision makers as they went about the business of
state-building.
Furthermore, I have tried to bring an international dimension to this story
and to situate it within the setting of regional and global events, in the belief
that we cannot understand the context in which everyday decisions are
made without a sense of the surrounding political landscape. This history
is not informed by theories of globalization or by Marxist dialectics, but it
Introduction 5
does implicate a dimension of Moroccan history that is often forgotten;

namely, Morocco’s relations with the outside world as a reflection of its
domestic concerns. In the nineteenth century, global powers with their thirst
for colonies determined Morocco’s fate. In the 1930s, the global economic
crisis impacted heavily on colonial ambitions as well as native expectations.
In the immediate postwar period, the perturbations in French politics, and
the growing ties between Moroccan nationalists and their European, Asian,
and American friends, formed the matrix for the coalition-building that
helped bring about independence. In the age of Hassan II, the monarch’s
vision of Morocco’s place in the world, his quest for international support
through subtle diplomacy that relied mainly, but not exclusively, on the
West, his courting of African allies, his role in the Middle East peace process,
make explicit the importance of overseas efforts in managing internal
affairs. In order to understand the success of the movement for liberalization
in Morocco of the 1990s, one must make note of the external actors who
effectively publicized the makhzan’s hidden human rights abuses to the
world, forcing their recognition at home. If Morocco had lived in a closed
bubble, its standing in the world today – surely not arrived at by dint of its
wealth – would never have come about.
The question of sources is of perennial concern to the historian. The
argument has been made often that certain periods in Moroccan history
are difficult, if not impossible, to study because of an absence of written
sources. While it was true for a very long time that the sources for studying
the Protectorate period were not accessible, that has not been the case for
nearly a decade. For some time now, excellent monographs have been
produced based on the colonial archives in Rabat and Nantes. For the
precolonial period, that is to say, the nineteenth century, the Moroccan and
European sources are voluminous and hardly exploited. For many years, the
Moroccan state archives were the atelier of the very few, selected either for
their innocuous politics or their poor command of Arabic; today, they are
generally open to everyone. Official documentary sources for the period of
Hassan II are not, however, available, and for this most recent period
scholars must resort to often inaccurate newspaper accounts, the memories
of participants, and the foreign press; as a result, the writing of the history of
the temps présent is a particularly challenging venture. The controversy
surrounding the historical value of personal memory raised by the testimo-
nies to the ERC is indicative of the problematic nature of this sort of material
and the passions raised by it. It is a widely accepted fact that while memory
can be misleading, it can also be treated as any other historical source by
using methods of comparison, fact-checking, and common sense.
Finally, it should be noted that this study is a synthetic history covering

a long stretch of time, and archival sources figure into it mainly through the
use of monographs, articles, dissertations, and other studies that rely on
original documents. Arabic chronicles form the substance of the early
chapters of the book; specialized books and articles by both Moroccan
and non-Moroccan researchers are the foundation on which the later
chapters are built. This variety of material in several languages and from
various disciplines brought together for the first time in one volume will
hopefully increase our appreciation for the complexities of the recent
Moroccan past, and offer the curious reader a refreshing lesson in history.
1
The Closing of the Era of Jihad (1830–1860)
In 1830, Morocco found itself under attack by an assertive and expansive

Europe, in the shape of France’s massive and well-planned attack on the
city of Algiers. With this event, Morocco was ineluctably drawn into an
economic and political maelstrom that would absorb its energies and color
its outlook for years to come. Europe for Morocco was a familiar adver-
sary. Morocco had lived in Europe’s shadow for centuries, sometimes
amicably, at other times in a state of violent confrontation. Their histories
were intertwined due to proximity and political necessity. Traders from
Marseilles set up a funduq (merchants’ inn) in Ceuta in 1236; in the
fifteenth century Jews banished from Iberia after centuries of settlement
found a safe haven in Fez; and in the seventeenth century, Moriscos –
Muslims who had adopted Catholicism but were forced to leave Spain by
the Inquisition – transformed Morocco’s maritime economy into a corsair-
ing one, returning the confrontation with the Christian West to Europe’s
shores. From the mid-eighteenth century onward, Europe’s slow and
steady march toward what historians call “modernity,” meaning greater
degrees of state integration, capitalist development, and technological
progress, inevitably shaped its attitudes and actions toward Morocco.
Meanwhile, Morocco responded by adopting ploys and stratagems that
it hoped would mitigate foreign influence and allow it to preserve its
independence.1
The year 1830 marks the beginning of a transition to a new phase in
which Europe is no longer an intermittent factor in Moroccan affairs, but
an omnipresent reality looming over political events, the economy, and
even social life. Yet, at the same time, the European factor was not all-
determining; other salient features of Morocco’s interior landscape
continued to evolve, change and confront one another, testing the capacity
of the state to meet challenges at home and abroad. Factors that moved
quite independently of the European encounter remained in play, such
as the struggle for quotidian existence against the forces of nature, changes
in intellectual life, the tension between the sultanate and the ruling classes,
and the arrival of new ideas from the Muslim East that swept over society.
These themes constitute the backdrop to the drama of Morocco’s tumul-
tuous confrontation with the West in the early nineteenth century. In
order to fully understand the events of 1830 in their fullest context, we
must first reach back into the eighteenth century to uncover some of those
factors that determined how Morocco composed its response to European
aggression.
rebuilding the moroccan state

Unending civil war following the death of Sultan Ismaqil in 1727 led to a
dispersal of state power, a damaged reputation for the ruling qAlawi
dynasty, and a devastated economy. Sultan qAbdallah (intermittently
reigned 1729–1757), son of the great state builder Ismaqil, suffered the
ignominy of being deposed five times during his thirty year reign; these
convulsions were a harsh lesson for his own son and successor,
Muhammad III (reigned 1757–1790), who was convinced that in order
to preserve the dynasty, a new approach to statecraft was required.2
Chronic problems produced unending troubles: a fractious, tribal-based
countryside that required constant policing; a subsistence economy
plagued by inadequate reserves of capital; a lack of infrastructure in the
form of roads, bridges and other methods of communication. The popu-
lation in the last quarter of the eighteenth century hovered between four
and five million, kept stagnant by periodic waves of disease, drought, and
famine.3 Other endemic problems blocked the path to the consolidation of
state power, creating a permanent deficit of capacity at the center: the army
was ill-organized, poorly disciplined, and made up of a rebellious praetor-
ian guard and unreliable tribal contingents, the bureaucracy was undis-
ciplined and corrupt, and the religious classes, or ulama, were notoriously
independent. Finally, the navy had been disbanded, leaving Morocco’s
coastline denuded of protection.
Grandson of the illustrious Ismaqil, Muhammad III realized that in
order to bring greater stability to his rule, he had to rebuild the state
from its foundations. He carried on a lively correspondence with the
Ottoman court and exchanged emissaries with them. His most trusted
The Closing of the Era of Jihad (1830–1860) 9
envoy was the historian qAbd al-Qasim al-Zayani, who brought home
from Istanbul first-hand news about the Ottoman way of doing things –
their order, rationality, and organizational strength.4 Following the
Ottoman example, Sultan Muhammad III first revamped the state
bureaucracy, extending it to the local level; then he reorganized the
army, making it more responsive to his command. Finally, he revised
the financial basis of the state with new methods of tax-collection that
depended on customs duties derived from overseas trade. These bold
reforms distinguish Sultan Muhammad III as the initiator of a new age
in Moroccan history, influenced by intimations of modernity filtered
through practices arriving in Morocco mainly from the East. The scope
of the Sultan Muhammad III’s ambition was so wide that Moroccan
historian Abdallah Laroui has called him “the architect of modern
Morocco.”5
In order to carry out this ambitious program of reform, the sultan had to
find a balance among interests that competed with and sometimes counter-
acted one another. On the political front, he had to give up the idea of
recovering the Spanish-held territories of Melilla and Ceuta, enclaves on
Morocco’s Mediterranean coast held by Spain since the fifteenth century,
knowing full well that such a move would expose him to the complaint
from religious quarters that he was abandoning the jihad. But he had
resolved that peaceful commerce with Europe was a far wiser course
than engaging in fruitless warfare: “Ceuta is the heart of Morocco,” he
avowed, “but only a crazy man or a fool would consider attacking it . . .
nothing will come of it except the disgrace of Islam.”6 On the economic
front, he rebuilt the Atlantic ports, most notably, the town of Essaouira (al-
Sawira) on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, for the purpose of promoting over-
seas trade.7 He created monopolies over goods for export and levied heavy
duties on imports that dramatically increased the revenues of the state, but
in so doing, raised the ire of foreign merchants. He filled his treasury by
imposing a new, non-Qur’anic tax (the maks) that was widely condemned
by both the ulama and ordinary folk, not only because its legality was in
doubt, but also because the hand of the state now reached into the sub-
stance of daily life. People had to pay taxes when making the ferry crossing
between Rabat and Salé; when they butchered a sheep; or when they used
the public scales in the marketplace. Finally, in order to mitigate the
corrosive effect of these unpopular measures, he refurbished mosques
and zawiyas (religious lodges) throughout the land, hoping to win over
the affection of the “men of the pen” as well as the hearts of the common
people.8
The campaign for reform embraced even the most sacrosanct elements
in society. Muhammad III intervened “where no sultan had ventured
before,” organizing the ulama into classes, depending on their responsi-
bilities, and paying them accordingly. He personally revised the teaching
curriculum in the mosques, prescribing the works to be studied, giving
emphasis to simplified texts that demystified legal practice. He seized his
prerogative as chief imam (religious leader) of the Moroccan Muslim
community to reinterpret existing laws and make new ones by issuing
fatwas (legal opinions) and dahirs (official decrees) that buttressed his
policies. Finally, he established lists of the religious nobility (shurafa),
purging those who made false claims of kinship with the family of the
Prophet in order to reap the benefits of tax exemption.
These sensible changes shook Moroccan society to its roots, and the
reaction was not long in coming. In the vanguard of the opposition was his
own son, Yazid, who became his father’s archenemy. Building his credi-
bility mainly on the basis of his father’s “neglect” of the jihad, Yazid was
joined by disgruntled others who had lost ground through Sultan
Muhammad’s reforms: religious elites stripped of their special privileges,
brotherhoods that found their income reduced, and ordinary people who
deplored the maks as a contravention of religious law. For two years after
the death of Muhammad III in 1790, the country was thrown into turmoil,
as Yazid raged from north to south, trying to undo the innovations
instituted by his father.
When Sultan Sulayman, a second son of Muhammad III, acceded to the
throne in 1793, the populace was in a black mood; they looked to him for
relief from the excesses of Yazid, but were disappointed. Early on, Sultan
Sulayman showed personality traits that impaired his ability to rule. His
contemporaries remarked that he was obstinate and a poor judge of
people, he paid no heed to the advice of his ministers, and he even forbade
his scribes from correcting the grammar of his letters.9 This unbending
personality was thrust into power at a delicate moment, when fears of a
clash with the West were growing. News of the French invasion of Egypt in
1798 reached Morocco, along with reports of French soldiers looting,
killing, and abusing Egyptian women.10 The pilgrimage to Mecca was
momentarily suspended, and Moroccans felt cut off from the rest of the
Islamic world. The crux of the problem, it was widely believed, was that
foreigners were causing the grief and placing the umma (the nation) at
great risk.
Sultan Sulayman responded by putting Europe at arm’s length. First, he
reversed the policy of Muhammad III of making overseas trade the
bedrock of state finances. Commercial ties with Europe dried up and

foreign businessmen were encouraged to leave: “All [foreigners] are wel-
come to leave the country,” he said, “as one of my Jews can import
whatever commission I order.”11 Then, armed with fatwas from the
ulama, he forbade his countrymen from traveling to Europe on the
grounds that it was contrary to the Holy Law. Finally, he dropped all
pretence of continuing the jihad by sea; in 1820 he delivered the last two
ships of the Moroccan navy to the Dey of Algiers. His response to the
perceived threat from Europe was to close the doors and seek shelter until
the storm had passed.
At he same time, he tried to put his own house in order, but with a
misguided zeal that soon destroyed his relations with key elements in
society. Early in his reign he abrogated the hated maks, thus lifting the
heavy burden that fell especially hard on urban households. Believing that
the surest source of wealth was hidden in the mountains and valleys of his
own country, he turned to the Moroccan heartland, milking the tribes
through the traditional Qur’anic taxes of zakat and qushr, and extending
his control into areas once thought beyond the reach of the state. This
policy worked for a time, but after 1817, a series of natural disasters
destroyed crops and upset the basis of his fiscal plan. Yet Sulayman
stubbornly continued to tax the rural areas heavily, turning the last
phase of his rule into one of chronic strife and rebellion.
In no area did his obstinate personality show itself more clearly than in
the sphere of religion. A spiritual revival led by followers of Wahhabism
was sweeping the Maghrib, and Morocco was caught in its wake. Founded
at the end of the eighteenth century in the Arabian Peninsula, Wahhabi
doctrine preached a purity and asceticism that appealed especially to the
intellectual classes. The sultan became an adept of this new creed.
Sulayman’s deep piety, now fortified by Wahhabi fervor, produced in
him a bitter contempt for the popular Islam practiced by his people –
their worship of saints and their extreme reverence for the Prophet’s
family. He used his authority to attack these practices, condemning the
use of music and dance in religious ceremonies, and banning pilgrimages to
saintly shrines and religious festivals that were the economic lifeblood of
the religious orders. He even had the qubba (dome) over his father’s tomb
removed, arguing that it was excessive ornamentation. The relentless
campaign to suppress what he considered heterodox practices placed
him in fierce contention with primary social groups – the nobility, the
brotherhoods, and even the ulama – who were ordinarily allies of the
sultanate.
Even as the chasm between the sultan and society widened, Sulayman
blindly plunged ahead. In 1819, in the midst of a raging epidemic of the
plague, he marched into the Middle Atlas at the head of a hastily
assembled Berber force to collect taxes and was shocked when his troops
melted away and rejoined their mountain kin. Stripped of his royal guard,
the sultan was seized and held prisoner by the Ait Umalu tribe for three
days before being released. Although treated with respect – the royal tent
was torn into squares that were distributed among his captors as religious
talismans – Sulayman never recovered from this painful humiliation.12
Nearing the end of his reign, he faced a general uprising that began in Fez
but soon engulfed the entire country. A self-imposed abdication and a
mortifying defeat at the hands of the petty shaykhs of the Chérarda
zawiya in the region of Marrakesh reduced his dwindling prestige to
the vanishing point.
Sultan Sulayman’s policies – the attack on the brotherhoods, the effort
to limit the special privileges of the shurafa, the self-righteous Puritanism –
had brought the state and the sultanate to a nadir of prestige and authority.
The reversal of his father’s efforts to set the country on an even keel had
been nullified, setting back the clock on reform for a generation. A near-
total dependency on local taxes had proven to be ill conceived, for the
sources of internal wealth were unreliable and governed by forces beyond
his control. Mounting a jihad to distract attention from the severe prob-
lems at home was also a futile endeavor, for the army was weak and the
prospects of military success were dim. Thrown back on his meager assets,
Sulayman found himself hemmed in on all sides; deaf to the sounds of
popular protest, having sullied the image of the sultanate, Sulayman lacked
the political skills to balance the competing elements that composed the
body politic. His contestation with society – for indeed, he seemed to have
declared war on the Moroccan people – severely weakened the state, just as
it faced the challenge of a new and unprecedented foreign threat, this time
very close to home.
the fall of algiers and the people of tlemcen

The French landing at Sidi Ferouch near Algiers on July 5, 1830, caused
panic in Morocco. The Moroccan reaction was immediate because the
frontier between the two states had always been a fluid one, with people
and goods moving in both directions, particularly along the trade corridor
between Fez and Oran that passed through Tlemcen. Cross-border reli-
gious ties were also strong, with Moroccan-based brotherhoods such as
the Wazzaniyya and Darqawiyya maintaining important lodges in

Western Algeria that provided a steady flow of income. In fact, precise
sovereignty over this corner of Algeria was not at all clear, from the
Moroccan point of view, because the ties between it and the sultanate
were so strong. Moreover, the ruling class in Algiers was not especially
beloved in the western provinces. In the years preceding the French land-
ing, in order to replace revenue lost through the demise of piracy, the Deys
(the Ottoman-appointed heads of the Regency of Algiers) had raised taxes,
turning the native population against them. The problem of mixed loy-
alties became even more acute after the French landing. As French forces
pushed deeper into the interior, the tribes and city dwellers of the province
of Oran turned to Morocco for help.13
Suddenly, the new Moroccan sultan, qAbd al-Rahman (reigned 1822–
1859), nephew and successor to the discredited Sulayman, saw an oppor-
tunity to restore the badly tarnished image of the sultanate by converting
long-standing ties with Oran into much-needed political currency. He
advanced cautiously, unwilling to offend the Ottomans or to provoke the
French, even as he strategized about how to profit from the unexpected
turn of events. Carving out a role as “protector of the Muslims” of western
Algeria, in the summer of 1830 he accepted boatloads of Algerian refugees
arriving in the ports of Tangier and Tetuan, ordering his governors to find
them housing and settle them into new work. The Algerians, many of them
highly skilled and well educated, were progressively integrated into
Moroccan society.14 Slowly and deliberately, Sultan qAbd al-Rahman
began rebuilding his credibility as an alternative to the Turks throughout
western Algeria.
Meanwhile, Western Algeria was in an uproar, and the city of Tlemcen
was torn apart by infighting between the remnants of the Turkish military,
the local religious leaders, and the tribal-backed nobility. When the people
of Tlemcen offered qAbd al-Rahman the bayqa, the oath of allegience that
would legally establish qAlawi rule over their region, it was a tempting
invitation. It offered qAbd al-Rahman the chance to extend his authority
eastward to fill the vacuum left by the retreating Turks. Hesitant to give a
hasty answer, and fearful of offending the mighty Ottomans, the sultan
temporized and consulted the ulama of Fez for their opinion. The response
of the ulama was mixed, some in favor, but others warning against an
Algerian adventure on the grounds that Tlemcen was still under Turkish
rule. Meanwhile, the notables of the beleaguered city kept pressing for a
Moroccan intervention, reminding qAbd al-Rahman that the defense of
Islam was the duty of the just ruler.15
Once again, a Moroccan sultan found himself in a dilemma at the center

of which was the question of jihad. In October 1830, qAbd al-Rahman
decided to seize upon the war option, and sent quantities of matériel to
Tlemcen, along with a mobile column (mahalla) of five thousand cavalry
and footsoldiers. Once on the scene, the Moroccans discovered that the
Turkish remnants of the old regime were still in a fighting mood and had
barricaded themselves in the town citadel, refusing to withdraw. In March
1831, frustrated by the stalemate, the undisciplined Moroccan soldiers
rampaged through the streets of Tlemcen, looting and fighting among
themselves.16 The sultan was forced to order a retreat, exposing his scheme
to use the Algerian crisis as a platform for his own political fortunes as a
complete failure. Meanwhile, popular feeling in Morocco had been
aroused; now qAbd al-Rahman was caught in the middle of the perennial
problem of balancing people’s enthusiasm for holy war against his own
sense of impotence.
morocco and qabd al-qadir’s resistance

With the Moroccans in retreat, the field was left open to the Amir
qAbd al-Qadir, an Algerian marabout (murabit) of the Qadiriyya brother-
hood with a flair for military leadership and strong backing from the
neighboring tribes. qAbd al-Qadir b. Muhyi al-Din al-Khattabi (1807–
1883) was by all accounts an extraordinary figure. His father was a scholar
of repute and head of the Qadiriyya brotherhood in Western Algeria; the
son qAbd al-Qadir was a Sufi scholar and a follower of the teachings of
the famous mystic Ahmad b. Idris. Reportedly, qAbd al-Qadir could recite
the entire Qur’an by heart by the age of fourteen.17 The Moroccan histor-
ian al-Nasiri described him as “not the oldest, nor the wisest, nor the
most virtuous, but he was decisive and courageous.”18 He showed excep-
tional physical grace, and was an accomplished horseman and swordsman,
fearless in close combat. In 1825, while still in his teens, he accompanied
his father on the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, stopping in Alexandria
and Cairo, visiting the Holy Cities, and proceeding from there to
Damascus and Baghdad, where he prayed at the shrine of qAbd al-Qadir
al-Jilani, patron saint of the Qadiriyya order. Deeply affected by this
experience, he returned home in 1828 intending to devote the rest of his
life to study and prayer.
But the contemplative life was not to be his. As son of the most powerful
saintly family among the Arab tribes of Western Algeria, when the French
expanded their foothold into the interior, qAbd al-Qadir arose as the
natural leader of the resistance. Anointing himself with the mantle of a

mujahid, or holy warrior, he took charge of the struggle, after having
received the bayqa from the local chiefs. It is said that when the young
mujahid accepted their offer, the tribal leaders “sprang to their feet, shook
their spears, clashed their swords, wept aloud, and with frantic cries yelled
out, Jihad! Jihad!!”19 qAbd al-Qadir was careful, however, not to appear to
challenge qAbd al-Rahman’s own claims of suzerainty, and made it known
that he was acting merely as the Moroccan sultan’s khalifa, or deputy. Still
in theory a vassal of the Moroccan sultan, qAbd al-Qadir continued to treat
qAbd al-Rahman with deference; but in fact, from that moment onward, he
decided to become master in his own house.
The Amir’s motives in launching a holy war were far more nuanced than
a simple desire to drive out the French. While waving the banner of jihad, he
also decided to collect regular taxes, appoint officials loyal to himself, check
lawlessness, and assert an unaccustomed discipline over the loosely feder-
ated tribes of western Algeria. In other words, he intended to adopt the
trappings of a state-in-the-making. At the same time, he adopted a policy
toward France that was flexible and realistic, moving deftly between modes
of attack and retreat, aggressiveness and rapprochement. French soldiers
had to be supplied from local sources in order to survive, and qAbd al-Qadir
quickly took advantage of that weakness. When he was not fighting the
French, he was busy making large profits by trading with them. Yet he
remained mindful of his own needs. The Treaty of 1832 called a temporary
halt to the fighting and allowed him to import arms from abroad and to hire
French drill instructors for his own fledgling army.20
At this moment in the long Algerian war, known as “the period of
incertitude,” France became ambivalent about its future role in Algeria.
On the one hand, it was desirous of exploiting such a rich and potentially
fertile territory; but, on the other hand, government officials in Paris
shrank before the costs, both human and material, that possession would
entail. In the breach, France adopted a nebulous policy of “limited occu-
pation.”21 When the truce between the Amir and France was broken in
1835, Prime Minister Adolphe Thiers expressed the general doubt: “It is
not occupation on a large scale,” he declared, “it is not occupation on a
small scale. It is not peace; it is not war. It is war badly made.”22
the revolt of the wadaya

Meanwhile, Sultan qAbd al-Rahman faced a humbling situation at home
after his abortive Algerian adventure. The withdrawal from Tlemcen
sharply diminished his popularity and in no time at all, dissidents rose up in

the countryside, using his humbling defeat as a pretext for contesting his
rule. At the heart of the opposition was the Sultan’s own elite guard, the
Wadaya. Created in the seventeenth century by Sultan Ismaqil, the
mounted Wadaya cavalry, along with the infantry corps known as the
qAbid al-Bukhari, formed the nucleus of Morocco’s permanent standing
army (jaysh, or in the dialect, gish). A longstanding rivalry separated the
two groups; the Wadaya, garrisoned at Fez, was composed of freemen,
while the qAbid, headquartered in Meknes, were recruited largely from
slaves coming from sub-Saharan regions. But far more important than
their legal status at birth, or their skin color, was the oath of loyalty they
took, and their “common destiny as servants of the makhzan.”23 Over the
years, both units had taken on the aspect of tightly bound kinship groups,
jealous of their privileges and maintaining a self-interested solidarity that
often deflected even the will of the sovereign. They were given housing and
land, a more or less regular salary, and a ration of food for their families,
making a military appointment a privileged one in an economy of scarcity.
Beyond these two standing units, the army was filled out by contingents
recruited as needed from tribes friendly to the makhzan, who were not
paid, but received exemption from taxes in return for their service.
Under Sultan Sulayman the army became increasingly unruly and defied
efforts at reform. In 1816, the Wadaya refused to relocate from Fez to
Meknes, where they could be more closely watched; in 1818, a plague
decimated their ranks, bringing the army to the verge of collapse. Their low
morale was reflected on the battlefield where they formed “a disordered
multitude and reckless horde lacking order [and] discipline,” according to
one observer.24 Even before the Algerian misadventure, during which the
Wadaya were implicated in the looting of Tlemcen, their reputation was
clouded; after Tlemcen, their disgrace was complete.
The Algerian debacle was the spark for an open rebellion that broke out
among the Wadaya in the summer of 1831, after Sultan qAbd al-Rahman
demanded that they return their stolen booty. The revolt began in the north
and spread throughout the country, escalating into a crisis that threatened
the foundations of the regime. When the sultan got wind of the uprising, he
tried to flee Fez for the safety of Meknes, where he felt better protected by
the qAbid infantry, but he was stopped on the road and forced to return to
Fez by rebellious troops. The anger of the Wadaya was not directed at qAbd
al-Rahman alone, however, but also toward his chief minister and the
paymaster of the army who skimmed from their wages. qAbd al-Rahman
dismissed his chief minister, denuded him of his wealth, and used it to
compensate the Wadaya with a generous bribe. But none of these actions
ended their insubordination; the tissue of mutual loyalty and respect that
had bound the Wadaya and the sultanate together since the time of Sultan
Ismaqil was now badly frayed. Confined as a prisoner in the palace, Sultan
qAbd al-Rahman reached a low point in his reign.
In the months that followed, the sultan managed to escape from Fez and
resettle in Meknes, from where he slowly rebuilt the army by adding new
recruits from among the tribes of the Middle Atlas and the Rif. Surrounded
by this restored force, he marched on Fez, and after a forty-day siege,
compelled the Wadaya to surrender. Acting swiftly and decisively, the
sultan ordered their two most important leaders to be executed in the
most brutal fashion; both were shot, and the cadaver of one was “thrown
on a pile of manure where it was eaten by dogs.”25 qAbd al-Rahman then
dispersed the units of the Wadaya to Marrakesh, Larache, and Rabat. By
1834, the revolt of the Wadaya was over, but the extended crisis had
exposed the fundamental weaknesses of a military system unchanged for
nearly two centuries: incompetent and corrupt officers placated by gifts
and rewards; low levels of training and equipment; unruly troops com-
posed of diverse, often rival, units who resisted centralized control; a
chronic deficiency of funds. The lesson that Sultan qAbd al-Rahman carried
away from these events was the acute need for far-reaching military and
fiscal changes. The breaking of the tyranny of the Wadaya was a small but
significant step toward a more encompassing plan for reform that would
emerge in the last years of his reign.
the battle of isly and the wages of defeat

The Tlemcen affair did not end Morocco’s involvement in Algeria. The Amir
qAbd al-Qadir continued to cultivate his standing among his followers by
pursuing the holy war. He called on Moroccan tribesmen of the eastern Rif
Mountains to join his resistance, and he entreated the sultan to help him
with military supplies. At the outset of the struggle, qAbd al-Rahman com-
plied, recognizing qAbd al-Qadir as a “champion of Islam” and maintaining
a steady stream of horses, arms, and money flowing to him. But over time,
qAbd al-Qadir began assuming the airs of an independent sovereign, minting
his own coins and imposing special taxes in the name of jihad. When the
conflict with France resumed in 1839 after a long truce, relations between
the two leaders deteriorated rapidly. Vacillating between his duty to defend
the borders of Islam on the one hand, and his fear of attracting retribution
from the French on the other, Sultan qAbd al-Rahman decided to distance
himself from the Algerian conflict. This led him into difficulties not only with
qAbd al-Qadir, but also with his own people, who saw his withdrawal as a
clear abrogation of his religious responsibilities.
Despite his reluctance, the sultan could not ignore the French presence
in Algeria; ineluctably, he was drawn into a direct confrontation with
France. In a bid to crush once and for all the Amir’s stubborn resistance,
the French government, declaring their objective to be one of “total occu-
pation,” assigned the task of defeating qAbd al-Qadir to the battle-
hardened General Thomas Bugeaud. A tough campaigner who had risen
through the ranks and had taken part in the Napoleonic wars, Bugeaud
was not about to fail in his assignment. The French launched a vicious
campaign of scorched earth and “methodical devastation” aimed at break-
ing the Algerian resistance and bringing the war to a quick conclusion.
Angered by the Moroccan sultan’s aid to qAbd al-Qadir, and by the
presence of Moroccan soldiers in the ranks of the Amir’s army, Bugeaud
ceased to respect the inviolability of the borderlands. Time and time again,
he forced the Algerian mujahid and his followers over the border into
Morocco. In 1843, the French began building a fort close to the holy shrine
of Lalla Maghnia near Oujda, well within Moroccan territory. With the
French at the eastern gates of the Empire, qAbd al-Rahman felt compelled
to mobilize his troops and to declare holy war, bringing popular feeling to
a fever pitch. British consul Drummond Hay reported in April 1844, “the
whole population of Morocco is in a state of great ferment.”26
Squirmishes began in May 1844, but it was not until August 14, 1844,
that a decisive battle took place near the banks of the Isly river, northeast of
Oujda, between French forces and a larger Moroccan army under Sidi
Muhammad, son and khalifa of Sultan qAbd al-Rahman. Employing
ancestral methods of combat, the Moroccan army marched into battle
“arrayed in ranks as far as the eye could see.” Sidi Muhammad, wearing a
bright purple mantle, rode in their midst mounted on a snow white steed,
the imperial parasol over his head. When the tide of battle turned against
him, an alarmed Sidi Muhammad folded his parasol, donned a less con-
spicuous robe, and changed his mount, but these stratagems only made
matters worse. His troops now failed to distinguish him in the thick of the
battle, and thinking he had been killed, lost heart. Despite their vastly
superior numbers, the sultan’s forces could not hold up against the dis-
ciplined and well-armed French. By noon, the battle was over. The
Moroccan army fled in panic, some stopping to pillage their own camp
and the sultan’s treasury, while others escaped to the safety of tribal lands.
“It was a huge calamity and a great misfortune, the like of which the
Moroccan state had never previously experienced,” pronounced the his-

torian al-Nasiri.27 Memorialized as the antithesis to the great Moroccan
victory over Christians at another river, “The Battle of the Three Kings” at
Oued al-Makhazin in the sixteenth century, the defeat at Isly was widely
interpreted as an eschatological happening, a sign of Islam’s changing
fortunes vis-à-vis the rising West.28
Meanwhile, on the morning of August 6, 1844, a French fleet under the
command of the Prince de Joinville, third son of King Louis Philippe,
pounded Tangier from the sea, raining down a torrent of shot “so tremen-
dous, so uninterrupted, so destructive ” that after two hours, “the walls of
the town looked like lace.” Terrified by the onslaught, inhabitants of the
town fled to the hinterland or escaped by sea to Cadiz or Gibraltar. The few
who remained in the town cowered in their houses like “a flock of sheep
being led to slaughter,” waiting for the storm to pass.29 The young prince
then ordered the French fleet down the Atlantic coast to Essaouira, where it
wrought similar havoc. The rout at Isly and the bombardment of the
Moroccan ports was another brutal reminder of the yawning military dis-
parity between Morocco and France. Reluctantly, the sultan signed the
Treaty of Tangier (September 10, 1844) that ended hostilities and the treaty
of Lalla Maghnia (March 1845), that defined the border between their two
territories, knowing full well that by doing so, he was accepting France’s
permanent presence in Algeria. But qAbd al-Rahman had no choice: his army
was in shambles, his commanders disheartened, and popular feeling in need
of a dose of reality. The stunning defeat wounded national pride and
brought closer to home the fear that Islam itself was under threat.
qAbd al-Qadir, now an outlaw, crossed the border into Algeria rather
than commit himself to a Moroccan internment. Two more years of aimless
wandering, punctuated by bitter fighting and unspeakable atrocities, left
him worn out and destitute. At the end of 1847, surrounded by his family
and a handful of survivors, he surrendered to the French General La
Moricière, yielding up his saber in exchange for the promise that he and
his family would be permitted to go to Acre or Alexandria. But this promise
was never fulfilled; instead, with his small retinue, he was loaded onto a
warship headed for France. In January 10, 1848, his party disembarked at
Toulon and were taken to the chateau at Pau, the first stage of a long exile
that would last until his death in 1883.30
Today, in the retelling the story of this first period of colonialism, the
figure of qAbd al-Qadir stands out more brilliantly than that of
qAbd al-Rahman, whose reputation became mired in the muddy banks of
the river Isly. The Moroccan sultan was dismissed as a leader who failed in
fi g u r e 1 . The Amir qAbd al-Qadir in exile, 1865, a carte de visite by the French
photographer Eugène Disdéri (1819–1889), who pioneered this genre of
portraiture. Among his many decorations is the Grand Cross of the French
Legion of Honor, seen hanging from the rosette on his left side, awarded for his
help in rescuing Maronite Christians during the 1860 war on Mount Lebanon.
(Adoc-photos/Art Resource, NY)
his mission, and no contemporary monument or historical monograph

vaunts his name; meanwhile, qAbd al-Qadir has become a known as the
foremost hero of the Algerian resistance, and in 1966, his remains were
returned home to Algeria amidst a display of collective joy. In 1987, an
imposing statue of him astride a lunging stallion was erected in a main
square in downtown Algiers, replacing the statue of General Bugeaud
hastily removed after the Algerian revolution. Apotheosized as a saint,
holy warrior, social reformer, and “precursor of a modern, free Algeria,”
his life and career have been appropriated to signify the forging of the
Algerian people into a single independent nation.31 The mythologized qAbd
al-Qadir is a far less interesting character than the historical one, whose
motives were more complex. In the crisis following the French landing in
1830, he emerged as a star performer, a leader capable of resisting but also

yielding, of negotiating and then refusing to negotiate. Even his capitulation
was staged with a self-conscious dignity and an awareness of posterity.
Diplomacy, cooptation, cruelty, and assassination were all part of his exten-
sive repertoire.
Resistance, as historian Frederick Cooper has pointed out, takes on many
forms, contesting, deflecting, and sometimes even engaging with the invader,
while colonial authority also assumes multiple aspects, including a confu-
sion of aims and an absence of focus, especially in the initial stages of
occupation.32 qAbd al-Qadir and the French were locked in an agonistic
bond, each seeking to overcome the other not only on the field of battle, but
also in the realm of ideas, reputation, and historical memory. Understanding
very well how to exploit the concept of jihad to vanquish his adversaries as
well as to mobilize his own camp, qAbd al-Qadir managed his meager assets
with skill and imagination. At the same time, he challenged the authority of
his Moroccan overlord by assuming both the comportment and mystique of
the warrior-saint, in stark contrast to qAbd al-Rahman’s cautious maneu-
vering and fumbling capitulation. If qAbd al-Qadir is a hero of anticolonial
resistance today, and if qAbd al-Rahman is a forgotten monarch, it is only
incidentally because of France. Rather, it is due to the way that historians
have measured the success of each in manipulating the symbols of power,
and to the peculiar way that memory works.
engagement with the outside world

Late in 1845, in the aftermath of the defeat at Isly, the sultan sent the pasha
(governor) of Tetuan, qAbd al-Qadir Ashqash, as ambassador to Paris to
negotiate border issues and to have a first-hand look at the situation of his
rivals. The account of this mission, as recorded by his secretary
Muhammad al-Saffar, placed in focus the immense disparities between
the two societies. Fifty days in Paris opened Moroccan eyes to French
achievements in science, business, education, communications, agricul-
ture, war, and the art of living. Going out of their way to astonish and
impress, their French hosts rolled out all the tricks and gimmicks of the
new era: the telegraph, experiments with electricity, the Diorama, the
mechanical printing press. The Moroccans reacted accordingly; aware
they were a captive audience at an especially brilliant show, they
responded with amazement and unabashed admiration. It was only in
the religious sphere that the French were seen as irreparably deficient.
“How confident they are,” al-Saffar the scribe wrote, “how impressive
their state of readiness, how competent they are in matters of state, how
firm their laws, how capable in war and successful in vanquishing their
enemies – not because of their courage, bravery, or religious zeal, but
because of their marvelous organization, their uncanny master over affairs,
and their strict adherence to the law.”33
In a long report that reached the hands of the sultan, al-Saffar prudently
but unequivocally reinforced the message of Isly; Morocco had fallen
dangerously behind, and the security of the state was in peril. Moreover,
educated people like al-Saffar perceived that the challenge from the West
was on the ideological as well as material plane, requiring a reappraisal of
almost every facet of public life, from rethinking the structure of the
economy, to reorganizing the military, to defending Moroccan territorial-
ity, and even to the definition of a specific national identity based in Maliki
Islam. While none of these perceptions was entirely new, it was the gravity
of the situation, coupled with a firsthand vision of Europe’s patent supe-
riority in matters of state-building, and its rapid progress toward that
elusive condition known as “modernity,” that so frightened the
Moroccans. While characterizing the accomplishments of his hosts within
the literary framework of ajaqib, or “wonders” – the stock-in-trade of the
traditional Arabic travel account – al-Saffar understood that he was indeed
witnessing something unprecedented. These innovations were not the two-
headed dogs or sea monsters of the Arabic travel accounts of old; rather,
they were signs of a new age in which Europe’s power would be projected
onto the rest of the world not only in military and economic affairs, but
also in the realm of ideas, methods and ways of doing things that would
impinge on every sphere of daily life.
Following the capture of qAbd al-Qadir in 1847 and the progressive
“pacification” of Algeria, the Great Powers turned to less violent and
more scalpel-like assertions of power, opening the era of what some
historians have labeled the quest for “informal” empire.34 The period
1848 to 1865 saw pertinent manifestations of a growing competition
among Britain, Spain and France for influence in Morocco, as each
looked to that country as a fertile ground for realizing its overseas
ambitions. The key actors in this scenario were the British, now recog-
nized as the preeminent Mediterranean power after Lord Nelson’s spec-
tacular victory at Trafalgar in 1805. Morocco drew British interest for
three main reasons: because of its geographical position at the entry to the
Mediterranean, gateway to the shortest route to India; for its role in
supplying the British garrison at Gibraltar; and for its potential as a
trading partner.35
In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, spearheaded by the rapidly

accelerating industrial revolution, the rise in the doctrine of free trade, and a
belief in the efficacy of the “open door,” British determination to expand its
commercial sphere of influence in Morocco grew noticeably. Britain was
also motivated by political objectives; namely, keeping their French rivals,
now positioned in Algeria, at a comfortable distance from Morocco’s north-
ern coast, and placating the Spanish who were in an increasingly aggressive
mood. Understanding the close interaction between economic activity and
political influence, Britain’s talented representative in Morocco, John
H. Drummond Hay (1816–1893), used aggressive diplomacy to convince
an enfeebled Sultan qAbd al-Rahman that Britain should be Morocco’s
“protector” against less friendly nations, if he would agree to a new com-
mercial treaty that would substantially increase British economic influence.
After many months of haggling, the sultan capitulated and instructed his
chief negotiator, Muhammad al-Khatib, to “swallow . . . the bitter
medicine . . . do the best you can [to come to] terms that do us no harm.”36
In two Anglo-Moroccan conventions of “friendship, navigation, and
commerce” signed in 1856, Drummond Hay was able to convince the
sultan to accept conditions that Morocco had long refused: the dramatic
decrease in customs duties to ten per cent of value, an end to royal trading
monopolies, and the opening of Morocco’s doors to a larger volume of
overseas trade. Britain also gained special advantages, such as the right to
extend legal “protection” to individuals, both native and foreign, who
came under its jurisdiction. Known in the Ottoman Empire as “capitula-
tions,” treaties of “protection” had been permitted in the past by
Moroccan sultans in order to promote trade, but they were usually tightly
controlled and limited to foreign merchants who lived in the port towns.
The status of “protégé,” or protected person, allowed a foreigner involved
in a legal matter to have his case heard in his own consular court, rather
than in a Moroccan court presided over by a Shariah-trained judge, or
qadi. After the 1856 treaty, the practice of foreign representatives granting
“protection” (himaya) grew by leaps and bounds, and protégés now
included Moroccan subjects employed by foreign enterprises, with dire
consequences for the stature and authority of the makhzan.37
Meanwhile, the opening up of trade for Britain proved to be advanta-
geous: in the years 1861–1865, the average annual imports into Britain
from Morocco were three times the imports for the years 1852–1854; the
average exports during those same years were double the amount for
1852–1854. Britain now commanded the lion’s share of Morocco’s over-
seas trade, providing more than three-quarters of Morocco’s total imports,
and receiving more than two-thirds of its exports.38 British manufactures

flooded the markets; in lieu of handcrafted domestic products, Moroccans
purchased all sorts of cheaply made manufactured items, from Manchester
cottons to copper teakettles. As a result, rather than stimulating the econ-
omy, the “opening up” of Morocco undermined the fragile mechanisms
that had kept prices stable, causing rampant inflation.
Now other European states lined up to take advantage of Morocco’s
all-too-apparent vulnerability. At the front of the queue was Spain, itself
in turmoil, riven by infighting between dedicated pro-monarchists, on the
one hand, and irate liberals, on the other, who wanted to end a reac-
tionary regime founded on Church wealth. Political life in Spain was
ruled by a military oligarchy engaged in an all-out effort to protect its
own privileges. Driven by a deep-seated national passion for “African
conquest,” the ruling junta saw a Moroccan military adventure as a
means of maintaining a grip on power while distracting public attention
from the ceaseless turmoil at home. A jingoist press aroused popular
opinion to a fever pitch, reminding one observer of a “revival of the
medieval crusades.” In preparation for combat, Spanish investors offered
the government loans at zero percent interest and bullfighters donated
their prizes to the war effort. In this overheated atmosphere, it is not
difficult to understand how Prime Minister O’Donnell, head of the mili-
tary junta, was able to launch an African campaign that rode a wave of
patriotic enthusiasm.39
the war of tetuan and its burdensome legacy

A brief but murderous three-month war between Spain and Morocco
centered in the north near Tetuan began in late 1859, during which
Moroccan troops again demonstrated their incapacity to confront a better-
organized European foe. The war was initiated when Anjera tribesmen
from the periphery of the Jebala Mountains raided the Spanish garrison at
Ceuta, provoking a thunderous response. Disregarding Britain’s plea for a
peaceful settlement, the Cortes in Madrid declared war on October 22,
1859, when Spain attacked Moroccan troops camped in the vicinity of
Ceuta. After putting up a valiant defense, according to the historian
al-Nasiri, the sultan’s army was pushed back toward Tetuan, with the
Spanish troops “fighting in a line and following a solid order” in close
pursuit. On February 3, 1860, the Spanish force paused briefly before
the gates of Tetuan. Defensive artillery mounted on the walls of the town
remained strangely silent; one Spanish observer called them arqueológicos,
relics from the seventeenth century that belonged more properly in a

museum than in battle. It was toward the end of the Jewish Sabbath, and
as the Spanish force paused at the main gate, swarms of enraged Rifian
mountaineers entered the town from another direction, headed for the
Jewish quarter and intent on pillage. Al-Nasiri describes the ghastly
scene that ensued:
A tumult broke out in the town, . . . the hand of the mob stretched out to plunder,
and even [normal] people took off the cloak of decency. . . . People of the Jabal, and
the Arabs, and the riffraff began to pillage and steal; they broke down the doors of
the houses and the shops . . . keeping at it the whole night until the morning . . .40
Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, a young Spanish soldier-writer who was

part of the Spanish force, was equally nauseated by the devastation; he
noted that the desolate streets reeked of “perfume . . . [for] the soil is full
of broken flasks of essence of roses, of aromatic herbs and spices, result-
ing from the sack of the [shops] and houses . . .”41 Two days later,
General O’Donnell entered Tetuan and began to restore order, taking
steps that made it appear as if the Spanish stay would be open-ended.
Meanwhile, the local Jewish population, Spanish-speaking descendents
of fifteenth century refugees from the Inquisition, seized the opportunity
to recover their losses by serving the invading army as interpreters and
moneychangers, muddying their relations with the Muslim population
for years to come. Alarmed by the threat to the status quo that a Spanish
occupation posed, Britain reacted quickly, bringing pressure to bear on
both the Moroccans and the Spanish to come to an agreement. As the
price of withdrawal, Spain demanded a huge indemnity of twenty million
duros, about $4 million in 1861 U.S. dollars, an amount far greater than
the balance of the Moroccan treasury. Eager to see the war brought to a
swift close, Britain guaranteed a £500,000 loan funded by private invest-
ors to help Morocco meet the Spanish demands. Both the British loan and
the amount due directly to Spain were to be repaid from customs rev-
enues; Spanish agents were to be stationed in the ports to supervise the
collection of the tariffs, inflating the number of foreign merchants already
living there.42
The crippling settlement that followed the Tetuan war exhausted the
financial reserves of the state, inhibiting its capacity to pay for much-
needed reforms and driving the makhzan more deeply into debt.43
Moreover, with this defeat, the door to Europe swung open even
wider. The effects of the financial drain took on various forms in the
coming years, including disruptions to the balance of trade, the
fi g u r e 2 . British Representative Sir John H. Drummond Hay greeted by Sultan

Muhammad IV at the palace in Fez, 1868. Mrs. Hay and Miss Hay remain
discreetly out of sight in the doorway. (A Memoir of Sir John Drummond Hay,
London, 1896)
ruination of native crafts, and the undermining of a stable currency. It

was a landmark moment; for the first time, Morocco borrowed funds
from abroad to meet its debt obligations, signaling a new stage in its
dependency on the West. Even more than the Battle of Isly, the Tetuan
war was a watershed moment in Morocco’s growing entanglement with
Europe.
The historian al-Nasiri captured the humiliation of the moment when
he said: “The Tetuan war removed the mantle of respect (hijab al-hayba)
from Morocco, allowing the Christians to run roughshod over it, and the
Muslims were broken as never before.”44 Sultan qAbd al-Rahman’s rela-
tionship with British representative Drummond Hay was symptomatic of
the new era in Morocco’s relations with the West. In turn threatening and
cajoling, dispensing largesse and well-meaning advice, Drummond Hay
won a position of exceptional authority at the Moroccan court; in his own
words, he was astonished at the degree of “blind confidence” the sultan
had placed in him.45 The age of jihad was now definitively over, as
Morocco was transformed into another subaltern state feeding European

expansion by offering raw materials, cheap labor, and unprotected mar-
kets.46 By deftly manipulating the twin tools of creating dependency while
promoting an atmosphere of good will, Britain had implicated the sulta-
nate into an expanding system of international power and money.
2
Facing the Challenges of Reform (1860–1894)
Sultan qAbd al-Rahman died suddenly on the eve off the Tetuan war in
1859, bringing his son Muhammad IV (reigned 1859–1873) to the throne.
Commander of the Moroccan troops at the ignominious defeat at Isly
while still his father’s khalifa or deputy, Sultan Muhammad IV was no
stranger to crisis, and was said to feel “very strongly his past humiliations.”
His determination to set a new course for Morocco after the disgraces of
Isly and Tetuan led him to firmly embrace a policy of reform. While new
measures were at first introduced slowly and tenuously, over time their
cumulative effect began to be felt widely, and soon a more radical
approach to change took shape that was counterbalanced by the reality
that Moroccan society was still largely rural, agrarian, conservative,
deeply traditional, and wary of rapid transformations.
the contours of reform

In recent years, the notion of “reform” in the Islamic world as a response to
Western interference has undergone modification. While earlier generations
of historians spoke of the decline and degradation of Muslim societies in the
process of confronting the challenges of modernity, contemporary histor-
iography has revised this image of deterioration. That the political contours
of much of the Muslim world were reshaped in the second half of the
nineteenth century by European imperialist designs is no doubt correct,
but the Muslim reaction to this aggression was not nearly as passive or
bungling as some would have us believe. Morocco in the late nineteenth
century also offers an occasion for revisionist thinking. Writing from a
Western perspective and using sources that were ideologically suffused
28
Facing the Challenges of Reform (1860–1894) 29
with the notion of failure, colonial and postcolonial historians made

judgments about the inevitability of independent Morocco’s demise that
are now being revised. The discourse of decline was not only pervasive but
also one-sided, for there were pockets of growth, patterns of success, and
even moments of triumph, unevenly distributed yet worthy of consideration.
Thus current research focuses more on the ideas of resiliency, of cautious yet
strategic thinking, and on the selective appropriation of new technologies
that helped the sharifian state to follow an independent course long after
neighboring Algeria (1830) and Tunisia (1881) had fallen to the imperial
sword. Viewed within this framework, the reform period in Morocco was
not a series of abortive attempts to “catch up” that ended in failure, but
rather a selective adaptation to innovations and ideas aimed at stabilizing
and maintaining the qAlawite dynasty in power.
Unlike the highly centralized Ottoman Empire, where Tanzimat (the
Ottoman reform movement) emerged as a fully developed state-sponsored
program embracing an array of administrative, legal, and military meas-
ures, in Morocco, change unfolded in a piecemeal, contingent, and multi-
causal manner. It took place more in response to specific events than as a
concerted and centrally directed effort to move the state rapidly into a
Westernized orbit. Yet it was evident that certain aspects of governance
had to be radically remade and that remnants of the ancien regime had to
be updated, in order for reforms (islahat) to make headway. Just as in the
Ottoman Empire, the reform movement had to break the back of the old
order and make way for new styles of absolutism that would inflict an all-
too-familiar pain on the population. In Morocco, reform created a cadre of
“modernizers,” or “new men” committed to change, but their numbers
were very small and their influence limited. Indeed, the chief agent of
reform was the sultan himself, coordinating, directing, cajoling, and some-
times figuratively whipping the bureaucracy into action. Moreover, while
many aspects of the process were flawed, others showed surprising
strength and innovation. By viewing this period from multiple perspec-
tives, by examining the specific measures adopted to meet external and
internal threats, we shall see that the simplistic view that the makhzan was
implacably opposed to change and fought it at every level is indeed false.
Instead, it is clear that the makhzan acted with vigor and determination in
areas where it exercised strength and unrivaled control, such as adminis-
tration, taxation, and the military. It is equally apparent that it struggled
to achieve a balance between those who opposed change, and its own
inclination to move ahead using models taken from both Europe and the
Islamic East, and in particular, from Muhammad qAli’s Egypt. The reform
period, roughly embracing the years 1860 to 1912, should be seen as a

complex, contentious, and extended period of interaction among various
internal and external actors from which Morocco’s leadership emerged far
more familiar with the ways the modern world.1
What were those inner strengths? First of all, the longevity, prestige,
and stability of the qAlawi dynasty that, by the mid-nineteenth century,
had ruled Morocco for more than two hundred years. The roots of the
qAlawi sultanate ran deep, and the personal charisma of the monarch
coupled with his religious prestige enhanced his legitimacy and his capacity
to turn the cumbersome wheels of change. Morocco never achieved the
“depersonalized” rule of large bureaucracies such as the Ottoman state,
and the figure of the sultan was always at the core of the construct of
the nation. Chosen by the court and then publicly confirmed by the bayqa,
the nineteenth-century sultans ascended to the throne with relatively little
opposition.2 Sultan Muhammad IV had already served a long apprentice-
ship under his father when his moment arrived, and his only rival was a
distant cousin from the far reaches of the south who was easily set aside.
His son and successor, Hassan I (reigned 1873–1894) was universally
acclaimed and his incumbency lasted more than twenty years.3 Not that
opposition to either monarch did not exist: upstarts, rebellions, and a
constant policing of city and countryside were mandatory to retain the
seat of power. But on balance, the makhzan’s solidity, coherence, and
continuity throughout the long nineteenth century served, almost to the
end, as the main engine of transformation. Only after 1900, when
converging foreign interests viciously attacked the foundations of the
state that were already weakened by internecine warfare, was Morocco
finally overtaken by the tide of imperial expansionism that had inundated
its neighbors decades before.4
economic policies
After the 1860 Tetuan War, according to historian Germaine Ayache, “the
history of modern Morocco begins.”5 Starved for revenue and blocked by
treaty from substantially raising port revenues, Sultan Muhammad IV
looked to the countryside to lighten his load of debt, and in particular, to
the fertile breadbasket of Morocco, the coastal plain stretching from
Casablanca to Safi, comprising three important tribal confederations: the
Chaouia, the Doukkala, and the Abda. These regions were the main
producers of Morocco’s agricultural wealth and its steadiest source of
agricultural taxes. Sultan Muhammad moved aggressively to exploit this
wealth by abolishing the old Qur’anic tax based on the size of the harvest
and by replacing it with a fixed sum imposed on each tribal faction to be
paid in cash. As a result, the system was made more efficient, but the cost
was high. The old system took into account the vicissitudes of nature,
while the new one, though brutally efficient, ignored practices that had
been in place for centuries that were geared to the environmental reality of
good years and bad years that followed one another in unpredictable
succession.
This change in the makhzan’s relationship with rural areas would entail
major consequences. By squeezing an agricultural economy already oper-
ating at subsistence level, the government removed the thin layer of reserve
that held rural society together and kept it from starvation. A severe
drought in the years 1867–1869 experienced across the land meant that
agriculturalists were without seeds or food stocks to see them through to
the next harvest. In order to get by, farmers borrowed from local middle-
men who lent cash at exorbitant rates, creating a crisis “that penetrated to
the pores of society.”6 Faced with economic ruin, some peasants began to
sell off their holdings piece by piece; others abandoned the land altogether
and fled to the cities. Thus a conjuncture of factors – heavy state taxes, the
venality of local officials, and natural disasters – led to a disaggregation of
rural society that worsened over the following years.
The growth of cities and expansion of trade was another economic
factor that came into play after the Tetuan War. The increase in the
population of the major urban centers was dramatic: from a village of
eighty-five hundred in 1857, Tangier blossomed into a city of forty thou-
sand in 1904. Not all the growth was due to a foreign influx; native rural
elites set up urban households in the major towns and cities across the
empire and attracted relatives and retainers from afar. Towns were places
where new mercantile interests congregated, eager to share power with
traditional elites. An urban bourgeoisie became visible in places such as
Fez, Rabat, and Tangier, led by a rising class of entrepreneurs often
involved in business deals with foreign enterprises. The newly rich became
an engine of modernity, consuming at unprecedented levels, introducing
higher standards for education, and demanding “quality of life” improve-
ments. Jews emerged from their mellahs (quarters) and were now visible in
the urban landscape; postcards from that era show market scenes peopled
by Jewish men in their distinctive dress. The Tangier-Fez axis was
especially active, carrying people and goods from the hub of Morocco’s
precolonial industry in Fez to its only working Mediterranean port at
Tangier. As we shall see, cities were also the setting for a host of
oppositional activities, in the form of revolts, riots, and demonstrations

against the regime and its increasingly intrusive tax collection system. And
while some sectors of urban society enjoyed unprecedented wealth and
opportunity, especially (but not exclusively) in the port cities, others
resented the ascendancy of social inferiors and “subordinates,” seeing it
as clear evidence of the corruption of mores that the foreign presence had
introduced.
Establishing the financial stability of the state was clearly the necessary
foundation of any successful program of reform. Yet despite evidence of
a thriving trade with the outside world and growing revenues flowing
into the coffers of the state – the heavy cost of the Spanish indemnity
notwithstanding – Morocco found itself in the midst of a monetary crisis
by mid-century. The root cause was a precipitous decline in the value of the
Moroccan currency. Historically, Morocco’s monetary system was simple:
the mithqal, a gold piece, was divided into ten ounces (uqiyas), a silver
coin; each uqiya was worth four muzunas (also a silver piece), and each
muzuna was equal to forty-eight fils, (flous) a copper or bronze coin.
For centuries, this monetary system held steady, but in the mid-nineteenth
century, locally minted coins began to lose their value as European coins
flooded the Moroccan market in quantity. Unable to stem the tide, the
makhzan realistically allowed foreign coins to serve as legal tender, and
Moroccans began to use them as if they were ”native”; as a result,
comparable Moroccan coins having higher silver content disappeared
from circulation. Meanwhile, the bronze coins that were most commonly
used depreciated in value, making goods more expensive for the average
person.7 These trends gained momentum during the Tetuan War when
Spanish soldiers made a profit from changing money at favorable rates.
Pedro Antonio de Alarcón noted that currency trading became their infor-
mal pastime: the Spanish currency had “a floating value . . . napoleons are
good today for 25 reales, tomorrow 18, the day after tomorrow 30,
according to their abundance or scarcity.”8
Monetary instability had especially dire consequences for Moroccan
peasants, for whom every decline in the value of bronze coins meant an
increase in their cost of living. Sultan Muhammad attempted to stabilize
the currency by issuing a new silver coin called the muhammadi dirham
and fixing its exchange rate relative to bronze coins. He ordered that the
new dirham be used in all commercial transactions, including the payment
of taxes. But this measure worked for only a short time and soon this coin
also disappeared from circulation. Later sultans followed a similar strat-
egy, issuing new coins with new names, readjusting the rates of exchange
to cover the rate of inflation, and imposing new taxes, so that the long-term
damage to makhzan finances was contained and revenues remained more
or less constant. But the mass of people who had less ability to regulate
their finances were not so fortunate, and they often had to “eat” the costs
of rising inflation by going into debt. The historian al-Nasiri noted that in
the year 1864, the price of basic foodstuffs rose to new heights, to the point
where people had to sell their valuable goods and jewelry “at a fraction of
their price, which came down heavily on the weakest elements of society.”9
Perhaps the most devastating effect of the ongoing monetary crisis was a
psychological one; in the popular mind, currency troubles were somehow
linked to the more general problem of foreign intrusion into the local
economy. But as Thomas Park argues, the perception that the makhzan
was on the verge of financial collapse that some historians have forwarded is
actually false. In fact, he says, the makhzan was fully cognizant of the extent
of its financial troubles and the mechanisms needed to overcome them; the
sultan and his advisers responded to the problem by manipulating exchange
rates to maintain fiscal control.10 These efforts show that the Moroccan
economy was undergoing an evolution necessitated by the movement to a
monetarized, cash economy. The influx of revenues from the ports, the need
to calculate expenses and prepare a rudimentary budget, the adoption of
cash salaries for the growing bureaucracy, all pointed to rapid changes in the
way that Moroccans measured and distributed wealth that were far more in
accordance with modern practice than previously.
administrative reform
Over the course of the century, the central administration was progressively
professionalized and regularized. While not as institutionalized as Ottoman
officialdom, the Moroccan ruling class was nonetheless built on a merito-
cratic model, with promotion contingent on loyalty, achievement, and
family ties. Muhammad al-Saffar is a good example of how promotion
through the ranks operated; son of an aristocratic Hispano-Moorish family
(“al-Andalusi” was one of his surnames), educated at the Qarawiyyin
University in Fez, he became a notary, or qadl, who fulfilled both adminis-
trative and religious functions in the judiciary. Chosen for the embassy to
Paris because of his literary skills, his elegantly written travel account caught
the attention of Sultan qAbd al-Rahman who brought him to the court to
educate his sons. Helped by his proximity to the royal center, al-Saffar
quickly rose through the ranks to the upper reaches of the state bureaucracy,
becoming a minister and close adviser to three successive sultans.11 Nor was
his story atypical; other middling ulama followed the same track, as the
bureaucracy expanded and the need for educated men with a good com-
mand of Arabic grew. Despite chronically inadequate finances, Sultans
Muhammad IV and Hassan I introduced structural reforms modeled on
the bureaucratic innovations ushered in by the Tanzimat, including a hier-
archically ordered state apparatus that by the end of the century included
ministers with specific portfolios for finance, war, justice, and foreign
affairs.12 Ministers were salaried, and during the reign of Hassan I, the
very top levels of government were organized into formal bureaus each
having a well-defined set of tasks. Muhammad al-Saffar became the first
wazir al-shikayat, comparable to a Minister of Justice, hearing grievances
from qaqid-s (local governors) and tribal leaders and redirecting them to the
appropriate department for a hearing. Muhammad IV created a school in
Rabat (al-madrasa al-makhzaniyya) for training personnel in techniques of
modern administration and the proper forms of written communication. A
voluminous correspondence with the foreign diplomatic corps was perhaps
one reason for the expansion of the secretarial corps; another was the
widening scope of the bureaucracy into new areas, such as the more metic-
ulous management of the royal estates.
The process of restructuring was an incremental one, geared to the
practical necessities of raising revenues to support the expansion of the
state. A body of inspectors (umana) was formalized after 1862 to supervise
the garnering of fees in the ports, at the town gates, and in the markets, and
this cadre eventually became the backbone of the state’s fiscal operations.
Bright young men recruited mainly from elite families in Fez, Tetuan and
Salé were sent out to the hinterland to collect taxes. At the head of these
cadres was the amin al-umana, the inspector-general, who was in fact a
Minister of Finance.13 Each agent was given a set salary and was forbidden
from engaging in commercial activities on the side.14 The close relationship
between the inspectors in the ports who were both servants of the makhzan
as well as counterparts to the European merchants who gathered there,
introduced a cosmopolitan factor into urban society. This development
blurred the strict separation between natives and foreigners in the com-
mercial sphere, empowered wider groups of natives to grasp the subtleties
of international trade, and opened new avenues for information and
cultural exchange.15
By 1870, the greater degree of organization within the bureaucracy was
palpable. Sultan Hassan I (reigned 1873–1894), with his talent for author-
ity and his knack at choosing competent subordinates, pushed administrative
reform even further. He mandated the hours of work (6 am to 10 am, then
3 pm until sunset, with Thursday for rest and Friday morning for prayer).16
The professionalization of the administration undergirded an already exist-
ing esprit de corps among the servants of the makhzan. With their own strict
codes of conduct, their adherence to court protocol, their own forms of dress
and own varieties of worship (in 1900, most were members of the brother-
hood headed by the Saharan Shaykh Ma al-qAynayn), they constituted a self-
confident and privileged elite. Another of Sultan Hassan’s strategies was to
replace or supplement provincial officials who had overstayed their tenure
with “new men,” often selected from the ranks of the qaskar nizami, the
reformed or “new” army, hand-picked by him. In the Doukkala region, for
example, five governors mushroomed to eighteen. Hassan’s main tactic in
governing was “divide and rule” in order to enhance his control from the
center, a strategy later exploited to near-perfection by the French.
In spite of all these measures, the countryside remained unpredictable,
and complete control over the rural areas eluded Sultan Hassan I, just as it
had eluded previous sultans. Rural insurrections of a millenarian cast
would often break through the façade of a subdued countryside, usually
in the aftermath of a mahalla. News of the revolt of the Mahdi Muhammad
Ahmad, the charismatic religious figure who stymied the forces of British
colonialism in the Sudan in 1881, reached the Moroccan hinterland,
rousing enthusiasm for jihad and raising anxiety in the palace that distant
events would become an exemplar for a homegrown variety of rebellious-
ness. While tribal uprisings, the opposition of brotherhoods, and urban
insurrections were a common feature of nineteenth century Morocco, the
rise of a mahdi was a threat of a different order, as we shall see in the reigns
of the last two pre-Protectorate sultans, qAbd al-qAziz and qAbd al-Hafiz,
raising the specter of fawda (anarchy) that millenarian movements had
often provoked in the past.
integrating the national space

The rural world was coming more under the thumb of the central govern-
ment, but did the balance of power between center and periphery really
shift, or were other mechanisms at work that altered the relationship? In
the early nineteenth century, the state did not have complete mastery over
its territorial space, making it exceptionally difficult to manage outlying
areas. The premodern makhzan was a patchwork of jurisdictions that
operated with minimal coordination, with the countryside presenting
a particular set of problems. The cliché of a “tribal mosaic” contains
more than a grain of truth.17 Molecularized by vast regional differences
in terms of climate, language, ethnicity, and geography, the rural world

was a universe unto itself. Yet here, too, we see signs of a greater degree of
integration between the makhzan and its outlying areas, particularly under
the reign of Sultan Hassan I, whose expeditions to the Souss (1882) and to
the Tafilalt (1883) expanded the perceptual boundaries of the state.
“The throne of the emperor of Morocco is his horse; his canopy is the
sky,” one minister reportedly said.18 Sultan Hassan’s annual expeditions
(harkas) were part of an overall plan calculated to project the aura of
a well-run sultanate into every corner of the empire. By personally leading
these expeditions, he transformed the figure of the sultan into the symbol of
a disciplined and encompassing authority. The harka was fundamentally
a military column, often as many as fifteen thousand men, made up of
infantry, cavalry, and artillery. The slow progress of this enormous living
wave of soldiers, animals, court officials, traders and suppliers, wives and
concubines across the landscape – in addition to the massive amount of
matériel needed to sustain them – made an unforgettable impression.19 The
sultan’s visits to tribal chiefs were the occasion for both fear and rejoicing:
fear that new fiscal demands would be made, that livestock would be
confiscated, granaries emptied, tax evaders jailed; joy that the moral
ascendancy represented by the personhood of sultan had come to bless
this or that corner of the empire. Criss-crossing the Moroccan territory
from one end to the other for years on end, appearing one season in the
north, the next in the south, the court of Sultan Hassan I took on the aspect
of nomadic encampment constantly on the move.20
The peripatetic makhzan was a force for integration, bringing into the
fold of the nation distant territories that had previously not been identified
with it. The great qaqids of the High Atlas, the Goundafa, the M’tougga
and the Glawa, each of whom owed his rise to power to his control over
a pass through those lofty mountains, were drawn into a tenuous relation-
ship with the ruling monarchy for the first time. In a letter to his provincial
governors announcing his diplomatic success in winning over the “Lords
of the Atlas” and gaining their cooperation in supplying his army with
tribal contingents, Sultan Hassan I took credit for this achievement:
We have sheathed our swords in their scabbards, and stemmed the flow of blood . . .
we have brought honor to them, substituting words of diplomacy for words of
war. . . . We have conquered their lands in their entirety, both the valleys and the
uplands, from the craggy hillsides to the towering peaks that are companions of the
moon and greet the stars whenever they appear . . .21
Rather than speaking of a weakened tribal structure vis-à-vis the grow-

ing military power of the makhzan in the later nineteenth century, or of an
already contentious relationship made more acute, we should better imag-
ine the emergence of new kinds of linkages – economic, political, and
military – between center and periphery in which each tightened its hold
on the other, bringing the “tribal” element to the center, and projecting the
“makhzan” into the farthest reaches of its territory.22
military reform
Finally there was the question of military reform. Modernizing the army
along European lines was a central objective of the state following the
crushing defeats of Isly and Tetuan.23 For centuries, the Moroccan army
had been based on a core of professional soldiers, the gish (Ar.jaysh) units,
complemented by irregular tribal contingents (napiba). Both groups had
grown increasingly volatile in the course of the nineteenth century, fiercely
resisting any reduction in their privileges despite their mounting failures, in
a manner reminiscent of the insubordination of the Ottoman janissary
corps earlier in the century. Starting with qAbd al-Rahman’s first tentative
efforts to create a new army, the qaskar nizami, until the imposition of
French colonial rule in 1912, sultans grappled with the question of how to
bring the military to a new level of preparedness, so that it would become
an instrument of internal order and a wall of defense against outsiders. The
implications of the word nizam were clear: it meant a rational chain of
command, creating units of well-equipped infantry and modern artillery,
and teaching coordination in the battlefield that required a machinelike
discipline rather than individualized displays of heroism. It also meant a
closer relationship with Europe as the source for modern weaponry and for
the recruitment of foreign military advisers. Yet another aspect of military
reform was the sending of student missions to the West as a means of
learning new methods of training and command.24
Over the course of sixty years, between 1845 and 1905, the fighting
capacity of the Moroccan military improved dramatically. But at the same
time, military reform was plagued by a host of problems that slowed its
progress. The “new order” evoked the darker side of European-induced
modernity that eventually reached into all levels of the Moroccan state.
Among the questions it raised were those concerning the relevance of
infidel models to the Islamic polity, whether the makhzan could manage
the heavy financial obligations and unending hemorrhage of wealth that
an upgrading required, and what would be the effect of change on key

groups in society who depended on the status quo for their well-being.
It should be noted that the “new order” –a term borrowed from the
modernization efforts of the Ottoman Sultan Selim III in the 1790s, and
later used to describe the modernized armies of Muhammad qAli Pasha in
Egypt and Ahmad Bey in Tunis – did not imply a complete break with the
past. Unlike the Ottoman Empire and Egypt, where ancient corps like the
janissaries and the Mamluks had to be crushed in order to clear the path, in
Morocco the core army units of gish and napiba were left intact when the
first tabors, or battalion-strength units of the qaskar nizami, were created in
1845. However, there was no mistake about the difference between
the new units and the old guard. First of all, there was a totally new
nomenclature for ranks and organization, often provided by Ottoman
and Egyptian military manuals. Moreover, the men looked different:
they wore European-style uniforms and carried flintlock rifles made in
England. Finally, the new units were infantry, as opposed to the old-style
mounted cavalry, enabling the Moroccans to replicate the tactics that had
produced the concentrated firepower the French had displayed at Isly.
Unfortunately, the first adversary against whom they were deployed in
the 1840s was the immensely popular resistance hero qAbd al-Qadir,
hounded around western Algeria by Moroccan auxiliaries. This use of
the qaskar nizami against the native hero dampened popular enthusiasm
for the new army, and in the course of time, many soldiers deserted. The
qaskar nizami were an insignificant unit within a pathetically disorganized
regular army when Moroccan troops were defeated by Spanish forces
before the gates of Tetuan in 1859.25
This situation began to change when Sultan Muhammad IV came to
the throne. The new sultan hardly looked the part of a modernizer with his
flowing white robes and mane of curly black hair, but he was in fact
immersed in the language of reform and fully aware of the technological
transformations taking place elsewhere in the region. He had reportedly
perused military manuals translated from Turkish and European lan-
guages into Arabic, and he had a lively curiosity about technical innova-
tions. An Englishman hired to build a steam engine in the palace in
Marrakesh in 1863 recounted how one day the sultan visited the work
site. That evening, the sultan ordered the engine room to be furnished with
carpets and invited the ladies of the harem to a sumptuous feast, simulta-
neously astonishing and terrifying them by turning the blasting engine on
and off.26 Sultan Muhammad knew a smattering of French and Spanish,
engaged in building projects to improve the roads and ports, initiated sugar
and cotton plantations in the Haouz region, and imported European

machinery to process the raw materials.27 Perhaps his most daring inno-
vation was the introduction of a state-sponsored printing press, the first of
its kind in Morocco, in 1865. By 1868, more than three thousand books,
mostly manuals of religious instruction, had been printed on the litho-
graphic press in Fez. In appearance they resembled hand-written manu-
scripts and in content they were hardly revolutionary; but a line had been
crossed and the long-standing monopoly of the scribal classes over the
reproduction and transmission of the written word had finally been
breached.28
In the sphere of military reform, Sultan Muhammad was equally ambi-
tious. He reconstituted the qaskar nizami, equipping it with up-to-date
weapons supplied by a munitions factory in Marrakesh. He created a
ministerial post equivalent to a Minister of War (al-allaf al-kabir) to over-
see military affairs, and he expanded the social base of the army by
conscripting men through regular call-ups directed to every level of society.
He established a military training school at Dar al-Makhzan in Fez, and he
sought out Muslim military instructors from Algiers and Tunis to train the
new corps, preferring them to Europeans. By the end of his reign, Sultan
Muhammad IV handed on to his son and successor Sultan Hassan I a
fighting force trained and armed to a degree his internal adversaries could
no longer match, giving the makhzan a preponderant edge in controlling
the national territory.29
In much the same way that military reform had transformed the
Egyptian state under Muhammad qAli, the qaskar nizami in Morocco
proved to be a force of primal change. Through the conscription process,
it sought out recruits from the all parts of the country and from every social
class; it made the state visible through the distribution of supplies, uni-
forms, food, fodder and equipment; it created new medical practices for
sanitizing the troops; it fostered codes of discipline, service and account-
ability, as well as new standards of cruelty in the punishment of those who
refused to comply. Conscripts in the sultan’s new army were tattooed
between the thumb and the forefinger in order to identify them in case
of their desertion. While riddled with inefficiencies, the reformed army was
at the same time a model for a new variety of state power that reached into
society and made its influence felt in ordinary lives.30
Surprisingly, Sultan Muhammad’s reforms encountered minimal oppo-
sition from the ulama, who were ordinarily inclined to reject innovations
that originated in the West. But largely because of his solicitous attention
to the opinions of his key religious advisers, Sultan Muhammad headed off
the possibility of turning them into a party of opposition. The handful of

mid-century religious figures who wrote about the nizami army took the
attitude that it was an instrument for repelling the infidel, shoring up the
foundations of the state, and fulfilling the religious duty of jihad – all
considered acts of piety.31 As foreign incursions on Morocco’s borders
increased in the decades of the 1870s and 1880s, discussion over the
correctness of adopting reforms from the infidel ceased. French incursions
into the Guir Valley (1870), the creation of a French military outpost on
the Moroccan-Algerian border at Aïn Sefra (1881), and the installation of
a British trading post at Cap Juby (Tarfaya) in 1882, required a military
response and convinced the governing elites as well as the ulama that it was
time to act boldly.
The chronicler al-Nasiri’s analysis of the situation rejected the super-
ficial notion that reform was simply a Moroccan adaptation of Western
methods of making war. Writing toward the end of the century and
evaluating the “new order” retrospectively, he expressed acute insight
into the far-reaching consequences of military reform. He was himself a
cautious “modernizer,” and he understood that the creation of a new army
was a complex operation laden with cultural signifiers. He perceived
reform as the leading edge of a broader reconstruction of relations within
Moroccan society based on the idea of the individual’s responsibility to
serve the state. The qaskar nizami, in his view, was a school for practicing
the arts of a new brand of Islamic modernity, where recruits learned the
fundamentals of religious practice, the principles of rational organization,
and the meaning of rank and hierarchy:
The first thing [the soldier] should learn is to appreciate the blessings of his religion
and to direct his efforts toward protecting Muslims. The purpose of this army
(jund) is to protect the faith and if it fails in this regard, then how can it render
service to the Muslim people? Furthermore, [the soldier] must learn manly virtue,
the importance of proper decorum and dress, worthy speech, respect for superiors,
and compassion for the less fortunate. He should understand that the finest quality
before God and man is zeal for religion and country (watan), as well as love of the
sultan and his wise counsel. If the fanatical foreigner is ready to defend his false
religion, then why not insist also that the believing Arab should protect his own
religion, his state (dawla) and his homeland (watan)?32
While the qaskar nizami may have been undertaken initially as a means
of improving the state’s capacity for self-defense, it had since grown into
something much broader. It was now the organizing frame for the state’s
primacy over its subjects, providing the model for a disciplined society
cohering around the idea of a Moroccan “nation.” If this concept was not
yet fully developed, if the implications of reform were not yet fully under-
stood, they nevertheless pointed in the direction of an acute awareness that
certain institutions had now become the means for imposing a vastly
expanded form of state authority capable of reaching down to the cellular
level of everyday life.
Hassan I continued to expand the military reforms instituted by his
father. His efforts moved along several axes at once, but were mainly
directed toward an increasing professionalization of the military. During
his reign, the qaskar nizami was expanded to the unprecedented size of
twenty-five thousand men.33 His military projects included shoring up the
coastal defenses with batteries of large caliber cannon, the founding in
1888 of a small arms factory in Fez (the “Makina”), the recruitment of
top-flight military instructors from both Europe and the Ottoman empire,
and the dispatch of students missions for study abroad. Between 1874 and
1888, three to four hundred students, chosen from the jaysh and qabid as
well as from among the civilian population, were sent to academies of war
in Britain, France, Italy, and Belgium to study mathematics, engineering
and military science.34
Not all of these innovations were a success: production at the Makina
was miniscule and the cost of each unit produced much greater than the
price of comparable imported weapons. Moreover, the ability to maintain
the more sophisticated equipment eluded the men placed in charge of them.
The three batteries of eighteen-ton British Armstrong guns installed on the
ramparts of Tangier did not function properly, and were never fired in
anger. Many of the returning students disappeared into the bureaucracy,
but some, like Muhammad Guebbas, who was sent to the Royal School of
Military Engineering at Chatham in 1875, learned respectable English and
on his return, joined the upper ranks of the makhzan, serving every sultan
from Hassan I to Yusuf, when he became Prime Minister.35
Raising the revenues to pay for these projects required that the govern-
ment be constantly on the move. Every year from spring until fall, Sultan
Hassan was on campaign, leading expeditions to all parts of the country
organized with great care and at enormous expense. The mahalla, or
mobile encampment, traveled throughout the countryside, collecting
back taxes, extracting expressions of fealty from local chiefs, winning
over reluctant allies mainly through persuasion but occasionally through
a show of force. Often the planning and execution of the campaign was in
response to internal political events, demonstrating that the “new army”
was as much an instrument of internal policing as a bulwark against the
foreigner. For example, the volatile brotherhood of the Darqawa led an
uprising in the name of jihad in the fall of 1887 near Figuig, ostensibly to
protest French incursions in that border region. Alarmed by the uprising,
the sultan immediately responded. Deploying a combination of force and
diplomacy, he squelched the rebel action by claiming that “unofficial”
proclamations of jihad posed a danger to the state; in a letter to the
obstinate chief of the Darqawa brotherhood, Muhammad b. al-qArbi
al-Madghari, who was advocating for a locally-led jihad, the sultan
warned that he alone had the right to raise the flag of holy war.36 Sultan
Hassan quickly followed his warnings by launching an expedition to those
regions, heading off what might have been a general uprising.
Likewise, his campaign to the Tafilalt in 1893, just months before he
died, was most likely motivated by internal political causes. Sensing
the end was near, he expressed the wish to visit the tombs of his qAlawi
forbears buried in that remote southern oasis. But the mahalla had other
purposes as well. The appearance of the sultan in the far corners of the state
helped to establish makhzan supremacy over the trans-Saharan trade
routes that bisected the Tafilalt, at that moment being closely watched by
the French from across the frontier with Algeria. And through face-to-face
contact with the local chieftains, the mahalla reestablished the ancient ties
of fealty between the qAlawi sultan and his desert minions. More than
a military maneuver, the system of the mahalla, according to Daniel
Nordman, was “specifically related to the exercise of sovereignty,” by
sketching on the ground the limits of the Moroccan national territory.37
diplomacy and the problem of protection

During the second half of the nineteenth century, the state and its activities
became entangled in a web of relations in which internal and external
policies could no longer be separated. Morocco’s engagement with the
outside world was now an established fact, and the necessity to build a
cadre of professionals who could deal with Europeans was imperative.
Moroccan embassies had never been stationed permanently in European
capitals, but now the number of special envoys sent abroad to negotiate
issues such as trade, frontiers, and the purchase of equipment increased
dramatically. The office of the sultan’s diplomatic representative in
Tangier (the niyaba), established in 1851, became an important outpost
for the exchange of information with Europeans, and the holder of that
position (the napib) became in reality a Minister of Foreign Affairs. The
immense amount of correspondence between the na’ib and the makhzan
preserved in the royal archives is proof of the intensifying diplomatic
activity that required the direct involvement of the sultan, as the Great
Powers increasingly viewed Morocco as a fertile field for their imperial
ambitions.
Another area in which entanglements with Europeans grew was that of
“protection.” Begun in the eighteenth century as a means of stimulating
commerce by releasing foreigners from the jurisdiction of Moroccan law,
including the payment of taxes, the granting of “protection,” or what we
might call “diplomatic immunity,” metastasized in the nineteenth century
into a corrupt and abusive practice that embraced hundreds of people
and undermined the authority of the makhzan. Known as the regime of
“capitulations” in the Ottoman empire, the idea of “protection” appeared
first in a treaty signed between Morocco and France in 1767, but remained
a rather benign legality while the number of foreigners in Morocco was
small. The list of protected people grew exponentially following the sign-
ing of the Free Trade agreement between Morocco and Great Britain in
1856; it now included not only foreign merchants in the ports, but also
official consular representatives (often native Jews) along with their
employees and their families, servants and friends, as well as the
Moroccan partners or “associates” of Europeans – indeed, anyone who
had access to a European could potentially negotiate or even purchase
protection and become exempt from taxes, renounce his debts, or refuse to
appear in a Muslim court.38
Many protégés were tujjar, or merchants, because of their key role as
intermediaries, but other natives were also accorded protection and
refused to pay taxes for less obvious reasons: chiefs of zawiyas, ministers
of state, the unofficial native escort of J. H. Drummond Hay, and one
entire village in the environs of Tangier whose inhabitants were employed
as beaters in boar hunts organized by the U.S. Consulate.39 The practice
grew despite the warnings of the ulama that protection was tantamount to
“wallowing in the mud of the infidel.”40 Certain European agents even had
the audacity to put patents of protection up for sale, and some Moroccans
reportedly bought multiple titles of protection, just to be on the safe side.41
While the aim of the reform movement was to open a new era in
state-societal relations founded on order and rationality, the practice of
protection proposed a different option riddled by corruption and special
privileges. Dubbed the “bridgehead of imperialism” by one observer, the
granting of protections penetrated deeply into the social fabric.
On the one hand, one might say that protégés were “proto-entrepreneurs”
acting as the leading edge of a new, capital-intensive exploitation of
Morocco’s agricultural and mineral wealth, energizing the economy by
launching new projects on an unprecedented scale, such as the manufacture

of luxury products, the processing of raw materials, the extension of agricul-
tural lands, and the stimulation of trade and other basic industries. On the
other hand, they were a source of disruption and economic grievances. Some
protégés used their status to engage in banned activities, such as ignoring
restrictions on imports and exports, purchasing tribal lands and illegally
privatizing them, lending money at exorbitant rates, and by eluding the
Shariah court whenever they were called to account. They also used their
extraterritorial status to demand redress of “losses,” both real and imagined,
in the commercial sphere, forcing the makhzan to pay large fines. While Jews
figured disproportionably among the protégés, they were by no means the
majority. Most Jews who benefited from the practice were bankers and
wealthy merchants, while the mass of Jews – poor artisans, shopkeepers,
and laborers – were not affected at all. In fact, they were not only excluded
from protection, but often became victims of it, when Muslims ruined by
debts to avaricious Jewish money-lenders turned their anger against others
who were innocent of such practices. The net effect was to exacerbate class
divisions within the Jewish communities, placing rich and poor in opposition,
and undermining a sense of communal solidarity.42
All these anxieties came to a head when the British aristocrat Sir Moses
Montefiore, a Sephardic Jew, undertook a mission to Morocco in 1863 to
procure guarantees for the security of his Moroccan coreligionists. Sir
Moses was a wealthy British financier and politician with close ties to
other powerful European Jews as well as to the non-Jewish world. He was
one of the architects of a new international solidarity movement led by elite
European Jews aimed at improving the conditions of their coreligionists in
the “Orient.” Appropriating the language of social justice emanating from
the French Revolution, and making use of modern tools of journalism and
propaganda, Montefiore and his associates pursued a two-pronged mis-
sion: to combat the abuse of Jews wherever it might occur, and to intro-
duce legal guarantees similar to those that had improved the status of Jews
in the West. In 1840, following the notorious “blood libel” case in
Damascus in which Jews were unjustly accused of having committed ritual
murder, Sir Moses extracted from the Ottoman sultan a firman (royal
decree) assuring Jewish rights and granting “the same advantages” to
Jews as other subjects of his empire. This success inspired Montefiore to
seek other venues for his well-financed and morally driven humanitarian
activities.
In 1860, a group of French Jews founded the Alliance Israélite Universelle
(AIU) in Paris, adopting a program of education and humanitarian “good
works” aimed at building strong links between Europe and the Jews of the
Middle East.43 Morocco had suddenly appeared on the map of Jewish
philanthropy during the Tetuan War of 1859–1860, when the plight of
the hundreds of Jewish refugees who fled northern Morocco for the safety of
Gibraltar and Cadiz was broadcast in the European Jewish press, launching
an international effort dubbed “The Moroccan Relief Fund.” This cam-
paign advertised the condition of Moroccan Jewry to the rest of the Jewish
world. In 1862, the AIU established its first primary school for Jewish
children in Tetuan, following with more schools in Tangier (1864),
Essaouira (1866), and Safi (1867).44
Eager to bolster his reputation as a champion for Jewish rights, and
despite his advanced age, Sir Moses now turned to Morocco, where news
of the torture and imprisonment of Jews in the coastal town of Safi on
dubious charges had reached European ears. Seizing on this incident and
working hand in hand with British representative Drummond Hay as his
reluctant consort, Montefiore – who had a keen sense of the theatrical –
decided to repeat his success of twenty years before and personally petition
Sultan Muhammad IV to grant “equality” to all dhimmis (non-Muslims),
Christians and Jews alike.45 Arriving in Tangier on December 11, 1863,
Sir Moses’ reputation in defense of Jewish interests had preceded him, and
he received a tumultuous welcome. It was widely believed that the purpose
of his visit was to succor the poor, and a century later, people in Tangier
still recalled how he rode into town on a donkey, a pannier of silver coins at
his side, casting fistfuls to the crowd as he passed.46
After successfully gaining the freedom of the Jewish prisoners in Safi,
Montefiore’s mission changed and began to take on a different cast.
Traveling down the Atlantic coast on a British warship, the portly octoge-
narian arrived in Essaouira and from there was carried overland in a sedan
chair to Marrakesh. His audience with the Sultan Muhammad IV went
according to plan, with the sultan obligingly issuing a dahir that promised
“Jews who live throughout our dominions receive their rightful measure
of justice equal to others according to the law,” employing modern liberal
expressions such as “equality” (taswiya) and “justice” (mizan al-haq).
Speculation about the motives for this surprising move center on at least
two possibilities: first, that the sultan may have been anxious to please Great
Britain, his principal European ally, by showing his open frame of mind and
by rewarding this semiofficial envoy with the prize for which he had come so
far; second, that the sultan was sincerely concerned that Jews be treated
fairly in his dominions, and by enforcing this measure, he would win over to
his side the small but economically important Jewish middle class.
In fact, Sultan Muhammad IV followed up the dahir with a circular

letter to all provincial governors urging them to halt abuses against Jews.47
The dahir did not constitute any change in Shariah law, only the manner in
which the law might be applied. Nevertheless, it was a stinging rebuke to
the ulama, who felt it was their exclusive right to interpret matters regard-
ing dhimmi status. Jews, by contrast, felt as if the dahir constituted an
important sea change, and copies of it were immediately translated into
Hebrew and posted on the doors of synagogues throughout Morocco,
even in the most remote mellahs.48 When news of the proclamation spread
internationally, Montefiore’s already lofty reputation reached new
heights. But in reality, the dahir did little to change the status of Jews in
Morocco. Indeed, it might have had the opposite effect, as is evident in
al-Nasiri’s vexed comments, where he complains that “certain Jews” tried
to unfairly exert political pressure on the sultan in order to gain conces-
sions “like the Jews of Egypt.”49
Montefiore’s mission was a watershed event on several counts: it dem-
onstrated the nascent political power of an “emancipated” international
Jewry; it forged a bond between Moroccan Jewry and world organizations
ready to intervene on its behalf; and it made the “Jewish question” an
ongoing theme in the makhzan’s dealings with the West. The question of
Jewish rights reappeared in 1870, when the entire Jewish population of
Algeria was given the legal status of citizens of France through the prom-
ulgation of the Crémieux Decree, a decision that reverberated strongly
throughout Morocco’s mellahs.
The visit of Montefiore, recorded in Moroccan memory as the visit of
“the Jew Mushi,” continued to reverberate long after, especially among
the ulama who regarded the dahir as an affront to their preeminent role in
shaping legal discourse.50 Thereafter, European diplomats regularly
mingled the question of Jewish rights in their discussions with the makh-
zan, even when broaching matters such as slavery and prison reform, using
the topic as a convenient lever for intervention in Moroccan affairs. The
Montefiore episode exposed an unexpected side to the program of reform,
pointing out to makhzan officials that any change in the status of dhimmis
was an acutely sensitive point with Europeans that could unleash demons
impossible to contain.
The topic of protection continued to trouble the makhzan throughout
the reform era. It was a preoccupation of Sultan Hassan, who internation-
alized the question and tossed it into the hopper of topics that stirred up
Great Power rivalries. He was skillful at dealing with the entreaties of
foreigners and raised to perfection the art of playing off one representative
against another. He believed that an international meeting bringing together

all the interested parties could work to his advantage. Indeed, each of the
powers had distinct objectives in Morocco: Britain’s aim was to stimulate
commerce and increase its market share of Morocco’s exports, while the
French were obsessed with protecting their investment in Algeria. Moreover,
the occupation of Tunisia by France and the declaration of a “Protectorate”
over that former Ottoman dependency in 1881 had raised France’s stake in
North Africa.51 Only Morocco continued to elude its grasp, but fierce
opposition from other European states was assured if it were to make a
move at this time. Protection was a safe means of extending French political
influence inside Morocco without risking a confrontation with the other
Great Powers. Spain held similar goals, but was handicapped by internal
dissention and instability. Both Spain and France preferred a weak makhzan
while the British hoped for the opposite – a “reformed” Moroccan state that
could stand on its own.
Aware of these distinctions, Sultan Hassan thought it would be a good
moment to settle the problem of protection and called for an international
conference on the issue. But the results were not at all satisfactory, and the
regime of protections went on. The Treaty of Madrid (signed July 3, 1880)
was negotiated in part to limit the practice, but instead of reducing foreign
interference, the makhzan was forced to make even more concessions that
further limited its sovereignty, such as granting foreigners the right to own
land in the countryside, something that Great Britain in particular had
been pushing for all along.52
The upward-spiraling number of Moroccans now exempt from Muslim
law angered the ulama, who regarded foreign intervention as the main reason
for the country’s moral decline. Prominent personalities with important
positions in society were being seduced by the allure of protection, furthering
the impression of a state under siege. Sharif and head of the zawiya of
Ouezzane, Mawlay qAbd al-Salam, owner of vast estates in northeast
Morocco and chief of a rich brotherhood with branches in Algeria and one
of the staunchest supporters of the makhzan, was granted France’s protection
in 1884, as part of a wider French strategy to co-opt important religious
figures as political allies. Mawlay qAbd Salam returned the compliment by
ignoring French incursions in the southern region of Touat, considered
Moroccan territory and a place where his zawiya had many followers. To
compound the insult, the sharif posed proudly for a photograph wearing a
French military uniform festooned with medals.53 His defection was a great
psychological blow to the makhzan, revealing the extent to which foreign
influence had penetrated the traditional power structure.
fi g u r e 3 . The “Emperor of Morocco,” presumably Sultan Hassan I, a carte de

visite by the E. & H. T. Anthony Company of New York, manufacturer of these
early photographic gems. Photographs of Sultan Hassan I are extremely rare; this is
the only known photographic portrait of him. (Courtesy of Special Collections,
Fine Arts Library, Harvard University)
Protesting against the abuses of protection was now a political neces-

sity, as well as a religious one. qAli b. Muhammad al-Simlali, a scholar and
a servant of the court, was no doubt acting as the spokesman for Sultan
Hassan when he wrote in 1891 that foreign protections had brought about
“the disorder and breakup of the people of Morocco.”54 Whether the
guilty party was a hereditary aristocrat, like the Sharif of Ouezzane, or
a dhimmi moneychanger, seeking protection was seen as a traitorous act.
Despite the storm of opposition, the practice continued unabated; it was

a constant thorn in the side of the makhzan, a reminder of the danger of
outside interference and of its own vulnerability to foreign pressure.
the rise of an assertive bourgeoisie

The death of Sultan Muhammad IV in 1873 and the ascent of his favorite
son, Hassan I, marked a new era in Moroccan statecraft. Thirty-seven
years old, Hassan had been indoctrinated into the subtleties of court
politics at a very early age. “Courage and perseverance were his dominant
traits,” according to French observer La Martinière, yet a quiet modesty
permeated his disposition.55 The worldly Italian traveler Edmondo de
Amicis confessed he was “enthralled” by Sultan Hassan’s appearance
when saw him outside the palace in Fez:
This Sultan . . . was the handsomest, most attractive young man who ever won
an odalisque’s heart. He was tall, active, with large, soft eyes, a fine aquiline nose,
dark, oval face, and a short, black beard. His expression was at once noble
and melancholy. A white haïk [cloak] enveloped him from head to foot . . . the
large and entirely white horse he rode had green housings, and the stirrups were of
gold. All this whiteness and the long, full cloak lent him something of a sacerdotal
air. . . . His graceful bearing, his expression, half-melancholy, half-smiling; his
subdued, even voice, sounding like the murmur of a brook; in short his entire
appearance and manner had a something [sic] ingenuous and feminine, and yet, at
the same time, a solemnity that aroused instinctive admiration as well as profound
respect.56
The combination of solemnity and intelligence that de Amicis felt was

corroborated by others. Sultan Hassan’s subjects were convinced of his
saintly qualities. It was said that he rarely reacted with force if other means
were at hand. Although violence was indeed in his arsenal of responses, he
used it with restraint and an eye to increasing his authority; nevertheless,
he did not shrink from displays of rank brutality, and foreigners took
notice of the heads of his enemies hanging from the gates of Bab Mahruk
in Fez. He was cautious in all things, even to the point of appearing
indecisive, according to sociologist Jacques Berque, but his intentions
were clear. He carefully guarded the patrimony he had inherited from his
ancestors, yet he approved of the reforms initiated by his father, and under
his guidance, the country entered an era of prosperity. The Spanish indem-
nity was paid off in 1884, and thereafter, all customs receipts went directly
into the Moroccan treasury.
Sultan Hassan knew how to deflect the incessant demands of Europeans

while harboring no particular affection for them, so that foreign visitors
were treated with courtesy but kept at a distance. His strategy was to fend
them off through dilatory responses and “inexhaustible diplomacy”; British
envoy Charles Euan-Smith was kept waiting for weeks in the sizzling
summer heat of Fez in 1892 in the hope of negotiating a new commercial
treaty with the makhzan. The treaty was endlessly discussed, and when a
compromise was finally reached, the text was so watered down that Euan-
Smith reportedly tore it up in disgust.57 When Sultan Hassan gave in to
foreign demands, it was always couched in terms of a one-time concession
rather than as an established rule. He adhered closely to court protocol – the
qa qida, or rules of behavior – that determined the dress, decorum, and daily
routine of those around him. Under his rule, ceremonial traits of power were
preserved with a rigor and exactitude, and nothing escaped him. Most letters
passed through his hands, and he often added his own notations; he saw
everything and knew everything. During the autumn of 1887 he fell ill and
was unable to attend to his duties, thus bringing the bureaucratic apparatus
to a complete standstill. His qualities of attention, consistency, and adher-
ence to past models brought him the high regard he enjoys today as one of
Morocco’s great sultans.58
His first crisis was a test of these qualities, foreshadowing the manner in
which he would deal with similar social upheavals throughout his reign.
The “abominable” (in the words of the historian al-Nasiri) maks, or “gate
tax” was reimposed by Muhammad IV in 1864 after a long hiatus. This
tax was levied on goods entering the city, as well as on goods sold in the
market, such as wool, animal hides, and foodstuffs, causing hardship
among the artisans and working people, and consternation among the
ulama, most of who considered this tax as illegal.59 The maks was not
the only source of discontent; foreign goods introduced after the free trade
agreement of 1856 competed with handmade manufactures of local arti-
sans, raising prices and cutting into their traditional markets. Only a small
group of rich Moroccans who served as middlemen to Europeans benefited
from this trade. Reluctant to stir up trouble with the wealthy urban
bourgeoisie who were one of its main pillars of support, the makhzan
looked the other way. Meanwhile, popular resentment, especially among
the militant crafts guilds like the tanners (dabbaghin), began to fester.
Increased taxes and competition from foreign goods had hit these artisans
and their families especially hard.60
The anger of the urban working classes reached a boiling point just after
Sultan Hassan I succeeded his father to the throne in October 1873. The
tanners rose up in protest against the maks, “raging like lions and tigers”
through the streets of Fez and ransacking the house of Muhammad Bennis,
the amin al-umana, or Minister of Finance, who was seen as chief agent of
the onerous tax. Bennis fled and took refuge in a nearby public bath. One
rioter was reportedly so enraged that he single-handedly tore the massive
door from Bennis’ house and carted it off down the street, finally collapsing
under its weight. Fez was turned into a battleground as frightened burghers
barricaded themselves behind closed doors. The sultan, who was on cam-
paign, sent solicitous letters calling for calm. The hated tax collectors were
momentarily withdrawn, and the rebellion ceased.
But the maks collectors soon reappeared in the markets, causing the
insurrection to break out once again, this time in an even more violent
manner. Local Fez militiamen, egged on by prominent citizens, took up
positions in the minarets of Old Fez and fired down on the qaskar nizami,
called out by the makhzan to face the fury of the mob. The opposition of the
townspeople was an act of insubordination the sultan could not ignore. The
insurrection finally ended when Sultan Hassan ordered the qaskar nizami to
pillage the town at will, a measure calculated to shock the people of Fez back
to their senses. Among the leaders of the revolt were prominent citizens –
a sharif, a secretary of the makhzan, a Muslim jurist – who were punished,
but then quickly restored to favor. Each party to the dispute had made its
point: the bourgeoisie led by the umana asserted its new-found militancy;
the working classes demonstrated the limits of their patience; and the sultan
drew a line on his willingness to negotiate with the people of Fez.61
This incident exposed many of the fault lines opening up in state-
societal relations stemming from the makhzan’s insatiable thirst for cash.
It laid bare the difference in attitude between the working poor, suffering
from excessive taxes and Europe’s entry into the local economy, and the
new bourgeoisie, including the tax collectors, many of whom were being
enriched by their dealings with foreigners.62 In the course of these changes,
the social equilibrium in Fez had become destabilized. The people of Fez
had a longstanding reputation for rebelliousness, and the revolt of the
tanners was an expression of popular dissatisfaction with changing geog-
raphies of urban power. At issue was the extent to which the makhzan
could allow pockets of local authority to challenge the centralizing goals of
the state. Finding a balance between entrenched special interests and the
centripetal ambitions of the sultanate was an ongoing theme of Hassan’s
reign, evident in his actions in rural as well as urban contexts. As the center
of gravity gradually shifted, Sultan Hassan acted with determination to
reassure his subjects that the rudder of the state was holding steady.
Typically, the peripatetic Hassan I met his death while on the march.
His mahalla had left Marrakesh and was passing though a remote region
near Tadla in July 1894, when the sultan succumbed to the illness that had
debilitated him during his last years. Because the army was still in enemy
territory, his chamberlain Ba Ahmad kept the death a secret, ordering the
ministers who accompanied the mahalla not to reveal the news. The harem
was also entreated to keep silent, and the usual you-yous that are a sign of
lamentation were suppressed. The camp was wrapped in silence as Ba
Ahmad plotted his next moves. The body of the sultan was washed and
dressed in fresh linen, and propped up daily in an enclosed litter until the
mahalla reached Rabat, when his death was revealed. And none too soon,
for the heat of the summer had rendered a telltale corpse.63 The greatest
sultan of the age of reform was instantly regretted, as Moroccans feared
what would follow without his judicious leadership. The strong person-
ality of Hassan I held the state together during his lifetime and maintained
an illusion of cohesiveness; as we shall see, with his death, centrifugal
tendencies inherent in the Moroccan polity reemerged once again.
the balance sheet of reform

Was the movement for reform a success or a failure, or something in
between? Obviously it did not halt the aggressive tendencies of Europe,
nor did it increase the capacity of the state to block European interven-
tions. The results of the reform movement were hardly uniform. The old
continued to coexist with the new. New coinages did not replace ancient
economies of barter; the qaskar nizami operated alongside traditional tribal
contingents; a bureaucracy chosen on merit did not supplant one based on
family and kinship; a sultanate inclined to consultation did not overrule an
authority derived from divine right. On closer examination, it appears the
changes introduced never penetrated deep enough to alter the fundamental
structures of the state, nor did they extend far enough outward into the
public sphere to change popular attitudes. The modernizing element was
not consolidated in any one institution, but rather weakly diffused
throughout the system. The “new army” was not sufficiently strong to
impose its will; the rising middle class was too embryonic to seize its due;
the educated youth, often an engine of revolution, were still too scattered
and strung between poles of social differentiation; the rural notability that
presented the only real challenge to reform eventually threw in its lot with
the makhzan and remained loyal to its absolutist tendencies, but without
endorsing a spirit of change; and finally, the ulama remained indifferent or

openly hostile to innovation, making concessions only when coerced.
Paradoxically, the potency of the state had increased because of military
reforms that now gave the army a monopoly over coercive force.
Meanwhile, Hassan, the exemplary sultan, never considered devolving
his authority, nor did he see a way of escaping his confinement within a
tight web of moral expectations and religious dogma. This is not to say he
was deaf to the wishes of his subjects. But there was no regularized
mechanism for hearing them, other than the shikayat system that was
not widely accessible. Caught between his dual roles of secular monarch
and religious guide, the sultan was unable to break through the wall of
intellectual conservatism that enveloped the seat of power. The culture of
the makhzan would not allow for a revision of the norms that governed
political life. Lacking were the conversations, debates, and exchanges of
ideas that would have stimulated a genuine rethinking of the underlying
social and political structures that historians have recognized as part of the
progression to modernity in other parts of the world.64
The end of the nineteenth century in Morocco was a time of increased
tension between state and society. On the economic front, the vicissitudes
of the agricultural sector and swings in the world market disrupted the
macro-sphere, sending shock waves down to the village level. The fluctua-
tions of the prices of basic goods were a main source of widespread social
discontent. While some were able to pay the elevated prices for expensive
imported goods and suffered hardly at all from periodic scarcities, others
were laid low by them and endured horrible deprivation. Growing inequal-
ities in the class system due to expanded contacts with Europe and the
influx of foreign capital exacerbated the impact of environmental disasters
such as drought and famine.65 The frustrated desires of the new middle
class to change its relationship with power weakened further whatever was
left of the old social consensus but did not produce a new one, as the revolt
of the tanners demonstrates. Ironically, in the coastal city of Tangier, an
integral part of the empire geographically, with its mixed population of
Jews, Muslims and Europeans, the period of 1870–1900 saw the refa-
shioning of political institutions based on new consensual methods of
decision making that were Moroccan in style yet influenced by European
institutional forms. But the adoption of such models by the makhzan of the
interior was beyond anyone’s imagination. Tangier’s liminality, the omni-
presence of the odious foreigner there, its large Jewish population, in sum,
its complete exceptionalism, eliminated its potential as a model for a more
open, popular-based, and integrative form of rule.
fi g u r e 4 . The main street of Tangier in 1890, called the Siyaghin after the many
Jewish goldsmiths [suyyagh] who lined its upper end. V. Hell, photographer.
(Postcard collection, Gérard Lévy, Paris)
Only the Islamic sphere offered some hope, because here the modal-
ities of change were deeply and innately engrained in the public con-
sciousness. Here alone was an opportunity for introducing elements of a
modernity that might stick and ramify to embrace all levels of society,
endowing them with the prestige of a just program for social change. But
here too, there was failure, since the traditional ulama, the experts in
religious law, were already in a state of pusillanimity and nothing had
risen to take their place. The leaders of Islamic modernity that arose in
Egypt in the late nineteenth century did not have their counterparts in
Morocco, although, as we shall see, a Moroccan parallel to the Levantine
religious revival propelled by intellectuals such as Muhammad qAbduh
and Rashid Rida did eventually emerge in figures such as Muhammad
b. al-Kabir al-Kattani and Ma al-qAynayn, who appeared in the first
decade of the twentieth century. These movements had a specifically
Moroccan character, based on respect for the religious nobility and
admiration for the charismatic figure. But they were fragile affairs, easily
crushed, and soon fell victim to the paranoiac tendencies of a dying
sultanate.
Challenged on the one hand by ideas flooding in from the West, and, on
the other hand, by the obdurate resistance of the masses and scattered
segments of the elite, the sultans of the era of reform had little room to
maneuver, yet they would tolerate no infringement of their prerogatives,
nor could they find the means to lead society forward. Europe was chang-
ing as well: the growth of liberalism, the increase in imperial appetites, the
articulation of the “civilizing mission” and Europe’s growing tendency to
assume the right to intervene on behalf of subjugated peoples everywhere,
were driving a new militancy. The example of Algeria next door, where
France was building a modern society while ignoring its native population,
was frightening to Moroccans. Reforms in Egypt and Turkey were equally
threatening, and their outcomes were considered unsuitable for Morocco.
The historian al-Nasiri, that incomparable seer, ended his magisterial
Kitab al-Istiqsa with these words of warning:
You should know that the situation of this generation is completely different that of
the one that came before. The habits of the people are completely reversed, the
behavior of merchants and craftspeople is unlike what it used to be in regard to
money, prices and the conduct of affairs, to the point where people are in dire straits
and have great difficulty finding a way to satisfy their daily needs. If we compare the
situation of the generations that preceded us with our own, we find it to be totally
different, mainly because of the close contact with Europeans, their mixing with us,
and their proliferation in Islamic lands, so that their ways and customs have
overtaken ours and absorbed them completely. . . . And you should know also
that the authority (qamr) of these Europeans in recent years has reached an odious
level and an unprecedented openness . . . so that it is almost at the point of
immorality (fasad). The knowledge of where this will end and what will be the
outcome is God’s alone.66
3
The Passing of the Old Makhzan (1894–1912)
At the death of Hassan I, the groundwork was already laid to bring to the
throne his favorite son, qAbd al-qAziz. Only fourteen years old at the time, the
young prince was kept in the shadow of the regent Ahmad ibn Musa,
popularly known as Ba Ahmad, the former palace chamberlain, who shame-
lessly doled out patronage for personal gain and filled the most responsible
posts in the makhzan with his closest relatives. A clever and ruthless man
commonly known as “the steel wire,” Ba Ahmad was worried that the new
sultan’s legitimacy might be compromised because of his young age, so he
carefully orchestrated his image to make him acceptable to a skeptical
public. When the tribes of the south rose in revolt in 1895, cutting
Marrakesh off from the rest of the country, the teenaged qAbd al-qAziz was
placed at the head of a hastily composed mahalla stiffened with reinforce-
ments from the immensely powerful tribe of the M’tougga, one of the great
Berber confederations of the Atlas, and sent to the south. The expedition was
a success, and qAbd al-qAziz triumphantly entered Marrakesh in March 1896
with Ba Ahmad at his side, leading an endless procession of captured horses,
camels laden with booty, and a straggling column of prisoners, their chains
jangling in the dust as they labored through the streets of the city.1 The
staging of these early years was mainly theatrics; but with the passing of
time, the Moroccan people began to peek behind the scenes and to observe
the confused choreographies of a dynasty in distress.
an age of crisis
Sultan qAbd al-qAziz was not without imperial demeanor or talent as a
ruler, but he was at the mercy of the same problems that had plagued his
56
The Passing of the Old Makhzan (1894–1912) 57
predecessors: insufficient revenues, tribal revolts, and now, because of

unbridled spending, a mounting foreign debt. But, unlike his father, he
lacked the strong character to engage with, and much less overcome, these
formidable obstacles. Moreover, perhaps because of his youth and naiveté,
he was lured into distractions pressed on him by courtiers who plied him
with expensive toys and extravagant entertainments.2 When word of these
pastimes leaked outside the palace, his reputation suffered. Added to this
troubling mix was ongoing pressure from France, relentlessly chipping
away at Morocco’s borders, especially in the southeast. Soon most of
Sultan Hassan’s accomplishments in shoring up the administration and
the economy came unraveled, baring the chronic ills that had plagued the
makhzan for years and allowed foreigners to intervene in the first place.
In the colonial and postcolonial literature, the short reign of the
mature qAbd al-qAziz (1900–1907) is often referred to as the “prelude to
Protectorate,” the period when, in the words of Moroccan historian
Abdallah Laroui, “anarchy became the leitmotif” of makhzan politics.
To the French diplomat Eugène Aubin, writing in 1903, it seemed that
“the makhzan is falling to pieces, and its authority is crumbling away. The
little order that reigned in the country is giving place to universal anarchy.
Brigands are clearing the mountains and occupying the highways . . . [and]
horsemen are pillaging at the gates of cities. It is a favorable opportunity
for settling old scores . . .”3 Laroui offers two possible approaches to
analyzing this disastrous scenario: the first, an “anthropological” one,
sees anarchy as an innate attribute of Moroccan social behavior, and the
second, a “political” one, blames Europe and the weakness of the makhzan
for the corrosive practices such as protections, loans, and other exactions
that undermined the authority of the state.4 Neither explanation is all
encompassing, while both undoubtedly contributed to the dramatic series
of events that gradually diminished the sultan’s ability to rule, culminating
in a dynastic crisis and the eventual imposition of the French and Spanish
Protectorates in 1912.
Historians both pre- and postcolonial have written about this period as
if the fall of the makhzan was inevitable, as a result of an accumulation of
forces that defeated efforts at reform. Without making a case for inevita-
bility, it is no doubt true that key factors converged at this moment and
served to accelerate Morocco’s submission to the West. Foremost among
these factors was the unfortunate personality of Sultan qAbd al-qAziz
himself, who, because of his character and circumstances, was unable to
seize the reins of power and pursue an independent political course. Also
significant was the cynical manipulation of events by foreign diplomats
and schemers who stood ready to reap the benefits of every political
setback they managed to contrive. Finally and most tellingly, we must
not discount the mounting tensions within the country itself that created
deep divisions and a widespread mood of impending calamity.
We should remember it was also a decade of innovation, a time when
many in the Moroccan elite developed a new sense of their place in the
world, a period of expanding cultural relations with Europe and the
Islamic sphere, an era of striking achievements in literature, law, and
religious thought. Intellectuals, bureaucrats, reformers, travelers to
Europe and the East, social dreamers with a cautious enthusiasm for
change, are the less well-known figures of this period. Their portraits are
only now coming to light, as well as their impact on the social and
cultural life of their times. Our study of the period 1900–1912 is
refreshed by the lives of near-forgotten figures who shaped the course
of events – even as they watched the makhzan collapse – and whose
actions inflect and modify the handed-down image of a society bent on
self-destruction.
portrait of a misguided ruler

When Ba Ahmad died suddenly in a cholera epidemic in 1900, qAbd al-qAziz
was finally free to follow the path of reform laid out by his father, but he was
handicapped by his age – he was twenty at the time – and his lack of
experience. Seeking assurance, he turned to a small and motley circle of
courtiers inherited from the days of Ba Ahmad to help him conduct the
business of state. His attraction to foreigners gave them unusual access to
the intimate side of palace life. French diplomat Eugène Aubin, arriving in
Fez in the midst of a political crisis in 1903, became friendly with people in
“official positions” . . . whose lips were unsealed “by the emotional stress of
the moment.”5 According to Aubin, the young sultan lived in isolation
within the palace, and unlike his father, rarely ventured out among his
subjects. “He has shown no disposition to become like his ancestors, either
a religious or warrior sultan.”6 The sultan reportedly loved sports such as
rugby and polo, introduced by his Scottish military adviser, Harry (Kaid)
Maclean, and he was intrigued by gadgets and modern inventions. Gabriel
Veyre, a young French cinematographer, introduced to the court in 1901,
was hired to instruct the sultan in the use of “modern discoveries” such as
“telephones and the telegraph, cinematography and phonography [sic],
bicycling and motoring, and anything else that pleased him.” Veyre found
a room in the palace at Marrakesh filled with photographic equipment,
fi g u r e 5 . “The only man in Southern Morocco with his Bradbury bicycle”;

perhaps the cyclist is Budgett Meakin, editor of the Times of Morocco, who
travelled from Tangier to Marrakesh on a bicycle in 1897, giving a mixed crowd
of curious onlookers a first look at this “modern” invention. Hayton Yates and
Co., Photographers, Mogador. (Postcard Collection, Gérard Lévy, Paris)
“of all brands, forms and dimensions from the smallest Kodaks to a large
darkroom” . . . as well as “all sorts of plates, basins, and flasks – a fully
equipped photography shop!” But unfortunately, all of this material was
“abandoned to the sun, the rain . . . playthings for the sheep that wandered
freely around the palace, using [the heaped up goods] as a mountain on
which to gambol with their young, most of it already reduced to rubbish.”7
According to Veyre, the sultan was surrounded mainly by women – over two
hundred in his harem, including a dozen favorites. They were his constant
companions and the main subjects of his experiments with photography.
Some of them learned to ride bicycles, and were even allowed to pilot the
motorcars parked around the palace grounds. Veyre, a devotee of early
cinema, often held showings of the latest films from Europe for the sultan
also attended by the women of the harem, who sat hidden behind a screen.8
Other personalities with whom the sultan had close contact were noted
for their physical beauty rather than their probity. Foremost among them
was al-Mahdi al-Manabhi, a striking young muhazni (soldier) from obscure
rural origins who had caught the attention of Ba Ahmad and became
his aide de camp. When the government of Ba Ahmad was decimated by
cholera in 1900, al-Manabhi rose to the position of Minister of War.
Dynamic and fun loving, he was “like a fish in water,” soon displacing the
grand vizir as chief counselor to the young sultan.
A rogue character often in attendance was military adviser Maclean, the
Scottish drill sergeant who had fled the Gibraltar garrison after an amo-
rous misadventure. Landing in Morocco, he soon became one of the
trusted inner circle, providing the sultan with amusements and whatever
else he desired from abroad. One of Maclean’s tasks was to stage royal
entertainments:
. . . the immense gardens of the Agdal [in Marrakesh] were given over to hare and
gazelle hunts, the salukis forcing them to bound among the trees like arrows.
Nearly every night were fireworks displays, a luminous shower of multi-colored
stars that suddenly lit up the gardens and were reflected in the vast basins of water,
while musicians played and slaves served milk sweetened with the perfume of
almonds or a syrup of pomegranates and raisins . . .9
Distracted by these lavish displays, qAbd al-qAziz grew increasingly

remote and out of touch with his subjects. In the popular mind, his
reputation was clouded because of his intimacy with foreigners, and
because of his self-imposed distance, his character and intentions were
known only through gossip and word of mouth. At court, his reliance on
favorites and his disdain for official business created an atmosphere of
jealousy and suspicion. Aubin remarked that under qAbd al-qAziz, there
“has arisen a weak makhzan – a makhzan of professional politicians,
intriguing against one another, adopting different attitudes, and playing
on the inexperience of the sovereign.”10 As the internal and external
threats that had dogged the country for years mounted, an irremediable
gap opened up between a darkening reality and the capacity of the state to
cope with it.
the economy in transition

Fiscal troubles were at the heart of the growing crisis. The eternal problem
of raising enough revenue to meet the growing needs of the state seemed
insolvable. When qAbd al-qAziz assumed full power in 1900, the treasury
contained, according to Dr. Weisgerber, the equivalent of sixty million
francs, that is to say, “enough to cover normal expenses for four budgetary
years.” But that surplus soon vanished, as the expenses of the state grew
disproportionately to its income, rising from six million francs in 1882, to
twenty million in 1893, to forty million by 1900.11 More than half of the
revenues went abroad, to pay indemnities, to purchase arms and military
supplies, or to buy European manufactured goods; the annual trade deficit

alone reached 14 million francs annually between 1902 and 1909.12 On a
visit to the port of Larache in 1903, Aubin saw the results of the capricious
buying habits of the sultan: “Half a dirigible balloon, the hull of a steam
launch, a heap of rails, cases of glassware, gun carriages, agricultural
machines . . . [were] lying casually dotted on the wharf or in the custom-
house stores, bearing lamentable witness to royal aberrations.”13 Not only
had the spending habits of the sultanate become excessive, but the tradi-
tional means of raising revenues through coercion, such as the mahallas to
the countryside, had fallen into disuse.
qAbd al-qAziz’s plan to stem the hemorrhaging of the treasury by reinsti-
tuting the tartib, a tax first mentioned at the Madrid Conference in 1880,
was his solution to the crisis. Unlike the Qurpanic taxes such as the aqshar and
the zakat, from which many were exempted, the tartib was a universal
capital tax imposed on everyone, including Europeans, protégés, tribesmen,
urban dwellers, and even the religious nobility, to be paid in cash and
without exception. In return, foreigners for the first time were allowed to
buy land on the perimeters of port cites open to overseas trade. Such uniform
taxes were not an innovation in the Muslim world; the Ottomans had tried
this method as early as 1839, and found it impractical without a stand-
ardized currency and an efficient bureaucracy to administer it. For a variety
of reasons, Sultan Hassan I had never implemented the tax.14
qAbd al-qAziz was drawn to the notion of a single tax imposed on all his
subjects as a direct, simple, and efficient method for introducing fiscal
reform. It was also decidedly “modern,” in that it supposedly treated
every subject anonymously and equally, without regard to position, kin-
ship or any other mark of status. Some said it was “a British idea,” brought
to the court by journalist Walter Harris who reached the sultan’s ear
through his friend Kaid Maclean: others saw it as the brainchild of
Minister of War al-Manabhi. The tax rolls were prepared with great
attention to detail, evaluating land and livestock, leaving no material
goods unaccounted for, making this exercise a high point of administrative
competence in the Azizist period. But regardless of the care given to its
preparation, once imposed, the new tax immediately stirred up immense
opposition, especially among the most powerful, who labeled it “anti-
religious, unjust, and offensive.” Not only was the tartib not sanctioned
by the Qur’an, they argued, and hence implicitly unjust; it also enraged
local qaqids who habitually sequestered part of the tax revenues for them-
selves. Local officials were in the habit of demanding “two dollars instead
of one,” it was said, one for the makhzan, and one for themselves.15
According to Dr. Louis Arnaud, who recorded the memories of Moroccan

soldier Hajj Salem el Abdi, the tax was irremediably harsh:
[It] was imposed on everyone and everything. Sheep, goats, donkeys, horses, mules,
camels, olives, and dates; the trees that gave fruit and those that gave nothing; even
the earth and stones paid a sum fixed in advance. Nothing was exempt but the air to
breathe and water to drink. . . . The rich and the poor, those who owned hundreds
of olive trees and troops of she-camels, and those who had only a donkey and a few
sheep; pashas as well as qaqids, men of the shurafa as well as marabouts; those who
possessed baraka and those who had none; everyone had to submit.16
As a result, the tax was universally hated. A second attempt under

qAbd al-qAziz at instituting the tartib fared no better than the first. The
tax was especially noxious to the French and other foreign interests, who
feared its ill effects on the protégé system. Because of the ubiquity of
protections and the incorporation of most commercial activity within
their scope, the makhzan had little space to maneuver and had to bend
to Europe’s will. By 1903, the experiment was declared a failure, leaving
state finances in worse shape than ever, for now state coffers were truly
empty. In the final analysis, foreign and internal interests worked in con-
cert to sabotage the new tax and to eventually defeat it.17
In search of a quick remedy to fix the fiscal dilemma, the makhzan tried
minting coins with a lesser intrinsic value, but the public refused to accept
them. A 25 percent depreciation in the value of the currency between 1896
and 1906 further diminished the resources of the state.18 The makhzan had
to turn to other sources, and foreign creditors were always ready to lend a
hand. The first major loan for 7.5 million francs at 6 percent interest was
negotiated with French banks in December 1901; more loans followed
from British and Belgian sources, making the makhzan financially depend-
ent on Europeans.
The Anglo-French accord of 1904 removing Britain from its traditional
role of informal protector of the makhzan was a watershed, changing the
nature of the diplomatic game. It gave France the lead in negotiating a major
bailout of the flailing makhzan, tying its hands even further. Seeing the
handwriting on the wall, upper echelons of the government split into two
warring factions – those who favored the loan, and those who saw it as a dire
threat to Morocco’s independence. Greasing the wheels of decisionmaking
with generous “gifts,” the French finally completed the signing of the loan
contract in June 1904. With a face value of 62.5 million francs, the loan
carried an interest rate of 5 percent, and like the Spanish indemnity of 1860, it
was guaranteed by a portion of the customs revenues. With the British now
out of the picture, and France controlling the major source of state revenue,
the removal of all obstacles to a French takeover was complete.19
The extent to which the governmental financial crisis of 1901–1904
caused the impoverishment of the masses is a topic worthy of debate.
Postcolonial authors, building a case for a picture of economic ruin caused
by Europeans, argued that the inflation that appeared at century’s end
caused dislocation and suffering on a broad scale. Bolstered by lurid
descriptions from European travelers of widespread penury, they spoke
of the “impoverishment” of the working classes, arguing that craftspeople
in particular were dragged down into a “precarious” existence by com-
petition with European-made goods. “The more those at the top bor-
rowed, the more those at the bottom were impoverished,” observed
Abdallah Laroui, but without providing substantive evidence.20 While it
is certainly true that poverty grew, it was not universally the case. Evidence
points to the fact that urban and the rural economies were not uniformly
shrinking in the years immediately leading up to the Protectorate.
Historian Stacy Holden has shown how the makhzan took charge of the
food supply during the 1903–1907 famine by developing sophisticated
mechanisms to increase the amount of flour for sale in urban markets.
Nicholas Michel has vigorously challenged the notion of end-of-century
economic collapse by producing data to show that although extreme
poverty may have existed, it was found only in isolated pockets. More
common, according to Michel, are signs of a growing prosperity in both
town and country, based on stable prices for subsistence items, improve-
ments in the standard of living, a rise in the consumption of luxury goods
like tea and sugar, and an increase in land under cultivation. This is not to
disallow the fact that the makhzan itself was in a fiscal crisis and out of
money, for that was surely the case; but the extent to which that crisis
spread out into the wider society is the subject of debate.21
internal politics: mahdis, insurgents,

and rebels
By 1904, it was widely believed that qAbd al-qAziz had lost control of the
government and was in the grip of Euromania. The antimakhzan reaction
burst out at all social levels, but especially in the countryside, where local
strongmen suddenly rose up to challenge the legitimacy of the regime. Rural
insurgencies were not a new phenomenon in Morocco; chronicles from
earlier eras are filled with tales of banditry and rebellion marked by pillaging,
kidnapping and assassination, usually between rival rural factions, but also
between tribal groups and the makhzan. Indeed, pillaging was not a monop-
oly of country warlords but also a strategy of the state as well; in the time of
Sultan Hassan I, the “eating up” of dissident tribes was a way of winning
back economic advantages as well as symbolic ones by recouping taxes and
other badly needed resources while reinforcing respect for the ruling author-
ity. Brigandage in the Moroccan context, according to sociologist Rahma
Bourqia, was not a marginal activity, but an innate part of the social and
political process in which discontented groups could make a claim on the
makhzan’s monopoly of power. It was far more common in times of envi-
ronmental crisis, when food supplies were short; moreover, it rose and fell
with the makhzan’s political fortunes, making the years 1903–1907 a prime
moment for social upheaval in the countryside.22
The language used in the Arabic sources to describe bandits is emotional
and violent – fussad (miscreants), quttaq al-turuq (highway robbers), awbash
(riff-raff) and munharifin (deviants, outcasts) – revealing the anxiety of a
state in distress. However, from the popular point of view, rebellious figures
fi g u r e 6 . “The Civil War in Morocco,” Le Petit Journal, January 18, 1903,

graphically illustrating the turmoil and popular strife caused by Bu Himara’s
uprising in the Taza region. (Courtesy of Widener Library, Harvard University)
such as Bu Himara and Ahmed al-Raysuni, both operating far from the
reach of the makhzan in the north, were political entrepreneurs on a mission,
engaging in recognized forms of social protest against an oppressive regime.
Among their objectives was the negotiation of a new relationship with the
central power based on a redistribution of honor and material goods.
Indeed, historically speaking, acts of brigandage often became occasions
for a kind of public theater, especially when the confrontation between the
sultan and the upstart ended in a ceremony of punishment and pardon that
restored balance to the makhzan-tribal relationship. These subtle means of
reapportioning power and renegotiating social control were at the heart of
the phenomenon of banditry and rebellion that reared its head with partic-
ular virulence in the first decade of the twentieth century.23
The most notorious example of the bandit-as-political upstart in this period
was a disaffected student who took on the title of El-Rogui (Ar.: al-Ruki,
or “The Pretender”), but was popularly known as Bu Himara, or “the man
on a donkey.” Bu Himara first appeared in the northeast region of Morocco
in 1902, claiming to be the sultan’s older brother and rightful heir to the
throne. His given name was Jilali b. Idris al-Yusufi al-Zarhuni, from the
region of Jebel Zerhoun. Earlier in his career he had spent time in Fez and
picked up all the gossip of the court, tales of the sultan’s entertainments, and
the in-fighting and pointless intrigues of his ministers. He capitalized on the
mood of popular agitation, and using his claim to sharifian descent, sur-
rounded himself with “a halo of miracles, prophecies and dreams.” His face
supposedly changed color three times a day, green in the morning, yellow at
noon, and black at night, a testament to his supernatural powers. He went so
far as to constitute a rival makhzan, with all its trappings and protocol,
centered in the far north in Selouane in the remote region between Melilla
and Oujda, far from the reach of the sultan’s armies, where he controlled a
vital stretch of the Mediterranean coastline. There he entered into commercial
relations with Europeans, collected customs duties, imported firearms, and
even granted mining concessions to the valuable iron and lead deposits in the
nearby Rif Mountains. Draping himself with the mantle of the mahdi, or
“rightly guided one,” Bu Himara declared a jihad against the infidel
(a category in which he included the sultan) and rampaged through the
north for seven years, supported by disaffected tribes. He easily defeated the
poorly organized mahallas sent to crush him, and even threatened Fez for a
time, before he was finally captured in the summer of 1909 and executed by
Sultan qAbd al-Hafiz.24
The makhzan’s inability to crush this rival was due to a number of factors,
foremost among them a decrease in the capabilities of the sultan’s army.
The energetic reforms carried out by his predecessors slowed under

qAbd al-qAziz, mainly due to the ongoing fiscal crisis and the sultan’s inability
to assert his leadership over the military corps. Minister of War al-Manabhi
proved to be an incompetent general, and as his mistakes accumulated, the
officer corps became demoralized and massive desertions took place among
the rank and file.25 In addition, thousands of rifles entered the country from
abroad, much of it as contraband, and soon found their way into rural areas,
giving tribal chiefs access to weaponry equal to or superior to that of the
makhzan. In the most remote parts of the country, tribal warriors were
exchanging ancient flintlocks for single-shot breechloaders such as the
American Remington (mashuka), the French Chassepot (sasbu), and the
British Martini-Henry (bu hafra). The rearming of the countryside not only
changed the internal military balance of power; it also opened the makhzan
to the critique that it was not in control of its territory and was teetering on
the brink of collapse.26
The rise of the Rogui gave the signal to other rebels to openly defy the
makhzan. In the region of Tangier, a local warlord named Ahmad
al-Raysuni gripped the town with fear during the winter of 1903–1904.
Al-Raysuni was the scion of a well-known sharifian lineage of the Jebala, a
hilly region south of Tangier with a long history of opposition to foreign
invaders.27 As a young man, al-Raysuni entered the netherworld of brig-
andage, surrounding himself with a band of outlaws who rustled cattle and
carried out other forms of extortion. He was caught and thrown into a
dungeon at Essaouira in 1894, where he was kept chained to a wall,
leaving deep scars on his wrists and ankles; when he was set free in
1900, he promptly returned to his old ways. Noting the success of
upstarts like Bu Himara, al-Raysuni decided to build an independent
power center in the north by kidnapping Christians. At the head of his
band of well-armed mountaineers, he invaded Tangier’s posh garden
suburbs and snatched wealthy Europeans from their palatial homes –
Greek-American Ion Perdicaris, British journalist Walter Harris, and
Scottish drill instructor Harry Maclean were among his victims – holding
them for ransom and stirring up an international uproar that stoked
the anger of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, who took the capture
of Perdicaris as a personal affront. The Perdicaris affair alone netted
al-Raysuni $70,000, prompting an outraged telegram from the famous
Rough Rider that bugled: “I want Perdicaris alive or al-Raysuni dead.”28
Al-Raysuni survived this incident, as he did so many others, with the
outlaw’s knack for the quick escape, and eventually he retired with his
booty to his mountain fastness of Tazrout in the tribal region of the Beni
Arous. British travel writer Rosita Forbes spent weeks there in 1923,
interviewing the aging miscreant about his life for her romantic exposé
entitled The Sultan of the Mountains. She concluded “. . . He believes in the
luck which invariably turns the most adverse circumstances to his advant-
age, and is not above staking his remarkable immunity from danger
against the credulity of his followers, but below this is the conviction of
divine right.”29 Al-Raysuni used his notoriety to build a political base in
the north that paralleled, in many ways, the vast fiefdom the Glawa clan
were consolidating in the south. Like them, he realized that Morocco was
headed for foreign domination and that the time was ripe for staking out
an alliance with its future rulers. His dealings with the Spanish, the even-
tual masters of the north, began in 1911 when he was awarded the
governorate of Assilah southwest of Tangier, thus acquiring a political
legitimacy once denied to him. A shrewd strategist, al-Raysuni had con-
verted banditry into political capital, a transition that would have been
unthinkable under Sultan Hassan I, who drew a clear distinction between
charlatans and men of honor.30
This situation of moral confusion made possible the rise of a charismatic
leader of a different sort who aspired to lead Morocco out of its troubles.
A noted scholar of Fez, Muhammad b. qAbd al-Kabir al-Kattani, emerged
from the ranks of the ulama at the end of the nineteenth century to head a
movement of Islamic revival aimed at halting the drift of Morocco toward
Europe. Al-Kattani was a member of an illustrious family with sharifian
roots, known for its independent stance vis-à-vis the makhzan. The
al-Kattanis founded a zawiya in 1853 in Fez that attracted men of all social
classes, but especially the working poor who were drawn to Sufi teachings.
Like others in the Fez elite, the al-Kattanis were appalled by the influx of
European advisers, diplomats and adventurers who invaded the court of
qAbd al-qAziz and seemed to be directing the course of events. In 1895,
Muhammad al-Kattani, only thirty-four years old but already famous for
his saintly qualities and his oratory skills, rose to leadership of the zawiya
and began to preach renewal on the basis of ijtihad, or the reinterpretation of
Shariah law freed from the confines of tradition (taqlid). He called for
resistance to Europeans and their banishment from the precincts of power,
but without directly attacking the sultan. Moreover, he used his zawiya to
attract disciples whom he indoctrinated into mystical practices that rejected
set norms and redefined the limits of orthodoxy, thus placing himself in
direct confrontation with the religious establishment. Recognizing in him a
threat to their authority, leaders of the Fez ulama branded al-Kattani a
heretic and put him on trial, but through clever diplomacy, he was able to
return to favor by drawing closer to the sultan, who appropriated al-

Kattani’s critique of the ulama to his own advantage, using it as a reference
point for reining in the overly independent doctors of law.31
After charges against al-Kattani were dropped, he returned to preach-
ing, determined to present himself as an alternative to the reactionary
ulama. He broke with tradition in other ways, too; he understood the
power of the printed word and published and distributed religious tracts
and political pamphlets produced on the lithographic press in Fez attack-
ing moral corruption. He also founded a short-lived Arabic newspaper
called al-Taqun (“The Plague”) that preached opposition to the growing
Western influence, established a Tangier branch of the Fez zawiya at the
nerve center of Morocco’s communications with the outside world, and
used it as a platform to expand his contacts deeper into the Maghrib and
the Mashriq, spreading news of his reformist agenda far and wide.32
Operating according to “politics in a new key,” to adopt a phrase of
historian Sahar Bazzaz, al-Kattani built a coalition of forces seeking an
alternative to the failing regime. Disheartened by the sultan’s ineptitude,
al-Kattani eventually dropped his support for qAbd al-qAziz and defected to
his brother and rival qAbd al-Hafiz, when the two began a countrywide
struggle for dominance in 1907. Al-Kattani’s role in the Hafiziyya of
1907–1908, the movement to replace the ruling qAbd al-qAziz with his
brother, was instrumental. Lending qAbd al-Hafiz his prestige as a sharif
and head of a brotherhood, al-Kattani rode the wave of enthusiasm for the
royal challenger and helped bring him to power in 1908. But these two
formidable and in many ways antipodal personalities – the sufi shaykh
and the new sultan – soon had a falling out, especially when it became
apparent that qAbd al-Hafiz would be no more successful than his brother
in confronting foreigners. Meanwhile, al-Kattani’s influence in both the
urban and tribal areas kept growing thanks to his “charm and passionate
eloquence,” according to his contemporary, the Moroccan scholar
Muhammad al-Hajwi, raising the possibility that this much-admired pop-
ular figure might lead a coalition of tribal forces that would independently
proclaim jihad.
The specter of an al-Kattani-led uprising no doubt motivated qAbd al-
Hafiz in the next stage of their relations.33 In March 1909, feeling himself in
dire danger, al-Kattani fled Fez with his family and disciples; however, they
were swiftly recaptured and paraded through the streets of Fez like common
criminals with their hands tied, their beards shaven, their heads bare. Taken
to the palace, al-Kattani’s band were punished in the cruelest manner possi-
ble, their hands cut off and the wounds rubbed with salt. To complete
the humiliation, the master himself was beaten before his wives and children
until he expired, and his corpse was thrown into an unmarked grave to head
off the possibility of a post-mortem cult of veneration.
The tragic story of Muhammad al-Kattani has been intentionally
“forgotten” by later generations of Moroccan historians, perhaps because
of its powerful motifs of royal injustice, bitter vengeance, and unspoken
martyrdom. But at the time, details of the tragedy sank deeply into the
Moroccan psyche, making this episode an important turning point in the
slow but steady dissolution of makhzanian authority. This event also
brought into the open the widespread hatred of Europe and its representa-
tives and the precipitous decline in the prestige of the shurafa and ulama,
once considered the guardians of the public trust, but now seized by mental
paralysis. The excessive cruelty used to bring down the al-Kattani family
exposed beyond a doubt the makhzan’s fundamental weaknesses. Lastly,
the extreme violence employed against a revered religious leader cast a
shadow over the sultan’s moral stature, contributing to qAbd al-Hafiz’s
final disgrace and leaving permanent scars in the collective memory.
Each of these “outlaws” whose portraits we have drawn appear to be
unique, but on closer examination, they had much in common. They repre-
sent a new strain in political life that redefined how opposition to the
state could be expressed. Bu Himara created an independent principality
adapting methods copied from Western statecraft, such as taxes, control of
the economy, and military conscription. Using violent means, al-Raysuni
exploited foreigners to fatten his treasury and to legitimize his bid for
political authority. Muhammad al-Kattani was also shaped by European
ideas – the printing press, newspapers, and other new forms of communi-
cation were tools he used to spread his message of political renewal. Each of
these “upstarts” was influenced by aspects of modernity filtering into
Morocco from abroad; each combined elements of the old-style mujahid
with new skills of propaganda and mobilization that transformed local
protests into a countrywide awareness of impending disaster. Though the
danger they posed to the ancien regime may have been more symbolic than
real, in the confused circumstances that preceded the coming of the
Protectorates, their resistance contributed greatly to the disequilibrium
that made the difference between the makhzan’s survival and its fall.
diplomacy and war

In the situation of upheaval that characterized the Moroccan scene after
1903, European powers – with France in the lead – acted quickly to exploit
the makhzan’s weakness. Repositioning themselves through a series of

dramatic moves, they swiftly sealed Morocco’s fate. The attack came
from a variety of directions, military, diplomatic, and financial. In the
military sphere, France mounted an aggressive campaign to absorb key
areas of the Moroccan desert along the ill-defined frontier with Algeria in
the southeast. Arguing that the makhzan had “neglected” this distant
zone, French troops began to trespass. For a long time, the colonial party
in France, backed by Algerian settlers, had been pushing for annexation of
this region as the future land link between Algeria and the French colony in
Senegal. While the makhzan’s presence in the desert region was indeed
weak, it was nevertheless considered part of the Moroccan patrimony,
especially the oasis of Tafilalt that was the home of the qAlawi shurafa.
Another important center in the southeast was the populous oasis of
Figuig, a bustling regional market, about seven hundred kilometers distant
from Fez. Both Tafilalt and Figuig shipped their products – mainly dates
and skins – via the long and tortuous route across the Atlas Mountains to
the commercial center of Fez, receiving in return imported goods such as
tea, sugar, and manufactured cloth.34
By 1897, the French-built trans-Saharan railroad reached as far as Aïn
Sefra on the Algerian side of the border, and soon Figuig merchants were
shipping goods to coastal Oran on the railroad in preference to sending
them via the long mountainous route to Fez. After 1900, the French
military stepped up their operations in the southeast, and took over the
sprawling oasis of Touat, prompting a renegotiation of the border with the
Moroccans in 1901 that brought little clarity. Nor did French ambitions
end there. Prodded by a militant Algerian settler lobby that scorned the
more cautious government in Paris, the army moved further south after
1903 under the leadership of an ambitious colonial officer named Louis
Hubert Gonzalve Lyautey, who occupied the Béchar oasis southwest of
Aïn Sefra inside Moroccan territory and rebaptized it Colomb to hide its
precise location from Paris. Operating with full freedom at the edge of the
empire, Lyautey advocated a policy of “suppleness, elasticity, and con-
formity to place, time and the circumstances,” with a sharp eye to both the
military and political consequences of his forward actions.35 (See Map 2,
page 97.)
The response of Sultan qAbd al-qAziz to Lyautey’s artful strategy was
weak and indecisive; instead of encouraging resistance from local chiefs to
confront the French, he tried to suppress it, fearing that attacks by the
tribesmen would only incite France to penetrate further. Indeed, by 1911,
the French had reached the river Ziz, two hundred miles inside Morocco
from the Algerian border, bringing much of the pre-Saharan southeast of

Morocco under French control. Meanwhile, in the southwest, the French
launched an expedition from Saint-Louis on the Senegalese coast into the
Saharan interior, with the aim of eventually reaching the region of Adrar in
Mauritania. A local Sahrawi shaykh named Ma al-qAynayn, a much-
venerated religious figure of the region of Saguia el Hamra, became
alarmed at the loss of territory to non-Muslims, and rallied his “blue
men” followers to defend their ancestral lands. Courted by qAbd al-qAziz
and supplied with money, arms and ammunition by the makhzan, shaykh
Ma al-qAynayn undertook a self-proclaimed jihad in the southwest that
kept the French at bay until the last days of Moroccan independence.36
fi g u r e 7 . “The Dreaded Guest.” A Moroccco-bound Kaiser Wilhelm II of

Germany is shown making his way south as other heads of state look on with
rising apprehension. An alarmed French President Emile Loubet looks out from the
tricolor-draped window. Puck Magazine, New York, August 1905. (Library of
Congress Prints and Photographs Division)
Meanwhile, on the diplomatic front, Britain stepped away from its

longstanding support of a neutral and independent Morocco, clearing the
way for French ambitions. The Entente Cordiale of 1904 between Britain
and France settled their outstanding differences over colonial territories;
France gave Britain a free hand in Egypt, and in return received the right
to “preserve order . . . and provide assistance in Morocco.” The French
stranglehold on Morocco tightened. France deliberately followed a steal-
thy diplomacy calculated to narrow Morocco’s options to the vanishing
point. Secret agreements between France, on the one hand, and Spain and
Italy, on the other, eliminated these lesser rivals from the race. The only
remaining roadblock was France’s archenemy, Germany. When Kaiser
Wilhelm II made a surprise visit to the port of Tangier on March 31,
1905, throngs of jubilant Moroccans met him. His declaration of support
for Moroccan sovereignty was calculated to show Germany’s determi-
nation to be counted in as a major player in the swiftly moving game of
international politics. Though the Kaiser’s visit momentarily derailed
French ambitions, it was merely a sideshow to Germany’s main purpose,
which was to gain an advantage in the intensifying struggle for continen-
tal supremacy. As for the “Moroccan Question,” it was once again put on
the table for consideration by the Great Powers, but with France now in
the lead, pushing for a long list of reforms that would assign it a pre-
eminent role in the military and economic restructuring of the Moroccan
state.
As the noose tightened and France’s list of demands lengthened,
Sultan qAbd al-qAziz decided to call for a “consultation” (shura) with
carefully selected members of the urban and rural elite representing all
parts of the country. The convening of the fifteen-member “Council of
Notables” (majlis al-aq yan) in January 1905 was calculated to appeal
to European liberals while giving the Moroccan regime the façade of
unity to strengthen its hand in the coming negotiations. Though hardly
the first sign of a “modern representative government” – as nationalist
leader qAllal al-Fasi would later claim – the council did serve as a sounding
board for developing a response to French demands. With French public
opinion sharply divided, and Germany showing renewed interest in
Morocco after the Kaiser’s visit, the makhzan felt its best card would be
another round of international negotiations in which no one country
would predominate. This strategy, however, proved to be a grave miscal-
culation; with the loss of Great Britain as an ally, and Germany’s wavering
commitment, the sultan was deprived of champions who could neutralize
France and block her ambitions.37
fi g u r e 8 . Bab al-Suq, gate to the main market in Casablanca, c. 1907; French

soldiers, European housewives, Jews in traditional garb, and small children mingle
with the crowd. Note the advertisements for European manufactured goods posted
on the walls of the madina surrounding the gate. (Postcard Collection, Gérard
Lévy, Paris)
At the international conference held in the southern Spanish coastal town

of Algeciras in January 1906, the gathered diplomats reluctantly acquiesced
to France’s now dominant position, allowing her to continue the process of
“peaceful penetration.” The United States argued strenuously that the
Powers should retain international control, quietly advising Germany that
in the American view, France was simply a “mandatory” of the other powers
and acting “under responsibility to all of them” to assure an “open door” to
foreign commercial interests. But in the end, the “internationalism” President
Theodore Roosevelt desired was ignored; while Morocco’s territorial integ-
rity and sovereignty were reaffirmed, large areas of the sultan’s authority
were ceded to France, especially in the port cities. A port police was created,
composed of Moroccans but commanded by French and Spanish officers,
and a state bank was founded under the watchful eye of the foreign powers
that essentially took over the country’s fiscal administration. When news
of the accords reached Fez, it was clear that the government of Sultan
qAbd al-qAziz had been betrayed and was now in deep trouble.38
Stirred into action by the Treaty of Algeciras, opposition within
the Council of Notables hardened; in the deteriorating political climate,
ordinary Moroccans began to show their anger in the streets. Since the
conference of Madrid in 1880, the number of westerners in Morocco had

increased dramatically, not only in the cities on the coast, but also in
communities of the interior. Missionaries, doctors, military advisers, busi-
nessmen, travelers, sportsmen, explorers and adventurers, including
women, were no longer an unusual sight in Morocco’s inland cities.
Their presence was a source of agitation and controversy, for not everyone
accepted them gladly. Writing in 1885, French military officer Jules
Erckmann complained that foreigners were the targets of stones and
insults, and householders did everything possible to prevent Christians
from lodging among them. Misunderstandings were rife on both sides. As
Morocco suffered setbacks in the diplomatic arena, popular resentment
toward foreigners grew.39
In the forefront of foreigners regarded as unwanted interlopers were
Christian missionaries. Spanish Franciscans had resided in Tangier since
the seventeenth century, where they ministered to the tiny Christian popu-
lation and kept on the fringes of Moroccan society. As the tempo of
European intervention increased, more missionaries arrived. After the
1859 war, a victorious Spain erected two churches, one in Fez and the
other in Tetuan. Later in the nineteenth century, Cardinal Lavigerie’s
Catholic crusade in Algeria spread to Morocco, and ordinary Moroccans
became fearful that their closest neighbor would soon become a source of
spiritual contamination. By 1875, more Christian missions were established
along the coast, from Tetuan to Essaouira; in this last town, synagogues,
mosques, a Protestant temple and a Catholic church nestled side-by-side in
the madina, the older, walled part of town. Jews were a particular target
of the “London Society to Promote Christianity Amongst the Jews,” a
missionary relief effort that drew converts during the severe famine of
1877–1879. In 1882, the Protestant “British and Foreign Bible Society”
began distributing Bibles throughout the country, and in 1887, the “North
African Mission” appeared in Fez and Sefrou, represented by four English
ladies who dispensed medical advice along with Christian teachings.
The makhzan greeted this wave of zealous foreigners with a cautious
wariness rather than hostility, and even tried to conciliate Christian interests.
In 1888, Sultan Hassan I sent a goodwill embassy to the Vatican headed by
Minister of Foreign Affairs Muhammad Torres. But among the common
people, the missionaries and their activities were regarded with suspicion,
and many feared their aim was conversion rather than good works. In
October 1902, a young English missionary named David Cooper was
assassinated in the streets of Fez by a deranged man, who was immediately
seized upon and executed by the authorities, enraging the populace even
further, for he had sought refuge after the event in the tomb of Mawlay Idris,
patron saint of Fez, a hurm (religious sanctuary) that was supposed to be
inviolate. The execution of Cooper’s killer on orders of the sultan simply
exacerbated the growing fear that Christian missions were being officially
“protected” and that Europeans were getting the upper hand.40
But the most spectacular episode in this angry escalation of popular
feeling was the killing of Dr. Emile Mauchamp, an eccentric French doctor
living in Marrakesh, who was repeatedly stabbed and beaten to death by a
frenzied mob in March 19, 1907, at the doorstep of his house. Eulogized as
a “martyr to civilization” by his French compatriots, Mauchamp’s death
became a cause célèbre demonstrating the growing gulf between European
aims and Moroccan sensibilities. The French press represented the murder
as an unprovoked and random act of barbarous cruelty; but recent reap-
praisals of the event suggest that the killing of Mauchamp was most likely a
calculated political act, designed to send a message to foreigners that they
were unsafe, and to the sultan, that his days were numbered.41
Shortly after Mauchamp’s murder and supposedly in retribution for it,
a French force occupied the Moroccan city of Oujda on the border with
Algeria, and held it for ransom until a series of exorbitant French demands
were met. Tensions rose even higher in July 1907, after eight Europeans
fi g u r e 9 . Victims of the 1907 street fighting in Casablanca are taken away for
burial; especially hard hit was the mellah, where dozens of people were killed
during the bombardment and subsequent looting. (Postcard Collection, Gérard
Lévy, Paris)
riding on a newly constructed railroad line in Casablanca were murdered

by native tribesmen. In the confusion that followed, the guns of the off-
shore French cruiser Galilée were turned on the town, setting off a general
insurrection. Parts of the city were destroyed and many were killed;
especially hard hit was the mellah, which turned into a scene of wild
mayhem. The French responded by sending a two thousand man expedi-
tionary force to Casablanca under General Drude and occupying the city,
raising the stakes even higher. Clearly, the period of “peaceful penetra-
tion” was over; the only element lacking to complete the montage of
disarray was a dynastic crisis. Sadly, this too was in the making.
the hafiziyya
By the summer of 1907, Morocco had reached a point of no return in its
struggle to maintain self-rule. Deeply alarmed by the inability of Sultan
qAbd al-qAziz to hold the country together, responsible elites looked else-
where for a leader who could solder the bits of a disintegrating state.
qAbd al-Hafiz, elder brother of the sultan and khalifa in Marrakesh,
seemed the best candidate for this prodigious task. He possessed a maturity
of intellect and a political cunning his younger brother lacked, and he had
the support of spiritual authorities such as the al-Kattanis. Since 1901, he
had been the makhzan’s man in the south, building close relations with the
so-called Lords of the Atlas, a loose collection of Berber clans who ruled
the High Atlas region with impunity. Foremost among them were the
Glawa family, headed by Madani al-Glawi, a powerful local chieftain
acquainted with the wider world and cunning enough to understand the
dangers of the French threat. The alliance between qAbd al-Hafiz and the
Glawa took shape in 1906–1907, and became the nucleus of an elaborate
scheme to overthrow qAbd al-qAziz and capture the throne. With this
union, a spirit of revolt was ignited that soon took on the appearance of
a full-scale jihad, mingling religious excitement, anti-French sentiment,
and a profound dislike of the ruling monarch. Supported by his southern
allies, qAbd al-Hafiz quickly assumed the trappings of rule. Dr. Arnaud
described a ceremony in which he accepted gifts from the people of
Marrakesh:
. . . the customary presents were handed over, including negresses and fully decked
out horses; then came the Jews with Isaac Corcos at their head, depositing mounds
of cloth and silks. Mawlay qAbd al-Hafiz was seated on the throne of his brother, in
the room that had served as the Sultan’s bureau. He had the Glawi standing to his
right . . .42
fi g u r e 1 0 . Rural tribesmen are rounded up by force to serve in the Army of

Sultan qAbd al-qAziz in his losing battle with his brother, qAbd al-Hafiz, who
succeeded him in 1908. Album Brémond. (Collection Gérard Lévy, Paris)
A bayqa pronounced in favor of qAbd al-Hafiz was offered in Marrakesh

in September 1907, plunging the country into a civil war, pitting south
against north, and splitting public opinion into two opposing camps over
the question of succession. In Fez, the news of qAbd al-Hafiz’s coup was
greeted with dismày, not because people were opposed to replacing the
incompetent qAbd al-qAziz with his more forceful brother, but rather,
because of the air of illegality that surrounded the effort. They especially
disliked the fact that they had been circumvented in certifying the new
sultan’s election in Marrakesh, and how he had taken the unusual path of
leaning on southern Berbers rather than seeking legitimacy from the ulama
of Fez.
In January 1908, the Fez ulama, prodded on by Muhammad al-Kattani
and his followers, reluctantly declared qAbd al-qAziz’s “moral death” and
issued a “conditional” bayqa in support of qAbd al-Hafiz as his successor.
The bayqa made a series of demands: that the new sultan should undertake
the jihad neglected by his predecessor; that he abolish the hated gate taxes
(maks); that he liberate the occupied cities of Oujda and Casablanca;
that he put an end to protections; and that he confine Europeans to the
port cities. In other words, the bayqa was conditioned on qAbd al-Hafiz
revoking Morocco’s consent to the Act of Algeciras. In daring to impose
terms on the naming of the sultan, the Fez bayqa was unprecedented in the
Moroccan experience. The assent of the Fez ulama turned the tide for
qAbd al-Hafiz, and soon other imperial cities followed suit. Yet the war of
succession dragged on for another six months as qAbd al-qAziz continued
his resistance, egged on by the French. The end came on August 19, 1908,
on the road between Rabat and Marrakesh, when the deposed sultan’s
mahalla was ambushed by partisans of his brother, and his soldiers melted
away in the torrid summer heat. Abandoned by his men, his jallaba
shredded by bullets, the ex-sultan fled to the safety of French-held
Casablanca, where he announced his abdication two days later. He spent
the rest of his very long life as a pensioner of the state, living in Tangier,
where he died in 1943.43
The fragile coalition that brought qAbd al-Hafiz to power soon disinte-
grated. Despite his intelligence and keen political skills, the new sultan
managed in very short order to alienate the pillars of society: the urban
bourgeoisie, the shurafa, and the rural nobility. By reinstating unpopular
taxes, by adopting an ambivalent attitude toward jihad, and by failing to
curtail European influence, qAbd al-Hafiz’s ambition to restore the prestige
of the sultanate had the opposite effect. Chronically short of funds, he
reinstated the tartib and resorted to expropriations, the sale of offices, and
other exactions against the rural population that destroyed whatever good
will toward the sultanate was left. According to Dr. Weisgerber, “soon
Mawlay Hafiz . . . found himself in the same situation as his predecessor:
without prestige, without authority, faced with an empty treasury and a
mounting debt.”44 Moreover, the two French bridgeheads in Oujda and
Casablanca were taking on an aspect of permanency, and qAbd al-Hafiz
was forced to reopen negotiations with an enemy now firmly planted on
Moroccan soil. Left with a rump territory only tenuously under his
control, he was the sultan of a Morocco that was neither politically nor
economically viable. As the historian Ibn Zaydan later observed, “The tear
was beyond repair.”45
Early in 1911, fed up with unending rounds of new taxes and news of
yet another huge foreign loan, the tribes of the Middle Atlas besieged Fez
and the sultan found himself a prisoner of the palace. In a moment of panic,
he appealed to the French for relief. Seizing the opportunity, a large French
expeditionary force entered Fez on May 21, 1911, ending the fiction of
Moroccan independence. On August 15, 1911, qAbd al-Hafiz signed over
control of his army to France who now provided the soldiers’ pay. French
advisers quickly took charge and displaced the Moroccan officers. Both
Spain and Germany registered a weak protest; after a half-hearted showing
of the flag by the German gunboat Panther in the port of Agadir on July 1,
fi g u r e 1 1 . Defeated Sultan qAbd al-Halfiz was exiled to France in the summer of

1912, following the signing of the Treaty of Fez and his forced abdication. Servants
of the ex-Sultan collect his baggage after his arrival in the southern French port of
Marseilles. Cliché Rol. (Collection Gérard Lévy, Paris)
1911, Germany dropped its objections to the French coup and accepted
territory in the Congo as compensation. On March 30, 1912, Sultan
qAbd al-Hafiz signed the Treaty of Fez, abrogating power and creating a
French Protectorate over most of Morocco; with this decisive act, the last
missing piece in France’s vast North African empire was finally set in place.
Might Morocco have stayed independent, had this divisive internecine
struggle not beset the country? Surely, the civil war dispersed the last
shreds of popular support for the old regime, making it ripe for foreign
takeover. Yet, for all that, the Hafiziyya might also be viewed as a moment
of strength, when diverse elements of the nation finally cooperated in an
effort to repel the foreign danger. There is no doubt that the Hafiziyya was
a time of national reawakening, similar to heroic moments of the past
when Morocans had joined together to repel unwelcome invaders. Some
historians have even argued that the Hafiziyya was a pivotal moment in the
formation of the modern state, representing a new turn in political life.
For it was indeed the case that novel ideas about the limits of royal
absolutism were taking hold, even if only in their infancy, among a narrow
group of reformers deeply influenced by ideas coming mainly from the
East. The notion that public opinion should influence policy, that the
leadership should demand bureaucratic accountability, and that rulers
ought to adhere to the contracts that lent them legitimacy, were abstrac-
tions now being seen in a new light. The idea that consultation and power-
sharing should be central to the governing process was also emerging as an
explicit theme. Many of these concepts had already taken root elsewhere in
the region. In 1906 the Persians and in 1908 the Turks had forced constitu-
tional governments upon their absolutist rulers; now these ideas were
reverberating throughout North Africa and reaching Morocco. Events of
this period were portents for the future, when Moroccan nationalists were
looking for models of popular participation. Rather than throwing a veil of
silence over the Hafiziyya as a shameful episode of fratricidal warfare, as
contemporary Moroccan historiography has tended to do, or treating it as
an anomaly, (in the manner of “official” accounts of the period), the
Hafiziyya might better be seen as a bridge between the old makhzan and
a new one that arose later during the nationalist period, driven by the need
to recompose fundamental structures of power while preserving the sym-
bolic assets of the state.
Nonetheless, concepts of popular sovereignty and parliamentary
rule were still far from the collective thinking of this pre –World War I
generation of Moroccan intellectuals. Late-nineteenth-century reformers
held fast to the principle of Shariah-based rule, not only because of their
fundamentally conservative outlook, but also because reform of the old
makhzan, rather than its overthrow, seemed the most pragmatic means
of making the transition to a more modern polity. At the same time, they
were steeped in ideas coming from the Arab East, especially the thoughts
of the Egyptian reformer Muhammad ‘Abduh. Copies of his journal
al-‘Urwa al-Wuthqa advocating political renewal through the medium
of a revitalized Islam passed from hand to hand in cafés and were read at
social gatherings. Like their Egyptian counterparts, Moroccan reformers
called for political innovation expressed in Islamic terms; but in order for
change to be legitimate and consistent with prevailing norms, they
argued, it had to be overseen by a pious sultan who was kin to the
Prophet.
Morocco of 1912 was not the Morocco of 1870. The public sphere was
in the midst of a process of transformation. Evidence of European styles
and tastes were everywhere: cigarettes and steam-powered flour mills,
telephones and the telegraph, cameras, bicycles, sewing machines and
pianos, and even the occasional motorcar. Methods of mass communica-
tion were becoming part of the fabric of daily life. During the Hafiziyya,
the contending parties wrote petitions and letters, meant to be read in

public places to rally popular support. News from outside circulated in the
port cities, and foreign newspapers made the rounds. In Morocco, as in
Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere in the Muslim world, a cultural revolution was
taking shape. Young men sent abroad to study in Europe and the Ottoman
Empire returned home armed with foreign languages and novel episte-
mologies, while institutions such as the “new army” and the reformed
bureaucracy drew on recruits from all sections of the country, broadening
their social base and contributing to an expanded sense of national
identity.
Moreover, there was new thinking about religion and its role in politics
following the drama of the Hafiziyya: Did Islamic thought and law provide
a viable vehicle for change, and if so, who was most qualified to direct and
interpret it? Engaging in doctrinal disputes over this question was the
domain of a new generation of scholars inspired by tenets of Sufi mysti-
cism, who plumbed the sources of faith and invented new modes of
religious discourse. Calling themselves salafis, but without belonging to
any formal movement, they were in fact inquiring minds seeking to engage
with modernity by replotting the contours of the received canon in the
spirit of reform. They operated in an atmosphere in which political change
was the overriding concern, but in fact, the thrust of their ideas was
directed more toward a moral reawakening inspired by the values of the
their pious ancestors (al-salaf al-salih), including the Prophet himself.
Their attitudes against corruption (fasad), against superstition, and against
certain extreme religious practices placed them in a position to wield moral
influence over men of authority, including the sultan himself. Even before
the watershed events of 1912, the feeling that Morocco stood poised at the
threshold of a new era was already in the air.46
In the political sphere, even though the makhzan was badly broken, it
still claimed legitimacy on the basis of dynastic loyalty. The term watan
(nation) had entered popular discourse, but it was not yet imbued with the
qualities of exclusivity that would inform later expressions of the national
idea. Still, European intervention had promoted a sense of countrywide
unanimity and attachment to the homeland. The more Europe threatened,
the more Moroccans responded to the call for jihad and committed acts of
violence, like the Mauchamp murder, in order to remove the stain of
humiliation associated with submission to foreign influence. The unanim-
ity inspired by the Hafiziyya was fleeting, but it foreshadowed a spirit
of solidarity that would be remembered and built upon at later stages in
Morocco’s struggle for independence.
fi g u r e 1 2 . Ex-Sultan qAbd al-Hafiz made the rounds of Parisian society after

arriving in France in 1912. Here he is in deep conversation with French ecclesiasts.
(Collection Gérard Lévy, Paris)
signs of modernity: changes in culture

and material life
In much of the non-Western world in this era, the impact of industrializa-
tion is the key to understanding local manifestations of rapid social and
economic change, especially on the urban level. Though large-scale indus-
trial development in the European sense was absent from Morocco, as it
was from much of the Middle East, the spread of capitalism was having an
effect, especially in the coastal cities. Beirut, Alexandria, Tunis, and Oran
were “bulking points” for goods coming from or going to the rapidly
industrializing economies of the West. In Morocco, both Tangier and
Casablanca fell into this category of the port city that served as a distribu-
tion point, and whose elites were deeply involved in the business of real-
izing profitability from trade with Europe. In the absence of a strong
central or municipal government, town fathers took the lead in deciding
what a modern city should look like, making key decisions about urban
growth that would determine the course of the future.47
Tangier – a port city straddling the Strait of Gibraltar on Morocco’s
northern coast – offers a fine example of a Moroccan town that showed
signs of a transition to a Western-style modern urbanity well before the era
of colonization. Since the mid-nineteenth century, Tangier had grown
exponentially as a commercial node because of its role as the country’s
busiest port, with the best customs and storage facilities, as well as easy
access to the interior by road. Europeans flocked there because of its
proximity to Europe and the presence of a diplomatic corps who played
a leading role in town politics, for it was Tangier – at a safe distance from
the interior – that the makhzan had designated as the place where foreign
relations would be conducted. The number of Europeans in the town grew
exponentially; from an estimated one thousand in 1872 (out of a total
population of fourteen thousand), to eight times that number in 1904, out
of a total of forty thousand – 20 percent of the town.
Also noteworthy in Tangier was the presence of a native Jewish pop-
ulation in which capital and expertise in trade were concentrated. Most of
the leading Jews had been educated at the French-oriented school of the
Alliance Israélite Universelle founded in Tangier in 1864, after the visit of
Sir Moses Montefiore. Skilled in languages and the art of dealing with
foreigners, many of them served the diplomatic missions in Tangier as
interpreters, or “dragomans.” Along with Muslims of similar talent, this
native Jewish elite was an engine of urban growth, investing its wealth in
property, construction, and speculation in land, and transforming a
“sleepy Arab town” into the likeness of a southern Mediterranean port
city, with its red tiled roofs, winding streets, and garden suburbs.48
The city was a slate on which an appreciation for things European was
etched; spacious Italianate villas, schools run on a European model, a
hospital with Western-trained doctors, apartment houses, tourist hotels, a
local telephone system, daily connections with Europe by sea, restaurants,
bars, cafés and dance halls, and even a municipal theater, built in 1913. By
1890, class divisions had begun to replace ethnic ones, and a city once
segregated into ethnic quarters was now known for its cosmopolitan mix,
with Jews, Muslims, and Christians living “promiscuously” side by side, in
the words of one foreign observer. Along with the intermingled living
conditions came a spurt in the growth of associational life in which natives
and foreigners joined together in sporting clubs and charitable organiza-
tions, musical groups and theater troupes, even in ladies’ circles and
auxiliaries. While these new cultural activities were confined to a narrow
fi g u r e 1 3 . The Moroccan embassy to France, 1909, headed by Minister

Muhammad al-Muqri (center), accompanied by translator Si Kaddour Ben Ghabrit
(far right), and other makhzan officials. Official embassies to Europe brought home
firsthand accounts of European industrial development. Album Brémond. (Collection
Gérard Lévy, Paris)
elite of wealth and education, their effects necessarily filtered downward and
outward.49
Tangier was also a center for newspapers and a modern press. In 1883,
the first French-language newspaper – Le Reveil du Maroc – appeared in
Tangier, managed by a Jew from Essaouira named Levy Cohen for the
purpose of spreading French language, culture, and political ideas among
his co-religionists. About the same time, al-Moghreb al-Aksa, published by
G. T. Abrines in Spanish, was directed toward Tangier’s burgeoning
Spanish-speaking community that included refugees from the political
turmoil in Andalucía. Later al-Moghreb al-Aksa joined forces with the
English-language Times of Morocco, edited by Budgett Meakin, an
Englishman whose crusading mission was to “expose abuses committed
by Europeans availing themselves of Moorish corruption, and to arouse a
greater interest abroad in the development of Morocco.”
While Tangier was the epicenter of foreign influence, signs of a non-
native presence soon appeared in other cities – Casablanca, Tetuan, and
Rabat also had European colonies before 1912. More than a dozen or so
foreign-language newspapers sprang up in the first decade of the twentieth
fi g u r e 1 4 . The 1909 Moroccan embassy to France donned workman’s togs to

visit the arms factory at St. Étienne. Minister al-Muqri is standing to the left of the
young boy, and translator Ben Ghabrit stands directly behind. Album Brémond.
century, reflecting the views of their patrons on the so-called “Moroccan

Question.” Some Moroccans knew foreign languages and could read the
newspapers; others had them read to them. Mahammad Jibbas
(Guebbas), who rose to the post of Grand Vizier in the early years of
the Protectorate, was fluent in English, and Muhammad al-Muqri, also
a Minister, knew some French. It was said that Sultan qAbd al-Hafiz’s
children were taking French lessons for several hours each day.50
During the Hafiziyya, the role of newspapers had become pivotal and
articles in the press represented the polarized factions. An Arabic news-
paper called al-Saqada appeared in Tangier in 1904, its Syrian editor a
follower of the literary awakening known as the Nahda. In 1908–1909,
al-Saqada, reflecting the position of France, supported qAbd al-qAziz, and
was violently attacked by the al-Kattanis, who were pro-Hafiz. By 1909,
at least three other Arabic newspapers were in circulation; one of them,
Lisan al-Maghrib (“The Voice of the Maghrib”) achieved notoriety in
1908 when it published the text of a liberal constitution that was backed
by an anonymous group of Moroccan intellectuals. The editors of this
newspaper, refusing to be intimidated by the makhzan, also printed a

series of “open letters” to Sultans qAbd al-qAziz and qAbd al-Hafiz that
evoked novel concepts such as freedom of speech, affording their read-
ership access to progressive ideas circulating elsewhere in the Arab
world.51 According to Abdallah Laroui, the Syrian-edited Arabic news-
papers introduced educated Moroccans to “a liberal conception of pop-
ular sovereignty very different from the notion of shura”; although these
efforts were mostly stillborn, they provided the raw material for a new
mode of political discourse.52
Westernizing tendencies radiated outward from Tangier to the rest of
Morocco, contributing to the atmosphere of political ferment. Familiarity
with European material culture remained a class-based phenomenon,
confined to the upper echelons of government and a handful of the elite
initiated into its codes and practices. Western ideas, on the other hand,
traveled in far wider circles and had a ripple effect throughout society that
stimulated innovative forms of creativity. In the field of history, Ahmad
al-Nasiri led the way in the 1880s when he used non-Muslim sources,
contextualized documentation, and cited precise quotations to write his
monumental Kitab al-Istiqsa, the first national history of Morocco.
Government recordkeeping also improved, and maintaining detailed
account books (kunnash) became good bureaucratic practice. Narratives
of travel to Europe circulated among the literati, bringing home the pleas-
ures of Paris, London, Marseilles and Strasbourg to a small but avid
readership. While most of this production remained in manuscript form,
some of it was printed in Fez and reached a broader audience. Most books
printed between 1865 and 1920 dealt with religious subjects such sufism
and jurisprudence, but others touched on subjects that had more mundane
appeal. While the Moroccan novel was not yet born, literary works having
a didactic purpose became more common. They took up the burning
questions of the day, such as the advisability of jihad, the dangers of
cooperating with Europe, and whether or not to consume foreign-made
products such as tea, sugar, candles, and tobacco. The best example of this
sort of literature was the immensely popular Nasihat ahl al-Islam (“Advice
to the People of Islam”), a fiery exhortation by Muhammad b. Jaqfar
al-Kattani published in Fez in 1908, calling on Moroccans to unite and
to purge themselves of the noxious foreign influences that had seeped into
society. The al-Kattanis seem to have grasped, more than any of their
contemporaries, the power of the printed word and its ability to shape
public discussion through the medium of books and pamphlets written in
simple and direct language.53
The first decade of the twentieth century witnessed a cultural awakening

led by precursors of a modernist trend in intellectual life whose full
contours would only emerge after World War I. Included in this category
was the legal scholar Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Wazzani (1849–1923),
who corresponded with the Egyptian Muhammad qAbduh on questions
of religious practice and introduced reformist ideas into Morocco.
Al-Wazzani’s great legal compendium, the Miq yar al-Jadid, showed
deep humanistic insight, bridging the gap between Shariah law and social
reality at a time when questioning the sources of religious authority was
uppermost in people’s minds.54 Another figure of this incipient modernity
was the Tangier historian Muhammad Skirij (d. 1940), informant
to French social scientist Edouard Michaux-Bellaire; Skirij penned a
seven-volume chronicle of Tangier’s history that closely adheres in style
and format to Muhammad b. Jaqfar al-Kattani’s monumental history of
Fez, Salwat al-Anfas.55 These years also saw the first appearance of the
savant Muhammad al-Hajwi (1874–1956), polymath, propagandist, and
later, Minister of Education under the Protectorate, who wrote more than
fifty books on diverse subjects such as travel, women’s education, Islamic
law, and history. Also the al-Azhar trained Abu Shuqayb al-Dakali, who
was an outspoken advocate for reformist ideas in Morocco, exceeding in
influence even qAbduh himself, according to the historian Abun-Nasr.56
Each of these men demonstrated a keen if selective understanding of key
aspects of modernist thought. Adept in the techniques of propaganda and
mass appeal (al-Hajwi used the radio in the 1930s to call for the reform of
family law), they developing the art of skirting entrenched conservatism by
reaching out to a new generation of readers and listeners. In sum, we could
view the period 1900–1912 in the usual manner, as representing the
limitations of the pre-modern state, anticipating the coming of the
Protectorate as a result of the breakdown of authority through misman-
agement and a poverty of ideas. Or we can adopt a fresh perspective that
takes into account the long-forgotten and largely ignored nonstate actors
who rose up in the interstices of society and seized the opportunity created
by the vacuum of power to advance a different vision of how Morocco’s
past and future might be joined.
4
France and Spain in Morocco
The Early Years of the Protectorates (1912–1930)
The signing of the Treaty of Fez on March 30, 1912, ushering in the French
Protectorate, was a mournful finale to qAbd al-Hafiz’s reign. Over the preced-
ing decade, large segments of the Moroccan heartland had fallen into French
hands; it was only France’s reluctance to alarm other European states that
kept her from declaring full dominion over Morocco before 1912. A secret
Franco-Spanish agreement of 1904 acknowledged Spain’s “historic” claim to
the entire north of Morocco, with the exception of Tangier, whose “special”
character was recognized by the Great Powers in the 1906 Treaty of Algeciras.
In the final division of Moroccan spoils between France and Spain in
November 1912, Tangier’s future was left up in the air. Britain wanted the
city and its hinterland to become an international zone where no one foreign
power would prevail, while France wanted Tangier to remain among the
assets of its Protectorate. Posing a host of difficult issues, the question of
Tangier was set aside for the time being. Then World War I intervened, and it
was not until 1923 that France, Spain, and Great Britain – noticeably without
the help of the newly formed League of Nations – finally agreed on a multi-
tiered international administration for the city under the nominal headship of
the sultan. This agreement acknowledged Sharifian sovereignty, as France
greatly desired, while preserving Tangier’s international character, as Britain
wished. The Tangier question was settled for the time being to the satisfaction
of Britain and France, but not of Spain, who quietly grieved over its loss.1
a troubled beginning
Despite all the diplomatic maneuvering, France’s hegemony over Morocco
in 1912 was still far from complete. A countrywide insurrection broke out
88
France and Spain in Morocco (1912–1930) 89
as soon as the Treaty of Fez was signed, starting in Fez itself. Moroccan
troops garrisoned in the madina rose up against their French military
instructors and went on a rampage, killing Europeans and looting at
will. As the city erupted in chaos, rebel militiamen entered the mellah, or
Jewish quarter. A woman resident recounted the anxiety of those terrible
days: “We closed the doors of our houses, our hearts pounding with
fear . . . the enemy entered and stole everything . . . they pointed their
weapons at us and said: ‘Your riches or your life, you bastards!’
Terrorized, we gave them what they wanted . . . ” After a devastating fire
and a severe pounding from the French artillery, the fighting stopped, but
hundreds were dead and the Jewish quarter was devastated. During the
insurrection the Jews of Fez, about twelve thousand in all, fled their homes
and took refuge on the nearby palace grounds, sheltering in the royal
menagerie alongside the lions and panthers.2 Meanwhile, in the southern
region of the Tafilalt, the insurrection continued under Ahmad al-Hiba, a
son of Ma al-qAynayn, who resumed the jihad after the death of his father
and even claimed the sultanate at Marrakesh before he was crushingly
defeated by a smaller but better armed French force under Lieutenant
Colonel Charles Mangin.
Providing direction during this chaos was the man now emerging as the
Protectorate’s chief figure – soon-to-be Résident-Général Louis Hubert
Gonzalve Lyautey, who immediately took decisive measures to seize the
levers of power. Resurrecting the disgraced qAlawi dynasty and preserving
the sultanate as the reliquary of Moroccan sovereignty was now the
centerpiece of French policy, but no one was fooled. The real master of
events was Lyautey. In August 1912, he forced an uncooperative
qAbd al-Hafiz to abdicate and with the endorsement of the ulama, replaced
him with his more pliable younger brother, Mawlay Yusuf, whose main
virtues were his quiet reserve, his piety, and his bland personality.
Realizing that an era had ended, the embittered qAbd al-Hafiz, as a final
act, broke the royal parasol and smashed the imperial seals before depart-
ing for a permanent exile.3
lyautey lays the foundations of the french

protectorate
Lyautey was an extraordinary personality whose policies and personal
vision laid the groundwork for the institutions that informed France’s
forty-four year tenure in Morocco. Born into a Catholic family with
royalist leanings and trained at the elite French military academy of
St. Cyr, Lyautey was deeply imbued with a respect for tradition while at the
same time burning to leave his mark on the world through bold action.
After years in the colonial service in Indochina, Madagascar, and Algeria,
Lyautey carried with him a well-honed set of ideas about the exercise of
colonial administration. Morocco in 1912 was the perfect canvas on which
he could limn his inspiration; immensely conservative in its societal
makeup, it was in dire need of a top-to-bottom “regeneration.” Charged
with energy and a passion for work, Lyautey now set out to achieve the
reorganization of the makhzan. Like many colonialists of his generation,
Lyautey believed that the Protectorate formula gave France the opportu-
nity to bring Western progress to the subject peoples under its sway, but
without changing their fundamental “soul.” An unremitting romantic,
Lyautey believed that Morocco, unlike Algeria, should not to be annexed
to France, nor should it be considered a “colony”; rather, it was to remain
sovereign but “protected” until that undefined moment when, in his own
words, it would be “developed, civilized, living its own autonomous life,
detached from the metropole.”4 He vowed to “offend no tradition, change
no custom, and remind ourselves that in all human society there is a ruling
class, born to rule, without which nothing can be done . . . enlist the ruling
class in our service . . . and the country will be pacified, and at far less cost
and with greater certainty than by all the military expeditions we could
send there.”5 With that mission before him, he gathered a group of excep-
tionally talented young men – social planners, educators, architects, and
military men – who subscribed to his goal of building a new Morocco
without disrupting what they considered its basic values: a love of hier-
archy, a respect for nobility and birth, loyalty to family, a consummate
religious piety. Lyautey’s formula was concise–complete control, but no
direct rule. There was an idealistic strain to his vision, perhaps even a
heroic one; it involved a deliberate return to a chivalrous world of pure
intentions, yet it was firmly planted in a setting of power plants, railroads,
concrete and steel. On the whole, in the early years of his administration,
his ideas met with success; it was only later, after the first decade, that the
delicate balance between the anachronistic and the modern was thrown
off, and the scale tipped asymmetrically in a dangerous leaning toward
the past.
The Treaty of Fez offered few restrictions on the scope of Lyautey’s
ambition. Modeled after the Protectorate set up in Tunisia in 1881, its
formal purpose was to establish a “proper” government of order and
security that would allow for the introduction of reforms that would ensure
Morocco’s economic development. Unlike the government of Algeria that
had “turned to dust” even before the coming of the French, Lyautey asserted
that precolonial Morocco was “an independent empire with a history,
jealous to the extreme of its independence, rejecting all servitude . . . looking
like a structured state, with its hierarchy . . . its foreign representatives, its
social organisms . . . ” His plan was to return the makhzan to its former
glory, while strictly limiting its authority, and to restore the sultan as the
respected symbol of the state. To this end, he set about retrieving the
makhzan from the ruins of the closing years of qAbd al-Hafiz’s reign and
refurbishing its image. In Lyautey’s Protectorate, the sultan retained his
formal powers: he issued decrees over his own signature and seal and
preserved his religious status as first imam of the nation. He was surrounded
by the trappings of power and every detail of courtly ceremony was kept
intact. “At the Moorish court,” Walter Harris wrote, “scarcely a European
is to be seen, and to the native who arrives at the Capital there is little or no
visible change from what he and his ancestors saw in the past.” To the
chagrin of the colonial party, Lyautey openly prided himself on being “the
first servant of Sidna,” and did not hesitate to hold the stirrup of the sultan’s
horse when he dismounted at state occasions. “In Morocco,” he argued,
“there is only one government, the sharifian government, protected by the
French.”6
But behind the scenes, in modern office buildings away from the palace
and its pageantry, a second and almost completely separate government
would grow up, efficiently French, and holding the actual reins of power.
Each part of this two-headed hydra would evolve along its own track: an
indigenous, Moroccan-manned “government of the people,” simplified
and stripped down, held in respect, concerned largely with religious,
cultural and educational affairs, on the one hand, and a complex, multi-
layered, French technocratic bureaucracy, tasked with the running of a
modern state on the other. From his new capital of Rabat, Résident
Général Lyautey was de facto the Protectorate’s highest authority; imme-
diately beneath him in the hierarchy was the Secretary General, his con-
fidant Henri Gaillard, the liaison between the Moroccan and French sides
of the administration. This post was the nerve center of the Protectorate,
serving as a clearinghouse for every matter that touched on administrative,
judicial, and political affairs. In 1912 it consisted of two departments,
finance and public works; it eventually expanded into eight departments
that included agriculture, commerce, education, health, communications,
and native affairs – the basic structure of a government-in-the making.
This last department was charged with the sensitive task of taking the pulse
of the Moroccan people and monitoring the minutiae of their daily life,
from vetting appointments, to enforcing the payment of taxes, to shaping

educational policy – but without dropping the mask of “indirect rule.” The
top level of administration was assigned to a Native Policy Council that
acted as the right hand of Lyautey, overseeing all aspects of Protectorate
rule. But in fact, the bureaus, sub-bureaus and multiple services of each
department were the workhorses of the regime, carrying out the complex
day-to-day operations of rule. It was here that the actual business of
government took place, where projects were planned and staffed, where
budgets were conceived, and vital decisions made.
Following the shift in the mechanisms of control, little was left of the old
makhzan. The baniqas (benches) where the sultan’s advisers had once sat
patiently awaiting for his summons were vacant, and the sultan was left with
only a few officials under his direct charge. Among them were the grand
vizier, a minister in charge of Islamic justice and the high courts of appeal,
who was also head of the habus, or the Islamic endowments, and the
director of Islamic education at the mosque-university of the Qarawiyyin
at Fez. The sultan was now anointed as the guardian of “Islamic Affairs,”
while the French administration controlled everything else.
As his capacities increased, Lyautey implemented an extensive program
of reform that filtered into every area of public life. The goals he set were
impossibly high: cajoling, insisting, verbally flogging his underlings and his
critics in Paris, brooking no opposition, he set about rationalizing the
bureaucracy, integrating the tribal areas, reforming the legal system; build-
ing roads, dams, railways and a power grid; redesigning the cities; improv-
ing sanitation and health; promoting business; creating a narrow but
effective system of education; preserving the impressive architectural pat-
rimony; exploiting agricultural and mineral wealth by controlling land use;
and finally, securing the necessary funds to carry out these vast and
expensive improvements. His record of success in achieving this ambitious
and far-reaching program, though far from perfect, elicits our admiration,
even after calculating its high cost.7
modernizing morocco’s cities: the work

of henri prost
Lyautey’s first task was to gain control over Morocco’s untamed physical
space through a subtle combination of military conquest and political
seduction. He began by establishing secure zones around the cities, reas-
suring urban notables that “business as usual” would follow. Then he took
on the task of rethinking the design of Morocco’s main population centers
to accommodate the expected influx of Europeans who would staff the

Protectorate administration. Architecture, urban design, and the protec-
tion of the Moroccan patrimony were particular concerns of the Résident-
Général, and he invested important resources in them. Technocrats trained
in modern methods of city planning were recruited from France to work
under Lyautey’s close supervision. Architect and urbanist Henri Prost,
winner of the prestigious Grand Prix de Rome in 1902, was put in charge.
Armed with a set of draconian dahirs that empowered him to “scandal-
ously” expropriate whatever he needed, Prost went to work; in the period
from 1914 to 1923, nearly every major Moroccan city was radically
reshaped by his hand. New quarters were built separate from the old,
characterized by a geometric sparseness associated with the latest modern-
ist style. Municipal services such as water and sewage were installed where
none had existed before; industrial zones were located distant from resi-
dential areas but close to transportation hubs; broad avenues for the
circulation of traffic were drawn across empty fields; elegant apartment
blocks were carved out of checkerboards of ramshackle housing. Cities
like Casablanca became a “laboratory” for testing out the most recent
ideas in city planning that were as yet untried in the metropole. Prost’s
work was profoundly modern but also characterized by a deep respect for
the traditional Moroccan building arts. Using motifs such as tile work,
arches, and the open courtyard design, he designed cities of classic pro-
portions whose aesthetic appeal has withstood the test of time. The singu-
larity of his vision is evident today in the monumental tree-lined
boulevards of Fez, in the majestic arcades of central Rabat, and in the
simple forms of the “Habous” quarter of Casablanca, an entire neighbor-
hood constructed by using modern infrastructure beneath a neo-
Mauresque façade.8
Behind this architecture was a particular understanding of Moroccan
urbanity based on a perception of the city as the focal point for hadariyya,
roughly translated as “civic culture.” When French planners studied
Morocco’s cities, they discovered a refined social life conducted behind
closed doors, kept alive by a Moroccan elite immersed in the inherited
forms and practices of the every day: a particular mode of eating, dressing,
conducting business, entertaining, and spending leisure time. Enamored
with this discovery, they viewed the domestic scene as the warp and woof
of social life, and decreed that the native habitat – the old madina – should
be left alone, unaffected by the exercises in modernism taking place else-
where in the city. As Lyautey said: “The Arab and the Jewish quarters, I
will not touch them. I shall clean them up, restore them, supply them with
running water and electricity, and remove the waste, but that is all . . . And
out in the bled (countryside), I shall build another town . . . ”9
Modern quarters were built for Europeans in cities both large and small,
usually within a stone’s throw of the old city. Both parts were hierarchical
and carefully controlled; the new quarters had their precise zones for living
and working, segregated by function and socio-economic standing, while the
old town was kept frozen in the grip of the indigenous patrician class whose
status and privilege remained intact. Municipal organization – regularized by
a 1917 dahir – left the hierarchies of the pre-colonial order untouched. In
each large city, a pasha was named as the head of municipal affairs, assisted
by a municipal council composed of representatives of the urban elite. The
pasha received orders directly from the sultan who was, as the French
incessantly repeated, “the source of all authority in Morocco”; in Rabat,
Salé and Casablanca, this façade of “indirect rule” was scrupulously main-
tained. But in fact, the powers of the pasha were gradually reduced over time
and overall management of the city was incrementally transferred to the
“Chief of Municipal Services,” a French bureaucrat who reported directly to
the Secretary-General of the Protectorate and wrestled with such mundane
matters as taxation, water supply, and school budgets. This figure was closely
shadowed by a municipal commission that reflected mainly settler interests.
Lyautey’s purist conception of how Moroccan cities should be run reflected a
practical approach to existing problems, but also a blind romanticism that
paid insufficient attention to the dynamic forces that the new era had
unleashed. It was not long before the madinas that had been “left to them-
selves” were bursting at the seams, transformed by a rampant increase in
population that neither Prost, nor Lyautey, could have possibly imagined.10
tracing the pathways of resistance

While Moroccan cities took on more complex forms, the bled was also
reconceived to fit the colonial imaginary. Rural Morocco was divided into
military regions and a slow process of conquest began. In areas that were
subdued, the Office of Native Affairs (Direction des affaires indigènes) sent
out young officers carefully chosen for the job of local administration; it
was a question of “finding the right man for the right place,” according to
Lyautey. The Résident-Général demonstrated extreme flexibility in his
choice of personnel, recruiting loyalists from military intelligence, among
other places. In this regard, he followed a pattern established many years
earlier by the Bureaux arabes in Algeria, whose liberal-minded officers
steeped in St.-Simonian ideas had acted as the vanguard of the “civilizing
fi g u r e 1 5 . Colonial infantry departing from the Gare de Lyon train station in

Paris, July 1912, on their way to Morocco to reinforce French troops preparing to
launch an assault against Berber tribes in the Middle Atlas Mountains. Cliché Rol.
mission.” Speaking Arabic and often personally dedicated to Lyautey

through years of shared service, his appointees were charged with facilitat-
ing the transition from military to civilian control by “educating and
guiding” local qaqids and pashas to bend to the finer points of France’s
unfolding master plan. Working hand-in-hand with the local qaqid to
realize “indirect rule” (that could not have been more direct), each officer
aspired to be a petty chieftain in his own right. The stories of French officer
Maurice Le Glay captured the powerful emotions felt by these men who
formed the vanguard of conquest as they placed their imprint on the rural
scene. Their aim was to make French authority absolute; in places where
their control was tentative, the work of “pacification” (the euphemism
generally applied) was considered incomplete.11
The bravery and single-mindedness of these officers were legendary; a
certain Captain Ayard was captured by the Berbers of Bekrit and held
prisoner for two years; at the end of his captivity, he persuaded the tribe to
surrender and make peace with France. Using punitive military measures
on the one hand, and tactics of persuasion and even bribery on the other,
Lyautey’s “right men” launched a campaign to control the “untamed”
Moroccan rural space. Within days of an officer’s arrival, a rudimentary

market, a clinic, and a school were usually established. Road building
quickly followed, along with new wells and dams, pumping stations and
vaccinations; after years of hard work, an indissoluble bond would
develop between the French officer and “his” people, who often bestowed
upon him the title of hakim – a capable and wise man.12
But the high-minded qualities of the individual colonial officer could not
mask the brutality of the spreading occupation. In the Middle Atlas, the
French imposed a state of siege, with the aim of subduing the major tribes
living in this mountainous region, and in particular, the Zayan tribal
confederation who had a reputation for ferocity. The policy of “a drop
of oil” (tache d’huile) became Lyautey’s signal invention, falsely suggesting
the quiet nature of the spread of French influence; this clever catchphrase
was directed at the home front in order to show that the submission of
rural Morocco would be speedy, low-cost, and unopposed. But, in fact, the
opposite case was more often the reality.
In the spring of 1913, for example, French troops moved into the
Middle Atlas region but made little headway, finding that every push
forward was met with determined resistance. Berber chiefs of the Zayan
confederation united under the leadership of a grizzled old warrior, Moha
ou Hamou, who fought every inch of the French advance with “an abso-
lute scorn for death.” At the famous battle of el-Herri that took place near
Khénifra in November 1914, Moha’s forces overcame a poorly organized
French column, killing over six hundred officers and men. This stunning
victory for the Moroccan side shocked the French command into recog-
nizing the offensive capacity of the Berber tribesmen. French forces
regrouped and began using aerial reconnaissance and artillery.
Bombarding villages at will, they ranged across the plains and foothills,
but dared not enter the steep heights where the Berbers had an advantage.
Instead, they imposed an economic blockade, depriving the tribesmen of
access to their traditional markets, and they employed scorched earth
techniques to destroy their crops. These tactics, coupled with unremitting
and often brutal military pressure, finally broke the back of the Middle
Atlas tribes. By the summer of 1918, even the son of Moha ou Hamou had
had enough, and with his capitulation, the Zayan front collapsed; after
years of a cat-and-mouse game, France had finally achieved some success
in the vital spinal cord of the country.13
But the slow pace of conquest and its escalating costs did not win over the
politicians and bureaucrats in Paris. With World War I raging in Europe,
critics complained that Lyautey’s gradualist approach was not sufficiently
m a p 2 . The French Conquest of Morocco, 1907–1927
bold, and that the Moroccan adventure was draining away resources badly
needed in France. In response, Lyautey invented new language that turned
defeat into victory and setback into progress; he argued that it should be
France’s aim not to possess all of Morocco, but only le Maroc utile, or those
areas that were “useful” by dint of their military, economic, or strategic
importance. Thus he reset the parameters of the colonial mission while
justifying his own slow, and sometimes vacillating, approach to conquest.
It was not until 1924, after more than a decade of bloody struggle in which
many French troops died, and many more Moroccan lives were sacrificed,
that the entire Middle Atlas region was finally subdued.14
In the South, Lyautey exercised a different strategy that took into
account the local chiefs, the same “Lords of the Atlas” who had supported
qAbd al-Hafiz’s uprising. Three Berber clans – the M’tougga, who held the
Tiz-n-Test pass, the Goundafa, who controlled Oued N’fis, and the Glawa,
who commanded the mountain peaks of Telouet near the Tiz-n-Tishka
pass – derived their power from their strategic perches atop the High Atlas
range. Instead of confronting these powerful seigneurs directly, Lyautey
adopted a policy of cooptation that he believed would save money and
French lives. The so-called politique des grands caïds recognized the local
warlords in return for their rendering service to France. French allies
fi g u r e 1 6 . Sultan Mawlay Yusuf, handpicked by Résident Général Lyautey to

succeed the deposed Sultan qAbd al-Hafiz, enters Casablanca under the royal
parasol, traditional symbol of sultanic authority, in November 1913. Cliché Rol.
included Haïda ou Mouis, the pasha of Taroudant, who worked tirelessly

on their behalf, relentlessly pursuing the indomitable al-Hiba throughout
the anti-Atlas. When the pasha Haïda was killed in the line of fire near
Tighanimine near Agadir in 1916, he was hailed by the colonial press as
“the heart and soul of makhzan resistance to Hibist schemes in the
Sous.”15 By using surrogate fighters, by supporting them with money,
equipment, advice, and occasionally troops, Lyautey could proclaim that
“indirect rule” was indeed working, and that the conquest of the south was
bought cheaply. “At no point did they let us down,” he wrote to Minister
of War Painlevé: “They made themselves the instruments of our policy
[and] proved themselves to be clear-sighted as well as courageous leaders
of men.” But in fact, France had made a bargain with the devil, for these
independent warlords in the south were often so abusive and tyrannical to
their own people, that their behavior gave Moroccans yet another reason
to abhor their French masters.16
Lyautey’s strategy of working through tribal leaders and urban elites
was based in part on his sense of realpolitik and finding others to do the
job, and in part on his own innate appreciation for rank and tradition. The
lavish displays of pomp and circumstance, the uniforms decked with
glitter, the decorations and prizes, the reification of the sultanate as near-
sacred, reflected a state of mind that in many ways returned Morocco to an
imaginary point in the past. Despite these regressive tendencies, change

was perceptible everywhere. Even in the seemingly untouchable sphere of
religion, the passion for reform had taken hold, bolstered by the desire to
build respect for the revivified sultanate. Religious affairs clearly belonged
in the restored makhzan’s portfolio, but only after being subjected to the
same kind of rationalization as other affairs of state. The rich religious
endowments were restructured and placed under the French administra-
tion’s eagle eye, while publicly remaining in the hands of the ulama; new
judicial standards were set for the posts of qadi and notary, and the
distinction between “civil” and “criminal” cases was redefined.17
Finally, there was the question of the zawiyas, or sufi brotherhoods, that
so fascinated French social scientists, who believed that they contained
“the secret to the historical constitution of Morocco.” Their rootedness in
society had impressed the policymakers of the Residency as much as it had
influenced ethnographers; hence, the desire to neutralize them politically.
Aware of their pivotal role, Lyautey courted them, showered them with
attention, and tried to rally them to his side. A small group of sufis from
among the Fez elite, refusing to collaborate, chose instead the long road of
exile and left for the Muslim East. As for the rest, they were free to continue
to conduct ceremonies and receive pilgrims; however, at the same time,
they were gradually being coopted as “agents of the makhzan” through the
renewal of the precolonial practice of granting the tanfida, a license allow-
ing the brotherhoods to receive lucrative donations. The blurred lines
between secular and religious, the need to exert control over the Muslim
sphere, the insertion of the sacred into the architecture of a modernized
state, all taxed the ingenuity of French policy makers. The challenge of
preserving the ancient patrimony of the makhzan (for which France was
now the self-appointed caretaker) while meeting the requirements of a new
kind of absolutism was daunting.18
education for the elites, work for the masses

Finding the right balance between the forces of tradition and contempo-
raneity was especially acute in the sphere of education, where the measures
of class and ethnicity entered the picture and were used to determine who
would have access to a modern education, and who would not. European,
Jewish, and Berber and Arab Muslim students were each directed to a
separate school system; primary schools for Muslims, Jewish-run schools
for Jewish students, and after 1912, separate schools for French and
European children. After 1916, five “schools for the sons of notables”
were created to educate boys from elite families, while the majority of
Muslim students were sent to vocational schools to prepare for manual
trades. Girls were almost completely excluded from this highly restrictive
schema. Two collèges, or high schools, were also established, one in Fez
(1914) and the other in Rabat (1916). These Eton-like boarding schools
fulfilled Lyautey’s notion of turning out Moroccan “gentlemen” of a
“double culture” who would enter the ranks of the makhzan immersed
in traditional values while being conversant with modern bureaucratic
practice. It was not until 1930 that the students at these collèges were
permitted to prepare for the high school diploma (baccalauréat) in
Morocco in order to have access to higher education in France. After
1920, special schools for Berber-speaking children in rural areas were
created where French instituteurs (teachers), specially trained for the
dual tasks of teaching and intelligence gathering, were assigned after a
year of rigorous training in a Berber dialect. One of these schools, Azrou in
the Middle Atlas, became a collège after 1930, providing Berber youth
with a step forward to higher posts in the administration; the best of them
would go on to the elite military academy at Dar el-Beida near Meknes,
where they were trained to become officers in the colonial army. This
integrated policy had one purposeful goal: to put in place a hierarchical
system of social reproduction that would guarantee an indigenous elite
loyal to France and ready to enter its service. But, as Mohammed Benhlal
has shown, the school system was far more porous than its architects
intended and pupils entered it from a variety of social levels, not only
from the rich but also from the middle and working classes, ultimately
turning the Berber educational system into a “vehicle of social mobility.”19
The majority of Muslim children who went to school, a mere fraction of
the total schoolage population, attended Qur’anic schools that were out-
side of Protectorate supervision altogether. Most Jewish children attended
the secular and privately run primary schools sponsored by the French-
based Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) that had branches all over the
country. Before 1912, Jewish girls’ schools not only imparted basic sub-
jects such as reading and writing, they also trained girls for the workplace
by teaching them tailoring, laundering, and, eventually, typing, shorthand,
and other vocational skills.20 In 1913, a similar program was established
for Muslim girls in Salé by the French authorities, where the girls learned
various handicrafts; later the curriculum was broadened to include French
language. This model soon spread to other cities, and by 1917, over
450 girls were enrolled in French-run handicraft schools that served
mainly working class families. Finally, in the period 1919–1924,
reformist-minded intellectuals, fearing that the French system presented a

cultural threat and that the traditional Qur’anic schools did not meet the
needs of a modern society, founded privately funded “free-schools” where
Arabic language was taught along with other subjects. The student pop-
ulation of the free schools were mainly sons of the well to do.
Protectorate officials were leery about schooling for the masses, fearing
that an educated proletariat would become a source of discontent and
eventually supply recruits for an anticolonial opposition. Lyautey’s elitist
sensibility marked the system. That quality, along with what Daniel Rivet
has called a “wary Malthusianism” that embraced selectivity as a matter of
principle, impregnated the educational structure from top to bottom. The
fear of drowning in a sea of well-educated, militant Moroccans haunted
the authorities and justified in their minds a highly restrictive approach to
schooling the masses.21
The capstone of Lyautey’s efforts as an educational innovator was the
Institut des Hautes Études Marocains (IHEM) which he founded in Rabat
in 1920. The purpose of this institute, housed in the graciously designed
Bibliothèque Générale close to the Residency, was to serve as a “school”
for colonial administrators eager to advance their knowledge of Moroccan
society and history. Lyautey himself attended meetings at the IHEM,
which flourished under his patronage.
Lyautey’s support of the IHEM was consistent with the tradition of
French scholarly research on North African society that moved in tandem
with the colonial project. As France’s interest in Morocco mounted in the
late nineteenth century, so did the pressure from the colonial party to gain
detailed knowledge of the country. In 1890, the Paris-based Comité du
Maroc, a pro-colonial lobby founded by Alfred Le Chatelier, occupant of
the chair in Islamic sociology at the Collège de France, campaigned in favor
of a stepped-up effort to study all aspects of Moroccan society. Le
Chatelier was the moving spirit behind the Mission scientifique, a research
unit established in 1904 in Tangier whose flagship scientific publication
was the authoritative Archives marocaines.22
With the coming of the Protectorate, Lyautey proposed to create a new
research institute structured according to his own design. His ambition
was to train colonial officials to be as at home in Moroccan society as he
was, speaking one or more of its languages, knowing its customs and
people. Under Lyautey’s patronage, the IHEM developed a vigorous intel-
lectual agenda that included the journal Hespéris, that continues today as
Hespéris-Tamuda. Leading French scholars of the Maghrib such as
Evariste Lévi-Provençal, Henri Terrasse, and Louis Brunot served as
directors, while Henri de Castries, Pierre de Cénival, Roger Le Tourneau,

and Robert Montagne were on its roster of instructors, making the IHEM
a highly selective and “embryonic university” and a pathway to advanced
studies.
In the decade of the 1920s, the IHEM held annual congresses attended
by Moroccan luminaries such as the historian qAbd al-Rahman ibn Zaydan
and the educator Muhammad al-Hajwi, who lectured in Arabic. But
participation of native scholars was subject to the political climate and
did not survive the tensions of Rif War. Moreover, only a handful of
privileged students – mainly Europeans – were permitted to study inside
its hallowed walls. Until World War II, none of its graduates were
Muslims; practically speaking, this elite institution contributed not at all
to the formation of the first generation of nationalist leadership. Like other
institutions founded by Lyautey, the IHEM was fundamentally an instru-
ment of political control, meant to reinforce through research and teaching
the structures of domination imposed by the Protectorate regime.23
world war i: the moroccan role

World War I interrupted Lyautey’s plans for a speedy end to conquest. The
European population in Morocco greeted the outbreak of the war with a
patriotic wave of enthusiasm, filling the streets of Casablanca and shouting
“À Berlin, À Berlin!” In a very short time, men and matériel began to flow
back to France, leaving Lyautey with a skeleton staff and diminished
resources. The Résident Général saw his closest collaborators recruited
for military service, his budget cut, and his reinforcements reduced to a
trickle. Five battalions of Moroccan infantry (tirailleurs) retrained after the
Fez mutiny by French officers were sent off to France with a message from
Lyautey to the Minister of War: “They are marvelous; you will ask me for
more.” Sultan Yusuf immediately and unhesitatingly threw his support
behind the French cause, ignoring a fatwa from the Ottoman sultan – now
allied with Germany – calling for jihad, and was lavishly praised by
Lyautey for his “absolute loyalty.” Over the course of the war, the
Moroccan forces in France, all volunteers, won fame as a first-class fighting
force, recognized by their commanders as “intelligent, maneuverable,
courageous, passionately warlike . . . tough, sober, and good marchers.”24
By war’s end, Morocco had supplied about forty-five thousand regular
infantrymen and auxiliaries to the war effort, had suffered nine thousand
men killed or missing in action, plus another seventeen thousand casualties
caused by sickness and battle wounds. The situation was ironic. While tens
of thousands of Moroccan soldiers were fighting and dying alongside

Frenchmen in the trenches of the Western Front, their brothers and cousins
were battling other Frenchmen in the valleys of the Middle Atlas, in the Rif
Mountains, and in the High Atlas.25
Who were these footsoldiers and what did this wartime experience
mean to them? French sources depict them as rural, poor, and often
illiterate. Their motive for joining the army was usually economic, and
they often joined up in family units. Qaqids were ordered to scour the
villages and suqs looking for recruits, who came from all over Morocco,
enticed by a recruitment bonus of fifty francs per year. Initially eager to
enlist, news of the bloodbath in France soon dampened their enthusiasm.
Moreover, the Moroccans were subject to rank discrimination in pay, a
lack of promotions, limited rights to a pension, and benefits that were far
inferior to those of the metropolitan troops. They were also subjected to
the institutionalized racism of the French army; common wisdom decreed
that they were “inferior” to French troops, ignorant of the French lan-
guage, with “deplorable” sexual morality, harboring an “instinct for
piracy,” and “unsuited” to perform certain military tasks. We know little
of their impressions of Europe; the few letters that have survived speak of
beastly weather, unfamiliar food, and a burning desire to return home.26
Moroccans also went to France as civilian workers during the war,
about thirty-eight thousand in all, filling places left vacant by men serving
at the front; many stayed in France after the conflict ended, despite the
distresses of living in a foreign land. They filled menial jobs as dock-
workers, laborers, and fieldworkers, often earning less than two francs a
day. Housed in the worst possible conditions, deprived of nourishment
because of severe rationing, they had few of the comforts of home. Life in
France was not to their liking, as summed up by Jilali ben Thami, a worker
in the region of Paris who wrote home to his family: “Oh dear brother, I
find myself in the land of infidels . . . it is God who wanted me to leave the
land of Islam to come . . . to this land where I find neither joy nor profit. We
ask God for one thing, which is to deliver us from here.”27 The discipline of
the factory, the meeting with men from other colonized nations, the
exposure to French modernity, raised their political awareness. Racial
discrimination, differences in pay, and poor living conditions led to strikes
and work stoppages by North Africans that alarmed French officials.
During and after the war, Moroccans joined leftist parties, especially the
dockworkers from Tangier and Casablanca who were already acquainted
with socialist ideas from home. Furthermore, in France Moroccans
encountered Algerians whose anticolonial political ambitions were ahead
of their own, and became “infected” with their militancy and passion. The
Moroccans’ sudden immersion in techniques of political organization and
their growing recognition of their rights as workers would have important
implications for the future.28
During the war, Lyautey refused to cede “a single inch” of conquered
territory and adopted instead the policy of “an empty shell,” maintaining
forward posts while withdrawing from the rest of the countryside. After the
defeat of Germany in 1918, France turned its full attention once again to the
arduous task of conquest, pouring war-hardened soldiers of the Foreign
Legion and the latest war-tested equipment – tanks, machine guns, air-
planes, mortars – back into Morocco. More native troops, including veter-
ans of the European conflict, were enlisted on the French side. By the early
1930s, so many Moroccans were engaged in combat that the “war against
Moroccans” was transformed into “a war between Moroccans.” Still the
Berber resistance held on, retreating even deeper into the mountains; local
leaders, some now forgotten, such as M’barak b. Husayn al-Tuzunini, rose
up claiming to be leaders of the jihad. Al-Tuzunini created a reign of terror in
the distant south, assassinating French officers and the chiefs of rival broth-
erhoods until his murder by a disgruntled follower in 1919.29 It was not
until 1934 that such old-style resisters were finally brought to heel, and
France could claim that the entire country was under its control.
qabd al-karim al-khattabi and the rif war

The most serious test of colonial will came in the confrontation with
Muhammad ibn qAbd al-Karim al-Khattabi, known as qAbd al-Karim,
leader of a rebellion in the years 1921–1926 centered on the Rif
Mountains. Northern Morocco (with the exception of the Tangier Zone)
was ceded by France to Spain in November 1912, in an arrangement called
a “sublease.” Spain’s portion was hardly the choicest cut, “the bone of the
Jebala and the spine of the Rif,” according to one observer.30 Yet Spain
had high hopes for its Moroccan stakehold. The traumatic loss of the
remnants of its New World Empire at the end of the nineteenth century
caused a wave of critical self-examination about Spain’s position in a still
unabashedly imperial world. While other European nations were accruing
colonies, Spain’s were falling away. Was Spain in decline, with no hope of
regeneration, or did she have a future as a colonial power? Led by the
belligerent King Alphonso XIII, known as “El Africano,” Spain looked to
Morocco to revive her imperial fortunes and restore her claims to
greatness.31
fi g u r e 1 7 . Spanish King Alfonso XIII, champion of his country’s expansion in

northern Morocco and known as “El Africano” because of his imperial ambitions,
directing military operations in the Rif Mountains, around 1911. (Collection
Recently industrialized and slowly modernizing, Spain saw Morocco as

a source of raw materials, cheap manpower, and unobstructed markets.
The rich mineral deposits of the Rif held promise, but the roughness of the
terrain and the lack of roads made their exploitation difficult. In its first
eight years of dominion, Spain made little headway into the interior, but its
intentions were clear. The Rifians, for their part, became increasingly
alarmed, for they were neither isolated nor ignorant of European ways:
the proximity of the presidios, the Spanish enclaves on Morocco’s north-
ern coast, a tradition of seasonal migration to the heavily hispanicized
region of Oran in Algeria, offshore fishing and dealing in contraband, had
familiarized Rifians with their Spanish neighbors. However, now that
Spain was no longer a visitor but a permanent resident and the Rifians
were colonial subjects, the relationship changed radically. By the time that
General Dámaso Berenguer was appointed High Commissioner for
Spanish Morocco in 1920, a resolute Rifian resistance movement had
coalesced under the brothers qAbd al-Karim, leaders of an impromptu
force made up of tough tribesmen known for their fearlessness in battle
and their stunning accuracy with a rifle.
The qAbd al-Karim family consisted of a father and two sons,

Muhammad, the elder, also known as Mohand, and M’hammad, the
younger. The patriarch was qaqid of the powerful tribe of the Beni
Ouariaghel who gave his sons a modern education, but did not neglect
their religious training. Muhammad (1882–1963) finished his studies at
the Qarawiyyin in Fez, went to work for the Spanish in Melilla, and then
became a journalist, editing the Arabic section of the local Spanish news-
paper, El-Telegrama del Rif. A complex person with a heteroclite educa-
tion, Muhammad qAbd al-Karim spoke Spanish and Arabic and was also
learned in Islamic law – prized achievements in the eyes of the Berber-
speaking Rifians. Both brothers were angered by Spain’s fumbling
attempts to exploit the Rif’s rich mineral deposits, and watched with
growing concern as the Spanish army penetrated deeper into their
homeland.32
Muhammad qAbd al-Karim was jailed for preaching sedition in 1916,
an experience that instilled in him a fierce desire for revenge. On leaving
prison in 1917, he returned to his homeland at Ajdir and began building an
armed force organized around his tribe of the Beni Ouariaghel.
Meanwhile, Spanish forces numbering about seventy-five thousand men
were advancing deep into Rifian territory, dislodging the most powerful
tribes of the Central Rif, such as the Beni Saqid, the Temsamane, and the
Tafersit. The Spanish force was large, but the rank-and-file were unreli-
able; the men were woefully undertrained, badly equipped and underfed,
supplementing their meager rations with frogs and turtles caught in the
watercourses. Moreover, the officer corps was arrogant and incompetent,
the lines of communication with bases on the coast overly long, the roads
were primitive tracks, and medical help was “beneath contempt,” accord-
ing to eyewitness Walter Harris, who saw wounded soldiers waiting days
for treatment.33
Clashes in the mountains continued throughout the spring of 1921,
with Rifian fighters overrunning Spanish outposts, but these encounters
were not taken seriously by the Spanish. In July, the Rifians attacked and
decimated a Spanish force of vastly superior size at the tiny outpost of
Anwal in the eastern Rif, winning a stunning victory. When General
Manuel Silvestre, commander of Spanish forces in the Rif, received news
of the attack on Anwal, he hurried to the battle front, but it was too late.
Harassed on all sides, Silvestre and his men held out until all were either
killed or committed suicide in shame. This defeat led to a general panic,
with the entire Spanish army fleeing cross the waterless and burning land-
scape of the central Rif in the heat of summer – a complete rout in which
artillery, transport, heaps of arms and ammunition, along with the

wounded, were abandoned on the roadside. At the garrison town of
Monte Arruit near the coast, the fleeing Spanish soldiers finally made a
stand; but here, too, they were completely overrun. In all, the Spanish lost
about nine thousand men killed in the battle of Anwal and its aftermath,
with hundreds taken prisoner; in addition, they left behind a huge quantity
of rifles, machine guns and artillery. Moreover, Spain was forced to
abandon five thousand square kilometers of countryside – a dozen years
of effort to implant its presence in those inhospitable mountains gone to
waste. When news of the catastrophe reached Madrid, rumors of inepti-
tude and corruption in the army spread, precipitating a parliamentary
crisis. The establishment of a military dictatorship under General Primo
de Rivera (1870–1930) swept aside the liberal constitutional regime that
was still in its infancy, setting the stage for fifty years of authoritarian rule,
much of it under the dictatorship Generalissimo Francisco Franco, who
first gained national attention as a result of his heroic role at the battle of
Anwal.34
After this spectacular victory, explained by the Rifians as due to divine
intervention, qAbd al-Karim tightened his hold on his political organization
and laid the foundations of a separate state. He founded the “Rifian
Republic” (al-jumhuriyya al-rifiyya), a political entity with its own cab-
inet, currency, tax and judicial systems. In addition, the Rifians formed
themselves into a regular army, headed by qAbd al-Karim, who imposed
compulsory conscription and even pressed women into service. After
assuring his political ascendency, he then launched an international cam-
paign to win his territory’s independence. Abroad, he used modern expres-
sions of self-determination to mobilize liberal support in Spain and France;
in the domestic sphere, he employed the language of Islamic revival to win
adherents to his cause.35
Following a two-year hiatus in which each side withdrew to regroup,
the Rif war entered a new phase in which France entered the fray. By 1924,
the French had subdued the tribes in the eastern region of Taza. The
railroad line between Fez and Oujda, the sole practical means of commu-
nicating by land between Morocco and western Algeria, ran through this
territory. Defending this territory was a primary French goal. During
World War I, the Germans had tried repeatedly to disrupt the railroad,
bribing Rifian contingents to cross the border from Spanish into French
Morocco to cut the railroad line; to prevent this, France had installed a
string of military outposts along the frontier between the two zones that
reduced but did not entirely eliminate the Rifian threat. Lyautey was
careful not to let his men cross the wide no-man’s-land that separated
Spanish from French Morocco. But as qAbd al-Karim boldly moved further
south, extending his authority among the tribes who lived near the border
separating the two zones, anxiety in the Residency increased. The Rifian
leader, for his part, was angry that France and Spain were playing the
imperial card, drawing imaginary lines across a territory where they had
few interests or past history – only the knowledge that their authority was
being challenged by a “native” upstart.
Fearing the Rifians’ vaulting ambitions, and dubious about Spain’s
ability to contain them, Lyautey was drawn into the Rif War against his
will. Earlier, he had famously warned: “Don’t set foot in the Rif. It’s a
hornet’s nest; moreover, it is not ours . . . ”.36 Now in the final year of his
pro-consulate, aging and in ill-health, he recognized that the uprising in the
Rif could be a source of a contagion that would spread southward and
poison his thirteen years of effort in French Morocco. On the larger scale, it
seemed that the supremacy of Western civilization was being challenged by
a bunch of fanatical country bumpkins. With this thought in mind,
Lyautey mounted a major counteroffensive, sending troops across the
poorly demarcated border that separated the two zones, cutting off qAbd
al-Karim from his new acquisitions. qAbd al-Karim saw no choice but to
defend himself, for acquiescing in the loss of this region would have been a
sign that he was stepping back from his pledge to rid the Rif of colonial
rule. Yet he knew he could not sustain a two-front war against the Spanish
on the coast and the French in the south; nevertheless, he went forward,
bringing together his own Rifians with men from the Jebala and the border
tribes.
Armed with the latest weaponry, including machine guns, hand gre-
nades and field artillery taken from the Spanish, the combined Rifian forces
gathered for a fight. In a series of stunning attacks led by qAbd al-Karim in
April 1925, the string of well-fortified border posts built by the French
were overrun and their defenders routed. qAbd al-Karim’s men, four thou-
sand strong, broke through the French defenses and rushed toward Fez; it
was reported that bands of armed Rifians were roving within twenty miles
of the city. The French now realized that it was far more than Spanish
incompetence that had created the Rifian success.
Fully aroused, France dispatched its most distinguished war hero,
General Philippe Pétain, to take charge of the fighting. Lyautey was rele-
gated to the sidelines by his superiors in a humiliating démarche that
permanently blunted his prestige. Writing home to Paris, Pétain confessed
that from his point of view, “we were unexpectedly attacked by the most
powerful and best armed enemy that we have ever met with in our colonial
campaigns.”37 In response, the French unleashed a barrage of modern
weaponry perfected during World War I with terrifying effect – aerial
bombardment, poison gas, and armored tanks and cars. In the summer
and fall of 1925, Pétain directed a joint French-Spanish effort that crushed
qAbd al-Karim’s main force and cut it off from its food supply. Meanwhile,
Spain successfully landed troops on the coast at Alhucemas in September,
1925, giving Spain a foothold from which it could strike at qAbd al-Karim’s
inland capital at Targuist. The Rifians found themselves caught in a pincer
movement, with Spanish forces pressing downward from the coast, the
French moving cross-country from the south, and a separate Spanish force
approaching from the east. Meanwhile, Primo de Rivera vowed “to break
qAbd al-Karim’s power” in the Central Rif, and laid plans for his uncondi-
tional surrender. In the spring of 1926, the war entered its final stages.38
In France, news of the plight of the Rifian forces and the crisis facing
their “Ripublik” stirred an antigovernment outcry. Thousands of irate
French socialists and communists marched through the streets of Paris
fi g u r e 1 8 . qAbd al-Karim al-Khattabi, hero of the Rif War, preferred

surrendering to his French adversaries rather than to the Spanish. Here he is
pictured (in the center) on his way to exile on the Isle of Réunion in the summer
of 1926. Photo Coutanson. (Collection Gérard Lévy, Paris)
protesting the conduct of hostilities and condemning France and Spain as

colonial “slave masters.”39 But the French government was determined to
finish with qAbd al-Karim, and on May 23, 1926, Targuist fell and the
Rifian chief became a fugitive. On the night of May 26, 1926, accompanied
by a small group of wives and family, he slipped across the lines and
surrendered to the French, apparently preferring a Gallic imprisonment
to a Spanish one. It had taken more than 158,000 colonial soldiers against
a combined Rifian force of 40,000 men to bring him to heel.40
It was the desire of Lyautey’s successor, Résident Général Théodore
Steeg, that qAbd al-Karim would be “neither exalted nor humiliated, but in
time forgotten.”41 But such was not the case; the Rifian warrior remained
politically active throughout his entire life in exile, writing and comment-
ing on the course of events in his homeland, first from the Island of
Réunion in the Indian Ocean, and later from Cairo, where he became a
rallying point for the Moroccan nationalist cause and an inspiration to a
younger generation of Maghribis seeking models of anti-colonial resist-
ance. Having become the beacon of the nascent nationalist movement, he
was branded persona non grata by the Protectorate administration and his
banishment made permanent. qAbd al-Karim returned to Morocco briefly
after independence in 1962, but he was already gravely ill, and died in
Cairo the following year without ever seeing his tribal homeland again.42
qAbd al-Karim and his war pose many problems for the historian. Was
his effort a reversion to old-style jihad, a final, abortive attempt to throw
out the “infidel,” or was he a modern politician, motivated by the vision of
a unified state? Or was he something else, perhaps: an opportunist, first a
Bolshevik and then a capitalist, playing with one side or the other depend-
ing on the benefits that accrued? Jacques Berque observed that qAbd al-
Karim “was no local marabout, promising paradise to those who fought
the infidel, but a political chief whose ambitions now included the idea of
nationhood, and even a share in the international game.”43 Within the
realm of Morocco historiography, the Rif War is embedded in a larger and
even more controversial question: At what point did resistance to the
colonial powers actually began, who should take credit for it, and who
were its “true” leaders? Was it a grassroots and popular uprising, as
Germain Ayache has argued, or was it a tribal vendetta, driven by jealousy
and offended honor? Some have claimed it was the first truly anticolonial
war, the struggle of an oppressed people attempting to wrest their freedom
from imperialist tyrants. On another plane, the memory of the “Rifian
Republic” was a constant reminder to those in power in Morocco –
whether they were colonial administrators, Moroccan nationalists, or the
qAlawi monarchy after 1956 – of the ability of this proudly self-reliant

region to raise the banner of revolt in defiance of the claims of the state. The
legacy of qAbd al-Karim still agitates and disturbs – an unresolved and
contrapuntal note in the narrative of the nation.44
the growth of colonial capitalism

Even though the “pacification” had not been completed, settlers began
arriving in numbers after World War I, changing the human composition
of colonial Morocco. What new elements did they introduce into the life of
the country, and what sort of a society did they help create? To what extent
did they mingle with, influence, and in turn were influenced by, the Muslim
majority? A subject of riveting interest, whose barest outlines can only be
sketched here. The current of migration was not uniform, but proceeded
by fits and starts. Nor was it all French, but a mixture of Mediterranean
peoples, dominated by the French, but also including Italians, Greeks,
Spanish, and Corsicans, with many coming from other parts of French
North Africa. In some periods, departures outnumbered arrivals. The
settlers’ mode of life was in many ways similar to that of the native
Moroccans, as were their food and habits, and perhaps even their appear-
ance; but they were Christian, modern, disproportionately male, urban-
ized, politicized, and imbued with a sense of their own cultural superiority.
They were ready to pitch in and drive the colonial engine, now moving
forward at breakneck speed, by assuming work as construction workers,
farm hands, small shopowners, bakers, carpenters, plumbers, tailors, flo-
rists, sellers of shoes and thread. Their contribution, as well as their primal
error, was their willingness to exploit a land that was not really theirs, by
providing the economic and social cement between a French managerial
class and bedrock of Moroccan unskilled labor.45
The influx also brought a smaller but not insignificant number of pro-
fessionals with access to capital: lawyers, doctors, architects, building con-
tractors, owners of newspapers, and some large landowners who frequently
made the circuit Paris-Rabat. In 1918, at the end of the war, the European
colony numbered about sixty thousand, with forty thousand arriving in the
expansion that took place between 1919 and 1922. Immigration stagnated
in the mid-twenties, and then spiked again during the “boom” years of
1926–1929. It continued to increase until 1931, aided by the loans offered in
French financial markets to underwrite large infrastructure projects such as
the railroad and the electric grid. The capitalization of these projects stimu-
lated employment and changed the face of the land: civic buildings and
residences, road construction, railroads and port construction, leaped

upward in these years. After 1931, the flow was reduced to a mere trickle
because of the Great Depression; at that point, approximately 162,000
Europeans lived in Morocco, sixty percent of them of French origin.46
Both public and private investment were behind this surge of activity.
Lyautey’s insistence on the rapid development of infrastructure related to
ideology as well as to economics; he wished to show the world that France
could single-handedly manage the exploitation of Morocco and thus join
Britain in the pantheon of great imperial powers. He shared with Albert
Sarraut, perhaps the most influential voice within the French government on
colonial policy, the belief in the doctrine of mise en valeur, or the encourage-
ment of massive investment in colonial development, preferably, but not
exclusively, from state funds.47 French companies that won the coveted con-
tracts to finance these giant projects were able to walk away with handsome
profits. The new port of Casablanca was the first rosette in Lyautey’s chestful
of achievements, with its long jetty extending two kilometers into the sea; by
1925, it had surpassed Tangier (now inside the Spanish zone) to become the
principal port of the Sharifian Empire, followed distantly by Kénitra.
The next great project was a railroad system that knit together much of
the country from Oujda to Marrakesh, supplemented by thousands of
fi g u r e 1 9 . The Compagnie de Transports au Maroc, or CTM, was created in

November 1919 with the aim of reaching “all of Morocco” with its fleet of buses
that traveled along a new colonial road system planned to connect all major towns
and cities. (Collection Tangier American Legation Institute and Museum)
kilometers of paved road. “The automobile is a last resort that we are glad to
have, but it will never constitute true commercial transport,” Lyautey
announced in 1919. Meanwhile, hordes of Moroccans of every social class
embraced la-tren, with the number of voyagers riding on the rough metal
benches of fourth class reaching 620,000 in the year of 1926.48 Mining
concessions, dam construction, and a massive electric grid rounded out the
tableau of major infrastructure projects. France’s achievements were show-
cased in a series of international fairs staged by Lyautey during and after the
war that attracted foreign visitors and shone the spotlight on progress in all
sectors of the colonial economy. The first fair was held in Casablanca in
1915, inaugurated by Lyautey with Sultan Mawlay Yusuf at his side.
Yet it was widely believed that the “true fortune” of Morocco resided in
the promotion of modern agriculture. Lyautey was sharply opposed to
intensive rural colonization in Morocco, fearing a replication of the sit-
uation in Algeria, where (in his words) the “riff-raff” of southern Europe
swarmed to take advantage of a giveaway of land that reduced much of the
native peasantry to a rootless proletariat. A small number of “choice”
settlers who would impart a strong French flavor to the bled was his goal.
Recognizing that some colonization was inevitable, Lyautey tried to con-
fine it to a “superior” class of “gentlemen-farmers” who would grow
cereal crops on farms located in the coastal areas of the Chaouia and the
Gharb, near Fez and Meknes, and in the region of Marrakech. Planting
cereals, it was believed, would restore Morocco to its historical role as “the
granary of ancient Rome,” while securing for the metropole a guaranteed
supply of basic foodstuffs. More to the point, however, was the oft-
invoked and misguided image of a Moroccan “Far West” – an empty
land, an unutilized space, ripe for exploitation by the pioneering spirit.
Armed with subsidies and offered generous quotas that guaranteed them a
niche in French market, privileged colonials were to be “an example” to
the peasantry by introducing new farming techniques while exuding a
mystical love for the soil.
Conforming to Lyautey’s wishes, the influx of settlers wishing to farm
the land was not great. The number of handpicked “official” settlers
arriving in the period 1917–1925 was a modest 692, even as the area
under cultivation began to expand, demonstrating an overwhelming pref-
erence for the grande propriété, or large estate, usually measuring about
one thousand acres, as the ideal size for colonial exploitation. The number
of migrants who worked the land was not great; in the years 1917 to 1931,
sixteen hundred people settled on 620,000 acres, and after 1931, the
number of new settlers completely dried up.49
What drove these people to come to this strange land? Often the dream
of easy riches and of achieving the wealth and status that had eluded them
at home. Though Morocco was “no El Dorado,” as one French observer
admitted, it could be a land of opportunity, free from the blockages that
impeded advancement in less fluid societies. It was a place for exercising
the imagination and pursuing high ambitions. The case of Madame
Garnier, a silk maker from Marseilles, emerges from the archives and
shows the progressive attitude of some of those who came: a devoted
disciple of the liberal French economist Charles Gide, she was appalled
by the condition of women in Morocco and decided to build a silk
cooperative in the Haouz that would employ women and provide a shelter
for the sick and exhausted. Not all immigrants were so high-minded; some
were simply seeking a boulot (job). In the remote oasis town of
Ouarzazate, Dmitri “the Greek” opened a small café that everyone fre-
quented “without distinction or segregation,” day and night, a convivial
spot boasting wooden tables and a cement floor.50
For most settlers, and especially those working the land, life was hard.
Malaria and dysentery were endemic, conditions in the countryside were
rudimentary, the sole comforts being “the warmth of anisette and the
ardor of the sun.” Harassed by meddlesome bureaucrats and in charge
of unwilling workers, the petit colon or small farmer often lived in a state
of high anxiety and morbid resentment, intensified by a deep racism that
colored all relations with the les indigènes, the pejorative term for native
Moroccans. Some struggled to bridge the gulf of incomprehension sepa-
rating worker from boss, while others retreated into a closed self-pity.
Moïse Nahon, settler, essayist, schoolteacher, native Moroccan and
adviser to Lyautey, captured the mood of frustration that characterized
life in the bled in his slim collection of essays, Notes d’un colon du Gharb: 2
juillet 1920–décembre 1924. In a series of vignettes, he represents with
pristine clarity the paternalism the settler felt to toward his workers and the
vitriolic anger he directed toward an obtuse officialdom. Putting aside their
republican sentiments, most settlers considered the Protectorate adminis-
tration as a necessary evil, useful for squelching whatever hopes
Moroccans might have had to recover their own soil.51
To accommodate this wave of migration, most of it destined for rural
areas, a massive transfer of land ensued, with makhzan, tribal, and even
privately held land, shifting from Moroccan to European ownership. The
lure of quick cash was too much for many impoverished peasants to resist.
Even though French law tried to protect farmers, unscrupulous local
officials found ways to circumvent the regulations. Much of the newly
acquired land was put into grain production, with the intention of turning
Morocco into the breadbasket of France; cropland planted to grain
increased sixty percent in the decade between 1919 and 1929, without
regard for the fact that growing grain in drought-prone Morocco was an
expensive and risky plan. Meanwhile, thousands of acres of collectivized
land changed hands, leaving whole tribes without a means of livelihood.
The thirst for land reached new levels after 1930, just as the world price
of grain plummeted, and Moroccan wheat, propped up by protective
tariffs and guaranteed quotas in the French market, became absurdly
expensive. Moreover, farmers in the metropole were producing bumper
crops of grain at a far cheaper price. It became clear that if Moroccan
farmers were to profitably export their crops, they would have to abandon
grain production and turn to something else. The stake in the heart of
Moroccan cereal growing was a massive plague of locusts in the summer of
1930 that left the roads covered with a thick, black, moving carpet that
devastated cropland. As famine loomed, planners abandoned the dream of
recreating “the granary of Rome,” and turned instead to the model of a
“French California” that entailed the cultivation of high-value citrus fruits
and vegetables on irrigated land. In addition to recuperating land previ-
ously considered inferior, the shift from grains to fruits and vegetables
required the setting up of farmer cooperatives to market the product using
modern techniques of branding, packing and quality control. It was a shift
that would have important consequences for Morocco’s agricultural
future.52
Preparation of the land for such intensive, mechanized agriculture
called for large amounts of capital and a degree of organization beyond
the capacity of most native farmers. Unable to compete, they abandoned
the countryside and sought work in the cities, following the periodic cycles
of boom and bust in the colonial economy. A severe drought in the years
1936–1937 accelerated the rural exodus. The face of Morocco’s cities
began to change; unable to find places to live in the urban core, migrants
settled on the periphery, throwing up substandard housing and ringing the
cities with shantytowns called bidonvilles. In 1931, more than half the
residents of Casablanca were Moroccan; by 1954, three quarters, or
500,000, were Moroccan, with 150,000 living in bidonvilles lacking
good sanitation or clean water.53 The influx of rural people was the
foundation of a new urban underclass unfamiliar with city ways. These
workers periodically went back home to the bled, constituting a mobile
and restless proletariat prone to volatility. Lyautey’s concept of a “native”
city and a “European” city existing side by side in harmony receded into
the past, as cities became a cacophonous mélange of native and foreigner,

rich and poor, longtime residents and newcomers from the countryside, all
muddled together in an explosive mix.54
The exploitation of Morocco’s riches was not limited to agriculture;
mineral resources were also subsumed under schemes for exploitation.
The Sharifian Office of Phosphates (OCP), created in 1920 to extract the
immense phosphate reserves in the Khouribga region, rapidly became the
most profitable mining enterprise in Morocco. With its up-to-date plant
and a direct railroad line to Casablanca port, the Khouribga mines readily
responded to rising world demand for phosphates (thirty-three thousand
tons exported in 1921, nearly two million tons in 1930). However,
Moroccan miners did not benefit from this success; forbidden to organize,
with no social protections, and salaries at a fraction of European wages,
they were cogs in the wheel of the extractive colonial economy. Industrial
workers fared no better. Fearful of competing with the metropole, French
planners kept manufacturing at a low level; canneries, sugar refining, a
brewery, and flourmills producing for local consumption comprised the
limited investment in industry in the interwar years. All other necessities
for life came from outside.
The growing population of manual workers was slowly drawn toward
the nascent Moroccan trades union movement. Founded in the aftermath
of World War I, syndicalism in Morocco was an outgrowth of the French-
based General Confederation of Labor (CGT). Initially, union members
were French nationals employed in the public sector, many of them seas-
oned by experience in Algeria and Tunisia – postmen, teachers, policemen,
administrators of every type. Work in the colonies had its attractions:
advancement was usually more rapid than in the metropole, and housing
allowances, costs of travel, and even periodic trips back to France were
part of the terms of employment. The effervescent political climate after the
World War I, the Russian Revolution of 1917, and other global events
inspired these workers to organize. In May 1919, employees of the French
administration, working quietly in a “fragmentary, hesitant, and furtive”
manner, under the cover of names such as “Mutuality” and “Association,”
formed the first labor union in Morocco, the Association Générale (AG) in
1919. Its various subunits represented groups such a engineers, bank
employees, hoteliers, postal employees, and teachers – the salaried bour-
geoisie. Influenced primarily by the labor movement in France, the main
objective of the AG was to improve working conditions in Morocco to
reach the level of the metropole. None of its members were Muslim.
Largely oblivious to the conditions under which native Moroccans
worked, the “salaried employees” pushed their own middle class agenda.
In fact, according to labor historian Albert Ayache, “they did not under-
stand the singularity of the country where they worked and did not under-
stand the true nature of the colonial situation.”55
With the departure of Lyautey in 1925 and the end of the Rif war, leftist
political groups consolidated and formed workingmen’s clubs in the major
cities of Morocco, and their militancy increased. The trial and execution of
Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti in Boston in August 1927 incited
thousands of demonstrators to gather in protest in front of the American
consulate in Casablanca. Still, none of these manifestations included
Moroccans, formally excluded from organizing by the Residency, who
feared the politicization of the “native worker” through an association
with socialists, radicals and communists. In the words of one official, “the
native masses are amorphous and easily led astray by agitators with bad
intentions.” But the drift toward unionization could not be held back. The
great capitalist expansion of 1926–1929 brought many more Moroccans
into the work force, and it was only a matter of time before they were
“infected” with radical ideas.56
Yet it would take another decade for Moroccan workers to form their
own associations. Oppressed by shrinking salaries and rising prices,
weighed down by fines, restrictions, and a lack of rights, the Moroccan
proletariat entered the political shoals of the 1930s ripe for insurrection.
By 1934, it was clear that both the Residency and the European-dominated
labor organizations had lost control of the Moroccan worker, who had
moved into the magnetic field of a powerful new phenomenon that we shall
explore in Chapter 5; namely, the country-wide uprising led by young men
dedicated to the nationalist cause.
the end of the proconsulship of lyautey

By 1925, when he left the country for the last time, Lyautey’s plans for
Morocco were close to fulfillment. It seemed that it was well on the way to
becoming the obedient client state he envisioned, moving slowly down the
path of progress while preserving its cultural distinctiveness in the modern
world. This image, however, was deeply flawed, because it excluded the
main actors in Morocco’s future, namely, the majority of the Moroccan
people. Out of touch with a rising generation of “young Moroccans”
(jeunes marocains) who were politically and socially attuned to a new
age, Lyautey realized that his notions of governance by “indirect rule”
had been swamped by an expanding bureaucracy swollen to many times its
original size. This hyper-centralized “Leviathan state” from which

Moroccans were systematically excluded was exactly the inverse of the
governing order he had envisioned in 1912; moreover, it was the substratal
cause for a rising tide of local resentment. His belief that he could “man-
age” Moroccan society with kid gloves and “drops of oil” dissolved as his
charisma faded and his closest advisers departed, to be replaced by impa-
tient hardliners who pushed for more aggressive interventionism – to “do
what was needed” for Moroccans, without their participation or assent.
Some argued that this shift was necessary due to an innate “incapacity” of
the natives to contribute to a modern state; others suspected Islam and its
“debilitating” effects; still others blamed the failure on Communist influ-
ence, or Egyptian reformers, or the nefarious effects of Pan-Islamism; but
in the end, it was the French colonial system itself that had turned
Moroccans against the Protectorate.
Lyautey’s final legacy is an ambivalent one, vacillating between the
positive achievements of a techno-organization that produced a beneficial
modernity, on the one hand, and that same organization’s capacity for
brutal control, on the other. His accomplishments were manifold, but not
always as he would have intended: he ended the opposition to the colonial
state, but in its place, he opened the way to a new form of resistance – a
vibrant patriotism nurtured on the hope that someday, the burden of
foreign rule would be lifted from the backs of the people. Through his
policy of the grands qaqids, he brought an end to siba, or tribal dissidence,
putting in its place a corrupt and archaic chiefery who oppressed the rural
masses and held them perennially in check. He raised the standards of
health, built modern cities, introduced new methods of transport, of work,
of communication, while maintaining a Protectorate “with a human face,”
but at the same time, he did all this without the assent of those he governed.
His love of rank and hierarchy, of royal princes and sons of the elite,
perfumed Morocco with an oligarchic scent that lingers to this day.
Finally, he snatched the sultanate from the dross of history, restoring it
to a position of respect, eliminating all contenders to its monopolistic claim
on religious authority, and in so doing, positioned it to reach for absolute
power when the dust of decolonization had finally settled.
Meanwhile, Lyautey himself remained stoic, despite his disgrace in the
Rif War, and stayed at his post like an aging gladiator knowing his final
days were near. He sent his official letter of resignation on September 28,
1925, but stayed in Morocco for several more weeks, making a pilgrimage
to the sites and symbols of his greatest successes: Casablanca port, the
Funduq al-Najjarin in the Fez madina, the cadets at Dar el-Beida, and a
sentimental visit to Sultan Yusuf, during which both were overcome with
emotion. He knew “that a world had come to an end.”57 Then he left for
his manor in Lorraine, in northeast France, now transformed into a
Moroccan palace, never to return.
Four years after his death in 1934, when the Protectorate was still in full
season, a monumental equestrian statue of Lyautey was erected in the
central square of Casablanca, a city he planned and had built. Sitting
astride a splendid horse, Lyautey’s figure surveyed the urban scene like a
proud condottiere. Later, in 1955, on the eve of Moroccan independence,
the statue was mysteriously removed from its pivotal spot and relocated in
a nearby garden of the Consulate of France, behind a protective iron fence,
where it stands today. The evaluation of Lyautey’s heritage in contempo-
rary Morocco, like the relocation of his monument, is tinged with an
undercurrent of strong emotion, and precisely where he ought to be
positioned is a subject of heated debate.58 For the time being, however,
his achievements are not widely appreciated by the mass of Moroccan
people. It may take decades, if ever, for the story of the beginnings of the
Protectorate and his role in it to be rewritten by Moroccan historians in the
liberal spirit he so much admired.
5
Framing the Nation (1930–1961)
It is difficult to pinpoint the precise moment when the concept of nation-

alism entered the Moroccan political consciousness. We know that the
idea of a Moroccan nation as a framework for political life appeared
in writing in the mid-nineteenth century, as a way of distinguishing
“Moroccans” from other peoples. The scholar-scribe Muhammad
al-Saffar, traveling in France in 1846, spoke of “the people of
Morocco” as a definable entity, different from others, with their own
particular cultural, religious, linguistic and political qualities. Later in
the century, the lexicon of historian Ahmad al-Nasiri included the word
watan, or “homeland,” suggesting a distinct Moroccan territory, sepa-
rate from its neighbors. But the notion of a Moroccan “nation” as the
centerpiece for an ideology of exclusivity or a rallying point for people’s
aspirations did not yet exist, nor would it for some time. In this chapter,
we shall trace the trajectory of the Moroccan nationalist movement from
its obscure origins in the madina of Fez and the streets of Paris to a
hard-won independence – an objective achieved within the space of a
single generation.
the origins of moroccan nationalism

The moment of transition to a new world order in which “nationalism”
became an ideological preoccupation of colonial peoples occurred after
World War I. Out of the wreckage of the Great War, new states emerged
on the periphery of Europe, inspired by notions of parliamentary democ-
racy, rule of law, and constitutionalism as governing norms, all within a
clearly defined national space. President Wilson’s Fourteen Points, first
120
Framing the Nation (1930–1961) 121
articulated in January 1918 and then reiterated at the Paris Peace

Conference of 1919, carried the hope of national “self-determination”
for all peoples, regardless of who they were or where they lived. These
ideas influenced many on the European left and soon spilled over into the
non-Western world, much of it still under colonial rule, inspiring a rising
generation to articulate its own vision of the future. The effect of this new
mood was nothing short of epic; countries from India to Morocco emerged
from the war with energized native elites – teachers, writers, public figures –
who aligned themselves with an awakened bourgeoisie ready for change.
Thanks to improved education, new modes of communication, and the
integrative effects of the post-war economy, their thoughts moved in
tandem with Europe’s own, inciting a torrent of political activity across
the globe.1
How were Moroccans affected by talk about political freedom coming
from Europe, and how did they imagine its impact on their own lives? The
establishment of the Protectorate in Morocco in 1912 constituted a sharp
break with the past by expanding the limits of state control and testing
people’s toleration for foreign rule. The colonial order dispatched the
makhzan and other traditional structures of authority to the periphery of
political life, creating a vacuum soon filled by a parallel, secular, and
unfamiliar Protectorate authority inspired by the principles of republican
France, but operating according to the rules of naked self-interest. World
War I quickly followed, upsetting everyday routines – shortages of food
and matériel, the absence of able-bodied men sent to France for combat or
work, the destabilization of social life. These ruptures induced widespread
suffering, particularly among poorer classes who were victims of the war
economy and its devastating aftermath. Less than ten years into its hegem-
ony, French power was already passing through its zenith, moving into a
new stage of contestation with a gathering opposition. “During the whole
inter-war period,” says Jacques Berque, “France’s power dwindled in
proportion to the growth of her appetites and responsibilities . . . she
asked more than she received, she promised more than she performed,
she undertook more than she accomplished.”2
For the native elite the break with the past that World War I offered was
liberating and brought a new sense of hope, especially among the few in the
younger generation who were being trained to become the vanguard of a
new ruling class. For these Moroccans, the postwar turmoil represented an
opportunity to act, not as subalterns being led to “maturity” under the
tutelage of France, but as architects of their own destiny. It took another
decade for the resistance to colonialism to coalesce into a full-blown
movement for independence, but hints of future insurrection were already

in the air before Lyautey left Morocco in 1925.
Signs of a change were evident in a variety of settings. The highly
selective education system that was the centerpiece of Lyautey’s plan for
transforming the next generation into a vector of modernity was already
under fire. The crisis came in 1922, when the “sons of notables” attending
the two collèges musulmans revolted against the tightly controlled curri-
culum intended to prepare them for middling jobs in the administration.
Comparing their own limited choices with the course of study being
offered to Europeans at the French lycées, they concluded that their edu-
cation was inferior. Some sought schooling elsewhere: Tuhami al-Muqri,
son of Grand Vizir Muhammad al-Muqri, went to Beirut to study with the
Jesuits, and pronounced it a life-changing experience. Others went to the
al-Azhar University in Cairo where modern subjects were combined with
an Islamic course of study, without the usual heavy dose of French cultural
superiority. Lyautey already spoke of “inevitable aspirations,” and in
1922, he told the Native Policy Council that the young elite was changing
with “disconcerting rapidity,” and that he feared that their “political
awakening” would soon have dire consequences.3
To combat the narrow access to education, committed Moroccan
intellectuals went outside the system and created “free schools” as an
alternative to the elitist French system, with the aim of educating children
in Arabic language, literature, and Islamic history. Still, the level of
schooling remained pathetically low; in 1934, out of a native population
of between seven and eight million, with half a million children of school
age, only eleven thousand were in school.4 The select few who acquired a
primary education joined with graduates of the Muslim collèges and the
Qarawiyyin University to form the nuclei of cultural associations and
literary clubs that sprang up in every major city. These associations, some
of them secret, served as centers for intellectual exchange and political
discussion that was decidedly pro-nationalist. In 1928, members of
the “Islamic Literary Club” of Salé presented a modern Egyptian play
directed by one of their own members about the Abbasid caliph Harun
al-Rashid that contained blatantly political themes, demonstrating their
ability to adapt cultural products emanating from Cairo, the capital of
progressive Arab thinking, to the local situation.5
Meanwhile, future nationalist leaders Ahmed Balafrej, Mohammed
Hassan al-Ouezzani, and al-Makki al-Nasiri, sought higher education in
France. Soon the streets of the Latin Quarter became familiar terrain for
young men who were sons of the Moroccan upper bourgeoisie. In the
intensely cosmopolitan environment of postwar Paris, where émigrés from

all parts of the colonized world met and intermingled, the Moroccans
became politically sensitized and began to question the raison d’être of
the Protectorate. In 1927, they helped found the Maghribi student associ-
ation AEMNA (North African Muslim Students Association), where they
came into contact with militants from the Arab East, such as Shakib
Arslan, a champion of Arab nationalism and disciple of Muhammad
qAbduh. The far-ranging discussions, the heady freedom, the meeting
with radicalized youth from other countries, produced a sense of political
intoxication that traveled homeward with them.6
On their return, they joined with other activists whose roots were in
the salafi circles that had grown up around the Qarawiyyin University in
Fez. Foremost among the homegrown nationalists was Muhammad
qAllal al-Fasi, son of a distinguished Andalusian family, who became
leader of a clandestine opposition centered in Fez in 1927. Possessor of
a golden tongue, al-Fasi sensitized his comrades to the importance of
qAbd al-Karim’s uprising in the Rif, tirelessly stressing themes such as
liberty and resistance to authority in speeches he made in mosques,
schools, clubs and other social gatherings. Under his direction, the Fez
group seized the leadership of the young nationalist movement. The
growth of this movement did not go unnoticed by French officialdom in
Rabat, who deplored the activities of these “intellectual dropouts and
talkative dreamers . . . whose only concern was to speak, write, and
preach against the great work of France in Morocco and to
propagate . . . the mental weaknesses of the educated classes . . . ” in the
words of one bureaucrat.7
Meanwhile, other grievances roiled the surface of public life, disturbing
the image of a smoothly working, well-oiled, and efficient colonial
machine. Economic troubles headed the list. The old pre-Protectorate
agricultural tax, the tartib, was an ongoing source of irritation in the
countryside. Government inspectors made an annual census of crops and
herds with the collaboration of the tribal jamaqa, or ruling council. Local
qaqids would retain 6 percent of the tax as their due, linking the tartib in the
minds of farmers with extortion and venality. This obnoxious impost that
produced ready cash for the coffers of the Administration was not abol-
ished for another fifty years, until the reign of Hassan II. The patente, a tax
imposed on urban shopkeepers, was equally hated; pashas pocketed a
fixed portion of the income from this tariff as their reward. Instead of
introducing rationality and efficiency, the French promoted a tax system
that spawned corruption and mismanagement. By the mid-twenties, two
important sectors of the economy, the peasantry and the urban business
classes, were moving headlong toward an anticolonial stance.
Other restrictions imposed by the Protectorate strangled freedom of
speech and limited the possibilities for political expression. Moroccans
were prevented from attending large political gatherings for fear that they
would “hear things beyond their capacity to understand,” and Arabic
newspapers were forbidden to write about politics, provoking cries of
censorship.8 Paternalistic and illiberal policies emanating from the
fi g u r e 2 0 . A young Sultan Muhammad V, not yet a symbol of nationalist

resistance, arriving at the Élysée Palace, home of the French president in 1930,
accompanied by his personal secretary, Muhammad al-Mammeri. (Collection
administration, now scoffingly referred to as the himaya (literally, the

“protection”) raised the political temperature and created conditions for
a confrontation.
the “berber dahir” electrifies the nation

The opportunity to vent the ill will incubating under an increasingly
oppressive Protectorate administration came in the spring of 1930, with
the promulgation of what was popularly known as the “Berber dahir.”
Coincidently, 1930 was also the year of the centenary of French Algeria,
celebrating one hundred years of occupation, as well as the year of the
Eucharist Congress held in Carthage, Tunisia; both events were perceived
by Maghribi people as an assault on their religious and cultural sensibi-
lities, provoking the fear that the underlying intention of France was to
evangelize and convert all Muslims to Christianity. The widely publicized
conversion in 1928 of Muhammad Benabdeljalil, the son of a prominent
Fez family, deepened the sense of foreboding. The “Berber dahir” and the
passionate response it elicited took place in an atmosphere of mounting
popular anxiety.
The roots of the concept of “Berber separatism” on which the dahir
was based reached deep into the French colonial experience in North
Africa. The belief that Arabs and Berbers were each distinguished by an
essential otherness that went far beyond the obvious linguistic differences
was firmly held among colonial officials. The origin of this belief can be
traced back to the nineteenth-century soldier-scholars of colonial Algeria,
who embraced the idea that the two were in fact distinct “races,” each
having its own language, physical characteristics, habits of mind, social
organization, and relationship to Islam. The “vulgate” went as follows:
Berbers were industrious, Arabs languid; Berbers were indifferent to
religion, Arabs were fanatically orthodox; Berbers respected hierarchy,
Arabs were anarchical; Berbers were reticent, Arabs were prolix; and so
on, in an unending litany of oppositions. This polarization played itself
out in common parlance, in scholarly literature, and in the practices of
governance. Ignoring evidence to the contrary, Protectorate officials in
Morocco (many of whom were raised in the “nursery” of Algeria) insisted
on recategorizing Moroccans in starkly binary terms that paid no atten-
tion the subtleties of ethnic and cultural variability. Practices of separation
and “divide and rule” became a fixed feature of Protectorate policy,
introducing miscalculations that were reproduced over and over again
throughout the colonial administration.9
The distinction between the two groups was inscribed with special
clarity in the legal domain, where a series of “Berber dahirs” – for there
were several of them – defined the juridical status of Morocco’s Berber
peoples as different from the rest of society. Colonial officials took as a
given that Berbers were by nature more “civilized” and democratic than
Arabs and that their system of justice should reflect this difference. Noting
that in the pre-Protectorate era, each Berber community had its own
independent Council of Elders, or jamaqa, “not unlike the councils of the
Teutonic peoples in the age of Charlemagne,” French officials proposed a
return to this archaic form of organization. It was decided to revive the
jamaqa and to endow it with special powers based not on the Shariah but
on Berber customary law. Sultan Mawlay Yusuf, surely against his better
judgment, for the measure undermined his own authority as imam and
guardian of the Muslim community, signed the first Berber dahir into law
in September 1914, even while most Berber areas were still outside of
French control.10
By 1930, the tribal jamaqas had been operating smoothly for some
years, but without a permanent statute spelling out their specific powers.
With Lyautey gone, and with the passing of Sultan Mawlay Yusuf in 1927,
the overall situation radically changed. The young and timid Sidi
Muhammad b. Yusuf (1909–1961) ascended to the throne at age seven-
teen, just as the Residency was pushing for a more assertive “native
policy.” The time seemed propitious for instituting a new Berber statute
resting on a more solid footing. On May 16, 1930, the French adminis-
tration promulgated a dahir announcing that Berber tribes would there-
after to be governed “according to their own laws and customs,” making
explicit the distinction between Berber law (now to be written in French)
and the Shariah law that applied to everyone else.11
The revolt against the dahir burst out almost immediately, and began in
the town of Salé. Abdellatif Sbihi, an interpreter in the colonial adminis-
tration and graduate of the School of Oriental Languages in Paris, quit his
post to devote himself to speaking out against the measure. Meeting at
clubs, on the beach, and in the mosque, he and his young and mostly upper
class friends decided to use the latif, a prayer recited in times of communal
distress, as an expression of protest, understanding that the mass of
Moroccans were unequivocally attached to religion, whereas their nation-
alist sentiment was still weak. His recruits shared his belief that the dahir
was the opening wedge in an insidious attempt to undermine the notion of
a single Moroccan nation united under Qur’anic law. They suspected, not
without good reason, that the dahir was a means of imposing a policy of
“divide and rule,” and that the French were preparing Berbers to become
full-fledged members of colonial society, while leaving the Arabic-speaking
population far behind.
In the weeks after the dahir was announced, protests broke out in Salé,
Rabat, Fez and Tangier. The latif was pronounced in the mosques, but with
the addition of a special ending: “Save us from the miseries of fate and do not
separate us from our Berber brothers!” On July 18, 1930, after the con-
clusion of the Friday prayer in Fez, the crowd spilled out into the streets and
joined a demonstration organized by Mohammed Hassan al-Ouezzani,
graduate of the École des Sciences Politiques in Paris. Al-Ouezzani was
immediately arrested and brought to the Pasha’s palace where he was
subjected to a public flogging. This humiliation not only radicalized
al-Ouezzani, who went on to became one of the more militant nationalist
leaders; it also gave momentum to the protest and advertised its goals.
In secret meetings throughout the country, “young men without beards”
persuaded – sometimes through trickery – older and more conservative
imams to allow public recitations of the special prayer. Organizers contacted
members of the foreign press, and the story of the insurrection spread
overseas, even appearing in the Times of London.12 Now fully awakened
to its meaning, French officials were helpless to stop the recitation and
reacted with beatings, deportations, and prison, giving many young activists
their first lesson in the cost of civil disobedience. The Residency soon realized
that its actions were having the opposite effect from what was intended, and
retreated. In August, when the sultan issued a conciliatory letter allowing
Berber tribes to opt out of the conditions of the dahir and submit instead to
the rule of Shariah if they wished, the furor subsided.
The angry reaction to the Berber dahir helped internationalize the
Moroccan problem, signaling its emergence as a new focus of anti-
imperialist agitation. The Emir Shakib Arslan, a pan-Islamic activist resident
in Geneva, also known as “the mujahid (warrior) of the pen,” was notified
by Moroccan students Ahmed Balafrej and Muhammad al-Fasi about the
uprising, and in August, Arslan appeared in the Spanish zone, where he gave
a series of fiery talks attacking the Protectorate regime for its plan to
“de-Islamicize” Morocco. His visit, in the flowery rhetoric of the times,
formed “a pure pearl in the historical chain of the emerging Moroccan
awakening.”13 News of his appearance in Morocco reverberated through-
out the Arab world as newspapers in Cairo, Damascus, Tunis, and Tripoli
picked up the story, and messages of protest flowed into the Quai d’Orsay.
Gradually, the tide of anger provoked by the Berber dahir receded, but
not before its organizers created a countrywide network aimed at combating
an increasingly oppressive colonial administration. Mohammed Hassan

al-Ouezzani exulted that “the movement surpassed all our hopes and
expectations.” But within the corridors of the Residency, its importance
was downplayed. Georges Hardy, adviser to the Protectorate administra-
tion on educational matters and a highly influential voice, dismissed it as
a display of “puerile behavior” by “showoffs (enfants terribles) who have
aroused simple souls and pulled off some pointless demonstrations.” But
others recognized that a milestone in French-Moroccan relations had been
passed: “Morocco, too, has now felt the thrust of nationalism,” noted one
pro-colonialist critic.14 Meanwhile, the project to reform the system of
fi g u r e 2 1 . Grand Vizier Muhammad al-Muqri was a deeply conservative pillar

of the “old guard” who served the makhzan for fifty years in various important
posts. Initially rejected from the Protectorate administration for his “panislamic”
tendencies, he proved to be indispensible and was eventually restored to his former
position. (Collection Gérard Lévy, Paris)
Berber justice was discreetly dropped, and when it was again reviewed in
1934, the role of the French courts in Berber affairs was vastly reduced,
making the expansion of the “Berber policy” through judicial reform a dead
letter. It was a victory for the jeunes marocains and gave an energetic boost
to their nationalist ambitions.
By all accounts, the 1930 revolt was the seedbed out of which the
embryonic nationalist movement emerged. However, it is important to
note that crucial elements were missing that would have implications for
the future. Most notably, the leadership of the antidahir revolt was largely
urban, young, aristocratic, and Arab; absent were rural peasantry and
tribal-based Berbers who were the subjects of the dispute. While it was
indeed a moment of mass mobilization, this absence raises the following
questions: Did Berbers favor the dahir, or reject it? Did they have any
attachment to the nascent ideas of national unity the uprising implied, and
if so, how did they imagine the Berber place in it? Which was the greater
threat? The loss of religious identity, through an association with France,
or the loss of ethnic identity, through absorption into the Arab mass? What
was their picture of the ideal nation, and how was it to be constructed? At
this time, we do not have answers to these questions, which require further
immersion into the archives and other written and oral sources.
However, we do know that in the popular imagination, the “Berber
dahir” of 1930 represents a foundational event in the unfolding story of
Moroccan nationalism, satisfying the need for “a myth of origin” from
which a linear history of the nation could evolve. Etienne Balibar has noted
that such foundational events are particularly susceptible to reinterpreta-
tion over time, as ideological needs change and new demands are placed on
the construction of the nation-state. Recent readings of events surrounding
the “Berber dahir” stress its integrative aspects and its success in bringing
about the semblance of a unified national voice, in contrast to older read-
ings that stressed the individual “heroism” of its protagonists. The story of
the Berber dahir has become an essential part of the “clay” of national
memory, to be molded and remolded over time.15 The attention being paid
to it today is testimony to its significance as a moment for gauging the
strength of a movement still in its infancy yet aroused to action and ready
to test its mettle against an obdurate colonial authority.
the nationalists mobilize

Inspired by their success in blocking the implementation of the Berber
dahir, in August 1930 a group of activists from Salé, Rabat, Tetuan and
Fez formed “the Zawiya,” a tight steering committee of the most prom-
inent nationalist leaders from all over the country engaged in “research
and study of doctrine,” and a larger and less selective group called the
“Ta’ifa,” or “Outer Circle.” Both organizations were clandestine in order
to evade security surveillance, which was becoming more intense. Arrest,
detention, and the police mug shot became a badge of honor among young
adherents. The use of terms like zawiya and ta’ifa, borrowed from religious
discourse, was no accident; radicalized by the events of 1930, the member-
ship of the Zawiya drew on the nomenclature, structure, and emotional
strength of the Sufi brotherhoods to build their own organization. A third
and final level of organization was a more public committee called the
CAM, or Comité d’ action marocaine (kutlat al-amal al-watani) formed in
1933, assigned the task of writing a program for reform. Membership of
the Kutla, as it was commonly called, eventually swelled to sixty-five
hundred before it was disbanded in 1937.16
The Kutla/CAM became the vehicle for nationalist action, moving
forward on two main fronts; first, to organize and mobilize the masses,
especially in the cities, along the lines of the movement against the Berber
dahir, and second, to develop a solid platform based on principles for
negotiating with the Protectorate authorities. The aim was not independ-
ence, nor even autonomy, for in 1933 a future without France was still
unthinkable; indeed, for a long time, the nationalist movement looked
more to France for salvation that than it looked into itself. Rather, the
CAM aimed for a top-to-bottom reform of the Protectorate regime to bring
it closer to the principles of the Treaty of Fez. It also wanted to introduce
more Moroccans into the administration, and to urge the adoption of the
rule of law rather the self-serving interests of France as the bases for
political action. It was an ambitious program, but the young nationalists,
led by qAllal al-Fasi, the principal spokesman of the movement, were
convinced of their ability to bring about change through the agency of
nationalist agitation.17
Their first objective was to capture the imagination of the intellectual
elites and convert them into a true vanguard of change. In public speeches –
qAllal al-Fasi was an electrifying orator – a new lexicon was introduced
that resonated with revolutionary fervor. It included words such as “peo-
ple” (shaqab), youth (shabiba), “nationhood” (qawmiyya), the “masses”
(jamahir), and most of all, the word umma, which suddenly referred to all
Moroccans, Jews as well as Muslims. This speechifying was more than
verbal pyrotechnics. It represented a conceptual remaking of society along
new lines that broke with ancient taboos, criss-crossing long-standing
divisions, and reshaping the social compact by bringing together artisans,

workers, students, shopkeepers, dispossessed peasants, and intellectuals
into a new organization with one goal – to wrest back ownership of the
nation. Speaking to the people in a language they understood, the youthful
voices of the nationalist movement found a willing and attentive audience.
As Jacques Berque pointed out, the old social compact was indeed “break-
ing down.” Nationalist rhetoric of the 1930s was the medium for redraw-
ing old boundaries and mapping out new ones.18
The signs and practices associated with traditional Moroccan cultural
life were appropriated to reinforce the image of a politicized collectivity.
Performing the Friday prayer became a civic duty. Even the subject of
personal demeanor became an arena for nationalist expression. Some
forms of dress were better than others: the jallaba (robe) and the tarbush
(peaked cap) became the national costume for men. For women, it was the
enveloping and cumbersome haïk (cloak).19 New rituals were invented. In
1933, the first “Festival of the Throne” was organized by the nationalists,
commemorating the accession to the sultanate of the Muhammad b. Yusuf
seven years earlier. The event turned into an enthusiastic show in support
of the young monarch, up to then regarded as a marionette dancing to the
tune of the Residency. It was the first truly civic celebration at the level of
the nation, transcending local events such as the religious festival. Early in
1934, qAllal al-Fasi was invited to meet with the sultan, and some weeks
later the nationalists organized another popular manifestation in Fez in his
honor, this time inextricably linking in the popular mind the concepts of
sultan and watan. The sultan, even without his specific consent, had been
effectively appropriated as a symbol of the nation.20
On the intellectual front, the opposition carefully gathered an arsenal of
ideas that would serve as bargaining chips in a confrontation with French
authority. The young activists – some of them trained in France and
conversant with legal discourses of the Third Republic – had plentiful
sources on which to draw. In their writings, a modernist Islamic thread
inherited from reformist thinkers such as Abu Shuqayb al-Dakali and
Muhammad al-Hajwi intermingled with strands of democratic liberalism
brought home from Paris and Cairo. While no one source produced the
“brain” of the fledgling movement, a paradigm that drew on various
points of the compass was becoming clear: in terms of a political philoso-
phy, an unmistakable tendency toward popular sovereignty and the sepa-
ration of religious and secular authority; in tactics, a de-centering of
politics away from the mechanisms of colonial control through propa-
ganda, negotiation, and the rallying of outside support.
fi g u r e 2 2 . Nationalist leader and later Foreign Minister Ahmed Balafrej in the

courtyard of his house in Rabat in the 1950s. (Collection Said Mouline, Rabat)
In 1932, Ahmed Balafrej, a brilliant, Sorbonne-trained member of the

opposition, a “visionary” and a “mystic” according to one observer,
founded the journal Maghreb in Paris. This journal became the principal
voice of the nascent movement, its pages filled with illuminating articles,
many of them written by French-trained Moroccan intellectuals. Its edito-
rial board – in fact a “committee of patronage,” according to historian
John Halstead – was made up entirely of French leftists. It was headed by
socialist Robert-Jean Longuet, grandson of Karl Marx and friend and
supporter of Shakib Arslan, who served as link between the Paris-based
group and the young nationalists. Despite the French façade, the journal
was a Moroccan project, backed by the Zawiya. Socialist themes were
highlighted, but they were never a dominant tone, leading French leftists to
criticize the Moroccans as the “bourgeois of Islam . . . clerical, racist, and
even anti-socialist.” As a result, the connection between the Moroccan

nationalists and the SFIO, the Section Française de l’Internationale
Ouvrière, or French socialist party, was a tentative one – “more like a
marriage of convenience than of love.”21
Nevertheless, in its two short years of life, Maghreb made a powerful
impression; the articles were eloquent, well-researched, and covered a wide
range of topics from education, to law and justice, to the question of
Palestine, to women’s rights, attesting to the Moroccans’ political maturity.
Meanwhile, another revue, L’Action du Peuple, appeared in Fez edited by
Mohammed Hassan al-Ouezzani, now emerging as qAllal al-Fasi’s chief
intellectual rival; this revue covered many of the same themes as Maghreb.
The success of these journals domestically and abroad led the Residency
to abruptly suspend them in the spring of 1934. However, the two revues had
achieved their goal; they were the opening salvo in a protracted war of words
that would engage the nationalists and the Residency for the next ten years.22
The next event in the nationalist campaign to gain recognition was the
publication of a widely heralded Plan of Reforms (Plan de Réformes
marocaines). Written in Fez by a small inner circle of activists in 1934,
the plan first appeared in Arabic, and later in French. Couched in polite
and lawyerly language – French Résident Général Henri Ponsot said that
“it would make an excellent doctoral thesis” – it was a remarkable docu-
ment that history has largely forgotten, despite the insight it offers into the
state of nationalist thinking at the time. The main thrust of the Plan was the
remaking of the French Protectorate regime. Drawing on essays published
in Maghreb, it summarized grievances against the colonial order and
pointed out practical solutions for fixing them. One hundred thirty-four
pages long, the document spells out the various measures needed to over-
come Morocco’s “internal crisis” and to reconstitute the Protectorate on a
more even-handed basis: government by committee at the local, tribal and
national levels, with the last elected by universal male suffrage; a totally
revised judicial system based on both Shariah and Western law; penal
reform; freedom of the press and assembly; workers’ rights; a progressive
social policy for the aged and unemployed; elective municipal councils that
would include Moroccans; compulsory primary education and one stand-
ard curriculum for the entire country; and perhaps most radically, a call for
land reform and the end to the feudal ties between settler and native
agriculturalist. In a sign for the future, the Plan demanded that Arabic be
reinserted everywhere in public space, including the railway, where “all
tickets and receipts, as well as signs on the cars and in the stations, be
printed in Arabic as well as French.”
fi g u r e 2 3 . President of France Gaston Doumergue (center, carrying a top hat)

arrives at the sultan’s palace in Rabat, October 1930, surrounded by officials of the
makhzan, including the Sultan’s personal secretary Muhammad al-Mammeri and a
broadly smiling Si Kaddour Ben Ghabrit, diplomatic liaison between the makhzan
and official France. Agence Muerisse. (Collection Gérard Lévy, Paris)
Strikingly, the Plan did not call for an independent Morocco or

separation from France; instead, it aimed at “restoring confidence in
the work of France in Morocco” and demanded greater Moroccan
participation in government, a more cooperative relationship with the
Residency, and a more faithful execution of the provisions of the 1912
Treaty of Fez. Nor did it question the limits of sultanic authority; in spite
of the provision for elected governing councils, there was no discussion
of how those councils would work, or how they would interact with a
ruler whose authority, at least in theory, was still absolute. This question
was put aside for the time being, after qAllal al-Fasi announced that
democracy would come about after a trial period of participation.23
The framers of the Plan considered that the legislation already in place
for governing the settler population would be perfectly suitable for the
natives. The decision to work within the framework of the Residency
was sincere, for at that moment, the nationalist leadership still did not
visualize Morocco without France. But that did not mean a relationship
of servility or abuse. At a fundamental level, the Plan launched a frontal
assault on the colonial mentality and the corrupt practices it had engen-
dered; namely, the racism, discrimination, and anti-liberalism that
allowed Moroccans to be treated as inferiors.
The Plan was presented to the Residency in Rabat and to Foreign
Minister Pierre Laval in Paris in December 1934, as well as to the sultan,
but its fate was already sealed; it was flatly rejected and shouted down by a
settler lobby that was sufficiently influential to block all attempts at pro-
native reform.24 In retrospect, the Plan of Reforms was the last chance to
excise the hidden decay of the colonial regime without attacking the whole
body. It failed, not for the reason that it was either ill-timed or badly
conceived, for it was not, but rather because the administration’s vision
was blinkered by settler opposition and the gathering clouds of war. With
the advent of the French Popular Front in 1936 headed by socialist Léon
Blum, the nationalists had hoped for an improvement in relations with
Paris, but that was not to be; the new “left” government in the metropole
was as indifferent to nationalist demands as the previous one. Europeans in
Morocco rose up against the Popular Front with a lionlike roar, forcing the
Blum government to hastily retreat from plans to accommodate nationalist
demands. As politics in France veered crazily from left to right and back
again, so did the equilibrium of the Protectorate.
Meanwhile, the colonial administration resigned itself to a state of
perpetual confrontation with the native opposition that kept up continual
pressure, reminding the French of their presence. At the same time, the
nationalist movement entered a phase of vigorous expansion, opening its
doors to the rural population, tightening discipline, creating a nation-wide
organization, and boosting card-carrying membership to over six thou-
sand, excluding the northern zone. Basking in its newfound strength, the
old CAM was reconstituted under the cumbersome title of al-Hizb
al-Watani li-Tahqiq al-Matalib, (The National Party for Realizing Our
Rights), holding its first party congress in Rabat in April 1937. A surpris-
ing relaxation of press laws after the advent of the Popular Front permitted
the opening of newspapers sympathetic to the nationalist cause, such as the
Arabic language al-Atlas, and the French language L’Action populaire,
edited by Khadija Diouri, wife of nationalist leader Muhammad Diouri.
Their political activities held in check by close official scrutiny, the
nationalists resorted to incitement through journalism, using the press to

rile up popular feeling over the deteriorating economic and political
situation.25
In these hyperactive times, the nationalist leadership split into several
camps: the National Party (PN), headed by the exiled qAllal al-Fasi, on the
one hand, and the Patriotic Movement (PMI) directed by Mohammed
Hassan al-Ouezzani, on the other, were the two largest factions. During
the war years, other groups rushed in, populating the political field.
The Rabat-based conservative Independence Party (PI), and a fledgling
Communist Party (PCM) whose members were mostly Europeans
troubled by the growing social inequality aggravated by the Great
Depression, were among the new players. qAllal al-Fasi’s National Party,
reincarnated as the Istiqlal (Independence) Party during the war, domi-
nated the field because of its superior organization and its ability to
mobilize membership on a mass scale.
The final act in the prewar confrontation between the Residency and
the nationalist opposition took place in Meknes in September 1937, when
the authorities announced a plan to divert part of the Oued Boufakran, the
town’s main source of water, to settler farms. Crowds filled the street
crying “Water or Death!” and “Not a drop for the settlers!” In the police
action that followed, some demonstrators were killed. The violence of
the mêlée set off a chain reaction, and the protest spread like wildfire to
other cities, taking on the coloration of a general uprising against the
Protectorate administration. Alarmed at the level of agitation, the author-
ities rounded up the nationalist leadership; on November 3, 1937, qAllal
al-Fasi was flown to a nine-year-long exile in Gabon, while others of the
inner circle were imprisoned, fled, or sent to the Sahara. Ahmed Balafrej, in
Paris at the time, escaped arrest and sought refuge in the Spanish zone. On
the eve of World War II, the nationalist movement in the French zone,
grown during the interwar years into a “well-oiled propaganda machine,”
appeared to have been decapitated. But its headlessness was only an
illusion; its brains had simply gone underground, and its will was intact.
the spanish zone follows a separate path

In the Spanish zone, pro-nationalist activity took a very different turn.
Tetuan was a charming Andalusian-style town ruled by a coterie of old
families immensely proud of their Hispano-Moorish heritage. It was said,
perhaps apocryphally, that in some of the houses of Tetuan hung a key
to the ancestral home in Granada. There a group of young militants
established a separate nationalist organization in 1930. The Tetuan group

included Muhammad Dawud, Mehdi Bennouna, Abdelkhalek Torres, and
Abdelslam Benjelloun, among others, and their main activities were jour-
nalistic. Their newspapers were allowed to flourish by the Spanish author-
ities, mainly because they spread harsh criticism of the colonial policies of
France, Spain’s ancient rival, while turning a blind eye to Spain’s own
misdeeds. Collaboration became the norm in the North. It was quite a
different game from the one the southerners were playing, and it created
tensions in nationalist circles between north and south.
In April 1931, the rickety monarchy of Spain’s Alfonso XIII fell and
after a brief republican interlude, the country became embroiled in a
bloody Civil War, pitting the Republicans against a military insurgency
under the leadership of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, hero of the Rif
campaign and leader of the africanistas, Spanish army officers whose
careers had been shaped by the Moroccan campaign. During the Spanish
Civil War (1936–1939), Franco used northern Morocco as a staging area
for his assault on the mainland, and by war’s end, nearly eighty thousand
Moroccan mercenaries had fought on Franco’s side, lured by steady
rations and a generous wage of four pesetas a day. The Rifian regulars,
or moros as they were known, served as shock troops and suffered high
casualties in the Spanish conflict. They were feared for their ferocity, and
whole Republican units were known to have deserted their posts at the
suggestion that they might be facing Moroccan troops.26 Achieved with
Moroccan help, Franco’s victory turned Spain into an authoritarian
regime that veered sharply to the right where it would remain for the
next forty years.
The relationship between the Franco regime and the nationalists was a
convoluted one, and was largely determined by Spain’s attitude toward
France. Franco pandered to the Moroccan nationalists by giving them legal
status and allowing them to publish their newspapers without censorship,
in stark contrast to French policy vis-à-vis the nationalist press. Spain’s
High Commissioner, the “brilliant if eccentric” Colonel Juan Beigbeder,
a Spanish T. E. Lawrence according to some because of his fearless tem-
perament and political acumen, played off one nationalist faction against
the other, maintaining cordial relations with all while keeping them off
balance. His friendly attitude stood in sharp contrast to France’s heavy
repression in the south and provided an enticing example of a “good”
Protectorate power. Beigbeder curried favor with Abdelkhalek Torres –
head of the northern Party of National Reform (PRN) – not out of love or
gratitude, but because he wished to embarrass France, where the Popular
Front remained vehemently opposed to the Franco side in the Spanish civil
war. The goal of humiliating France may have also motivated Spain’s
occupation of Tangier in 1940. Franco’s army marched into the interna-
tional city in June of that year, on the same day that Paris fell, and
remained there for five years.
It has been suggested that the reason that Abdelkhalek Torres collabo-
rated with Franco was not that he was especially drawn to Fascist ideology,
but rather that he dreamed of a Moroccan caliphate of the North, united
with Spain in a romantic reenactment of the convivencia that existed
between Muslims and Christians in medieval al-Andalus. Contacts
between nationalists in the North and personalities drawn into the orbit
of prewar Berlin such as the Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin al-Husayni,
Shakib Arslan, and Rashid qAli al-Kaylani, suggest that at least some of
the northern leadership explored building ties to the Nazis, in the naïve
belief that enemies of France were the friends of theirs. Historian Amina
Aouchar says that Torres himself went to Berlin in 1941 to meet with
Himmler and Goering and to press the nationalist case. It should be kept
in mind that the intense political rivalry between the Left and the Right in
Europe in those years dominated the calculations of France and Spain in
Morocco, just as the same exogenous factors shaped the strategic thinking
of the nationalists. It would be simplistic to think of the northern nation-
alists as rabidly “pro-Nazi”; rather, they were manipulating the few assets
they had in order to advance to their goal of independence.27
the substance of everyday life: health,

society, work
A sharp rise in fertility after 1930, and especially after 1935, seemed to go
unnoticed amidst the familiar rhythms of daily life. A vibrant growth rate
rejuvenated the nation and produced new cadres of young people willing
to be swept up in the nationalist cause. Annual population growth for the
Jewish and Muslim population was slightly less than 2 percent between
1936 and 1951; it went from 5.8 million in 1936 to 8.4 million in 1951,
including nearly a million in the Spanish zone. In the same period, the
European population grew from 219,000 to 415,000.28
Young Moroccans differed from their elders in their willingness to take to
the streets, to shout slogans, to aspire to modern values and inventions, even
if they were not always within reach. Radio, the cinema, printed books and
newspapers, organized sports, kura (football) on the plage (beach), were
now part of the fabric of the quotidian. French-derived neologisms filled in
fi g u r e 2 4 . Public health was an ongoing concern of French officials, who feared

the spread of contagious diseases, especially in the crowded inner city. Poor people
living in the native quarters were targeted for free vaccinations in order to stem the
tide of smallpox. Here residents of the mellah are being vaccinated by colonial
health officials, Casablanca, 1920s. (Postcard Collection, Gérard Lévy, Paris)
verbal voids: tumubil (automobile), firmage rumi (French cheese), and le

tren (the railroad) were innovations that quickly became part of the vocabu-
lary of even the modest day laborer. In elite circles, the adoption of foreign
ways and their seamless integration into local forms was even more notice-
able: French language spoken at home, the “dual” salon, the dressing ward-
robe divided into two compartments, one rumi (European), and the other
taqlidi (traditional). Western mores were adopted selectively but with alac-
rity throughout all levels of society.29
Other aspects of the slow evolution of forms were less appealing. The
state of health in Morocco at the dawn of the Protectorate was deplorable.
Rudimentary health services were limited to the major cities, with few
doctors and almost no hospitals or clinics. Protectorate authorities hastily
introduced modern methods of disease control aimed at protecting settlers,
while coincidentally improving the health of native Moroccans. Colonial
fear of contamination from the “insalubrious” native quarters had an
immediate effect on Moroccan living standards. Measures included com-
bating infection, building clinics, recruiting doctors, instituting a vast
program of vaccination, building closed sewer systems, assuring clean
water supplies, and imposing strict rules of hygiene and sanitation, espe-
cially in urban areas. The aggressive treatment of diseases such as syphilis,
malaria, and bilharzia did not have an immediate or dramatic effect and
they continued to be endemic; syphilis in particular resisted control until
the use of penicillin was introduced after the World War II. A vigorous
campaign of vaccination against smallpox undertaken in 1925 seems to
have had better success, forcing the disease into regression. Typhus was
perhaps the most deadly unchecked disease, with seasonal bouts in the
years 1920–1921, 1928–1929, and 1942–1943.30
The triumph of French medical practice was not a foregone conclusion
and met with popular resistance, as traditional health practitioners con-
tinued to hold sway among the poorer classes. Blood-letters with their
striped barber poles could be seen plying their craft in rural markets until
the late twentieth century. Muhammad al-Hajwi, the modernizing reli-
gious scholar, speaking on Tunisian radio in 1937, assured his native
listeners that their own traditional medical practices rivaled Europe’s in
efficacy, particularly in matters of childbirth. “Muslim women are more
adept in sexual matters than Western scientists would give credit,” he said.
“[They] are skilled in the knowledge of herbs and potions, [and] capable of
performing acts that would astonish the devil.”31 Al-Hajwi’s argument for
cultural authenticity did not appeal to everyone. Many women sought out
Western medicine, evidenced in the rising number of hospital births. The
number of clinic visits in 1912 was half a million per year, surpassed two
million in 1929, and reached twenty million in 1955, 86 percent of them
native Moroccan. Admittedly, these services were not evenly distributed,
with most concentrated in the coastal cities. The proportion of doctors to
people in the southeast of the country was a shocking one per twenty
thousand. For those deprived of the healing touch of modern medicine,
there was always succor in maktub, or “inevitable fate.”32
Other European forms spread throughout society, changing the tex-
ture of everyday life. In the late 1920s, colonial investment in Morocco
reached new heights, and many new workers entered the modern indus-
trial and agricultural sectors. The great economic crisis that began in
Europe in 1929 did not arrive in Morocco until 1931, and was initially
felt only in the small modernized industrial sector. European investment
fell precipitously, and the feverish speculation of the years 1927–1930
ended abruptly. Exports dried up, so that 1936 values were roughly
half of those of 1929. Especially hard hit were the mining, port, and
construction sectors, where drastic layoffs began after 1931 and the
problem of unemployment (and underemployment) reached massive
proportions. Moreover, Moroccan workers still lacked a collective
awareness of their political strength and did not go on strike to defend
their rights. In rural areas, they often worked seasonally, disappearing

into the bled when the annual crop cycle ended; in the city, they were
frequently temporarily employed, badly underpaid, hired and fired at the
whim of the patron, fined for the least infraction, and forced to buy
supplies at the “company store.”
In 1934, according to Albert Ayache, half the Moroccan population of
Casablanca inhabited bidonvilles such as the Carrières centrales, a fester-
ing slum area with no services, no paved streets, no running water or
electricity. Living in deplorable conditions, lacking class-consciousness
and possessing few professional skills, they did not hold any promise as a
political factor. The Residency actively blocked workers from organizing,
cheered on by extreme rightwing groups such as the militant and
anti-Semitic Croix-de-Feu, whose Moroccan branch, made up mainly of
businessmen, was openly bent on destroying workers’ unions. In response,
the working class closed ranks, joined by socialists and intellectuals, on the
one hand, and artisans and shopkeepers on the other, when their income
plummeted because of cheap foreign goods flooding the markets. This
broad coalition between workers, craftsmen and tradesmen became the
matrix for a nascent labor movement that arose in response to generally
worsening economic conditions.33
Gradually, the syndicalists and the nationalists, at first hostile to one
another, began to draw closer together. The political potential of the
unions was gradually recognized by the nationalists, who overcame
their fear of joining forces with people who in their minds had been
“overpoliticized.” The burgeoning worker-nationalist alliance struck fear
in the heart of the Residency, panicked by their combined ability to
organize the street. To head this off, the administration flatly refused to
legalize Moroccan unions and only allowed the formation of “corpora-
tions,” a traditional form of labor organization that could be more easily
controlled. Finally, in 1936, after the socialist Popular Front came to
power in France, the right to organize was granted, but to Europeans
alone. Soon strikes broke out all over the country, with workers demand-
ing basic rights such as a minimum wage and an eight-hour day.
In the midst of this crisis, General Charles Noguès, an old “Moroccan
hand,” was appointed by the Popular Front in September 1936 to take over
the Residency, replacing the much-despised Marcel Peyrouton. Noguès’
arrival inspired hope of change: the new Résident Général drew closer to
the young Sultan Muhammad V and became his mentor, but he had little
sympathy for the nationalists. When labor strife spread throughout the
country, he refused to negotiate, forcing the nationalists and workers even
closer together. He then moved forcefully against them, crushing their

organizations and dispersing their leadership. After this round of violence,
the pro-labor newspaper Clarté announced that the Moroccan workers’
movement had finally come of age: “The Moroccan proletariat has finally
shown that it has acquired a class consciousness and will stand without
retreat alongside European workers to defend the right to work for its daily
bread.” On the eve of World War II, despite constant harassment from the
Protectorate regime, the Moroccan labor movement had shown its political
strength and willingness to enter the fray. Its painful education in agitation
and mobilization would prove to be a valuable asset in the 1950s when the
curtain rose on the last days of the Protectorate.34
world war ii and the radicalization of the

nationalist cause
As Western Europe’s defenses fell before the Nazi onslaught in the spring
of 1940, opinion in the colonies also shifted. The “strange defeat” of
France signaled an opening for North African nationalists, who saw in
Marianne’s broken sword an opportunity for their own cause. Maréchal
Philippe Pétain, ancient foe of qAbd al-Karim, was appointed head of a
collaborationist government centered on Vichy, while General Charles de
Gaulle fled to England and formed the nucleus of the Free French forces
that eventually helped to liberate Europe. The metropole was fractured
and defeated and in North Africa, the interminable status quo was
abruptly ruptured. As the ground shifted, native politics took on a new
energy and direction.
In Morocco, tension between pro-Gaullist and pro-Pétainist forces
remained acute throughout much of the war, with the majority of settlers
leaning toward Pétain, and the majority of politically conscious Moroccans
gradually turning their support toward de Gaulle and the Allies. Sultan
Muhammad V initially pledged loyalty to the Third Republic, but with the
coming of the pro-Nazi puppet regime at Vichy, his sentiments gradually
shifted, especially when the Vichy authorities tried to impose their murder-
ously harsh anti-Semitic race laws on Morocco. Mohammed V reportedly
refused to sign off on Vichy’s plan to ghettoize and deport Morocco’s
quarter of a million Jews to the killing factories of Europe, earning for
himself their undying devotion. His stand was based as much on the
insult the Vichy diktats posed to his claim of sovereignty over all his
subjects, including the Jews, as on his humanitarian instincts. Over his
opposition, partial race laws were imposed, with damaging effects on
Moroccan Jewish livelihoods and morale. Wedged in between an indifferent

Muslim majority and an anti-Semitic settler class, Morocco’s Jews
were pushed to the edges of society during World War II, entering a
no-man’s-land from which they never really returned.35
The war years were a period of widespread deprivation and dislocation
in North Africa, but also a time of gestation for the nationalist movements
of Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. Despite the fact that their leadership
was scattered to the four winds during the immediate pre-war years, when
the Moroccan nationalists reemerged in 1944, they had undergone a
transformation. The war had dramatically altered the terrain on which
nationalist politics were being played out. The French colossus had fallen,
an American one had taken its place. The prewar colonial politics of
repression, indifference, and deception were no longer viable; world opin-
ion, sickened by the Nazi violation of Europe and its terrifying results,
turned away from imperialism as an acceptable form of rule. People
crushed by Hitler’s Reich in Eastern Europe in particular, were rising out
of the mire of defeat and clamoring for liberation. Decolonization was at
the top of the international agenda, and the desire to correct the cruelties of
the immediate past was the broadly conceived goal. In this atmosphere of
upheaval, the Maghribi nationalist parties regrouped, feeling that their
time had finally come.
“It had become obvious since 1937,” qAllal al-Fasi later wrote, “that an
irrevocable divorce had occurred between the people on the one hand and
the Protectorate regime on the other.”36 As the maelstrom of war
descended on North Africa, the nationalists openly embraced the goal of
independence, and sought the means to achieve it. The Allied North
African campaign provided an opportunity. On November 8, 1942, in
preparation for the assault on Fortress Europe, Operation Torch got
underway with American and British landings near Casablanca, Oran
and Algiers, turning Morocco and the rest of the Maghribi littoral into a
staging area for the eventual retaking of Europe. Swaggering U.S. General
George S. Patton Jr., who headed the Moroccan sector of Operation
Torch, met frequently with Sultan Muhammad V after the landings to
talk about the future of Morocco. Patton innocently saw Morocco “as a
gateway for the Americans entering the continent of Africa.”37 The
Moroccans were impressed by this first encounter with American armed
might, by the well-oiled military machine, the modern equipment, and the
seemingly endless supplies of food. The palace and the nationalists quickly
abandoned any lingering pro-Vichy sentiments and turned toward sup-
porting the Allied cause; eventually, thousands of Maghribis joined in the
battle against the Axis, fighting bravely through Sicily, Corsica, Italy,
France, and Germany, in some of the bloodiest battles of the war.
Even before the Allied landings took place, nationalist leaders were led
to believe that the Americans in particular would look favorably on their
project. The Atlantic Charter of August 1941 was vaguely reassuring, but
hardly specific; rather, it was the Anfa Conference held in Casablanca in
January 1943, where Allied chiefs gathered to strategize about the conduct
of the war and the peace to follow, that gave the Moroccan nationalist
cause its greatest boost. U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt met privately
with Sultan Muhammad V and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill
on Friday, January 22, 1943 (“no cocktails before dinner . . . no pork,”
wrote the President’s son Elliott in his diary) and announced, much to
Churchill’s discomfort, that “the post-war scene and the pre-war scene
would . . . sharply differ, especially as they related to the colonial ques-
tion.” According to the future King Hassan II, then a fourteen-year-old,
who also attended the dinner, Roosevelt went much further, promising
that in “ten years from now your country will be independent.” Regardless
of what was actually said, Roosevelt’s conversation with the sultan became
a crucial turning point, encouraging the Moroccans to work openly for
complete independence.38
But hopes raised would almost immediately be disappointed when the
American government adopted an ambivalent policy toward the anticolo-
nial struggle. The Americans had already shown their canniness, weaving
their way through the maze of competing French factions; in preparation
for the Allied invasion, they reached an agreement on stockpiling supplies
with the Vichy Commander-in-Chief in North Africa, General Maxime
Weygand, who openly collaborated with the Nazis, while at the same time
they encouraged General de Gaulle, vigorous opponent of Hitler, who
headed the Free French forces. Following the success of Operation
Torch, the Americans threw in their lot with de Gaulle, realizing that
they needed his help in order to win the war in Europe. Previous pro-
nouncements about American willingness to lend a hand in loosening the
colonial grip were now tempered by a more cautious tone. De Gaulle, for
his part, played his cards close to the chest and avoided all talk of decolo-
nization. After his Free French forces had safely dislodged the Vichyites
from North Africa in 1943, de Gaulle expressed the wish to “safeguard the
Empire,” turning a cold shoulder to the “encouragement” supposedly
given by Roosevelt to the nationalists.39
Meanwhile, the nationalists, now known as the hizbiyin, (party mem-
bers), or hizb al-Istiqlal (the Independence party), resumed their pressure
on the Residency, taking advantage of the disarray caused by wartime

shifts in command. On January 11, 1944, the Istiqlal issued a “Manifesto
of Independence” that explicitly called for “the independence of Morocco
in its national entirety under the aegis of His Majesty Sidi Muhammad Bin
Yusuf” and the installation of a democratic constitutional government
guaranteeing the rights of “all elements in society.” Signed by fifty-nine
of the movement’s faithful, the Manifesto urged the sultan to take the lead
in engaging in negotiations with “interested nations . . . whose object
would be the recognition . . . of that independence.” The Manifesto adop-
ted the call for reforms outlined in the 1934 Plan and repackaged them
with a demand for independence, making a seamless transition from one
kind of activism to another. The new and revolutionary assertion under-
lying the Manifesto was that the Moroccan people themselves had to
assume responsibility for making the changes that the Protectorate had
failed to bring about.
The year 1944 represents major turning point for other reasons as well.
It marks a shift in the center of gravity of the nationalist movement from
Fez to Rabat, from the old cradle of bourgeois culture to a fresh and
untried venue; an expansion of its membership into broader sectors of
the urban bourgeoisie and into the new urban proletariat; the rise of
activities aimed at building populist cadres such as a party-sponsored
scouting movement and public parades; and the founding of the Arabic
newspaper al-qAlam in 1946. The Istiqlal followed a specific program to
stamp public space with a “modern Moroccanness” that was mimetically
informed by European forms of mass organization on display during the
interwar years.40
Although the 1944 Manifesto fell on deaf ears, it marked a major step
forward in the nationalist struggle. The administration, distracted by
wartime confusion, responded precipitously by arresting Istiqlal leaders
Balafrej and Lyazidi, along with eighteen others, and accusing them of
“consorting with the enemy.” These arrests provoked widespread protests,
indicating that the Manifesto had achieved the goal of rousing the masses.
The fortunes of the Istiqlal continued to rise thereafter, particularly as the
party gained skills in manipulating the street. By taking the lead in shaping
nationalist rhetoric, by attempting to broaden its social base, by piloting
the labor unionists into its fold, and by beginning to ally itself with the
revered figure of the sultan, the Istiqlal had succeeded in seizing control of
the movement for independence.41
The role of the sultan at this stage was becoming critical. In the minds of
the nationalists, the institution of the sultanate – given new life under the
Protectorate – was the symbolic pole around which the revived independ-
ence movement could be organized. Not everyone agreed; some of the
hizbiyyin saw the sultan as a useless anachronism incompatible with a
modern state. But al-Fasi and others in the Istiqlal were convinced that the
popular enchantment with the near-mystical image of the Sharifian ruler
had immense value that could be harnessed to the nationalist cause. How
this notion fit with the Istiqlal’s pretensions to democratic governance was
not yet clear, nor would it become clearer in the coming years; the inherent
contradiction between the hard kernel of absolutism at the center of the
concept of Sharifian authority stood in irreconcilable opposition to the
Istiqlal’s ideal of a democratic and popular sovereignty.
It is true that the Istiqlal’s ideology, if it had one at all, was already an
eclectic mix of ideas taken from democratic constitutionalism, Egyptian
reformism, Islamic teachings, nineteenth century progressivism, and Third
World anticolonialism, all broadly construed. Al-Fasi himself acknowl-
edged the profound bricolage that made up revolutionary doctrine: “Every
constructive revolution has been preceded by probing into the remote past;
such a return, which on the surface appears a retrogression, is in fact a
mighty liberator . . .” But the high value intrinsic in the symbolism of the
monarchy could not be ignored. The sultan’s endorsement offered cultural,
religious, and emotional assets to the revolutionary cause that the Istiqlal
readily seized on and incorporated into its program.42
postwar developments: the uneasy alliance

between the sultan and the istiqlal
Meanwhile, a wounded France struggled to retake the advantage in the
larger drama unfolding across the colonial world. Postwar efforts by the
French to regain control of the Moroccan polity took the form of top-
down state planning inspired by the new, globally announced values of
democracy, human engineering, and a shared prosperity to eliminate
economic and social disparities. In Morocco and elsewhere in North
Africa, the grip of the colonial power did not lessen; it simply put on kid
gloves. In urban areas, the Protectorate undertook major infrastructure
projects to ameliorate the gap in living standards between natives and
colonizers, especially in the housing sector. Initiating new construction
targeted at reducing the number of bidonvilles, the most blatant sign of the
failure of social policies, was a top priority. French modernist architect
Michel Écochard arrived in Morocco in 1946 to head the Department of
Urban Planning, and was given the task of building functional housing for
the “greatest number possible.” Ignoring cultural specifics, Écochard pro-

posed worker housing consisting of two eight-by-eight meter rooms, a
patio and a W.C. that would meet their “human needs.” Never realized,
his plans were symptomatic of a postwar discourse of social welfare that
not only came too late, but was also disconnected from the Moroccan
reality. To fill the gap between inefficient state planners and local needs,
charitable organizations rallied to take care of the indigent. Soup kitchens
sprang up in all the major cities, regularly feeding thousands of poor
people. In Fez, a Muslim welfare society ran a popular soup kitchen in
the madina at Bayn al-Mudun, feeding five thousand people a day.43
Another expression of state social planning took place in the rural areas.
The most prominent of these new state-run social programs was the
“Secteurs de modernisaton du paysannat” or SMP, a plan for rural deve-
lopment inaugurated in 1946 by new Résident-Général Eirik Labonne,
a reformist-minded professional diplomat who replaced Gabriel Puaux
when the war was over. An advocate of the “soft” approach of using
economic development rather than brute force to contain pressure for
change, Labonne decried the forty years of “stagnation” imposed by the
Protectorate regime and proposed a “new deal” for Morocco. Touted as
the opening phase of a new French social policy, the SMP employed French
social scientists inculcated with egalitarian ideals, like the young Jacques
Berque who later went on to a career as a distinguished sociologist of
Islam. These idealistic young people helped set up programs designed to
modernize farming methods that imitated the Soviet model of the kolkhoz,
the agricultural cooperative. Several factors disrupted Labonne’s plans: a
policy of stubborn noncooperation emanating from the Istiqlal, a foot-
dragging Protectorate bureaucracy, and a huge outcry from big land-
owners who were implacably opposed to Labonne’s worker-centered
approach. These elements combined to force Labonne to back down and
disperse his cadres, diluting the project to the point of ineffectiveness.44
The radicalization of the nationalist movement was now an established
fact; fragmented into several tendencies, the Istiqlal stood at the head in an
uneasy alliance of pro-independence forces. Returning home from his
Gabon exile in 1946, qAllal al-Fasi – now surrounded with the “halo of a
national martyr” – managed to heal the rift with the nationalists of the
Northern zone, joining forces with Torres to maintain pressure on the
Residency to negotiate the terms of independence. The ranks of the Istiqlal
swelled with increasingly militant masses who were suffering from
postwar inflation, the burden of heavy taxes, and the small daily indignities
inherent in the condition of colonial rule.
Composed of a cross-section of the Moroccan social mosaic, member-

ship in the party grew dramatically in the postwar years, spreading out-
wards from its bourgeois origins to wider social groups. According to
Mehdi Ben Barka, “the extraordinarily rapid development of the industrial
sector resulted in the formation of masses of workers who, little by little,
were won over to the nationalist ideology.”45 While statistics are at best
approximate, “reliable observers” estimated party membership at about
three thousand in 1944, reaching ten thousand after the sultan’s speech in
1947, and one hundred thousand after 1952. The intellectual leadership of
the party working under the baton of Balafrej stressed three themes:
inculcation of party discipline and consciousness-raising, devotion to the
monarchy, and fixation on the goal of independence.46
The actions of the sultan were pivotal in the move toward a confronta-
tion with the French. Gradually, the shy and retiring Muhammad V rose
up like a lion to meet his historical destiny. In an electric speech pro-
nounced at Tangier on April 9, 1947, the sultan – who had never before
uttered a word that might suggest he would deviate from Protectorate
policy – praised the march toward Moroccan “unity” and affirmed his
belief in the country’s “Arabo-Islamic” destiny, publicly carving out a wide
space between himself and the Residency. Carefully modulating his lan-
guage, the sultan now joined the duel between the Istiqlal and the
Protectorate regime, turning it into a three-sided altercation. The popular-
ity of the sultan and his family soared, as “monarchy fever” seized the
Moroccan people and Muhammad V became the adored symbol of
the nation. His portrait appeared everywhere, in the smallest shops of
the madina to the place of honor inside the private home.
Bolstered by the surge of support, the sultan’s behavior became progres-
sively more objectionable to his former tutors.47 In January 1951, despite
repeated requests from General Juin, Labonne’s successor, the sultan refused
to set his seal on a dahir that would paralyze the Istiqlal; moreover, he
initiated a barrage of requests to the Residency – unanswered – to “redefine
the Franco-Moroccan accords to allow for Morocco’s complete recovery of
her independence.” Finally, the Residency grew impatient and resorted to
strong-arm tactics. In an ultimatum addressed to Muhammad V in January,
1951, Juin ordered the sultan to approve the repugnant dahirs or risk
being deposed. He then backed up this threat by surrounding the palace in
Rabat with troops and dismissing top officials of the makhzan, including
the rector of the Qarawiyyin University in Fez. Under duress, the sultan
stepped back, but without detaching himself from the nationalists, who
responded by inviting him to form a unified national front. They were joined
in 1952 by the powerful labor arm, now reorganized after the war under
native Moroccan leadership. A standoff developed, with the sultan and the
nationalists on one side, and the forces of order backed by the Protectorate
administration on the other.
In this atmosphere of open rebellion, the alliance between the sultan
and the nationalists tightened, as both became increasingly convinced
that the days of the Protectorate were numbered. In fact, it was difficult at
times to discern who was leading whom – the sultan or the Istiqlal. On the
diplomatic front, the Istiqlal took the lead, with Balafrej and others
campaigning at the newly formed United Nations in the fall session of
1951 to raise the question of Morocco. A UN mission sent to Morocco in
February 1952 to investigate the situation on the ground was greeted by
wild street demonstrations calling for freedom. The Moroccan question
remained before the UN for several years, enmeshed in the politics of
anticolonialism and backed by the emerging Third World bloc, but it
never succeeded in winning enough votes to reach a favorable resolution.
Nevertheless, the exposure at the UN advanced the nationalist case and
gave it credibility on the world stage. Senior spokesmen for the Istiqlal –
Balafrej, Laghzawi, al-Fasi himself – traveled continually to Europe, the
United States, and the Arab States, seeking support for Moroccan inde-
pendence, writing letters, launching publicity campaigns, meeting with
important political figures. In order to win international support, the
nationalists tempered their message to the world, issuing statements
through their party organs that were moderate in tone. Ahmed Balafrej,
playing the role of chief spokesman and theorist, continued to insist
publicly on “the installation of a constitutional monarchy, whose organs
are His Majesty the Sultan as head of state, an elected Assembly, and a
responsible government.”48
After 1951, the enthusiasm of the masses drove the nationalist cause
and the founding fathers simply rode the wave. The tempo of protest rose
in November 1952, when Farhat Hached, a prominent Tunisian labor
leader and pro-nationalist, was assassinated in Tunis. In sympathy, over
thirty-five hundred workers organized by the Casablanca trade unions
came out in force and staged a demonstration that was brutally disrupted
by French police. The event culminated in a rampage into the native
quarters by irate Europeans that ended with hundreds killed or wounded.
The union leadership went underground and did not reemerge until 1955
when the UMT (Moroccan Union of Workers), was founded. By that time,
six hundred thousand working people had joined its ranks. For the pro-
colonial party, the conjuncture of this bloody popular uprising with
Muhammad V’s growing obstinacy won him the derisive title of “the
Sultan of the Carrières centrales”, a Casablanca slum; but for the average
Moroccan, he had become their revered defender and champion. The
mood of general insurrection was now complete.49
Panicked by the sultan’s growing popularity and his stubborn refusal to
do their bidding, French authorities decided to send him into exile. The
plan to usurp the throne was led by Thami al-Glawi, Pasha of Marrakesh,
one of the “Lords of the Atlas” whose personal wealth and power had
grown immensely during the Protectorate thanks to his pro-French sym-
pathies. Patently corrupt, with a taste for Cartier watches and expensive
British motorcars, al-Glawi, working under French guidance, engineered a
plot to dismiss Muhammed V and enthrone in his place the aging
Muhammad Ben qArafa, the ruling sultan’s uncle. Al-Glawi was joined
by qAbd al-Hayy al-Kattani, scion of the brotherhood of the same name
and brother of the murdered Shaykh Muhammad al-Kattani, who had
been the victim of qAbd al-Hafiz’s brutality in 1908. The al-Kattanis still
harbored great antipathy toward the qAlawi dynasty, a detail overlooked
by the Protectorate administration when it co-opted them because of their
extensive grassroots organization.
The co-conspirators concocted a plan that unfolded with scenes wor-
thy of a Hollywood melodrama: a petition signed by Glawi’s collabora-
tors among the pashas and qaqids stating that the sultan’s policies were
incompatible with Islam; the solemn proclamation of a new imam at the
holy sanctuary of Mawlay Idris in Fez; the descent of mounted tribesmen
acting under al-Glawi’s orders into the streets of Rabat; the royal palace
invested by tanks. According to the later account by Hassan II, Résident-
Général Guillaume himself entered the palace to supervise the operation,
and found the Sultan still in his pajamas. The royal family was packed off
to Madagascar on August 20, 1953, amid howls of protest from every
segment of the population. Ordinary Moroccans were thunderstruck by
this event. The nationalist cause ceased to be an abstraction and instead
became the saga of a single family, uprooted from its home and sent off to
a distant exile. The entire country was transfixed, and it was said that
women standing on their rooftops at night could see the image of the
banished sultan in the moon.50
French opinion was deeply divided over such a desperate act. De Gaulle
denounced the deportation as “stupidity,” predicting, “he will return . . . I
know it . . . he will never abdicate,” while French Foreign Minister Georges
Bidault declared that France was engaged in a war of civilizations, a “fight
of the Cross against the Crescent.”51 President of the Republic Vincent
Auriol invoked the bogeyman of that era: “. . . behind the Sultan is the
Istiqlal, and behind the Istiqlal are the Communists.”52 But others sprang
to the defense of the rightful occupant of the throne and the nationalist
cause. Led by Nobel laureate François Mauriac, Parisian intellectuals,
already up in arms over the war in Algeria, now added French Morocco
to the list of die-hard colonial enclaves struggling against the tide of
history. He was joined by eminent figures from the world of Orientalist
scholarship, such as Louis Massignon, Charles-André Julien, and Régis
Blachère, who were determined to save whatever was left of Franco-
Moroccan amity. Muhammad V and his family remained in exile in
Madagascar for two years and were finally allowed to return in 1955, on
the eve of independence.53
a dramatic finale to french rule

The departure of the Sultan unleashed an international storm of protest,
further compounding France’s troubles in a turbulent Maghrib that was
squirming out of its grip. Tunisia under Bourguiba was clamoring for self-
rule, and the bloody Algerian revolution that lasted eight long years
(1954–1962) and cost nearly a million lives had already begun in earnest.
The territory from Tunis to Casablanca was on fire. The crushing defeat of
French forces in May 1954 at Dien Bien Phu in Indochina, the last outpost
of its Asian dominion, seemed to support the view that France was entering
the dusk of empire. Moroccan troops who participated in this disaster
were totally demoralized, and on repatriation, became ready fuel for the
anticolonial conflagration.54 From his Cairo exile, Istiqlal leader qAllal
al-Fasi reacted to the expulsion of Muhammad V by broadcasting a call
for armed struggle that was picked up by a new instrument of insurgency –
the radio – and delivered to every corner of Morocco. All of Morocco was
tuned into the revolution. In the months of August-September 1953, eleven
thousand new radio sets were sold. Violent attacks became a daily occur-
rence. Some, such as the abortive attempt on Mawlay Ben qArafa’s life by
house painter qAllal Ben Abdallah, created instant heroes of the resistance.
Secret cells proliferated throughout 1954 and 1955, attacks on settlers
multiplied, farms and factories were set on fire, and strikes paralyzed vital
sectors of the economy. Clandestine organizations of colonial diehard
“ultras” responded by carrying out the assassination of nationalist leader
Tahar Sebti and liberal French industrialist Jacques Lemaigre-Dubreuil,
who favored compromise. Former Prime Minister Pierre Mendès-France
admitted that the Protectorate had “almost always ignored liberal
Frenchmen” and that opinion in Morocco was far more nuanced than the
French public had been led to believe. Even the far right press began
speaking out against immobilisme, realizing that change finally had to
come.55
Following the example of Algeria, where the FLN liberation movement
had spawned a paramilitary force, a Moroccan Army of Liberation (ALN)
formed in the north of the country. Armed with hunting rifles and weapons
pillaged from French depots, the ALN carried out attacks against police
posts and offices of the Affaires indigenes, destroying local bases of French
authority and forcing the regime to negotiate with its back to the wall.
These attacks were committed with one goal in mind: the return of the
sultan, “the Prince of the Believers,” now transformed into the symbol of a
nation clamoring for independence. On August 20, 1955, a well-planned
and deadly attack by Middle Atlas tribesmen on the European population
of Oued Zem, a farming community near Kasba Tadla, ended once and for
all the myth of Berber “solidarity” with the Protectorate. The carnage that
ensued provoked a massive and brutal military response from the French
side, who used airplanes, tanks, and ground troops to subdue a resistance
that left five hundred Moroccans dead. France poured troops into
Morocco, many of them fresh from the killing fields of Indochina, as the
situation moved increasingly out of control. The war was now being
carried out on a national scale, with both sides engaging in atrocious
acts, and showed no signs of letting up.56
Recognizing it had few remaining options and that “the whole of
Morocco was in flames,” the French government, torn by discord,
removed Ben qArafa from the throne and began negotiations with the
exiled sovereign. Preliminary talks at the French resort town of Aix-les-
Bains in August 1955 with “representatives of Moroccan public opinion”
yielded little benefit. They were followed by direct conversations between
the sultan and a mixed French-Moroccan delegation in Antsirabé,
Madagascar in early September. In October, a roadmap setting out steps
to the sultan’s return included the creation of an interim “Throne Council”
composed of loyalists to France such as the ancient former Grand Vizir
Muhammad al-Muqri, now close to one hundred years old.57 The council
was immediately rejected by the Istiqlal and the street.
France had run out of options and was obliged to turn to the deposed
sultan to extricate itself from an impossible situation. Even the usurper
al-Glawi, seeing the handwriting on the wall, recanted and called for
Muhammad V’s “prompt restoration.” The sultan was brought to Paris
to meet with French Foreign Minister Antoine Piney, and from Paris he
addressed the nation. Speaking in a remarkably moderate manner, the

sultan set the tone for the new era by promising reforms that would make
Morocco into “a democratic state based on a constitutional monarchy”
joined to France “by permanent links of interdependence.” The following
Friday, the mosques in Morocco filled with worshippers to hear the khutba
(Friday sermon) in the name of Sidi Muhammad, while the national
council of Moroccan rabbis met in Rabat and issued a declaration express-
ing “their great joy” in anticipation of his early return.
On November 16, 1955, the sultan stepped foot on Moroccan soil once
again; greeted by delirious crowds, he announced the end of the
Protectorate. As thousands of well-wishers encircled him, he pronounced
the closing of the “minor jihad” – the pursuit of independence – and the
beginning of a “major jihad,” the collective effort to rebuild the nation.
Implicit in his words was the message that the sultan himself, the elected
head of the umma, would be the supreme leader. Yet he faced a formidable
competitor in the Istiqlal, who had played the part of master architect of
independence; with its sprawling network, its armed militants, its local
cells in every city and town and throughout countryside, it was a state
within the state that had to be absorbed in order to make the transition to
independence complete.
the dissolution of the nationalist consensus

Morocco’s politicized cadres, energized by their success in the nationalist
struggle, were eager to become equal partners in planning and executing the
effort of state building. During the forty-four years of French overlordship,
Morocco’s economy and society had been fundamentally transformed; in
the cities, a salaried proletariat had supplanted the artisan class, while in the
countryside, much of the peasantry, still more than 70 percent of the
population, had become a landless proletariat, beholden to a small, power-
ful and wealthy group of native landowners who would become even richer
with the departure of the French. The project of introducing modernity had
come at great cost: the division of the economy into dual sectors, the modern
and the outmoded; the abandonment of the majority to poverty, ignorance,
and lack of advancement; the stripping away of precolonial protections that
had cushioned the worst effects of a capricious natural environment; and the
reinforcement of structural imbalances between classes and ethnic groups.
Illiteracy in Morocco on the eve of independence was an appalling 90
percent; the expected life span for men was forty-seven years. The systematic
exploitation of Morocco’s riches for the benefit of a few had created a
distorted pattern of abuse that was difficult to undo. The habit of the
Residency was to disguise its manipulation of power behind a false façade
of royal legitimacy, when in fact the monarch was hamstrung and almost
until the end of France’s tenure in Morocco, unable to act independently.
Ostentatious displays of respect toward the throne hid a deep-seated con-
tempt for its actual worth.
Immense problems of a practical nature faced the country at the thresh-
old of independence. Creating and consolidating state institutions, build-
ing a national economy, organizing civil society and the nascent political
parties, establishing social protections for a needy population, headed the
list. Agrarian reform was imperative. The expropriation of millions of
hectares of arable land by the colonial regime had left the Moroccan
peasantry – more than 3.5 million of them – without land. Educational
reform was badly needed; only 15 percent of schoolage children were
actually in school. A university system had to be built out of the scarce
resources left by the French. In the course of forty-four years, the
Protectorate had produced a scant 1415 Moroccan baccalaureates, 640
of them Muslims and 775 Jews. The assets of the young nation were
waiting to be mobilized and developed.58
In terms of efficacy, the makhzan of 1956 was not vastly different from
the makhzan of 1912. The Protectorate regime had kept the native
Moroccan government in a puerile stage of evolution, robbing it of the
chance to benefit from the experience of engaging in practical politics by
keeping it in a deep freeze. The principal dilemma facing the new regime
was how to restart the engine of the state and overcome the blockages of an
arrested political and social development. Members of the revolutionary
vanguard, young men of the Istiqlal like Mehdi Ben Barka and Aberrahim
Bouabid, who were very popular with the youth sectors of the party, were
ready to assume the mantle of leadership, but their aspirations were soon
frustrated. The euphoria that accompanied the return of the sultan and the
granting of independence swiftly turned into political infighting among
factions of the Istiqlal, and between the Istiqlal and other aspiring political
parties. The polarity of views was not immediately apparent, as various
interests sparred for dominance in the government of national union that
took office in December 1955 under M’Barek Bekkaï, a Berber from the
Oujda region who was, in the words of one observer, “a man of honor but
not a politician.” The appointment of Bekkaï to this post signaled the
beginning of an enduring alliance between the throne and the conservative
rural elite who had formerly served as the bedrock of the Protectorate
administration in the countryside. The Istiqlal, to its great chagrin, was
given only nine out of twenty-one ministries in this new government

despite its strength and domination over the political field. The party that
had fought hard and won the prize of independence now found itself shut
out from key networks of patronage. The rest of the ministerial portfolios
were distributed to two minor parties: al-Ouezzani’s PDI (Parti
Démocratique de l’ Independence, founded in 1951) received six portfo-
lios, while a group of independents headed by Ahmed Reda Guedira,
royalist and friend of Crown Prince Hassan, received another six.59
The struggle for power between Muhammad V and the Istiqlal now
became the principal motif of the new state’s political life, intensifying in
the months and years to come. Forces loyal to the monarchy rallied to
counter the overwhelming weight of the Istiqlal, who had hoped to profit
from its pivotal role in bringing the monarchy to power. While talk of
democratic constitutionalism remained part of official rhetoric, the sultan –
now known officially as the king – reconsidered his options. Instead of
moving forward steadily toward governmental restructuring, he stopped
the clock on introducing radical changes, and projects of reform that had
been at the core of the Istiqlal’s argument with the colonial regime were
sidelined, replaced by an angry debate over the distribution of power.
Indeed, the political process became enveloped in a miasma of distrust
that engulfed society as a whole, as mysterious political assassinations of
prominent individuals such as Touria Chaoui, the first Moroccan aviatrix,
and Abbas Messaadi, a Berber militant, heightened the general sense of
fear. The preindependence atmosphere of unity quickly dissipated, and
jockeying for position rather than institution-building became the main
business of the political elite.
In 1959, the Istiqlal itself sundered, with younger members under the
leadership of Mehdi Ben Barka, Abderrahim Bouabid, and Abderrahmane
Youssoufi forming a new, more “progressive” branch that became a
separate party, the leftwing UNFP (National Union of Popular Forces).
Its program of action included agrarian reform, democratic government,
and the swift departure of the remaining vestiges of French rule, in other
words, all the measures of far-reaching reform not prioritized by the
monarchy. Representing “the revolutionary option,” the UNFP moved
rapidly further to the left, leaving behind a truncated Istiqlal still domi-
nated by the figure of qAllal al-Fasi. Reconciling the interests of the pro-
gressives with those of the throne was proving to be increasingly difficult.
Through his reticence to engage in rapid change, King Muhammad V
demonstrated that he was deeply bound to a primordial concern for self-
preservation and a doubtful attitude toward the political maturity of a
Moroccan people who had been “delivered to modernity by the forceps of

the Protectorate.”60
Meanwhile, other parties coalesced and chipped away at the power base
of the Istiqlal. In 1957, the Popular Movement representing a mainly rural,
Rifian Berber position took shape in the North, the Communist Party
(PCM) reappeared after years of repression, and new life was breathed
into the PDI, or Independent Democratic Party of Mohammed Hassan
al-Ouezzani. Together, these competing groups now formed a disorgan-
ized opposition, warring with each other for a seat at the table. To the
monarchy’s satisfaction, a multiparty system was taking shape, diluting
and weakening the monolithic structure and influence of the Istiqlal.
Managing this chaotic political scene with consummate skill, the mon-
archy emerged by 1959 as the main pillar of stability in the state. King
Muhammad V captured and manipulated powers delegated to the govern-
ment, keeping for himself control over the military and eventually, over
security services, as well as the ministries of Justice and the Interior. Given
this preponderance of royal influence over affairs, the new “left” was
consistently outmaneuvered by the palace, whose strength grew incremen-
tally as it perfected techniques of rewarding and bringing its friends closer,
while undermining its adversaries through processes of divide and rule.
Eventually, the competition between the king and the opposition forced
the monarchy to turn away from the urban-based parties of the left and
seek its base of support in the countryside, in a process carefully recon-
structed by political scientist Rémy Leveau in his study of peasant politics
in the immediate postindependence period.61 The alliance between the
king and the rural notability had fateful repercussions; it relegated party
politics to a subordinate position, allowing the monarchy to disregard an
increasingly urbanizing and radicalizing popular will; it postponed much
needed agricultural reforms that would have benefited the peasantry and
alleviated the entrenched poverty of the countryside ; and it set the stage for
long-term agrarian policies that mainly benefited pro-royalist rural
elites.62
A key element in this process of reasserting royal hegemony was the role
being played by young Crown Prince Hassan, now his father’s right-hand
man, who was placed at the head of the newly constituted national army
(Forces armées royales, FAR) in 1956, composed of units of the disbanded
ALN. Crown Prince Hassan was supported by a cadre of military profes-
sionals who had served in the French colonial army, such as Mohamed
Oufkir, graduate of the Berber college of Azrou and veteran of the war in
Indochina. The officer class of the FAR and the rank-and-file had two
things in common: at least 90 percent were of Berber and rural origin, and
most professed loyalty to the throne rather than to the nationalists, whom
they held in deep suspicion. Thereafter, the relationship between the
monarchy and the army was an especially close one, with members of
the ruling family regularly appearing in uniform.63 However, the new
army faced a confused situation in the field, where rogue remnants of the
ALN continued to operate, refusing to lay down their arms until they could
see the outcome of the political struggle. Angered that French troops
remained on Moroccan soil, the southern branch of the ALN launched a
war against the FAR, only to be defeated in 1958 with the help of French
and Spanish troops after a bloody settling of scores.64
Another armed separatist movement arose in the ever-effervescent Rif in
1957 under Mahjoubi Aherdane, a Berber leader acting as a voice for a rural
elite who felt alienated from the left-leaning, urban-centered and seemingly
Istiqlal-dominated political process. Launched with the slogan “We did not
achieve independence in order to lose freedom,” the insurrection by the
Mouvement Populaire (Popular Movement, or MP), as it eventually was
called, was brutally crushed by General Oufkir, who was rewarded with the
title of “Butcher of the Rif” for his efforts. In his own defense, Aherdane
declared that his enemy was not the monarchy but rather “corrupt inter-
mediaries,” a not so subtle reference to his hostility to the Istiqlal. Following
the defeat of the MP, King Muhammad V took a page from the book of his
ancestor, Sultan Hassan I, and pardoned the “siba” of Aherdane and his
followers, allowing the MP to be swiftly reintegrated into the political fold.
The creation of yet another important political faction, the FDIC (Front de
Défense des Institutions Constitutionnelles), a loyalist coalition headed by
Ahmed Reda Guedira, rounded out the process of intense fissuring in this
period of post-independence politics. The membership of the FDIC included
urban intellectuals, rural notables, young technocrats; in other words, all
those “who had been alienated by the Istiqlal”; but their real political cement
was fealty to the king.
The rise of breakaway political factions who refused to submit to Istiqlal
party discipline eliminated once and for all the possibility of a unified
opposition that could serve as a counter-balance to the rising influence of
the monarchy. By 1960, the political stage was crowded with a swirl of
actors, each one competing fiercely with the others, their net impact neutral-
ized by the political agility of the monarchy.65 Moreover, in an ominous sign
for the future, with blessings from his father, Crown Prince Hassan gradually
seized control of a national security apparatus originally put in place by the
Istiqlal in the early days of independence to root out its political enemies.
In July 1960, Hassan’s close associate, the sphinxlike and ruthless Oufkir, his
eyes perpetually hidden behind dark glasses, was appointed Director General
of Security, bringing the secret service fully under the control of the palace.66
Fully occupied by its need to solidify its hold on politics, build up the
army, and restore stability to the country, the monarchy paid less attention
to the fundamental human needs of its people. Muhammad V was a liberal
on international affairs, firmly aligning himself with Third World anti-
imperialism, but he was a staunch social conservative at home. In the
domestic sphere, he chose a strategy that carefully avoided upsetting the
traditional groups that sustained him in power. A new government formed
in 1958 and headed by Abdallah Ibrahim, a trade union leader and
cofounder of the UNFP, seemed to auger well for reform, but the monarchy
was firmly opposed to promoting broad societal interventions. Instead, the
majority of Moroccans were left to cope on their own with problems such as
high unemployment, scarce housing, inadequate schooling, understaffed
health services, and a stagnant economy depleted by the flight of foreign
fi g u r e 2 5 . U.S. Vice-President Richard Nixon and Mrs. Nixon are greeted by

King Muhammad V during a state visit to Morocco in 1957. While relations with
the United States were cordial, the Moroccan sovereign generally followed a policy
of nonalignment and sought friendships with neutral nations. (Courtesy of the
Tangier American Legation Institute and Museum)
capital. Even nature conspired to confound social progress; on February 29,

1960, a massive earthquake destroyed much of the town of Agadir in
Morocco’s south, claiming up to fifteen thousand lives. To those on the
left, it seemed ironic that Morocco, a beacon of political progress on the
regional level, languished in the rear when it came to social advances at
home. In May 1960 the king, weary of the endless political back-and-forth,
summarily dismissed the government of Abdallah Ibrahim and seized the
reins of power, anointing himself as his own Prime Minister.
In the arena of diplomacy, as the Cold War intensified, Muhammad V
cleaved a clear path between Eastern and Western blocs. While professing
strong anticommunist sentiments, he endorsed a policy of nonalignment
and cultivated friendships with emerging African nations. His independ-
ence in foreign affairs did not please his American allies, nor did it win him
large amounts of U.S. foreign aid.67 The monarch’s relations with France
were equally murky. When the declaration of independence was signed on
March 2, 1956, one hundred thousand French troops still remained on
Moroccan soil, and it was clear that France would continue to play a role
in Morocco politically, economically and militarily for some time to come.
Moreover, an absolute disengagement from colonial status was not a
foregone conclusion; negotiations in February and March 1956 between
Morocco and France revealed a wide divergence of opinion about the
future relationship between the two nations. France proposed “an inde-
pendent state united with France by permanent ties of interdependency,”
while Morocco insisted on the complete abrogation of the Treaty of Fez of
1912 and full exercise of Moroccan sovereignty. As France became
increasingly mired in the Algerian War of Independence, the Moroccan
view prevailed. In April 1956, Spain signed an agreement to quit the
northern zone, but it took twenty more years to complete the withdrawal
of its forces from the provinces of Tarfaya and Sidi Ifni in the Sahara, while
the cities of Ceuta and Melilla remain in Spanish hands to this day. Finally,
on October 8, 1956, an international conference opened in Fedala to
discuss Tangier’s reversion to Moroccan sovereignty for the first time
since 1912. While large chunks of the national territory that had been
alienated for nearly two generations were being reunited with the national
space, other sore points like Ceuta, Melilla, and the Saharan territories
remained in foreign hands to fan the flames of irredentist passions.
Meanwhile, in a monumental national tragedy, the majority of
Morocco’s age-old Jewish community of 250,000 souls began to leave,
at first in a clandestine trickle, later in a flood, leaving a painful rent in the
social fabric. Treated meanly by the Protectorate regime, suffering from
faltering economic conditions, displaced from their traditional role as

intermediaries by the new native middle class, humiliated by the race
laws of Vichy, confused by the upheavals in the Middle East, deeply
disappointed with France while heeding the nationalist clarion with only
half an ear, and above all, pulled by the siren call of Zionism, Morocco’s
Jews began a grand exodus after 1947, migrating both to Israel and
the West. The Six-Day War of 1967 was the final act for Morocco’s
Jews, drawing away most of those who remained, ending a millennium
of coexistence that had marked Morocco as the most tolerant of Muslim
societies.
From its modest origins within student circles of Fez and Paris, in the space
of thirty years the Moroccan nationalist movement had grown into a
globalized cause having tentacles that stretched outward to Europe, the
Americas, and the Middle East. Within Morocco, it reached from the great
cities of the coast deep into the plains and mountains of the Berber heart-
land. Its cadres included Sorbonne-educated intellectuals and tribal mil-
itants, pious salafis and rough-edged industrial workers, peasants and
shopkeepers. Its single-minded quest for dignity and nationhood had
transformed the simple doctrines of its founding fathers, based on a
rational set of legal and social principles, into a strident declaration of
the unity and historical uniqueness of the Moroccan people. Strictly hier-
archical, strongly anticommunist, fervently patriotic, especially when it
came to the king, leaning toward tradition but open to innovation,
embracing Muslims and Jews, Arabs and Berbers, the movement was as
variegated as Morocco itself.
But deep cracks were appearing in its hastily constructed façade. In the
postindependence years, we see signs of a political machine running out of
control, ignoring principles fundamental to its founders, leaving a vacuum
filled by a revival of royal absolutism. Instead of constitutional democracy,
there was no constitution; instead of economic liberalism, the state took
charge; instead of a nation free of the colonizer, the fingerprints of France
were still found everywhere; instead of a mosaic-like and vibrant
multiethnic and multipolar social organization, people were being forced
into a stifling, centralizing, and homogeneous mold in the educational
system, in the workplace, in the shaping of the political field. In many
ways, the tenor of politics was reminiscent of the old makhzan, with its
leitmotifs of patronage and gift giving, arbitration and negotiation, and
patriarchal systems of kinship and family. Presiding over this swirling
vortex was the king, ready to take charge through the age-old implements
of authority in Morocco, deftly deploying his religious prestige, financial

weight, coercive force, and convincing powers of persuasion.
This picture of a free-for-all struggle for power among rival parties is
hardly the image the founders of the Istiqlal had in mind when they wrote
their Manifesto in 1944. Nor does it mimic in any way the Morocco that
qAllal al-Fasi imagined when he promised that a demotic age would engulf
the Maghrib at mid-century. His projection of a revolutionary state, deeply
Islamic, vaguely monarchical, resoundingly populist, and directly respon-
sive to the voice of the people, was fading fast. Perhaps such a regime
would have emerged had the progenitor of the nation, King Muhammad
V, been allowed to live out the fullness of his years. Instead, as we shall see,
the regime he prematurely bequeathed to his son and successor King
Hassan II was a fluctuating system of transient relationships, kept loosely
in order by a monarch that anthropologist Clifford Geertz cleverly dubbed
“The First Machinator”: a distant and enigmatic figure lacking the style of
a Nasser or a Bourguiba, closed within himself, who failed to impose a true
sense of national purpose.68 Morocco did eventually inherit its own zaqim,
but he was a flawed one, without the monumentality, or the generosity, or
the selfless conviction that the nationalists imagined. The coming phase –
the age of Hassan II – frames the last chapters of Morocco’s twentieth-
century history, in which the personality of the ruler became the defining
element in the search for a national purpose that might meet the expect-
ations of the Moroccan people.
6
The First Age of Hassan II
The Iron Fist (1961–1975)
The sudden and unexpected death of Muhammad V on February 26,

1961, during minor surgery unleashed a torrent of grief from a people
who had come to revere the shy and retiring figure who, by sheer force of
will, had become father of the nation. Designated as heir apparent in 1957,
the thirty-two-year-old Crown Prince Hassan was of a different temper.
He stayed close to his father’s side throughout the last tumultuous years of
French rule, absorbing the lessons of political survival at home and in exile.
Educated at the palace by a battery of French and Moroccan professors
(including the brilliant Mehdi Ben Barka in Mathematics) and later at
Bordeaux, where he received a law degree, he was open to the world and
far more at ease with the accoutrements of modernity than his father. Yet
he was also a lover of tradition and the prerogatives of power: the tinsel
uniforms, the hand kissing, the palace ceremonial ordained by ancient
protocol. Unlike his father, he was completely fluent in French in addition
to Arabic, and spoke capable English as well. Cold-blooded and hot-
tempered, an amateur of fast cars and sleek women, with a broad streak
of ambition and a love of command, he was more than ready to rule.
the new king tightens his grip on power

Hassan II’s credentials were impressive but not altogether flawless. His
postindependence success in organizing the FAR and repressing revolts in
the Rif and the south had burnished his reputation as a decisive and effective
leader. But among the common people, his worth was questioned by his
supposed attraction to the forbidden pleasures of life. Viewed as a playboy
whose nocturnal wanderings in the company of hard-drinking army officers
162
The First Age of Hassan II: 1961–1975 163
cast doubt on his attachment to religious values, the young king faced the
challenge of creating a public persona consonant with his role as
“Commander of the Faithful.” His primary objective was to convert that
reserve of symbolic capital into political coin. Thus the early years of his
reign were devoted to building his own signature image based on the mythic
aura of his father, while setting an agenda aimed at eliminating opponents and
consolidating his personal power. The later years of his rule were devoted to
undoing the mistakes of the first years, guaranteeing the family legacy, and
projecting forward his vision of a “new” Morocco. His character and ambi-
tions were decisive in shaping Morocco’s direction in the last third of the
twentieth century. Indeed, the survival of the Moroccan monarchy in this
period, when so many other Middle Eastern and North African monarchies
failed, is largely due to the “the remarkable personal skills” of Hassan II,
according to political scientist Rémy Leveau, who observed him closely for a
half century.1
At the top of his agenda was the unfinished business of assuring the
political supremacy of the monarchy, while playing a cautious game of
engagement with the political parties. In the May 1960 municipal elections,
the Istiqlal party had won a majority of votes, obliging the then Crown
Prince to work with it and gain its support. After the death of Muhammad V
and Hassan II’s sudden ascension to the throne, qAllal al-Fasi, who was still
the undisputed leader of the Istiqlal, returned the favor and threw his party’s
considerable weight behind the new and untried monarch, calling for a show
of “national unity.” In return, Hassan II was reluctantly compelled to pay
attention to al-Fasi’s demand for a constitution based on representative rule
that had been promised earlier by Muhammad V. He invited al-Fasi and
Ahmed Balafrej to join a new government in the spring of 1962, and at the
same time issued a “Fundamental Law,” a sort of provisional constitution,
meant to satisfy the Istiqlal’s demands for a move in this direction. This
document introduced foundational issues for the Istiqlal into political
discourse that had hitherto been unwritten, such as Morocco’s “Arab and
Islamic” character and the state’s duty to reclaim its historic territories; but it
did nothing to alter the balance of power in favor of representative govern-
ment. In fact, rather than tempering absolutism, it made it even more
pronounced. Any decision-making authority not given directly to the king
was assigned to his close associates, keeping the levers of control firmly
within his grasp. Historian Maati Monjib comments that the Fundamental
Law “was a bad precedent that opened the door to all kinds of abuses, and it
was the first step toward promulgating a constitution totally designed by the
clients (services) of the king.”2
The constitution that finally appeared in December 1962 was written

behind closed doors by Hassan’s appointees, not by a representative
body. It was immediately boycotted by the parties of the extreme left,
but it was cynically supported by the Istiqlal as well as by Istiqlal-
affiliated organizations in an attempt to remain in power. The constitu-
tion was approved by popular referendum with 85 percent of the vote.
Article Nineteen confirmed the king’s position as “Commander of the
Faithful,” and “supreme representative of the nation,” blending his
political and religious roles and consolidating in the head of state near-
unlimited executive powers. One leftist leader ruefully complained, “We
have a king who uses all the means of the twentieth century, automobiles,
airplanes, and so forth, in order to perpetuate feudalism.”3 At the same
time, the constitution gave a brief nod to liberal principles by encourag-
ing the stabilization of multiparty system that would be “democratic and
social,” reflecting the views of Hassan’s close ally, ultra-royalist Ahmed
Reda Guedira. But Hassan himself was not very interested in power-
sharing or in nurturing open processes of rule. Instead, he used his
extraordinary executive power, now endorsed by the new constitution,
to maneuver the Istiqlal out of the government and into a situation of
permanent opposition, where it would stay for nearly four decades.4
Thereafter, political activity fell into a stable pattern in which authori-
tarianism coexisted side by side with plural political parties, skillfully
manipulated and circumscribed by the king, thus preventing any one
party or political force to come forward and challenge the throne’s
monopoly on power.
Hassan II made important diplomatic moves as well, orchestrating a
swift turnabout in Morocco’s foreign policy. He abandoned the non-
aligned position his father had mapped out and instead veered sharply
toward the West. Once qAllal al-Fasi was out of the government, Hassan II
no longer felt obliged to support the nationalists’ demand to recover
Morocco’s “historic” territories remaining under foreign rule.5 The
irredentist aspect of the Istiqlal platform had been a major thorn in the
royal side, paralyzing Hassan’s freedom of movement on the diplomatic
front; for years it had provoked sharp anger against Morocco from
Algeria, France, Spain, Mauritania, and to a lesser extent, the United
States. The Saharan issue in particular vexed Morocco’s relations with its
African neighbors; Morocco’s ambitions in the Western Sahara ran coun-
ter to a plan for Mauritania’s independence that was backed by other
African states. With the Istiqlal in opposition, the king could set aside the
irredentist issue, at least for the time being, and concentrate on other
matters. Hassan II quickly lowered his voice on territorial demands, and

turned instead to mending fences with important friends in Europe, Africa,
and America.6
France in particular was drawn in by Hassan’s turnabout; in 1961,
France was in the twilight of empire, in search of new relationships with
its former vassals. The Algerian War was winding down and de Gaulle’s
plan for a definitive departure from North Africa was close to realiza-
tion, including a final evacuation of France’s remaining bases in
Morocco. In Hassan’s view, improved relations with France could
bring a windfall of economic and diplomatic dividends, among them a
staunching of the hemorrhage of French capital out of Morocco caused
in part by the belligerent anti-imperialist speeches of the Moroccan left.
This calculation proved to be correct, and Franco-Moroccan relations
improved markedly in the period 1962–1965. With France now
responding to his overtures, Hassan II began to lay the foundations of
a foreign policy designed to reflect his long-standing desire to firmly
establish himself as an ally of the West. A precedent had already been
established when, in December 1959, Muhammad V negotiated an
agreement with the United States to withdraw from its five military
bases in Morocco acquired at the height of the Cold War as a part of
America’s Strategic Air Command (SAC) anti-Soviet early warning
system. With the advent of a new generation of long-range bombers,
the Moroccan bases were deemed no longer essential by the U.S. military
and the withdrawal was completed by 1963. This amicable exchange
over the shutdown of the bases became the cornerstone for the warm and
increasingly close Moroccan-American friendship that developed over
the course of Hassan’s reign.7
While soothing relations with France, Hassan purposely disrupted them
with his closest neighbor, Algeria. Morocco’s border with Algeria,
inherited from the colonial past, was ill-defined, especially in the southeast,
where France had begun chipping away at Moroccan territory even before
1912. The area around Tindouf became especially important when oil
reserves were discovered there in the 1950s. King Hassan II mistakenly
believed that Algeria’s new national leadership, having wrested its freedom
from France in 1962 with Moroccan help, would agree to a realignment.
But when a dispute broke out over the disposition of the tiny border
outpost of Hassi Bayda, newly elected Algerian President Ahmed Ben
Bella stubbornly refused to discuss any border revisions. This altercation
arose at a time when politics in both countries were in turmoil: Hassan was
wrestling with an uprising on the left, while Ben Bella was faced with
smoothing out the nasty internal rivalries left over from the Algerian
Revolution.
In this hypertensive and over-heated atmosphere, the face-off between
Morocco and Algeria quickly escalated, producing the sad spectacle of the
two recently decolonized and once-amicable states fighting each other in
“a war of the sands.” Later, Hassan II would call it “a stupid war . . . a real
setback”; however, at the time, the struggle with Algeria served to test the
leadership skills of an untried and freshly anointed monarch seeking to
rally the nation behind him. While most Moroccans were drawn in by a
media blitz contrived to rouse nationalist fervor, cooler heads opposed the
war. UNFP leader Mehdi Ben Barka condemned the conflict as a diversion
from more serious problems, and called on Moroccans not to fight their
Algerian “brothers” who were in the midst of an experiment in Arab
socialism. After hundreds of casualties on both sides, a cease-fire was
finally negotiated in November 1963 with the help of the Organization
of African Unity. Although the Moroccan army had made a good showing
in the field, it kept none of the spoils of victory, and the border problem
remained unresolved. Moroccans, furious at this stinging setback, began
to feel a widening gulf between themselves and their Algerian neighbors,
who were waxing rich from gushing oil revenues. These differences soon
hardened into a permanent hostility, and a bitter animosity now poisoned
the atmosphere between the two neighbors, leading directly to the Western
Sahara crisis of 1975.8
plots, counterplots, and the alienation

of the left
Tensions mounted in the period 1962–1965 as the UNFP became more
outspoken in its opposition to the monarchy, turning Mehdi Ben Barka,
the popular head of the party and pied piper of the younger generation,
into the archenemy of the regime. The contrast between the revival of
the old makhzan and its autocratic ways, on the one hand, and the fresh
breezes blowing in from the Arab socialist regimes in the East on the
other, frustrated Ben Barka and his followers. They looked to newly
independent Algeria’s socialist-leaning nonalignment as an alternative
model of governance that differed profoundly from Morocco’s conser-
vative and Western-oriented monarchy. Even little Tunisia was follow-
ing a progressive path under the leadership of Habib Bourguiba and his
socialist-oriented neo-Destour political organization. Reading the
political Zeitgeist and fearful of a resurgence of colonialism, Ben Barka

urged Moroccans to recognize their unanimity with other recently
liberated Third World nations and to build ties of solidarity with
them. Meetings and discussions with revolutionary leaders such as Ho
Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, and Che Guevara had radicalized his thinking
even more. When the project for a new constitution was announced in
1962, Ben Barka immediately called for its boycott, declaring that “the
primary task of the Moroccan people is to battle this totally feudal
regime.”9
Ben Barka’s fiery intellectualism and his wide popularity frightened
King Hassan II and alarmed Morocco’s new Western allies, themselves
caught up in Cold War antimonies that situated personalities such as Ben
Barka on the far side of the political fence. Moreover, Ben Barka’s high-
profile activities around the globe that associated Morocco with inter-
national revolutionary movements of a Communist flavor came precisely
at the moment when Hassan II was seeking rapprochement with the West.
After Oufkir’s secret services uncovered a plot to kill the king allegedly
hatched among members of the disbanded ALN, the regime used this
incident to begin open warfare with its opponents on the left, foremost
among them Ben Barka.
In July 1963, following a good showing by the UNFP in the first
parliamentary elections, a massive arrest of five thousand UNFP militants
took place, catching in its net even moderate UNFP leaders such as
Abderrahim Bouabid and Abderrahmane Youssoufi. The sudden crack-
down announced a new, more violent phase in the monarchy’s confron-
tation with the left and a blatant disregard of the political aspirations of a
rising middle class attracted to Ben Barka’s populism.10 During the
winter of 1963–1964, a sensational trial of over two hundred UNFP
detainees took place, during which eleven prominent leaders of the
party accused of participating in the alleged plot against the king were
sentenced to death, including Ben Barka. Meanwhile, the now outlawed
leader fled abroad and was condemned in absentia. The obvious inten-
tion of the trial was to break the back of the UNFP, although Hassan II
later denied that he held any personal animosity toward his former
professor. In August 1964, Hassan II pardoned the condemned men,
but Ben Barka refused to return to Morocco.
The saga of his dramatic exile ended on October 29, 1965, when he
was kidnapped on a Paris street and then “disappeared.” The full circum-
stances of his death have never come to light, although the implication of
Moroccan, French, and other “foreign” agents in the affair has often
been made. General Oufkir (after he was conveniently dead!) was men-
tioned most often as the chief architect of Ben Barka’s abduction, though
this, too, has never been proven. As for King Hassan II, he innocently
denied all knowledge of the affair, swearing that he had been confronted
with “a fait accompli” regarding the fate of Ben Barka. For nearly fifty
years, a strict wall of silence has enveloped the death of this most pas-
sionate figure of mid-century politics whose presence on the world stage
was felt far beyond Morocco, and whose disappearance left a deep and
lasting wound in the national psyche made worse by secrecy, falsehood,
and innuendo.11
The politics of resistance were not confined to the intellectual elites,
but filtered down through the ranks of society and eventually burst out
into the streets. In the vanguard of the politicized masses was the UNEM
(the Moroccan National Students’ Union), whose members repeatedly
went out on strike in the period 1962–1965. University students had been
aggressively wooed by Ben Barka since the early days of the UNFP and
formed a core group among its cadres. The yearly congress of the UNEM
was often the scene of raucous demands for democratization, the purging
of colonialism, and the placing of limits on the powers of the king. When
the leadership of the UNFP was rounded up in 1963 for “plotting”
against the monarchy, the UNEM rose up with a roar, calling for the
“abolition of the regime.” The state, for its part, used coercive tactics to
try to bring the students to heel, including beatings, arrests and disap-
pearances of leading figures in the student movement. There was no
quarter given to the student left and its leadership was hounded relent-
lessly; Hamid Berrada, a UNEM official-in-exile, echoed Ben Barka’s
position about the pointlessness of the “war of the sands,” and he, too,
was condemned to death in absentia.12
High school students (lycéens) were not officially part of the UNEM,
but they, too, heeded its call for top-to-bottom political and social
change. When, early in 1965, the Minister of Education instituted new
rules regarding secondary school admissions, lycées in Rabat,
Casablanca, and other big cities became staging areas for spirited
demonstrations against the regime, reaching a crescendo on March 21,
1965, when a student-organized protest in Casablanca quickly devolved
into three days of running street battles in which students were joined by
thousands of workers laid off during the economic recession of 1964,
as well as inhabitants of Casablanca’s sprawling bidonvilles. Ripping
up trees and paving stones, breaking shop windows and burning
cars and busses, the rioters treated the regime to a frightening scene of
urban chaos. The coalition of students and the workers organized by the
UMT was especially threatening to the authorities, and seemed to
portend a coming social revolution. The city was paralyzed and the
king was openly denounced in a massive display of civil disobedience.
The riots were brutally put down three days later by security forces
fortified with phalanxes of tanks and armored vehicles under the direc-
tion of Oufkir, who circled the city in a helicopter, at the cost of hundreds
of lives.
The strikes spread to other cities: Rabat, Settat, Khouribga, Meknes,
and Kénitra were caught up in the antigovernment fervor. When histor-
ian Mohamed El Ayadi, at the time a high school student, demonstrated
in the Rabat madina, he was expressing a new political awareness: “For
me, as well as for the majority of my peers, the first step in our political
socialization happened spontaneously in the street, before taking on a
more organized and self-conscious form at the university in 1968.”
Hassan II felt especially betrayed by this youthful opposition and vented
his anger on the young, educated Moroccans who were taking to the
streets for lack of jobs: “Allow me to tell you,” he said on national
television, “there is no greater danger to the state than the so-called
intellectual; it would have been better for you to be illiterate.” Schools
and university campuses across the country were shut down, but a
dangerous precedent had been set; the concept of popular protest was
now securely entrenched in the public mind as a legitimate means of
showing dissatisfaction with an otherwise distant, unresponsive, and
impenetrable regime.13
In the aftermath of the March 1965 riots, the king dismissed the parlia-
ment and suspended the Constitution of 1962, putting in place a state of
emergency that would last for more than five years. The political parties
were now in serious remission, and the main arenas for political dialogue
switched to informal settings, in the universities, in the salons of the
educated elite, among émigrés and students in France, and within the
rank and file of the trade unions who were closely allied with the left.
The UNEM had served as an incubator for a new generation of activists,
predecessors to an even more ultra-politicized cadre that appeared in the
late 1960s, inspired by youthful militancy worldwide and especially the
Paris uprisings of May 1968. Impregnated with revolutionary ideology,
the “New Left” (al-yasar al-jadid in Arabic) rejected affiliation with any of
the old political parties who were indelibly marked by their compromises
with the authoritarian regime. Many in the New Left were communists
who left the PCM when, in a bid to gain legal status and recognition from
the monarchy, the PCM entered parliament under the new name of the
Party of Liberalism and Socialism (PLS). Deflated by this defection, groups
of leftists split from the PLS and went underground. Student uprisings
continued into the 1970s, with the universities perpetually on strike and
hundreds of activists arrested and sent to jail, including prominent leaders
of the UNFP. In 1973, the departments of social science (history, philoso-
phy, sociology) in the government-controlled universities were “Arabized”
by fiat, changing the curriculum in fundamental ways, in a crude and
obvious attempt to foster a more conservative atmosphere within aca-
demia and to dampen enthusiasm for the radicalizing influences filtering
in from Europe.
In the forefront of the far left was the organization Ila al-Amam (“To the
Forefront”), a political faction composed of young intellectuals such as
Abraham Serfaty, Abdellatif Laâbi, and Ahmed Herzenni, vehemently
opposed to the king, who considered themselves “the avant-garde” of a
popular revolution.14 Repression of Ila al-Amam was immediate and
violent, carried out by security forces working under the direction of the
Ministry of the Interior. In the early 1970s, countless militants were
arrested and put on trial, and many incarcerated for years, including the
charismatic Serfaty, a mining engineer turned political activist. Born in
1926 in Casablanca to a Jewish family, Serfaty trained at the prestigious
École des Mines in Paris where he became an ardent Communist. After
independence, he returned home and became a government adviser on
mining engineering and a university professor. In 1970, he left the
Communist Party and co-founded Ila al-Amam; pursued by the author-
ities, he went underground in 1972 but was captured two years later and
held at the notorious Derb Moulay Cherif prison in Casablanca used for
“interrogating” suspects where he was repeatedly tortured. In 1977, in a
public show trial, he was condemned to life imprisonment with five of his
comrades for “attacking the security of the state.” Serfaty’s beliefs won
him seventeen years in confinement and a front place in the ranks of those
who opposed the increasing autocracy of King Hassan’s rule.15 His
imprisonment and the jailing of his colleagues marks the beginning of a
dark period in Moroccan history popularly known as les années de plomb,
“the years of lead” (roughly 1975–1990), in which many hundreds of
Moroccans entered into a Golgotha of suffering kept hidden from the
rest of society.
Throughout these violent confrontations, Hassan II relied increasingly
on the army and the police as the backbone of his regime, integrating senior
officers into his expanding network of royal patronage. In 1964, General
Oufkir was named Minister of the Interior in addition to his central role in
the intelligence services, thus tightening the link between the army, the
state, and the security apparatus. Hassan II privileged the army above all
other institutions in society, and by 1971, the FAR had grown into a
formidable force of fifty-seven thousand men. The king regarded the
army as the true cross-section of the nation, believing that through it, he
had established a tie to the Moroccan people that the unruly political
parties had denied him. Cozened and patronized by the king, given favors,
gifts of money, land, and promotions, the top brass of the army formed a
praetorian guard that was the envy of the rest of society. Hassan’s con-
fidence in the military explains his readiness to impose the “state of
emergency” in 1965 that represented a final turning away from a fictitious
democracy toward an unadulterated authoritarianism. The rupture
between the parties of the left and the palace consummated by the 1965
state of emergency concentrated overwhelming authority in the hands of
the king, established the military and secret services as his principal tool for
keeping civilian politicians in line, and stifled the national debate on issues
of much-needed reform.16
an economy in disarray
The crisis in the political arena was matched by ongoing turmoil in the
economic sphere. Independent Morocco had inherited a host of problems
from the Protectorate, as well as certain benefits. On the positive side, it
was endowed with a modern infrastructure, some industrial capacity, and
the beginnings of a mechanized agricultural sector. On the negative side,
the grip of “neocolonialism” was still secure, in the form of foreign control
of capital and assets, a weak and dependent agricultural base, and perva-
sive underdevelopment in both city and countryside, where, according to
Ben Barka, “a majority of the population is kept in misery and igno-
rance.”17 For political reasons, many elements of the former colonial
system were kept in place, especially in the countryside where feudal
notables still held sway, largely because of the monarchy’s need to preserve
the privileges of the rural elites who were its most reliable base of sup-
port.18 Perhaps the most vexing economic problem was the vast disparity
between the modern agricultural sector and the traditional one, where
“antique” forms of production were still in use: the use of wooden plows
pulled by undernourished animals surprised even seasoned foreign deve-
lopment experts.
fi g u r e 2 6 . King Muhammad V on a U.S.-made Caterpillar tractor,

demonstrating the benefits of mechanized farming in “Operation Plowshare,” a
government program aimed at increasing agricultural productivity among small
farmers. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)
Distorted patterns of land ownership were at the root of the problem.

In 1956, 1.3 million hectares of land in the modern sector were held
by fifty-nine hundred Europeans and twelve hundred Moroccans,
each with an average holding of 170 hectares, while 1.4 million
Moroccan families farmed 6.5 million hectares in the traditional sector,
with 90 percent farming an average holding of less than two hectares.
Meanwhile, some five hundred thousand Moroccan peasants were
absolutely landless, working as fellahs de khemmas, or tenant farmers,
in a system inherited from precolonial times. Cereal production did not
nearly meet the demands of local consumption, for its cultivation had
been abandoned over time in favor of high value export crops, such as
citrus and vegetables. Recognizing the severity of the problem, the leftist
government of Abdallah Ibrahim (1958–1960) opted for a major pro-
gram of agrarian reform aimed at bringing modern techniques to the
farmer, including mechanized plowing and chemical fertilizers to boost
cereal production. This ambitious plan, dubbed “Operation
Plowshare,” failed when it became apparent that it caused an increase,
not a reduction, in peasant indebtedness. By 1961, the program was

shut down, and Abdallah Ibrahim was dismissed.19
Radical innovations in the countryside did not appeal to the monarchy,
who feared the effects of social dislocation on its rural power base.
Accordingly, only sixteen thousand hectares of former colonial holdings,
a bare minimum, were redistributed to farmers between 1956 and 1960.
Instead of indulging in sweeping land reform similar to that which fol-
lowed the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, the monarchy quietly bought up
the land of departing French settlers piece by piece, keeping it for itself,
reselling it to other big landowners, or redistributing it to its clients in the
government or the army. As one observer noted: “What the Moroccan
government has called land reform is a misnomer for a repossession pro-
gram of land owned by European settlers.”20 Meanwhile, traditional
agriculture languished and experienced diminishing yields, while the
rural population kept growing.
By 1970, the Moroccan economy, from the viewpoint of the working
classes, was in dire straits. Economic indicators showed a steady and steep
decline from 1956 onward, marked by low productivity, rising unemploy-
ment, weak savings and investment, and an unfavorable balance of pay-
ments. A stagnant industrial sector compounded the problem, and
consecutive five-year plans ushered in with fanfare ended in disappointment.
Poor people were experiencing a constant decrease in living standards while
prices kept rising. The price of sugar (a basic commodity for the tea-drinking
Moroccan worker) doubled in the period August 1963–May 1964, and in
roughly the same period, the cost of living rose by 11.5 percent. Meanwhile,
wages for urban workers had been frozen since 1956 and the demographic
situation was becoming critical: the annual population growth rate was
3.3 percent, overall unemployment stood at 45 percent but went as high
as 60 percent in rural areas, the cities were filling with migrants from
the countryside, and migration to Europe failed to absorb the surplus.
Moreover, the flight of capital abroad created pressure on currency reserves,
and after 1968, Morocco began borrowing steadily from the International
Monetary Fund (IMF). Fifteen years after independence, according to econ-
omist Abdul Aziz Belal, Morocco was faced with “enormous needs in terms
of creating jobs, education, training, and improving the quality of life of the
mass of its population.” While official economic policy was ostensibly
liberal, in fact, it was a form of state-directed capitalism aimed at expanding
private wealth to benefit the few.21
Economic malaise was not only a matter of statistics, it was also etched
on the surface of daily life. In the winter of 1971, in the streets of Rabat,
mendicants sprawled on the narrow sidewalks, their legs and arms out-
stretched, forming a tangled obstacle course for the passer-by. Children
peddled cigarettes, one by one, on the terrace of the Hotel Balima;
oranges cost three cents a kilo in the suq in Salé, and twenty cents
would buy a bulging sack so heavy that two people had to carry it.
Rents were low but so were wages; ten dollars a week bought the services
of a full-time housekeeper. Peace Corps volunteers, French cooperants,
hippies who came to roost, lived in a luxury unattainable at home. The
elite was safely hidden away behind high walls in the posh garden suburb
of Souissi, while working people huddled four and five to a room in the
quartiers populaires. Gracious public parks built under the French had
become dangerous wastelands of broken trees inhabited by feral cats,
country roads were single-lane affairs made for donkey carts and mean-
dering tourists, while ancient tirailleurs, some still wearing odd bits of
their old army uniforms, sat in dusty cafés and dozed in the sun.
Inequality was woven into the texture of the quotidian and misery was
its omnipresent face. The situation in Morocco, if one could only read it
properly, was rife for an explosion.
a season of coups
Despite the overall gloomy atmosphere, the end of the sixties witnessed
a small economic boom, powered by the monarchy’s decision to invest
state resources in capital development. Under Hassan’s determined
direction, an ambitious program of dam construction begun in 1968
boosted the amount of irrigated land available for growing export
crops; the price of phosphates, of which Morocco was now the chief
global exporter, rallied and began to rise; and tourism, targeted as a
major growth industry, stimulated a flow of foreign currency. Without
abundant oil, Morocco could not develop heavy industry, but concen-
trated instead on import substitution along with agricultural modern-
ization; as a result, the economy enjoyed an unexpected annual growth
rate of 5.6 percent after 1968. While the king gained some popularity
from these successes, there was little “trickle down”; the main benefi-
ciaries were still a narrow elite, and to a certain extent, an evolving
urban middle class. The extravagant lifestyles of palace favorites and
government officials and their families, and especially of the “golden
youth” of Casablanca who engaged in unabashedly open consumption
on a scale unimaginable to most Moroccans, were offensive to the
working and professional classes. The seething resentment that would

burst out in the abortive coups of 1971 and 1972 could be read as
attempts by the middle social levels to influence basic understandings
about the distribution of wealth and the exercise of power. These senti-
ments were especially strong within the army, where self-appointed
“keepers” of morality, often from of rural backgrounds and newly
integrated into the urban middle class, were conscious of their position
as public guardians and were deeply offended by the growing social
disparities.22
The king declared an end to the state of emergency in July 1970 and
immediately promulgated a new constitution approved by referendum
(98.5 percent in favor) that gave the throne virtually unlimited powers.
The Istiqlal and the UNFP united into the “Kutla,” or national bloc, but
boycotted the elections, leaving the way open for the makhzan to fill the
seats of the parliament with its own, hand-picked members. Meanwhile,
Ila al-Aman organized on the far left, and a new group of religious
extremists, the Shabiba Islamiyya (Islamic Youth) quietly congealed on
the right, but both were beyond the bounds of political give-and-take. No
one was misled to believe that this flurry of activity had in any way changed
the fundamental calculus of politics in Morocco, or that the palace had
rescinded its role at its head; by all accounts, “the king was the unchal-
lenged master of the system.”23
The explosion, when it came, took place where it was least expected – in
the ranks of the supposedly loyal army command. If there was any single
factor that ignited the first coup of July 10, 1971, it was the accumulated
evidence of unpunished corruption in high places: ministers on the take,
illegal land transfers, enormous kickbacks from foreign companies to
members of the royal inner circle. In the summer of 1971, the situation
reached a tipping point, and a group of top army officers, led by Lieutenant
Colonel M’hamed Ababou, head of the military academy at
Ahermoumou, and General Mohamed Medbouh, Director of the Royal
Military Household, a man widely respected for his honesty and rectitude,
decided to take matters into their own hands. What motivated these high-
ranking officers to act? Though their reasons were undoubtedly complex,
evidence points to their disgust with the deteriorating moral climate.
Members of a proud officer caste, mostly veterans of World War II and
Indochina (with the exception of Ababou), it seems that the inner circle
that directed the 1971 coup (who never had a chance to speak out) believed
that decadence at the top was leading the country down the path of ruin,
and it was their duty to act.24
fi g u r e 2 7 . The Skhirat coup, July 1971, as seen through the lens of a U.S. Peace
Corps volunteer who witnessed the attack on the headquarters of Moroccan Radio
and Television (RTM) by rebel soldiers: (a) loyalists defending the radio station;
(b) a rebel soldier is detained; (c) and roughly tossed into a waiting truck; (d) rebel
cadets, now prisoners, are driven away. (Courtesy of Ron Cardoos, RPCV
Morocco, 1970–1972)
They made their move on the occasion of the Hassan’s forty-second

birthday party held at the beach-side palace at Skhirat on July 10, 1971,
where hundreds of male guests, including the entire government and heads
of the diplomatic corps, were assembled to eat, drink, and play golf.
Twelve hundred young cadets from Ahermoumou were driven to the
palace in a convoy, given live ammunition, and ordered “not to allow
anyone to escape.” On entering the interior of the palace, the cadets were
greeted by a sumptuous banquet prepared for the royal invitees, the like
of which they had probably never seen; in a rage, they upended the heavily
laden tables, knocking over pyramids of delicacies and trodding on
plates and glasses. In the pandemonium that followed, government minis-
ters, diplomats, and the personal physician of the king were pitilessly
massacred.25 Somehow, Hassan II and his immediate family, including
his brother Prince qAbdallah and eight-year-old-son, Crown Prince
Muhammad, managed to escape, through a combination of luck and

quick-wittedness.
Invested on the spot by the king with full military and civilian powers,
General Oufkir took charge. Meanwhile, the Moroccan people stood by in
amazement and watched as events unfolded via national radio and TV, even
as its headquarters were being beseiged by the rebels. In Rabat, the great
wooden gates of the Casbah were swung shut and barred for the first time in
recent memory, closing its inhabitants within as army trucks rumbled
through the streets below. Noisy antiroyalist demonstrations broke out
here and there, but for the most part, people were fearful, mute, and impas-
sive. By midnight, Oufkir informed the king that Ababou and Medbouh
were dead, and that troops loyal to the monarchy had restored order. But the
toll was a heavy one: more than 100 guests killed and 125 wounded; among
the rebels, 150 dead and 900 held in custody. Three days later, on July 13, ten
surviving rebel officers were shot on an empty lot south of Rabat, as the king
reportedly watched from a distance through binoculars.26 The coup
was over, but in its aftermath, ordinary Moroccans asked how Hassan’s
favorites had turned into such a pack of wolves, and whether anyone left in
the army was worthy of trust. The seeds of suspicion were cast far and wide.
They also asked why so many of the plotters were Berbers, as indeed they
were, what role the all-knowing Oufkir might have played in events, and
how the coup could possibly have taken place without his knowledge.27
With the king isolated, the army discredited, and the political parties in
disarray, Morocco seemed to be a rudderless ship adrift in a sea of
troubles. The crisis worsened on August 16, 1972, when a Royal Air
Maroc Boeing 727 carrying home Hassan II and his brother Prince
qAbdallah from an official visit to France was attacked by four U.S.-
supplied F-5 fighter jets from the base at Kénitra, as it entered Moroccan
air space. Once again, luck was with the king. The American-trained pilots
of the F5s failed to deliver the coup de grâce, permitting the king’s bullet-
riddled passenger jet to land safely at Rabat-Salé airport with its royal
cargo intact. This time, the all-powerful Oufkir was identified as the chief
plotter, along with two other high-ranking Air Force officers, one of whom
was Mohamed Amekrane, commandant of the Kénitra air force base.28
That evening, Oufkir was summoned to the palace at Skhirat where
Hassan awaited him; at his side was Ahmed Dlimi, another shadowy
henchman soon to succeed Oufkir as Minister of the Interior. Oufkir
never left the palace alive.
Was he assassinated, or was his bullet-riddled corpse the result of
“suicide,” as Hassan II later claimed in his memoirs?29 A succession of
mysteries surround these sensational events. For example, Oufkir’s

motives in fomenting the second coup were not at all clear. Was he, too,
unsettled by the excesses of the regime? Did he have secret desires to
complete the royal housecleaning and become a Moroccan Robespierre?
The truth about these matters is buried with him. Meanwhile, Hassan II’s
white-hot wrath was vented on Oufkir’s immediate family. His wife and
six children, the youngest only a toddler, once intimates of the palace, were
taken to a remote desert outpost where they were incarcerated for fifteen
years in appalling conditions. The Oufkir family made their escape in
1987, only to be recaptured and held under house arrest for four more
years until 1991, when they were finally set free.30
As for the pilots who participated in the assassination attempt, eleven
were condemned to death after a brief trial, and thirty-five others were
sentenced to jail terms ranging from three to twenty years, while 117 others
were acquitted. Those with longer sentences were transferred to Tazmamart
prison, a secret hell in the southeastern desert, where they were joined by the
condemned of Skhirat. Treatment of these prisoners was hidden from public
view until 1992, when, after eighteen years of solitary confinement, the
living dead reemerged from their desert prison and began to tell their stories.
But not until after the demise of Hassan II were their testimonies published
for the first time in Morocco, and the full extent of the injustices committed
against them revealed to a shocked and disbelieving Moroccan public.
The two failed coups, accompanied by pervasive corruption, repression,
and political turmoil, shook the monarchy to its very foundations and
exposed the fragility of its claim to legitimacy. Respect for the king had
reached a nadir; for some, it appeared that Hassan’s days were numbered,
while for others, his two hair’s-breadth escapes were a sign of his indelible
charisma. The advanced degree of social and political decay demonstrated
by the two attempts was profoundly disturbing. Stripped of his closest
advisers, shattered by public revelations of his personal failures, Hassan II
entered a period of deep self-reflection during which he reexamined the
underpinnings of his rule. Characteristically, this period of introspection
was followed by one of decisive action. He resumed a dialogue with the
opposition parties in order to widen his base of support, and purged the
army of doubtful elements. He personally assumed the position of Minister
of Defense and reorganized the structure of the FAR, multiplying its opera-
tional units to prevent any concentrations of coercive force.31 And most
important of all, he revitalized ties with the conservative Islamic establish-
ment, in an effort to use it as a counterweight to the secularized military
higher-ups and the political parties that had failed him. This strategy led the
m a p 3 . The Western Sahara in 1979
monarch down a new path that would ultimately strengthen the position of
the religious element both within and outside the government. At the same
time, he turned outward in search of new avenues through which he might
rebuild a national consensus, using the “cause” of the Western Sahara as a
convenient launching pad to rehabilitate his reputation.
the war in the western sahara

and the “sacred union”
Seizing on the issue of Morocco’s “lost” Saharan territories, the king made
their recovery a point of national honor and the centerpiece of his domestic
politics in the years following the failed coups. Morocco’s claim to the
Western Sahara was rooted in historical memory harking back to the days
of the nineteenth-century patriot Ma al-qAynayn; it was also a main compo-
nent of the Istiqlal’s vision of a “Greater Morocco” adopted by the mon-
archy at independence. During the colonial period, Spain occupied the vast
territory of 266,000 square kilometers that included (according to a Spanish
census of 1974) a population of about 74,000 that jumped to 330,000
Sahrawis when inhabitants of the surrounding territories (Morocco,
Mauritania, and Algeria) were counted in.32 When Mauritania became
independent in 1961 with the backing of other African states, a large
chunk of Morocco’s imagined Saharan domain was permanently excised.
But when Spain in 1971 announced its intention to withdraw from its
Saharan possessions, Hassan II saw a new opportunity to revive the
Saharan issue, and engaged in various tactics to press a Moroccan claim.
fi g u r e 2 8 . Women volunteers in the hundreds were mobilized to join in the

Green March in November 1975. Brought by train to key rallying points, women
figured prominently in government-staged demonstrations supporting Morocco’s
claim to the contested Saharan territories. (Bruno Barbey/Magnum Photos)
Rich deposits of phosphates had been discovered in the Western Sahara in

1962, offering an additional enticement. Moroccan ambitions, however,
ran directly counter to the hopes of the Sahrawi people and their newly
formed military arm, the Polisario Front (the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Saguia el Hamra and Río de Oro), whose goal was national
self-determination. Both Mauritania and Algeria made known their objec-
tion to Morocco’s plans, but Hassan II was undeterred.33
In May 1975, with the Caudillo Francisco Franco on his deathbed,
Spain promised to leave the Sahara “in the shortest time possible,”
prompting Hassan II to act unilaterally.34 In great secrecy, he personally
planned the “Green March,” a massive wave of 350,000 Moroccan
volunteers armed “only with their Qur’ans” and their red and green
banners of Morocco and Islam. This human flood surged across the
frontier on November 6, 1975, uprooting border signs to demonstrate
their belief that the Western Sahara should be Moroccan.35 Ordinary
Moroccans rallied to the king’s side, and a torrent of popular patriotism
erased growing doubts about his competency to rule. Only the extreme
left proclaimed its support for Sahrawi independence in a stunning act of
defiance, thus deepening its own political isolation. All other organized
groups, however, rode the wave of enthusiasm, allowing the king to
announce the formation of a “sacred union” of political parties who
believed that Moroccan ownership of the Western Sahara was a non-
negotiable and natural right. In one brilliant stroke, Hassan II had
cornered his political opponents, boosted the flagging spirits of the
military, hastened a Spanish withdrawal, assumed a spot on the world
stage, and garnered an attention, prestige, and a legitimacy he had not
experienced in years. In the aftermath of the march, the UN granted
administrative authority, but not sovereignty, to both Morocco and
Mauritania over the Spanish Sahara, but the Mauritanians soon with-
drew, leaving Morocco in de facto control.
The Polisario, however, remained firm in its commitment to total inde-
pendence, backed by the promise of Algerian aid. On December 19, 1975,
the Polisario declared war on Morocco, and Hassan II found himself
embroiled in a desert conflict for the second time in his kingship. The
confrontation quickly took on the profile of other Cold War clashes: the
“revolutionary,” anticolonial forces of Algeria and its Sahrawi clients on
one side, and “reactionary” Morocco, backed by large shipments of
military equipment from the United States, on the other. The war assumed
even greater international éclat when the Polisario, warmly embraced by
the Third World movement, launched a propaganda offensive against the
fi g u r e 2 9 . More than 350,000 volunteers backed King Hassan II’s claim to the
Western Sahara, crossing the border between Morocco and the former Spanish
territory in the “Green March” of November 1975, armed only with their Qur’ans,
the national flag, and the photo of the king. (Bruno Barbey/Magnum Photos)
monarchy. Other African states swiftly came to its side, favoring the cause
of “Africa’s last colony” over Morocco’s irredentist claims. To many in the
developing world, it was a struggle between the forces of an old-style,
selfish, and land-hungry nationalism versus the will of an oppressed people
yearning to be free.
Meanwhile, the war was going badly for the Moroccans. Rejecting
methods of conventional warfare, the Sahrawis adopted guerrilla techni-
ques that brought them surprising success. Bouncing over familiar terrain
in their ubiquitous Land Rovers, they confounded their adversaries with
their lightning mobility. Polisario forces entered Moroccan territory in
January 1979 and seized the border town of Tan-Tan, capturing hundreds
of Moroccan soldiers and carting them off to prison camps inside Algeria,
where they were incarcerated for years. This phase of the war culminated
in October 1979, with the bloody battle of Smara, where more than a
thousand men on each side were killed. By the end of the decade, the
balance sheet for Morocco was not especially favorable: crushing military
setbacks, an inability to exploit the rich phosphates of the newly acquired
territory because of the war, and diplomatic isolation. In 1978, U.S.
government specialists estimated that the Saharan war was costing

Morocco about one million dollars a day.36
Stunned by the negative accounting, Morocco changed tactics and
decided to fortify a reduced security zone instead of attempting to clear a
limitless expanse of open desert. The method of building a series of
“berms,” or defensive walls along the Moroccan-Algerian border, gave
the army greater control over the battlefield, tipping the balance in
Morocco’s favor. Eventually, the Moroccans were able to gain control
over most of the territory, allowing King Hassan to negotiate a UN-backed
cease-fire in 1989 intended to be followed by a referendum according to
which the Sahrawis would choose between integration with Morocco or
independence. But an end to the problem was not yet in sight. Hassan’s
concerns regarding the terms of a referendum, on the one side, and the
Polisario’s adamant refusal to back down on its demand for unconditional
and full independence, on the other, turned the Saharan situation into a
never-ending stalemate. Moreover, more than one hundred thousand
Sahrawis who had fled the Moroccan invasion in 1976 still languished in
camps inside the Algerian border, creating a permanent refugee population
under the care of international humanitarian organizations.37
fi g u r e 3 0 . Crown Prince Sidi Muhammad, the future Muhammad VI, was

trained for the duties of kingship from a very young age. Here he is seen at a rally
in the desert, preparing to address volunteers assembled to join the Green March,
November 1975. (Abbas/Magnum Photos).
Nevertheless, the political gains of the Saharan affair for the regime
were considerable. By creating an atmosphere of national emergency over
the Sahara, the king was able to build a consensus across the political
spectrum that reified the monarchy as the pre-eminent pole of Moroccan
national unity. Yet the Saharan issue was a double-edged sword, for in
associating possession of these remote territories so closely with the matter
of royal legitimacy, Hassan II raised the stakes for the future. After more
than three decades of war in which the army has taken many losses, failure
on the part of the makhzan to accept anything short of full integration of
the territory into Morocco would be unacceptable, for it would raise the
specter of an “amputated” kingdom and a weakened throne. Hassan II
bequeathed to his son and successor Muhammad VI an open and trouble-
some dossier – “a war he could not win, but could not afford to lose.”38
hassan the unifier

The Saharan issue also presented challenges on the domestic front. On the
global scale, the war had brought Hassan II closer to the West, including
the United States, as well as to conservative Arab states that supplied him
with money and arms. He used this moment to push for the
“Moroccanization” of the economy, by transferring to political loyalists
and high-ranking military officers state-held assets, agricultural lands, and
enterprises that were more than 50 percent foreign owned. The operation
encompassed thousands of enterprises and changed overnight the propor-
tion of Moroccan-owned industrial enterprises from 18 to 55 percent.
Most of this wealth was now concentrated in the hands of thirty-six
major families who controlled two-thirds of the moroccanized economy;
suddenly, Morocco became a country with a sizeable class of multimillion-
aires. Moreover, in the period 1973–1977, the country experienced
another economic boom, with an annual growth rate of 7.3 percent per
year, a new record, financed primarily by borrowing from abroad. These
economic measures, coupled with the Saharan triumph, collectively
revived the king’s fortunes and gave him the opportunity to declare himself
as “Hassan the Unifier,” the leader who single-handedly brought the
nation together. Moreover, the necessity of integrating the new southern
territories into the Moroccan economy required the building of expensive
infrastructure where none had previously existed, as well as the provision
of services to a neglected Sahrawi population. On the average, the
Moroccan government spent six times more on the Sahrawis in the period
1977–1980 than on the rest of the Moroccan people.39
This shift in priorities was not appreciated by most of the population,

for it did little to help solve endemic problems of poverty and political
nonparticipation. The “national pact” observed during the Saharan con-
flict was broken in 1978, when 130,000 teachers went out on strike to
protest working conditions, followed by phosphate miners, transport
workers, industrial workers, and even the ground crew of Royal Air
Maroc. Workers formed a new national union, the CDT (Democratic
Confederation of Workers) that broke with the UMT and its parent
organization, the Istiqlal, for its “reprehensible collaboration with man-
agement and reactionism.”40 Tensions within the working class grew
incrementally when a severe drought at the beginning of the 1980s
required large-scale imports of wheat, elevating the price of bread and
couscous, the daily fare of the average Moroccan, which had been regu-
larly subsidized for years. Under pressure from the IMF, the government
was forced to adopt an austerity program that removed subsidies, raising
the price of basic foodstuffs about 30 percent. In response, the CDT and its
allied party, the USFP (Socialist Union of Popular Forces), a party that
evolved out of the UNFP in 1975, organized a general strike in Casablanca
on June 20, 1981; this strike soon degenerated into a popular uprising.
Strike action was a new phenomenon in Morocco, according to its organ-
izers, because it brought together the unemployed, industrial workers,
public servants, students, and self-employed shopkeepers, a broad cross-
section of the working and lower middle classes who were fed up with the
conditions of daily life. The crowd set fire to cars and looted the shops. The
police lost control of the situation when rioters advanced toward them
throwing rocks and crying “Kill us! Kill us.”41
Hassan II had to call out the army to restore calm, but the signals
coming from the mob were clear; namely, the hunger for change was no
longer confined to rebellious high school youth as it was in 1965, but had
infected the new urban middle classes as well. As one observer remarked:
“The country had undergone a profound change in its demography, in the
composition of its social classes, and in the mentality of its citizens.”42 The
state could no longer solve social problems by crushing them with brutal
force alone. The response of the king was to not repeat his error of the
1960s when he put absolute coercive power into the hands of one man.
Instead, he separated military, gendarmerie, and Ministry of the Interior
functions into separate dossiers and used them in tandem to quell the
revolt. He assigned the Interior portfolio to Driss Basri, a French-trained
lawyer who did not shrink from using strong-arm tactics to end the 1981
riots. Basri’s efficiency won him a place at the king’s side as the chief
planner of the campaign of repression carried out throughout the 1980s

and 1990s. A shrewd operator within the labyrinth of the makhzan, Basri
presented himself as a loyal servant of the king, saying once that he had
filled his head with secrets, locked them in, and had given the key to
Hassan II. His ministry was an abode of power with walls thickened by
corruption, and his somber figure overshadowed the last two decades of
Hassan’s reign until he was removed by Muhammad VI in 1999, to a vast
public sigh of relief.
More “bread riots” occurred during the 1980s, as the government sought
to manage its economic troubles through debt restructuring under the watch-
ful eye of the World Bank. Slowly, after years of stagnation, the makhzan
began to work its way out of the economic morass, but not without making
difficult choices that came down especially hard on an increasingly militant
urban underclass. Fiscal matters took precedence over social ones, with salary
freezes for government employees and the elimination of food subsidies for
the masses. Every time popular outbursts acted as a safety valve for discon-
tent, the authorities struck back hard. Riots in Nador in the Rif in January
1984 turned into a bloodbath in which dozens were killed and supposedly
secretly buried at night by the police. On each occasion, the government
forced its way to a solution by cowing the public with a sense of hayba (fear),
which became the elemental tie between the king and his people.43
Wallowing in heavy debts, operating according to tactics of extreme
repression, the regime was on autopilot, playing the political game accord-
ing to familiar rules of reward and punishment, cooptation and isolation,
tension and stalemate, that had become its habitual modus operandi. The
exterior face of political life manifested an eerie calm that hardly betrayed
the ferment taking place beneath the surface. But there was indeed an
important groundswell underway, much of it beyond the eyes and ears of
the makhzan, that was about to burst into the public arena. The awakening
of civil society in the 1980s, completely outside the paralytic embrace of
either the government or the political parties, was the novel factor. As
Morocco turned the corner toward the last decade of the century, Hassan
the Unifier found himself confronted by a new combination of social
forces, far less easily manipulated than the old, that demanded a change
in strategy and outlook. The era of liberalization was at hand, and Hassan
II was impelled to respond.
7
The Second Age of Hassan II
The Velvet Glove (1975–1999)
Following the triumph of the Green March and the consolidation of

the “sacred union,” Hassan II came to the conclusion that allegiance
to the state could coexist with moderate expressions of opposition.
Public opinion took the lead in showing him that the iron fist was no
longer the most efficient instrument of rule, and that allowing criticism
and dissent might even be healthy for the regime. The rise of an
Islamist movement and other signs of social ferment helped to speed
the progressive emergence of a civil society occupying the open space
between the individual and the state, as human rights and civic asso-
ciations, feminist and professional organizations, Berberist groups,
and other special interests proliferated in the public sphere. The ques-
tion was, how to allow this effervescence to go forward without
causing an explosion.1
In a related development, the parties of the left, excluded from
power for more than a generation, gained new life and rejoined the
political process, with both the USFP (a radical splinter group of the
UNFP formally declared in 1975) and the PPS (the Party of Progress
and Socialism, the former Communist Party reborn under yet another
new name) reentering the political arena. They were joined by older
parties of the center and the right, complicating even further the
intricate mosaic of Moroccan party politics. The 1984 elections, with
its multiparty participation, confirmed the necessity for government by
coalition, an arrangement that allowed the king to continue in his role
as grand master of the political game, variously balancing, co-opting,
distancing, and integrating the pieces on the chessboard, depending on
the circumstances.
187
the rise of modern political islam

A critical development of the 1980s was the reemergence of Islam as a
salient factor in politics. The admixture of religion and politics in Morocco
has roots deep in the past and the interweaving of the two is an ongoing
theme in Moroccan history, especially given the duality of the king’s claim
to legitimacy: a political function, based on his control of a monopoly of
coercive power, and a religious function, due to his prophetic lineage and
his leadership of the community of the faithful. The fusion of the religious
and the political in his personhood is symbolized by the motto of the
nation: “God, Nation, and King.” (Allah, watan, malik). As political
scientist Malika Zeghal notes, “this fusion . . . is a historically constructed
political fiction that might become contested, albeit one that has great
mobilizing and legitimizing power.” The monarch, despite all of his gal-
vanizing potential, has never held absolute control over the definition of
Islam, leaving an open space for other contenders.2 In the precolonial
period, we noted the political instability generated when the sufi shaykh
Muhammad al-Kattani contested the legitimacy of Sultan qAbd al-Hafiz as
an example of the kind of dissent that religious personalities could muster
against an all-powerful makhzan. Religiously motivated interventions in
politics were common in the early twentieth century as well: qAllal al-Fasi’s
vision of the postcolonial Moroccan state included an important place for
the moral authority of Islam, to be exercised by an educated, modernized,
and essentially apolitical ulama.3
In the era of Hassan II, the Islamist option as a political force first
showed itself in the universities in the late 1960s, mainly as a counter-
balance to groups advocating ideologies of the left. In 1969, qAbd al-Karim
Moutip founded the al-Shabiba al-Islamiyya (Islamic Youth) organization.
Moutip was a former UNFP member who veered sharply in the opposite
direction and created a rabidly antileftist movement inspired by the think-
ing of Sayyid Qutb, intellectual light of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt
in the 1950s. Between the years 1972 and 1975, the Shabiba occupied the
space in the universities vacated by the UNEM when it was repressed by
the regime. The Shabiba had a clandestine, paramilitary wing whose
penchant for violence hastened its demise when it was involved in the
assassination of the popular labor leader Omar Benjelloun in 1975. After
this event, Moutip had to flee Morocco, but he left behind elements of a
radical Islamist organization that were later enfolded into other groups.
Closely related with the growing Islamist challenge were the questions
of Arabization in the schools and religious education. The ideology of the
The Second Age of Hassan II: 1975–1999 189
Istiqlal supported the teaching of Arabic as far back as the free school
movement of the 1920s. After independence, the aim of the party was
complete Arabization, but the chaos within the educational system in the
1960s slowed the changeover from French to Arabic. In the late 1970s,
Islamic education and Arabic language became required subjects in the
public schools. Hassan II, who was completely bilingual, encouraged this
development, in the hope that teaching Islamic subjects would counter-
balance the rise in leftist agitation. At the same time, in 1973 departments
of Islamic studies were created at the universities, often replacing depart-
ments of philosophy, allowing for an influx of Islamic-leaning students
that eventually led to their takeover of the UNEM. By 1992, Arabization of
the secondary school curriculum was complete and the humanities facul-
ties were well on their way to being completely Arabicized. The introduc-
tion of compulsory Islamic education benefited pro-Islamist activists, who
monopolized the training of teachers and the writing of school curricula.
Following these changes, the universities became a vortex of Islamist
student activism, with frequent and often bloody clashes between secular
students and their Islamist opponents.4
By the 1990s, new Islamic organizations had arisen from the embers of
the Shabiba. Foremost among them was a group headed by the charismatic
Abdessalam Yassine, a former high school teacher who adopted the per-
sona of a sufi mystic and acquired a large and devoted personal following.
Shaykh Yassine took advantage of Morocco’s multiple disruptions of the
early seventies – political repression, economic woes, a lack of jobs, and
social malaise – to garner a following and boldly attack the king person-
ally. In a public letter sent to Hassan II in 1974 entitled “Islam or the
Deluge,” Yassine called on the monarch to repent, mend his ways, and
“return to God.” The shaykh’s self-styled role as “holy chastiser” was
based on his adoption of the timeworn trope of the simple wise man
admonishing the wayward prince. But his letter went beyond that, for it
was not simply a lesson in proper behavior; rather, it was a specific indict-
ment of the king that catalogued his political errors and questioned his
religious sincerity, with the implied warning that divine punishment was at
hand. Naturally, the king was not receptive to the schoolteacher’s
reproach, and Yassine’s impetuousness earned him three years in a mental
hospital. His major “crime” was the explicitly subversive assertion that the
monarch was not the sole source of religious legitimacy in the state, and
even a humble shaykh could take a stand and criticize his actions.5
By censuring Hassan II in this publicly ostentatious manner, Yassine
was drawing a clear connection between himself and the figure of
Muhammad b qAbd al-Kabir al-Kattani, the sufi shaykh who had harshly
criticized Sultan qAbd al-Hafiz for his failure to halt European incursions in
the first decade of the twentieth century. At that time of national crisis,
al-Kattani had also adopted a stance of religious authority and moral
rectitude, coupled with public indignation toward the mistakes of the
sultan. However, al-Kattani’s cruel fate was withheld from Yassine, who
reemerged from his incarceration in sound health, only to be immediately
placed under house arrest. However, his confinement did not prevent him
from building his movement, al-qAdl wa-l-Ihsan (Justice and Good Deeds,
founded in 1987), and from writing tracts infused with messianic excite-
ment and the message that history was on his side. Concurrently, the
influence of his ideas was felt in the public sphere through street demon-
strations, the pronouncements of his acolyte-daughter Nadia, and later,
through the internet and other forms of new media.
Alarmed by the seemingly mass appeal of Yassine, the monarchy out-
lawed his organization in 1990, but interest in Islamist organizations
whose discourse was infused with religious fervor did not recede. At the
same time, some Islamic militants realized that in order to gain a foothold
in the system, their tactics had to change. Morocco’s support for the United
States in the Gulf War of 1991–1992 against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was
an opportunity and a moment of inspiration. Public opposition to
Morocco’s pro-Western stance provoked angry street demonstrations in
Fez, Casablanca, Tangier and Kénitra, calling attention to the fact that
large segments of the population were more drawn to Islamic solidarity
than they were to a policy that favored the West.6 Wishing to control this
sentiment without resorting to violence, the king adopted a new strategy in
the 1990s that would integrate moderate Islamist parties into the political
sphere, so long as they did not call into question the legitimacy of the
monarchy.7 Soon a range of parties emerged out of the remnants of already
existing Islamic groups, ready to follow the rules of the game as outlined by
Hassan II.
Foremost among them was the PJD, the Justice and Development Party,
a loose coalition of groups that formed a political party in 1998. Before
being allowed to join the political field, its organizers had to agree to a list
of rules: “recognition of the concept of Commander of the Faithful,
renunciation of violence, recognition of the Maliki religious school, and
the legitimacy of Moroccan territorial integrity”; in sum, the vital compo-
nents of the national creed, as defined by Hassan II.8 Made up of elements
from across the Islamist spectrum, the PJD was headed by Abdelilah
Benkirane, an engineer who dressed in Western style and spoke both
French and Arabic. Whereas relations between the king and shaykh
Yassine had been based on bitter antagonism, the connection between
the monarchy and the PJD was based on a cautious civility, creating a
situation unprecedented in Moroccan politics. The PJD’s modest showing
in the 1997 elections certified its need for “respectability,” while reassuring
liberal and secular-leaning Moroccans that there really was no reason for
alarm, for the PJD was only one among multiple contenders. It seemed that
the king had cleverly managed to steer between the dangerous extremes of
banning the Islamists from political life, on the one hand, and allowing
them free rein, on the other. Unlike neighboring Algeria, where in 1991 the
state came undone over the question of Islamism, the Moroccan monarchy
adopted a different and wiser course, neutralizing the religious factor and
gradually introducing it into institutionalized political space.9
the politicization of women’s issues

The political opening of the 1980s also gave birth to a movement aimed at
improving women’s status and enhancing their legal rights. As the political
parties emerged from the shadows and claimed their reward for having
participated in the “sacred union” associated with the Western Sahara
war, women party activists were assigned the task of campaigning to
attract female votes in the hotly contested legislative elections that fol-
lowed. Soon the number of women active in politics led to an expansion of
women’s energies into areas of feminist concern. There were few prior
models to guide these women, for the history of the women’s movement in
Morocco is barely written, as are the historic, but often muted, roles
women played in public life.10
During the Protectorate period, sociologist Jacques Berque remarked
on “the outstanding economic dignity of the women” in the Berber
villages of the High Atlas (not noticing, perhaps, that they were
doing the lion’s share of the backbreaking work); in urban settings,
modernizing men understood the value of educating girls. By the 1930s,
a few young women began to engage publicly in political discussions
and embryonic women’s groups were springing up under the aegis of
the nationalist movement, mainly for the purpose of propagating its
ideology. Because of widespread female illiteracy, politically aware
women were few and far between, they were almost always closely
allied with powerful men, and they were rarely given decision-making
authority. Women played an active role in the War of Liberation in a
variety of tasks, evading the police, carrying weapons, teaching literacy
classes, and raising the consciousnesses of other women, but never in the
forefront of leadership.11
The cautious integration of women into public life took a leap forward
at mid-century, as economic factors began to shape behavior.
Modernization theory visualized a positivist role for the Moroccan
woman as “educator” of the modern family, as partner to a monogamous
husband (polygamy was in fact declining), and as participant in the work
force. A 1952 census estimated that one in eight women worked outside
the home for wages as domestics, factory workers, or in the handicrafts
industry, a marked increase over the prewar period.12 The dark side of
women’s work was exposed by a 1951 study into the “reserved” quarter of
Bousbir in Casablanca by two French researchers, influenced by Simone de
Beauvoir’s groundbreaking pro-feminist book, The Second Sex (1949). In
a precise and richly documented report, they concluded that three to six
thousand women were employed as prostitutes in Bousbir, and that per-
haps thirty thousand women in Casablanca earned income through the sex
trade.13 Buried in the turmoil that preceded independence, this study
presents data on the historical exploitation of poor women in one of its
most extreme forms.
In contrast, the situation of elite and middle-class women had changed
dramatically. The arrival of U.S. soldiers during World War II, the intro-
duction of American and French films, the invasion of Egyptian cinema in
the early 1950s, the proliferation of newspaper advertising, women’s
magazines, radio and TV, had changed women’s self-perception and
their relations with men by commodifying femininity and introducing
new styles in dress and comportment. Fatima Mernissi, in her absorbing
personal memoir, Dreams of Trespass, catalogues her mother’s campaign
to rid herself of her veil by shrinking it out of existence. But these external
changes did not necessarily signal a move toward women’s equality.
Women were still unorganized, atomized, and legally embedded within
the family-based patriarchal system. The severe repression of the political
parties of the left after 1965 was especially dampening for the growth of a
women’s movement, since most female organizations were affiliated with
the progressive political parties that fell afoul of the makhzan. However,
young women continued to be active through student organizations such
as the UNEM, where feminist leader Aïcha Belarbi, Morocco’s ambassa-
dor to the European Commission in 2000, received her first political
education.14
The most significant shift came in the period 1975–1989, as women
became more active within the resuscitating political parties of the left.
Rather than launching a fruitless frontal assault on the male-dominated

political system, women adopted more subtle and inventive methods. One
approach was “secular,” using party and public platforms to argue that
the subordination of women was not a class issue, but rather a gender one,
infringing on universally ordained standards of human rights. Another
approach, popular among religious women, was to advocate for change on
the basis of ijtihad, the doctrine of reform within the framework of Islamic
law. Mapping yet another tactic, the ADFM (Democratic Association of
Moroccan Women), once affiliated with the PPS, wrenched itself free from
the grip of its parent organization and became a separate entity, pursuing
its own course of action independent of party politics. Other groups did the
same on both the right and left of the political spectrum. These various
approaches were effective in widening the arena in which women’s issues
were debated in the face of stiff resistance from the political class as a
whole.15
After 1989, in step with developments on the world scene that encour-
aged feminist activism on a global scale, a quiet revolution began to take
hold in Moroccan women’s personal lives. Increased education, opportu-
nities for employment, the growth of urbanization, the rise in the age of
marriage, a dramatic drop in fertility, the growth of the nuclear family, the
emergence of the notion of “individual” identity as opposed to a family-
oriented, male-controlled one, were factors that improved the position of
women from all walks of life and all degrees of religious conviction. By
1995, twenty-two women’s associations had registered with the Ministry
of Social Affairs, and five others were in the early stages of formation,
almost all located in major urban centers.16
Despite these changes, the state continued to be ambivalent in its
attitude toward women’s rights. While the legal system of Morocco
was secularized overall, as of 1999, women remained subject to an
unreformed Mudawwana, the religiously inspired and conservative
Family Code that was fast becoming the target of efforts to substantially
improve women’s legal status.17 Meanwhile, other forces were working
in their favor, especially on the international level. Moroccan participa-
tion in the UN-sponsored World Conferences on Women in 1975, 1980,
1985, and 1995 sharpened organizing tactics and reinforced the regime’s
eagerness to present a progressive face to the world-at-large on women’s
issues. In his last days, in a striking turnaround, King Hassan II said that
the problems raised by women’s groups were fair, that their demands
were relevant, and that they represented “a bulwark” against the Islamist
“danger.”18
At the close of the century, reform of the Family Code was on the table
and four ministerial portfolios were in the hands of women. In retrospect,
it is clear that women stood at the juncture of a greater effort to open up
the political terrain to new actors, subjects, and institutions by widening
the circle of debate to interest groups that formerly stood outside. By
interweaving the question of women’s rights with the larger question of
human rights, women’s groups also helped to reinvigorate and re-center
political life by starting a conversation about the “forgotten souls” of
Moroccan society, such as abused and abandoned children, battered
wives, drug users, underage maids, prostitutes, unmarried mothers; in
other words, the exploited, the marginalized, and the rejected who tradi-
tionally were silenced. In sum, the women’s movement not only advanced
the cause of women; it also had the electric effect of opening up the
political field to new forms of debate associated with a more inclusive
political culture.
berber cultural revival

The development of the campaign for Berber cultural rights in Morocco
followed closely in the footsteps of the women’s movement as it sought to
achieve recognition. It, too, grew from an informal collectivity of intellec-
tuals with modest goals seeking to preserve aspects of a threatened Berber
identity in the 1970s, to a nationwide experiment in cultural rehabilitation
by the year 2000. The constituency for Berber activism in Morocco is
potentially huge; 40 to 45 percent of the population are Berber speakers,
and almost every Moroccan, as King Hassan II once famously said, has
Berber “cells.” Since the 1980s, pro-Berber organizations have gathered
momentum by promoting their cause within the context of the controlled
opening taking place across the political spectrum. Moreover, Berber
appeals to all Moroccans to accept cultural diversity resonated with
other marginalized groups seeking recognition, such as the tiny (about
two thousand souls) but firmly entrenched Jewish community. The voice of
the Amazigh (Berber) movement became incrementally louder during this
period, adding its claims to the long list of unresolved societal problems
demanding the state’s attention.
It was not always that way. In the early years of independence, still
reverberating with the wickedness of France’s “divide and rule” policies
under the Protectorate, Moroccans – both those who identified as Berbers
and those who did not – rejected the notion that there was any value in
preserving Berber difference. Berbers entered the highest levels of state
service as nationalists, confidants of the king, generals, and politicians, but

not as Berbers per se. Moreover, the monarchy, in its own inimitable way,
managed to co-opt the Berber “personality” and make it part of the
constellation of attributes of the royal family, diluting it, so to speak,
into impuissance. As a result, ordinary Berbers were submerged in a larger,
Arabo-Islamic identity reified by nationalist rhetoric and in particular by
qAllal al-Fasi and the Istiqlal, who insisted on the “Moroccanness” of all
citizens. As Berbers moved from rural areas to cities, losing their tribal
attachments in the process, they also seemed to leave behind their “Berber”
selves, no longer speaking their language or wearing their distinctive dress.
Young men who went to school in the urban setting quickly replaced
Berber with Arabic, leaving the first language behind as a “jargon” of the
home, to be used when speaking to wives and mothers. This transforma-
tion was inadvertently reinforced by a kind of ethnographic scholarship
that read ethnicity more as a correlative of kinship structure, and less as an
attitude of mind.19
Startled by the rapid deterioration in the use of Berber language, in the
1980s Moroccan intellectuals of Berber background began to agitate
actively to preserve their heritage. At a talk on Berber linguistics given at
the Faculty of Letters in Rabat in the late 1980s by Ahmad Boukous
(today director of IRCAM, the Royal Institute for Amazigh Culture),
the overflow audience filled the auditorium and spilled into the central
courtyard, eager to catch a few words on a topic long suppressed. The
newfound enthusiasm for Berber studies surprised everyone, academics as
well as people outside the academy, eliciting responses ranging from lively
enthusiasm to dire warnings of ethnic fragmentation. The problems of
reviving a language that was not written and had no agreed-upon alpha-
bet, and whose literature was mostly oral, were formidable. While the
focus was mainly on the revival and preservation of Tamazight (the
collective name for a group of closely related Berber dialects), other topics
were not ignored; Berber visionaries spoke of Tamazgha, or Amazigh-
land, extending from the Siwa oasis in Egypt, across the Maghrib to the
Canary Islands, and as far south as Niger and Mali, all places where
Berber speakers are found.20
In 1991, a group of Berber cultural organizations issued the “Charter of
Agadir” that denounced “the systematic marginalization of Amazigh lan-
guage and culture,” and called for making Tamazight an official language
of Morocco. Their goal was to develop a curriculum for teaching the
language and to press for its introduction into the schools and the mass
media. However, pushing for Berber rights was still considered by some a
subversive activity, engendering strong opposition, even among Berber

intellectuals. On May 1, 1994, seven members of the Tilelli (Freedom)
Cultural Association, all teachers, were arrested in the town of Guelmim
when they unfurled banners in favor of Berber language rights. Their harsh
treatment in detention and their trial and conviction provoked an ava-
lanche of protest among the general public that did more for the cause of
Berber rights than all previous events.
Always the astute politician, King Hassan II sensed the direction in
which popular opinion was moving and jumped on the Berber band-
wagon. During his Throne Day speech on August 20, 1994, broadcast
on Moroccan television, he announced that Berber dialects “were a com-
ponent of our authentic history”; in so doing, he formally brought the
notion of cultural and linguistic pluralism squarely under the national
tent.21 The makhzan speedily announced plans to begin television news
programs in Berber, and in a further development, the king issued a royal
decree in 1995 calling for the teaching of Berber in the public schools,
signaling the seriousness of his intention to reintroduce Tamazight into the
nation’s linguistic family. The plan aroused considerable heat among
Islamists, who considered it a threat to the supremacy of Arabic and
Arabic language studies, as well as a manifestation of Western ideas of
cultural “diversity” aimed specifically at “weakening Islam.”22
But the program for strengthening Amazigh cultural rights was already
inserted into the royal portfolio, and the carping from the sidelines was
simply ignored. In neighboring Algeria, authorities viewed the Berber
factor as unpredictably dangerous and tried to contain it, often infringing
on basic human rights; in Morocco, on the other hand, the state co-opted
the movement on its own terms, and the king, symbol of the nation, was
presented as the preeminent defender of Berber rights.23 Unlike Algeria,
the makhzan did not prevent Moroccans from attending the First World
Amazigh Congress, held in August 1997 in the Canary Islands, which gave
the movement a broad transnational cast. Instead, it tried to reach a
détente with Berberism and use it to reinforce its own program of con-
trolled liberalization. Even though many Berber activists resented the self-
serving logic behind the king’s tactics and protested against what they
called “cooptation” by the makhzan, leaders of the movement argued that
fully achieving their goals meant reaching a cultural and political under-
standing with the state. That the Amazigh factor has become a permanent
feature of the Moroccan reality is no longer in doubt; the question moving
forward was how and to what extent would its ambitious program be
realized.
new voices: the press, literature,

and the cinema
Since the early 1930s, a vibrant and engaged press has animated political
life in Morocco. Maghreb, the political journal published by the founders
of the Istiqlal in 1932, set the standard with its well-written articles on
politics, society, and the economy. The postindependence regime prided
itself from the early years of statehood on its policy of “freedom of the
press”; in comparison with its Maghribi neighbors, Morocco’s news-
papers were generally unfettered. The Istiqlal founded the first party
newspaper, al-qAlam in Arabic, in 1946, and its French counterpart
L’Opinion appeared in 1965; meanwhile, almost every other emerging
party, group, and association produced its own broadsheet. Since 1971,
the official point of view has been represented by the daily Le Matin du
Sahara, but alongside it are a plethora of other newspapers representing
various factions, creating a concert that is not always euphonious, but is
rarely dull. Still, the number of readers of newspapers, like the book-
reading public, remains small; average daily sales of newspapers in 2000
in a population of thirty million was an unimpressive four hundred thou-
sand copies. As if to compensate, in the 1990s the growth of weekly
magazines (hebdomadaires) covering politics, the economy, culture, and
society was explosive.
The impact of this journalistic cornucopia on the public mind has
been incalculable, especially as literacy has increased and political life
has “opened up.” Nevertheless, egregious examples of censorship still
occurred; newspapers were shut down, editors censored and exiled,
and red lines of a dubious rationality were capriciously drawn. The
most daring sector of this journalistic free-for-all, and the one most
closely watched, was that of the so-called economic journals. Le
Journal, an initiative of Ali Amar and the youthful Abubakr Jamaï,
launched in 1997 during the period of political transition to greater
freedom known as the Alternance (see later in this chapter) was most
representative of this genre. In the late 1990s, Le Journal became the
news magazine of choice for educated Moroccans, exposing corrup-
tion, questioning authority, disinterring the past and pinpointing
inherited half-truths, providing the substance of countless dinner
table conversations and academic postmortems. The provocative
nature of this revue became too much for certain members of the
political elite to bear, and after 2001, its editors were subjected to
repeated harassment.24
Similar trends delineate changes in literary life and the world of publish-
ing. Up until the 1970s, publication of books in both French and Arabic
was strictly limited, because of the high rate of illiteracy, the small size of a
reading public, and the price of books relative to other basic goods. Most
books were imported from France or the Middle East, crowding out local
production. As university education spread and Arabization took hold,
demand leaped upward. The number of publishing houses increased, and
the list of available titles reached into the hundreds. By the 1990s, itinerant
vendors blanketed the sidewalks of Rabat’s main boulevard with books,
newspapers, and magazines, their wares perused by students, office work-
ers, flaneurs, and curious foreign tourists. The array of topics was striking:
history, literature, social criticism, and political essays coexisted alongside
popular subjects such as cooking, fashion, and lifestyle magazines in both
French and Arabic.
Moroccans have shown increasing experimentation in their literary
tastes, particularly in the domain of fiction. Pioneers of the Moroccan
novel, like Driss Chraïbi (Le Passé Simple, 1954) are lauded for breaking
with colonial molds and creating a new “national” literature. In Arabic
fiction, Abdelkarim Ghallab was a pioneer with his Dafanna al-Madi
(The Buried Past, 1966), a story about the Moroccan resistance before
independence. According to social critic Abdou Filali-Ansary, the gener-
ation of Chraïbi and Ghallab focused on “the ways and means by which
underdevelopment and historical retardation might be overcome . . .
through voluntary, rational, and coordinated efforts,” and their main
preoccupation was with the question of how intellectuals might contrib-
ute to nation-building.25 Many writers were Marxists concerned with the
uplifting of the collectivity; their work was often informed by a stark and
sometimes brutal social realism, as well as a yearning for greater personal
freedom.
A rash of leftist literary journals played their part in establishing the
parameters of an evolving public taste. Souffles, founded by leftist intel-
lectual Abdellatif Laâbi in 1966, became a meeting place for the most
inspired writers, both Moroccan and foreign. The writings of major
prophets to the generation of the sixties such as Foucault, Kristeva, and
Derrida appeared in its pages in translation, as Laâbi and his compatriots
wrestled with the question of the writers’ moral responsibility to society.
Throughout the worst of the “years of lead,” Laâbi continued to publish
experimental writing and especially the works of members of Ila
al-Amam, such as Serfaty, Mohamed Bedouin, Abdelfattah Fakihani
and Mohamed Talbi, skirting the frontiers of the forbidden. Souffles
finally folded in 1972, following the arrest, torture and imprisonment of

its editor. The organ of the Moroccan Writers’ Union, Afaq, founded
in 1963, stayed within acceptable bounds and fared somewhat better,
while Lamalif, a monthly founded by Zakya Daoud in 1963 that served
as a roundtable for the most important thinkers and social scientists of
the 1960s and 1970s, survived for over two decades, until it was banned
in 1988.26
By the end of the 1990s, Moroccan literary production had come into its
own, with dozens of novels and books of nonfiction published each year in
French and Arabic. The variety of genres was impressive: police proce-
durals, biographies, historical fiction, feminist literature, and a literature of
social protest exposing evils such as pedophilia, the use and abuse of child
labor, incest, and other subjects previously hidden from public view. Most
significant was the wave of prison literature that began to appear in the
1990s, in the form of testimonials and fictionalized accounts revealing the
repressed memories of the victims of the “years of lead” who were either
“disappeared” or imprisoned without trial. This outburst represented a
landmark moment for Moroccan literature as a whole, locating it within a
global dialogue about intellectual freedom and human rights that crossed
borders and blurred older categories of racial, linguistic, and national
difference.
The medium of cinema has also recorded many of the changes taking
place over the past half-century in Moroccan social and cultural life. The
history of moviemaking in Morocco is a long one, reaching back to
precolonial times, when Moroccans were involved simply as objects in
the camera’s eye. The Lumière brothers shot footage in Morocco in 1896
that was shown at the palace in Fez to an attentive Sultan qAbd al-qAziz,
himself an ardent cinéaste. After 1912, Protectorate authorities encour-
aged a cinematic industry that produced films glorifying the colonial
project. In the 1930s, as the official mood shifted away from celebrating
conquest to promoting the economy, documentary films and newsreels
began to appear, produced by the Centre Cinématopographique Marocain
(CCM), founded in 1944. This colonial institution, like many others,
continued after independence, forming the armature for a new generation
of filmmakers who documented the “successes” of the young nation.
Meanwhile, foreign filmmakers kept arriving, drawn by Morocco’s rich
urban and rural landscapes: Orson Welles’s Othello (1949), Jacques
Becker’s Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1954), and Alfred Hitchcock’s
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1955), were all shot on location in
Morocco. Famous American directors such as John Huston, Robert
Wise, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorsese were drawn to

Morocco’s visual exoticism, producing full-length films for an interna-
tional public in the 1960s and 1970s.27
However, locally produced feature films were still a rarity. Until the
1980s, the Moroccan moviegoing public was treated to a steady if bland
diet of spaghetti westerns and foreign-made action films of the “B”
variety (Bruce Lee was a particular favorite) screened mainly in the big
cities. The discovery that cinema could be used as a platform for express-
ing oppositional points of view broadened the audience for film as a
forum for social commentary. Leftist literary journals such as Souffles,
as well as the party newspapers, began to publish film criticism, inspiring
Moroccan directors to strike out on their own. In an effort to catch up
with this trend, a state-run “Support Fund” was established in the early
1980s that made it possible for Moroccan directors, using a combination
of public and private funds, to mount full-length productions. State
financing helped to produce films such as M. A. Tazi’s The Big Trip
(1981), a Moroccan road movie that introduced the themes of poverty
and social malaise. Tazi’s next major film, Looking for a Husband for My
Wife (1993), the comic story of a Fez merchant who makes a mess of
his married life, broke all records for attendance and showed that a
Moroccan-made film appealing to middle-class audiences could become
a box-office success.28
Films that captured the complexity of life in contemporary Morocco
continued to dominate the field. Farida Benlyazid’s The Door to the Sky
(1988), the story of a migrant woman’s return home from France, and
Nabil Ayouch’s Ali Zaoua, Prince of the Streets (2000), a deeply felt
account of street children in Casablanca, are examples of a genre built
on Moroccans’ rapid and often disorienting immersion in modernity.
Films depicting social issues, such as problems of life in the diaspora, the
culture clash between generations, the confrontation of the religious versus
the nonreligious, marked a definite turning away from postcolonial themes
of nation-building. In the course of this transition, the attitude of the state
was ambivalent. On the one hand, it supported and “tolerated” the treat-
ment of oppositional and even subversive topics, exercising restraint in
terms of censorship; on the other hand, astute film directors knew that a
“red line” existed (at the discretion of the state) that could not be crossed.
Moreover, the CCM was criticized for showing favoritism and biased
judgment in its choice of which films to support. State-sponsored cultural
activities are often subject to political pressure, and Morocco is no
exception.29
opening the door to the secret garden

The larger context for these important changes was a major shift in public
acknowledgement of the centrality of the issue of human rights. While
word of egregious and severe violations by the regime had been floating
around since the 1970s, appeals to the authorities for a clarification were
always met with a wall of silence. In those rare cases when a response was
forthcoming, it was usually that Morocco was not in violation of inter-
national norms, that it held no political prisoners, and that the prison at
Tazmamart was “a figment of the imagination,” despite mounting evi-
dence to the contrary.30 By one account, the confessional avalanche began
because of the efforts of Christine Daure, who later became the wife of
Abraham Serfaty. A French school teacher who first came to Morocco in
1962, ten years later Daure sheltered two militants on the run, one of
whom was Serfaty. After his trial and imprisonment in Kénitra in 1977, she
began to agitate for better treatment for the prisoners held in the Kénitra
jail. Meanwhile, the appearance in Paris in 1980 of letters describing the
desperate conditions in the as yet unknown prison at Tazmamart increased
concern about violations of human rights within the Moroccan penal
system.31
In 1984, an Association for the Defense of Human Rights in Morocco
(ASDHOM) was founded in Paris; its voice, amplified with Daure’s help,
was heeded in French political circles, reaching as high as Danièlle
Mitterand, wife of the French President, opening the door to direct pres-
sure on Hassan II at the very highest level. In 1986, Christine Daure
returned to Morocco, married Serfaty while he was still in prison, and
agitated for justice. In 1988, a group of intellectuals led by Omar Azziman,
a professor of law, and Mahdi el-Mandjra, an influential voice from the
leftist PPS, founded the Moroccan Organization of Human Rights
(OMDH). Soon after, another group of liberals created the AMDH
(Moroccan Association of Human Rights). Both groups had ties abroad,
and Western governments – usually at the insistence of their own human
rights organizations, and in the glare of articles published in the interna-
tional press – began to pressure Morocco about its human rights record
and the so-called secret garden holding an unknown number of detainees.
The escape in 1987 of the children of General Oufkir, innocent victims
of Hassan’s wrath, from their desert prison, and the publication in 1990
of Gilles Perrault’s exposé of corruption within the tight circle of the king
entitled Notre ami le roi (Paris, 1990), were turning points that forced
the regime to examine its image in the eyes of the world. Using information
from Daure-Serfaty and her associates within the human rights movement,
Perrault’s book created a near panic in the palace and severely strained
Moroccan-French relations. A traveler arriving at Casablanca airport in
those days watched helplessly as her luggage was turned topsy-turvy by a
zealous customs official engaging in a fruitless search for forbidden mate-
rials. The concerted effort to achieve literary purity failed, however, as
clandestine copies of the book slipped into Morocco in countless ways.
Fraught with sensationalism and unsubstantiated accusations as well as
some horrifying truths, the book finally tore the veil off the regime’s façade
of indifference.32
In response to these events, in 1990 the government formulated its own
human rights agenda and created the Consultative Council for Human
Rights (CCDH) to serve as the official vehicle of a new policy of amnesty
and reconciliation, or as Abdallah Laroui put it, to start “its democratic
apprenticeship.” A Ministry of Human Rights was formed in 1993 and
Omar Azziman was appointed at its head, and that same year, Morocco
ratified the UN Convention Against Torture. Announcing that he was
“turning the page on political prisoners,” in September 1991 the king
released inmates of detention centers, prisons, and desert tombs where
some had been held in near-total isolation since the 1971 coup. On
September 13, 1991, Abraham Serfaty, the symbol of a justice system
gone awry, was freed from jail and exiled to France on a visa technicality.
In October 1991, as the ghosts of Tazmamart emerged from their decades-
long incarceration and began to tell their stories, a disbelieving Moroccan
public emitted a collective gasp.33
An indelible sign that times had really changed was the Tabit Affair.
In 1993, Mustapha Tabit, the mighty and seemingly untouchable police
commissioner of Casablanca, was found guilty of raping hundreds of
falsely detained women and then videotaping his misdeeds; later, it was
revealed that he sold the tapes to an international pornography ring.
Suspicions about his activities had been circulating for years, but when
precise accusations resurfaced in 1993, a decision was made at the highest
level not to bury the case but rather to use it as the starting point for a show
trial and a purge of the police. Judgment was swift; Tabit was publicly tried
and executed on August 9, 1993, and sixteen others who participated in
the cover-up were given jail terms from two years to life imprisonment.
Before the Tabit affair, the Moroccan press depicted the country as a “land
without crime” and the police as an institution beyond reproach; but the
unfolding events in this sordid affair, closely followed by the news media
that published lurid photos and even more graphic descriptions of Tabit’s
crimes, demonstrated to the Moroccan public that even the police, long
considered inviolate, were now not above the law.34
The Tabit affair was the opening salvo of a sweeping and overzealous
“cleanup campaign” (campagne d’assainissement) commanded by
Minister of the Interior Basri in 1995 that went to excess and completely
backfired, giving the battle against corruption a bad name. Directed
initially against drug dealers, contrabandistes, and tax evaders, in due
course hundreds of innocent people were thrown into jail, viable busi-
nesses were forced into bankruptcy, people lost their jobs, and decent
lives were ruined, according to newspaper and other personal accounts of
the period. In fact, most of the victims were later amnestied, but without
compensation for their losses. According to political observers Mohamed
Tozy and Beatrice Hibou, the campaign was seriously misrepresented to
the public. Rather than an effort to “remoralise” business practices as
was reported in the press (for “corruption,” they conclude, is an integral
part of the system), it was a move to assert state control over emerging
social categories that could become a future source of dissidence. In sum,
the “cleanup” was “a modern harka” designed to “redefine the norm,”
discipline potential troublemakers, and “assert the primacy of the central
power.”35
In the public mind, the “cleanup campaign” was yet one more example
of an arbitrary regime manipulating the judicial system for its own ends,
without concern for the human toll. By the time of Hassan’s death, it was
clear that the discourse of human rights had entered the lexicon of every
politically aware Moroccan. People were awakened to the disturbing fact
that international norms of justice had somehow become diluted and even
eliminated altogether within their own society. This realization was the
source of deep anger and resentment. It was no longer possible to argue for
special dispensations because of matters of state security, or to shift
responsibility to the victims, or to insist that international standards of
human rights were somehow contrary to Islamic cultural values; rather, it
was a time of accounting, when the new King Muhammad VI had to face
squarely the moral failings of his predecessor. Hassan II’s offer of a modest
indemnity to a small percentage of the survivors of his dungeons without
any public hearings, while granting immunity to the perpetrators without
extracting confessions, was the strongest indication of his unyielding state
of mind. But this approach was highly unsatisfactory to the outraged
victims, who in 1999 organized a public declaration calling for an formal
apology, reparations, criminal procedures against the torturers, and an
accounting of all those who had disappeared. As the century ended, the
carapace of indifference that had so long covered up the issue of human

rights had finally been removed.36
the royal road to reform

In the last decade of his rule until his death in July 1999, King Hassan II
piloted a sharp turnaround in public policy that surprised his people
and won him recognition on the international front. After decades of
rigid authoritarian rule in which regime opponents received the harshest
treatment, Morocco seemed to transform itself into a model among Arab
states for promoting political reform. The atmosphere of change was
complemented by a variety of factors that included the end of the Cold
War, a resurgent global Islam, the outbreak of civil war in Algeria, the
ongoing domestic economic crisis, and greater public access to informa-
tion through the internet. Yielding to popular demand and international
pressure, the king made known his determination to recast Morocco’s
image along more modern, open, and tolerant lines, while preserving its
“specificity” and the tradition-based allure that nourished its uniqueness
for generations.37 The extent to which he succeeded in this quest, his
calculated motives for pursuing it, the actual achievements of this “tran-
sition,” and the impression it made on the Moroccan public, are the
bench marks according to which the final phase of his rule must be
judged.
Just as in Morocco’s first age of reform in the nineteenth century, this
new age of reform began with intrusions from the outside world that
deeply affected the monarchy’s attitude toward domestic politics. The
word “democratization” has often been used in connection with these
changes, and certainly greater transparency in politics was a characteristic
of the period of transition, particularly in regard to elections. However, to
assert that Morocco began to follow a “democratic” path along Western
lines is a distortion of reality, for in fact the authoritarian nature of the
monarchy did not disappear, nor did the king yield any of his exceptional
powers. Rather, additional mechanisms were put in place that allowed for
greater freedom of action from individuals and groups wishing to enter the
public sphere. That is to say, the basic modus operandi of the regime did
not change; it continued to govern by the old methods of “divide and rule,”
with occasional episodes of harsh treatment, much to the disappointment
of its subjects/citizens. Yet it is also true that the opening up of a space to
accommodate new social forces and modes of political activism offered
a safety valve that was long overdue.
The decade began with the constitutional reform of 1993 that

empowered parliament to challenge appointments and debate govern-
ment proposals. It also inserted the concept of human rights into official
discourse. The preamble to the new Constitution stated that “The
Kingdom of Morocco reaffirms its attachment to human rights as they
are universally recognized.” This revision and the liberal sentiments it
expressed gave new life to the opposition parties, who formed themselves
into a political bloc (Kutla) as a prelude to reentering the political fray.
The Kutla then began extended negotiations with the king regarding the
terms allowing its participation in the government.
Meanwhile, between 1993 and 1997, a series of “governments of
technocrats” signaled an effort to move away from an older model of
rule by mandarins closely vetted by the ominous Basri, to a new mode
of government based on competence and fresh thinking. These years also
saw a determined campaign to get the economy under control through a
rigorous austerity program. But these innovations did not mean that the
coercive power of the makhzan was in any way diminished, or that the
“sacred institution” of the monarchy was circumscribed. Understanding
that, the parties of the left refused to enter into a coalition that main-
tained vestiges of the ancien regime (namely Basri), despite the king’s
invitation.38
Hassan II persisted in his reform plans by pushing for an amendment to
the constitution that would change the electoral laws. Signed into law in
1996, the amendment created a bicameral legislature that allowed voters
to elect all the members of a lower house (instead of only two-thirds), while
an upper house, chosen indirectly by regional assemblies and professional
organizations, enabled favorites of the king and parties that had not
succeeded at the ballot box to participate in legislative rule. More impor-
tant, however, was the unwritten understanding that the king would name
a prime minister from the party having an electoral majority. The 1997
elections were marred by multiple accusations of fraud, yet Abderrahmane
Youssoufi, seventy-four-year-old secretary of the USFP and a lifelong
opponent of the regime, agreed to head a government of “Alternance,”
or opposition, at Hassan’s request. At this stage, the king was already quite
ill and facing his own mortality; it is assumed that his invitation to
Youssoufi was motivated largely by a desire to assuage his political oppo-
nents and assure a smooth transition after his death.39
In retrospect, the task assigned to Youssoufi appears unreasonable
because of the difficult conditions imposed on him by the palace. The
presence of Driss Basri at the Ministry of the Interior was a psychological
necessity for the king but obnoxious to the prime minister, who abhorred
working with the principal architect of the “years of lead.” Four other
“sovereign” ministries were also filled at the discretion of the king: Foreign
Affairs, Religious Affairs, Human Rights, and Defense, further circum-
scribing the authority of the prime minister. Saddled with a team he did not
choose, Youssoufi also had to deal with the discordant noise of multiple
political parties, each clamoring for a seat at the table. When the dust
cleared following cabinet selection, the Youssoufi government emerged as
an unmanageable herd of seven parties with forty ministers in all, and only
thirteen from Youssoufi’s own party.
Despite this unwieldy mix, the aging prime minister persevered, under-
standing that after a forty-year hiatus, he had been chosen to represent an
openness and integrity in the governing equation that had been missing
since independence. His relations with the king and other ministers were
publicly characterized with words such as “consensus” and “dialogue,”
and other expressions indicative of the “new order.” In his favor were
palpable advances in freedom of expression, in women’s equality, in
religious and ethnic tolerance, buttressed by the strong timber of human
rights. Supporting his flanks were intellectuals and militants from the
sixties generation – committed reformers such as Habib al-Malki and
Khalid Alouia – who were also ready to participate in the experiment in
loosening the grip of absolutism on the levers of power. Building on this
tender growth, Youssoufi was determined to advance the transition while
helping to maintain the stability the palace so much desired. Moreover, as
a dyed-in-the wool-patriot, Youssoufi felt that he had little maneuverabil-
ity, for he had “given his word” to the king.
The Alternance, for all its shortcomings, was an important step in
demonstrating to the Moroccan people the possibilities inherent in chal-
lenging the system of non-democratic rule that had dominated Moroccan
politics since mid-century. It won favor from both right and left, for it
introduced new political practices that would benefit the Islamists as well
as the secular opposition. Its failings aside, the Alternance marked, accord-
ing to one observer, an “extraordinary change in tone, in climate, and
especially, in mentality.”40 This change was personified on September 30,
1999, when an ailing but triumphant Abraham Serfaty returned home to a
heroes’ welcome. Even more significant was Muhammad VI’s firing, on
November 9, 1999, of the much hated Driss Basri as Minister of the
Interior, four months after the death of King Hassan II, raising the all-
important question of the future role of the Ministry of the Interior in
relation to politics and the functioning of the state.
Morocco seemed to have truly entered a period of “transition,” but it

was a transition directed from above that served, first and foremost, the
purposes of the monarchy. While Hassan II in the last decade of his life
deliberately started down the path of political reform, the process was only
in its beginning stages and far from complete. From the perspective of the
elite, the pace of change may have seemed dizzying; for Morocco’s friends
on the outside, such as the United States, it may have appeared measured
and hopeful; but for the majority of the Moroccan people, it was still far
too slow. Whether Hassan’s motives for instituting changes were rooted in
realpolitik or remorse, or simply the desire to guarantee his legacy, we do
not know. His own sense of history was acute and he was always keenly
aware of the mood of the times. The method of the regime was to proceed
with the greatest caution while maintaining complete control over the
tempo of reform – an attitude made apparent by its ambiguity, its foot-
dragging concerning the exculpation of the crimes of the past, and the
reluctant, deliberate, and carefully managed pace of change.
morocco in the world

It is a truism that domestic and international policies reflect each other in a
Janus-like fashion. In the first period of Hassan’s rule, Morocco’s internal
political paralysis and its ongoing economic difficulties shaped its stance
vis-à-vis the wider world. As we have seen, initially, Hassan II followed in
the footsteps of his father, who traced a nonaligned stance in the early
years of statehood; later, desperately in need of foreign aid and cognizant
of preexisting realities, Hassan II executed a sharp turnabout by placing his
confidence in the West.
By 1964, the value of Morocco’s trade with the European Economic
Community (EEC) was ten times that of trade with the Eastern Bloc. The
EU, successor to the EEC, was and remains to this day Morocco’s most
important trading partner, receiving 65 percent of Morocco’s total exports
in 2009.41 In 1969, at France’s insistence, Morocco was given “Associate”
status in the EEC, but the conditions of association did not work in
Morocco’s favor, especially regarding the price of agricultural exports.
Farm products were Morocco’s main source of revenue until 1973, when it
received an unexpected but very short-term windfall in the form of a
precipitous rise in the price of phosphates. A second agreement signed
with the EEC in 1976 brought more financial aid, allowing Morocco to
draw heavily from European lenders, so that by the mid-1980s it had run
up a considerable debt. By 1983, foreign exchange reserves were at an
all-time low, having been depleted by the costs of the Saharan war and the
trauma of the global oil shocks of the early 1980s. External debt was
70 percent of GDP, and the debt service had climbed to 42 percent of
annual exports.42
The threat of financial collapse forced Morocco to comply with a series
of structural readjustment programs mandated by the IMF that reshaped
its economy, including the selling-off to the private sector of government
monopolies in which the king was often a principal shareholder. Wealthy
Moroccan investors were encouraged to buy into these formerly state-run
companies, exaggerating even more an already distorted concentration
of capital within the elite strata. Hassan II’s petition in 1987 to make
Morocco a full member of the EEC was based on the argument that he
had “liberalized” the Moroccan economy and committed his government
to a “democratic” multiparty system. These arguments collapsed before
the weight of European opinion (most sharply enunciated by the French far
right) that an Arab-Islamic state in Africa could not reasonably be consi-
dered part of Europe. Unspoken but palpably in the air was the fear that
EEC membership for Morocco would augment the already robust migra-
tion of Moroccan workers to Europe. The false perception that North
Africans in general were a source of crime and labor unrest gave thrust to
the anti-Moroccan crusade. On July 30, 1987, the Financial Times wrote
that Hassan’s application “was greeted in the European media with a
mixture of incredulity, scorn and the kind of racial jibe which many
educated Arabs have come to expect from Western countries.”43
Privatization accelerated after 1991 under the watchful eye of the
makhzan, as the “jewels” of the economy, according to Clement Henry,
were parsed out to friends of the king: “. . . in league with foreign owners,
principally French banks, the king’s men thus controlled over three-
quarters of the private sector’s total assets.”44 By disengaging the state
from the economy, Hassan II was able to develop new political clienteles
while satisfying European investors that Morocco had truly followed the
path of liberal reform. As a result, a European free trade agreement signed
in 1996 brought rich benefits in terms of development aid. But it came at a
high social cost; namely, inflation and the bifurcation of the Moroccan
labor force into a well-paid professional class and an underpaid, informal
workforce, exacerbating Morocco’s already critical social problems.
Embedded in this swing to “neoliberalism” was the almost mystical
belief that economic development would “trickle down” and eventually
lead to greater prosperity and wider participation in the political process
through the recruitment of new stakeholders in the middle class. But
globalization, as Shana Cohen has pointed out, has another, less lovely
face: the shrinking of the public sector required by international lenders
produced widespread unemployment, especially among university gra-
duates, creating a permanently disruptive and dangerous threat to social
stability. By 1999, it was clear that chronically inadequate government
policies in the economic sphere had failed to keep up with the needs of a
youthful population demanding jobs, services, and educational opportu-
nities, creating a permanent and unresolved cancer within the body
politic.45
The connection between internal and external affairs was equally
evident in Morocco’s relations with the West. Morocco’s ties to NATO
and with the United States grew increasingly friendly over the years
under Hassan II’s careful management. Considering himself an
“adviser” to American Presidents, he dutifully made the voyage across
the Atlantic numerous times, to golf, horseback ride, and party with
every American head of state from John F. Kennedy to Bill Clinton.
Morocco was one of the first countries to invite U.S. Peace Corps
volunteers, who began to arrive in 1963. Built on the legacy of memo-
ries, mostly positive, of the American landings during World War II that
brought chewing gum, be-bop, nylons and lipstick, enhanced by the U.S.
Food for Peace (PL 480) program during the Cold War that distributed
countless sacks of flour stamped with the logo of friendly shaking hands,
by the 1970s, a store of rosy images relating to America had penetrated
the Moroccan imagination.
On the military front, the United States steadily supplied arms to
Morocco for its Saharan war, and in return, Morocco became a consistent
supporter of U.S.-Middle East policies that were often distasteful to other
Arab States. Hassan II played a crucial role in the post-Camp David efforts
to sustain the peace process, capitalizing on the regime’s long and mostly
positive history with its own Jewish minority by maintaining contacts with
high Israeli officials as well as with the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO).46 U.S. Moroccan strategic cooperation became less important once
the Cold War ended, but Morocco was still seen by many U.S. lawmakers
as a “bulwark” of stability in an otherwise volatile area. And as the “war
on terror” spread its dark cloud across the region after September 11,
2001, Morocco became America’s “first friend” in supporting the U.S.
counterterrorism campaign.47
At the same time, King Hassan II showed a strong streak of indepen-
dence from the West, the best example being his interactions with
Libya’s Muqammar al-Qaddafi, bête noir of successive Washington
administrations. Before the two leaders signed a cooperative accord at

Oujda in August 14, 1984, they had regarded each other with “undis-
guised contempt.” But the reality of regional policies, namely, Algeria’s
unvarnished support for the Polisario and Morocco’s subsequent iso-
lation, made Morocco and Libya into strange bedfellows. The short-
lived alliance with the Libyan dictator was one of the less fortuitous
foreign policy ventures of Hassan’s reign, indicating the extent to which
the Saharan issue had become the touchstone defining Morocco’s rela-
tions with its Maghribi neighbors. The sauve Hassan had little stomach
for the mercurial Libyan dictator. The alliance ended suddenly and
badly in 1984, with Radio Rabat calling al-Qaddafi “an imbecile
tyrant.”48 With Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia’s President-for- Life, whose
tenure as head of state roughly paralleled his own, Hassan II claimed to
have had a “close friendship,” but in fact it was a relationship that
fluctuated between mutual respect and intense animosity.49 Both were
French-trained lawyers, both preserved their ties with France after
independence, both came to Algeria’s rescue during its bloody revolu-
tion, both shared a pragmatic approach to power, and though
Bourguiba was a confirmed republican, he too ruled with an iron fist.
But the ups-and-downs of inter-Maghribi politics wore heavily on them
fi g u r e 3 1 . King Hassan II welcomes Algerian President Houari Boumedienne

and Foreign Minister Abdelaziz Bouteflika to Morocco in 1972, in a rare moment
of amity between the two nations. (Abbas/Magnum Photos)
both and impeded the forging of a smooth and lasting Moroccan-

Tunisian détente.50
Toward Algeria, Morocco’s supposed “brother,” relations were pois-
oned by the ongoing Saharan dispute, blocking a trans-Maghribi under-
standing that might have opened up doors to regional economic
cooperation. King Hassan reportedly said that the most vexing external
relations of his reign were with Algeria, with whom Morocco shared so
much culturally and historically, but so little politically. A short-lived Arab
Maghreb Union (AMU) came into being with the signing of the Treaty of
Marrakesh in 1988, having as its goal the setting up of a North African
“Common Market” among the supposedly complementary economies of
the region. But chronic underlying tensions, both personal and political,
tore the agreement apart; in 1994, a terrorist attack in Marrakesh, sus-
pected by Morocco of being Algerian-inspired, led to the closing of the
Moroccan-Algerian border and the freezing of the AMU.51
In the inter-Arab sphere, Hassan II considered his relations with other
Arab and Islamic states to be especially close and “natural.” Morocco sent
token contingents to support the Arab side in both the 1967 and 1973
Arab-Israeli wars, and Hassan II was a leading actor in the Islamic
Conference, chairing the al-Quds (Jerusalem) Committee dedicated to
preserving the Arab character of the Holy City. His engagements with
Arab states tended to favor ties with the monarchies that most closely
resembled his own: the Gulf royals, or King Hussein of Jordan, whose
death preceded Hassan’s by only a few months. The Moroccan monarch’s
moderate stance on Arab-Israeli issues and his adherence to the ceremonies
of royal privilege did not win him great popularity in the Arab socialist
heartland. To his Arab critics, he responded acerbically by saying that
Arab leaders had neither the ability to make war against Israel, nor the
willingness to make peace. After the collapse of the Arab Maghreb Union
in 1994 and the stalemate following the Oslo Accords, Hassan II increas-
ingly pointed his antennae toward Europe, building his most important
relations economically and politically on a North–South axis rather than
across the region.
King Hassan’s actions on the diplomatic front were wide-ranging, often
unpredictable, but never tentative. He saw himself as a leading actor on the
world stage, perhaps the most prominent statesman in the region at the
time of his death, because of the range of his relationships, his closeness
with the West, his contacts with the former Soviet Union and China, and
his forays into African politics where he was among the founders of the
Organization of African States. Like Anwar Sadat, his value abroad far
outshone his currency at home. Yet, for the most part, his foreign activities
were motivated by practical domestic concerns: preserving his vision of the
national territory, finding the resources to compensate for budgetary
shortfalls, assuring the prestige and survival of the monarchy. His actions
in the foreign field contributed to strengthening the monarchical institution
by broadening its base and its capacities, with the result that a diplomatic
dimension lacking under his father now enhanced the royal persona:
Hassan the Unifier was joined by Hassan the World Leader, creating a
model of international statesmanship for his successor to follow.
On July 25, 1999, in what the New York Times described as a “scene of
tumult,” two million mourners lined the streets of Rabat to say goodbye to
the king that many Morocans knew as their only ruler. After thirty-eight
years on the throne, Hassan II finally succumbed to the maladies that had
weakened him in his final years. A panoply of world leaders followed the
cortège: President Bill Clinton, former President George H. W. Bush,
President Jacques Chirac of France, Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, and
Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel, along with a clutch of kings and
princes. Ordinary Moroccans poured into Rabat from all over the country,
many of them walking on foot along blocked highways from as far away as
Casablanca, sixty miles away. The juxtaposition of this torrent of emotion
for the defunct monarch with the memory of his harsh practices and his
inability to deal with Morocco’s most pressing social problems introduces
us to the central dilemma of his years in power.
While the world press lionized the defunct king as “a sage” and
“worldly Muslim leader,” a “peacemaker” and a “visionary,” most
Moroccans thought of him as a stern and forbidding father who used
the rod more often than the gentle word. Yet the acknowledgment of his
achievements was inescapable, even from his most determined critics. In
1961, Hassan II took the formless clay of the state handed to him by his
father, and molded it into something that most Moroccans came to
recognize as singularly their own. During his years in power, he shaped
an entity that would live beyond his own life span, embossed with the
attributes of a modern and functioning nation-state. While his people
may have not always loved their king, they had become enamored of the
concept of Kingship, seeing it as the governmental form that best suited
their needs as a nation, albeit with a long list of complaints, caveats, and
modifications.
Late in his life, Hassan II opened his eyes to the dynamic nature of the
state as an evolving political institution, along with the prospects for its
reform. At that point, putting aside his essential conservatism and bringing
to bear his deep understanding of the mechanics of the Moroccan political
system, he sought practical ways of moving forward. Too little and too
late, according to his critics, and perhaps this is true. It may be that his most
grievous error was his failure to discern the swiftness with which his
country and his people were changing. Yet during his tenure, the attributes
of power inscribed in the monarchical order did not fail him; rather, his
principal dilemma concerned the manner and pace at which royal influence
should be applied. The ideological underpinnings of the monarchy
remained intact, despite the sharps jabs directed at it from left and right,
from republican militants, on the one hand, and Islamist sympathizers, on
the other. Indeed, the idea of the monarchy emerging from Hassan’s
incumbency was more firmly implanted in the Moroccan reality than
ever before. It was in the political arena, in the pragmatic and day-to-day
juggling of the limited assets and built-in constraints that Hassan II was
handed, that he faced his greatest challenges. As Morocco moved forward
to a new century under a new king, the need for far-reaching changes to
satisfy the demands of a restless people was undisputable, but the funda-
mental raison d’être of the system inherited by Hassan II, recrafted by his
genius, and passed on to his successor, was hardly brought into question.
8
Summation
In Search of a New Equilibrium
The year 1999 and the death of Hassan II marked a watershed in

Moroccan history. The outpouring of public grief at his funeral revealed
a nation profoundly moved by the disappearance of this larger-than-life
and often unloved father figure. While some mourned the passing of the
ancien regime, others quietly rejoiced at the opportunity for greater poli-
tical freedom within the framework of institutionalized monarchical rule.
The new King Muhammad VI seemed to breathe fresh life into the political
process because of his youthfulness and open style, and hopes ran high that
the reforms initiated by his father would deepen and accelerate. But the
realities of temporal politics soon intervened: the shock of 9/11 coupled
with attacks in Casablanca in 2003 provided the brake that opponents of
change were seeking. In 2003, in response to the increase in radical
militancy, the new king pronounced that the “era of leniency” was over,
raising the question of whether or not reform would continue at the same
pace as before.
The Arab Spring of 2011 reopened the debate in an explosive manner,
raising once again the question of reform, this time focusing especially on
changes to the constitution that would limit the powers of the king. Once
again the knotted problem of the monarch’s dual and intertwined attri-
butes as both religious and temporal leader of the nation became a topic
of public discussion. But as Rémy Leveau warned some years ago, the
crux of the political struggle in Morocco is not over ideology in all its
competing forms, but rather over tactics and accommodation of interests:
“Morocco’s most important institutional problems are not really con-
stitutional,” he said, “rather, they concern the interaction and power-
sharing between the monarchy and Morocco’s political parties.”1 The
214
Summation: In Search of a New Equilibrium 215
king’s central symbolic role, his special privileges, his overwhelming

authority in governmental affairs, the blurring of the line between his
personal wealth and the treasure of the state, all of these questions hung
in the balance, appended to matters of a more ideological nature.
Meanwhile, the political life of the nation goes on, revitalized by the
emergence of a popular voice seeking a greater role in politics. It is not
the role of the historian to predict the future, but rather to try to clarify
the past and render it useful in thinking through the complexities of the
present. But certain continuities stand out from our account of the past
170 years of Moroccan history that might serve as markers for finding
a route through the current confusion, as well as providing guideposts
to the future.
The narrative we have chosen to represent the flow of Moroccan history
over the past two centuries revolves around three principal axes: the
monarchy, the state (not always easily distinguished from the monarchy),
and society. An overarching theme of this narrative has been the interlac-
ing of relations among these three centers, and how their interactions form
the substratum of Moroccan history in the modern period. Each in its own
way was a prime mover, sometimes acting in isolation, but more often
moving in tandem with the others, interweaving interests and negotiating
compromises. It is a principal thesis of this book that these compromises
were reached less on the basis of ideology and more on the basis of material
necessity and pragmatic goals. While inherited traditions, cultural tem-
plates, and conceptual frameworks are important, it is the stuff of the every
day, the materials at hand, and the opportunities and threats of the
moment, that have to a large extent determined the course of modern
Moroccan history. Moreover, as methods of communication have become
more complex, as the possibilities for networking and exchange have
multiplied, the historian’s task of identifying the major trends and devising
an appropriate analysis of them has become increasingly difficult. Yet in a
synthetic political history such as this, a key question remains: How may
we understand the fit between single events and the long durée, and what
are the terms of analysis that undergird the framework we have chosen?
Why this particular narrative and not another?
In political and diplomatic history, the state is by necessity the main
actor who controls the agenda and orchestrates, more than other players,
the principal performances. The makhzan/state as we know it is an insti-
tution hardened by experience and replete with its own rules, regulations,
and traditions. Continuity and resistance to change are its earmarks, along
with an acute awareness of its own unassailable position at the heart of the
Moroccan body politic. How the state construed its role historically is the
core issue of any political accounting of Morocco, as we have often pointed
out here. Inherited beliefs about what the state/sultanate should represent,
usually articulated in religiocultural terms, have received a preponderant
amount of attention from students of Moroccan history. But as we have
argued throughout, alongside these factors, of equal if not greater impor-
tance, are the raw materials of political decision making that are contex-
tually transparent and recoverable by means of a thorough search through
the closet of history.
Take, for example, the relationship between the state and its territory.
Over the period of our discussion, Moroccan monarchs have wrestled with
the problem of settling the contested boundaries of the state as an essential
ingredient in establishing both the physical and perceptual parameters of
national identity. But territorial issues also intersect with the pragmatic
need to make the state more secure and less vulnerable to outside interfer-
ence. Not surprisingly, it was always the closest neighbor, Algeria, who
was at the heart of these disputes. In the age of jihad, the quandary over the
defense of western Algeria led to humbling defeats that initiated the first
age of reform; at the turn of the last century, the loss of territory to French
colonial troops crossing from Algeria into Morocco presaged the coming
of the Protectorate. In the independent state, the wars in the desert have
repeatedly pitted the Moroccan army against the forces of Algeria and
muddied relations between the two. The historical continuities that per-
meate the border issue explain the saliency of Moroccan-Algerian relations
in recent Moroccan history, and why this topic constantly returns. Intense
feelings about questions of territorial integrity have been a centerpiece of
foreign relations for a very long time, exaggerated by popular sentiment
and manipulated by the monarchy in order to win recognition for its
diplomatic skills at home and abroad.
The relationship between the state and the monarchy is a second key
theme. The monarchy – not the constitution, or the parliament, or the
people – is the main source of legitimacy in the Moroccan polity. The
monarch’s role as the symbolic center has grown incrementally over time,
becoming, in the age of Hassan II, the source of immense authority. But
this pole has also fluctuated over time, and though the institution of the
monarchy, more than any other, is built on a pedestal of belief, it is also an
institution that has demonstrated an astonishing ability to be responsive to
the changing times. We should recall the nineteenth century, when the
position of the sultan was in a state of constant renegotiation; indeed, at
times sultanic power was reduced to a mere modicum of respect rather
than inducing the terrifying awe of a later period. By instrumentalizing

this authority and using it in tandem with other coercive means, Hassan II
was able to force the modernization of the state without having to rely on
other institutions such as parliament or the religious establishment. This
political masterstroke, while bringing about changes long overdue, weak-
ened complementary political forces and bolstered the supposition that
reform could only come as an emanation of the sovereign will. But in
practice, the attrition of the political parties and the stagnation of mean-
ingful political activity were corollaries of the incremental growth in kingly
authority. The steady accrual of royal power, traced historically, demon-
strates how the hopes of those invested in the democratic process despaired
of ever achieving parity with the state. But it was in the arena of practical
politics, not in the sphere of ideology, where the monarchy delivered its
most virtuoso performance, and it is in the realm of the quotidien that the
role of the monarchy becomes most historically relevant.
Another trend we have marked is toward the centralization of state
institutions. The increasing visibility and omnipresence of the state was a
global phenomenon that emerged in the nineteenth century and gathered
momentum in the twentieth. In the precolonial period, the makhzan
exercised intermittent control over tribes that sometimes resisted, some-
times acquiesced in their submission; already, the tendency toward domi-
nation from the center is evident under Sultan Hassan I. The integrating
actions of Lyautey as he laid the foundation for the Protectorate are
well documented. In the independent makhzan that followed, both
Muhammad V and Hassan II incrementally reinforced many of the
structures and mechanisms of control instituted by the colonial power.
Electoral reforms, the implementation of new varieties of governance in
the rural areas, the management of urban space, the growth of munici-
palities, the expansion of bureaucracies, were decisive actions that
brought subjects under the umbrella of the state. The taming of the
forests and fields, the building of dams and irrigation systems, the crea-
tion of agricultural plans, were counterparts to this centralizing and
disciplining trend that were observable in the natural world. New envi-
ronmental histories locate and document these trends, demonstrating the
step-by-step accumulation of measures that added up to a massive focal-
ization of power in the apparatus of the state.
Alongside centralization was the mechanism of co-optation. Co-optation
was a phenomenon that penetrated all of the principal institutions of public
life and it, too, can be historically traced. Co-optation is a social style that
has permeated Moroccan politics for centuries; one has only to look at
Sultan Hassan I’s treatment of dissident tribes, or his manipulations of the

Fez bourgeoisie, to find tell-tale signs of its presence. In the modern period, it
has been especially decisive in filling out the arsenal of the state. The army
and the police, as we have seen, were absorbed and gradually made into
instruments of state policy through gifts, favoritism, and special treatment.
The old makhzan in the nineteenth century was beset by the problem of
finding the resources needed to pay for military reform; the new makhzan
was bedeviled by the problem of finding the rewards that would keep the
army, now firmly established, within its fold. The setbacks of the failed
coups of 1971 and 1972 brought the loyalty of the army into question,
highlighting the fact that military insurrection was an ever-present possibil-
ity. Neutralizing the army after the fall of Oufkir in 1972 by the redistribut-
ing its power among multiple centers was an innovation of Hassan II, forced
upon him by circumstances. Whether the army is completely inside or out-
side the tent today is a critical question, occulted by the veneer of a steady
professionalization.
The ulama, too, have also been increasingly absorbed through a
historical process; from their nineteenth century role as spoilers of reform
under Sultan qAbd al-qAziz, they have been gradually taken in and con-
verted into a tool of the central power. Schools and the educational
system have also been harnessed to the bureaucracy, and school curricula
at every level reflect the conservative norms of society. The state has also
shown a sustained ability to control the economy; the chaotic response to
the nineteenth century debt crisis was not repeated in the twentieth, as
Hassan II, wielding his extraordinary powers, imposed strictures on
taxation, trade, and investment though various phases of debt restructur-
ing in the 1980s and 1990s. This aspect of control spread from economic
matters to class formation, making the state to a large extent the progeni-
tor of a new middle class. Co-opting this class has also become a project
of the makhzan: will professionals who comprise the expanding middle
stratum of society continue to value stability over freedom of action, or
will they escape the state’s tutelage and opt for something different?
While the state as prime mover dominates the historical narrative, on
the opposite side of the balance sheet are the people and their social
institutions. We have repeatedly pointed to a deeper social reality not
always easy to locate as an underlying current within the historical
process. The example of the riot or urban revolt as an ongoing theme in
Maghribi history emerging out of popular sentiment is an apt one. Mass
demonstrations, such as the Green March, are occasions for transfor-
mative collective action, while anti-government street demonstrations
provide a counterpoint to makhzan policies of repression and “divide

and rule.” From the revolt of the Fez tanners in 1874 to the urban riots of
Casablanca in 1965 and 1981 to the 20 February Movement of the 2011
Arab Spring, Moroccans have demonstrated for recognition and social
justice in the face of sometimes overwhelming coercive power.
The “tradition” of the demonstration is more than simply street theater;
in a non-democratic setting, it is a political maneuver of an exemplary type,
evoking past glories as well as the present complaints of the common
people. Youth who took part in the Casablanca riots of 1965 acknowledge
that the street demonstrations unleashed by that event were a “school” for
learning about political activism. Their testimonies after the fact were a
kind of “witnessing” in which people’s memories trumped the bland
official accounts that screened out popular grievances. By memorializing
these events through informal means, young people came to see insurrec-
tional behavior as an instrument of political culture that is deeply rooted in
society. Critical of authority, disorganized politically, divided in their
loyalties, yet sharing a consensus that the future must somehow be better
than the past, Morocco’s youth have become a group-in-formation that
uses the street as its party headquarters.
The press is another institution that has, to a large extent, escaped the
confines of the state and has increasingly become a vehicle for popular
expression over time. From its humble beginnings in the late nineteenth
century, to its role in the nationalist movement, to its impact as an arm of
party politics in the 1950s, the Moroccan press has developed into a
vibrant, contentious, and informative locus of information and public
debate. The press more than any other institution in society has pushed
for the recovery of a buried past that often confutes established opinion.
In the absence of a genuinely critical contemporary historiography, news-
papers and magazines have been the vehicle of choice for rewriting recent
political history. By publishing memoirs, reviews, and news analyses that
provide a counterpoint to “official” accounts that glorify the monarchy,
the press has disseminated information that contests the restrictive pro-
makhzanian discourse that has monopolized the field since independence.
Press exposés on the “years of lead,” or on the kidnapping of Ben Barka,
fill the void between official dogma and suppressed memory. Writing in
the press, when not subjected to censorship, has offered the plurality of
perspectives necessary for a balanced accounting of the past.
The resurgence of civil society in all its forms is another manifestation of
change that enriches historical discussion and constitutes a continuous
theme. While informal social structures of the nineteenth century have
received some attention from historians, there is much to be learned from

the study of groups that systematically resisted the state in the course of
modern Moroccan history. Urban militias, saintly lineages, sufi orders,
secret societies, trade unions, civic associations, radical leftists, women’s
organizations, all comprise entities whose histories need to be reanalyzed
and retold in the light of a positive dynamic of social change. Finding these
phenomena tucked away in the recesses of the past has only begun; stories
about the prostitutes of Bousbir, the goumis of World War II, women
revolutionaries, Moroccan Jewish communists, Berber poets, all consid-
ered “peripheral” by those in rule, contribute to a re-centered narrative
characterized by diversity and inclusiveness.
Historians do not make social revolutions, nor can they heal the iniq-
uities of the past, but they can help reorient the imagination and suggest
new avenues for research and action by providing examples from the
archives of memory. In the “new” Morocco in search of an equilibrium
between the all-powerful state and its restless citizens, the elements of a
freedom-loving tradition embedded in historical discourse are the vital
components for the construction of a revised connection with the past.
The appearance of novel perspectives from every direction, native and
foreign, written and oral, are the signs of a society in mutation. The
Moroccan state has lost control of the minds of its citizens, if it ever held
it, and that fact has helped to incite the ferment we witness today.
A decentered and pluralistic history is part of that ferment, constituting
one of the mainstays of a truly democratic society in which people make
their own choices about which narratives they choose to believe. History
from below is difficult to write, especially in the absence of sources, and
when questioning and innovation are not encouraged by a regime that
up to now has regarded history as its own sacred territory. Recovered
memories can produce a Pandora’s box of images that are difficult to
restrain. But this, too, is changing in an era of renewal, in which historical
inquiry in all its forms becomes vital to the consciousness of a new
generation.
9
Postscript
The Long Decade of Muhammad VI (2000–2011)
The Moroccan people were deeply affected by the dramatic events of the
Arab Spring in the first months of 2011. The king’s response to the popular
uprising that shook the country in February and March of 2011 marked a
new chapter in Morocco’s modern history, in which the monarchy’s
inventiveness, flexibility, and will to survive were severely tested.
Muhammad VI’s deft handling of the crisis was the result of a decade-
long inculcation in the practices of monarchical rule, acquired through
skillful manipulation of the elite classes, the political parties, and the mass
movements played out in the street, that make up the fractured and highly
mobile Moroccan political scene.
The first months of Muhammad VI’s rule were characterized by bold
acts that set the tone for a decisive departure from the past. The ascent of
the youthful king to the throne offered opportunities to introduce far-
reaching changes in public perceptions of the monarchy, with the new
king’s age and accessibility raising hopes for a more equitable balance
between the regime and its people. Immediately upon acceding to power,
he placed his stamp on public affairs by positioning the complementary
concepts of political liberalization and respect for human rights at center
stage. By all accounts, King Muhammad VI’s desire to clean up the residual
grievances from the “years of lead” was genuine. In August 1999, he set up
a Royal Commission to study the payment of indemnities to former
political prisoners, and on September 13, 1999, Morocco’s most famous
political prisoner, Abraham Serfaty, along with his wife Christine Daure-
Serfaty, was allowed to return home. In October 1999, he visited the north
of Morocco, a notoriously fractious region shunned by his father, and with
one stroke, returned the densely populated Rif to the national fold after
221
years of isolation and neglect. On November 9, 1999, an even more

startling act was the firing of the much-hated Interior Minister Driss
Basri, symbol of state secrecy and oppression under Hassan II. This bold
move set the stage for a reorganization of the security apparatus, raising
hopes for a rapprochement between the forces of order and a deeply
alienated public.
The figure of the king acquired a new humanity, as the thick veil of
secrecy thrown over the personal life of Hassan II was cast aside. In the
spring of 2002 Muhammad VI married Salma Bennani, a modern, edu-
cated woman from a well-known Fasi bourgeois family, and a year later,
she delivered their first child, Prince Hassan, now heir to the throne. For
the first time, Moroccans saw the face of the king’s consort – a redheaded
beauty – plastered over the pages of the foreign and national press.
Morocco now had a “royal family” centered on a “first couple” whose
images, desires, and habits were publicly scrutinized in a closely managed
campaign in the popular media. Moroccans learned facts about the royal
family they had never before known: the location of their many residences,
the annual budget of the royal household, their preferences, and their
pastimes.
The new king also surrounded himself with a cadre of advisers of a
totally new cast: friends from school, business associates, and graduates
from the most prestigious French and American universities and profes-
sional schools, who were assigned to crucial posts in the palace and
government and wielded immense power in his name. A dense and inter-
locking web of royal commissions, institutes, councils, and foundations
sprang up, manned by comrades and protégés of Muhammad VI, and
answering to him alone. Key posts were filled by talented loyalists, such as
palace spokesman Hassan Aourid (a school friend) Interior Minister
Chakib Benmousa (École polytechnique and MIT), Tourism Minister
Adil Douiri (École nationale des ponts et chaussées and Harvard). Their
mission was broad but well defined: to modernize an outdated infrastruc-
ture, to build barriers against the threat from religious extremists, to
launch a “war on poverty” that would ameliorate the appalling conditions
in which many Moroccans lived, to encourage foreign investment, to build
bridges to Morocco’s friends in Europe and the United States, and to help
preserve the material and spiritual bedrock on which the monarchy rested.
Uppermost in the king’s mind was the plan to increase social mobiliza-
tion by closing the books on the “years of lead.” King Hassan II had tried
to clean the slate, but at his death, the job was only half-done. The 1998
government of Alternance represented something of a détente with the
The Long Decade of Muhammad VI (2000–2011) 223
regime’s old opponents on the left, but it left unanswered the question of
reparations for the victims of makhzan brutality. Under pressure from
former prisoners and following the publication of harrowing accounts of
their travail, such as Tazmamart cellule 10 of Ahmed Marzouki, the
makhzan felt compelled to respond. Muhammad VI assumed responsibil-
ity for this dossier, and in 2003 created the Equity and Reconciliation
Commission (ERC) for the sole purpose of exposing victims’ stories to the
public eye and arranging compensation for them. His charge to the ERC
was to bring the truth to light, but “without judging my father,” and
without citing names of perpetrators. Human rights activist Driss
Benzekri was appointed to head the commission to the chagrin of many
of his former associates and fellow prisoners, who saw his cooperation as a
form of capitulation.
The ERC worked for nearly two years, recording and videotaping
testimony from thousands of victims, creating a record of individual
abuses and cases of disappearance, locating sites of torture as well as the
secret burial places of the dead. The nation stood transfixed as these
revelations unfolded in the media. But the identities of the torturers were
never revealed, the name of Hassan II was never invoked, and no punish-
ments were meted out to the perpetrators. In December 2005, the ERC
delivered its final report, calling for a reform of the judicial system that
would obviate a return to the iniquities of old, but these recommendations
were never acted upon. Instead, on January 6, 2006, Muhammad VI
received the families of the victims and accepted the regime’s responsibility
for their suffering, according them a “noble amnesty.” Overall, nearly ten
thousand victims of the “years of lead” received indemnities totaling more
than $200 million.
Despite its shortcomings, Morocco’s experience with the ERC was
revolutionary in the Arab world, establishing judicial norms that were
widely praised at home and abroad. However, turning the page on the
“years of lead” did not mean that human rights issues disappeared from
the political agenda. Human rights advocacy in Morocco continued both
under the umbrella of the state and outside of it; a National Human Rights
Council (CNDH) commands the field, organizing humanitarian efforts,
reporting on abuses, defending children’s and prisoners’ rights, and acting
as a standardbearer in Arab and international fora. The regime’s progres-
sive stance on human rights has paid multiple political dividends, allowing
it to coopt and neutralize many of its former adversaries on the left. But
after 2003, when the temperature of the Islamist threat rose and the regime
began to confront militants now located mainly on the right, norms of
conduct embraced during the campaign to repair the damage of the years
of lead were allowed to lapse. By mid-decade, many Moroccans were
wondering if, in the sphere of human rights, the more things had changed,
the more they had remained the same.
The fear of a new descent into repression was implicit in the second
platform of Muhammad VI’s early years, when he was willingly recruited
into the international “war on terror” waged by the West against Muslim
extremists. While a virulent religious opposition had been part of
the Moroccan scene since the 1980s, with the diatribes of Shaykh
Abdessalam Yassine receiving the most attention, the danger of a reli-
giously based insurgency did not really come home to Morocco until
2001, when security forces revealed the presence of cells of the al-Qaqida-
linked group Salafiyya Jihadiyya dispersed around the country. In the
intense manhunt that followed, thousands of populist preachers and their
followers were seized and thrown into prison, reawakening for many
Moroccans the nightmare of the harsh repressions of the past.
Suicide bombings on May 16, 2003, in Casablanca carried out by mem-
bers of the Salafiyya Jihadiyya mainly from the Sidi Moumen bidonville
of Casablanca killed forty-five people and injured scores more, deepening
Morocco’s involvement with the growing problem of international ter-
rorism. While aimed principally at Jewish and foreign (Spanish) targets,
the bombings traumatized the Moroccan public at large. A massive
public relations effort was launched, leading with the slogan “Don’t
touch my country!” in an concerted effort to galvanize public
opinion against the security threat. Popular feeling was inflamed further
by the Madrid train bombings of March 11, 2004, allegedly planned and
executed with Moroccan participation. Parallel to these events, the gov-
ernment initiated a campaign of severe repression directed against
Islamist militants that continued unabated from 2003 onward, orches-
trated by the flamboyant General Hamidou Laanigri, head of the
National Security organization until his fall from power in September
2006.
Meanwhile, Morocco became implicated in America’s “war on ter-
ror,” with allegations surfacing that sites in Morocco were being used for
the “rendition” of detainees suspected of terrorist activities. The BBC
reported on September 28, 2006, that the nongovernmental AMDH,
along with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, were claim-
ing that a “black site” at the beach town of Temara was being used to
interrogate and torture prisoners. The Moroccan Ministry of Justice
denied knowledge of such a place, but the negative image of official
involvement in torture now circulated widely in the local and inter-

national press. Many Moroccans felt that by engaging in the “war on
terror” Muhammad VI was fighting America’s war, and that Morocco
should play a more neutral role.
Indeed, the degree to which the press would be allowed to critique the
regime became another bone of contention between the monarchy and
human rights activists. Press freedom promoted by Hassan II reached a
high point in the late 1990s, when a spate of new periodicals appeared that
exposed formerly hushed-up subjects to the public gaze, even at the risk of
being censored. And censored they were, with increasing severity during
the reign of Muhammad VI, who was in many ways more thin-skinned
than his father.
The case of Le Journal is instructive. When it first appeared in 1997, its
editors Ali Amar, Abubakr Jamaï, and Hassan Mansouri immediately
showed their political mettle by giving an interview to the head of the
Polisario. The magazine was shut down for the first time in 2000, but soon
reappeared with an article denouncing the Washington, DC, real estate
capers of the then Moroccan ambassador to the United States, Mohamed
Benaïssa. In 2001, Le Journal was slapped with a five hundred thousand
dirham fine in connection with the Benaïssa case that put a huge hole in its
finances; nevertheless, the editors persevered, inciting even greater anger
from the powers-that-be for their unrelenting attacks on corruption in high
places. When Abubakr Jamaï was compelled to flee Morocco in 2007 or be
subject to prosecution, the life span of Le Journal entered its final stages;
former editor Ali Amar announced the magazine’s demise in 2010, naming
as its cause the campaign of “financial asphyxiation” mounted against it
by the regime. News magazines of a satiric nature, like Ali Mrabet’s
Demain and Doumane, suffered reprisals for showing “a lack of respect
for the King,” and Rachid Niny, editor of the high circulation daily
al-Masap, was arrested for publishing “disinformation.” While some
news magazines like Tel Quel managed to endure, others fell by the way-
side. By the end of the decade, it was clear that the brief honeymoon
between the activist press and Muhammad VI had come to an end.
Another topic carried over from the previous era was the issue of Berber
rights, and the place of Berber language (Tamazight) and culture in the
Moroccan national diadem. King Muhammad VI took on this cause as a
third item in his campaign to correct lapses of the past, recognizing the
argument that the suppression of Berber culturalism was widely construed
as an infringement of human rights. He was also personally open on this
topic, since his close friend Hassan Aourid was a standard-bearer for the
Amazigh cause. In March 2000, over two hundred intellectuals led

by Berber university professor Mohamed Chafik published a “Berber
Manifesto,” insisting on the presence of “Amazighity” in Morocco since
pre-Islamic times, while frontally attacking the ideology of Islamo-
Arabism that had served as a cornerstone of nationalist discourse since
the early days of the Istiqlal. The Manifesto made a series of demands,
including a call to make Tamazight an official language alongside Arabic.
In May 2000, a congress of Amazigh activists held at Bouznika laid the
foundations of the movement, but when a second national congress was
planned for June 2001 with the aim of creating a Berber political party,
opposing voices condemned the movement as “racist,” “xenophobic,”
and “separatist,” and a danger to the integrity of the nation, and the
congress was abruptly cancelled.
With more than 40 percent of Moroccans still identifying with their
Berber roots, Muhammad VI understood the volatility of the topic and
stepped in. On October 17, 2001, at Ajdir, the Rifian village of the Berber
nationalist hero qAbd al-Karim al-Khattabi, Muhammad VI announced
the creation of the IRCAM, and appointed Muhammad Chafik as its first
director. The mission of this institute was to publicize the Berber element in
Moroccan culture through programs of research, conferences, and publi-
cations generously supported by the state. But the IRCAM soon adopted a
more aggressive platform when in 2003 Chafik was replaced by Ahmed
Boukous, another widely respected academic. Under Boukous’ guidance,
the IRCAM pushed for changes such as the adoption of a Berber alphabet
(Tifinagh), making it possible for the first time to develop textbooks and
school curricula that would bring the demand for a state-sponsored pro-
gram of Berber language instruction into the realm of reality.
With the debate focusing on the question of Berber language, officials
faced a serious challenge. Studies have shown that many Moroccan stu-
dents, even those who complete high school, are weak in reading and
writing formal Arabic (fusha), while mastery of French is an accomplish-
ment usually confined to the educated elites. The addition of Berber to this
already indigestible linguistic mix presented a daunting problem for plan-
ners, who were wallowing under a welter of demands to modernize an
overcharged and under-funded school system. In 2006, a coalition of
dozens of pro-Berber associations presented a report to the United
Nations about the situation in Morocco, protesting against “official denial
of the Amazigh reality, constitutional discrimination and exclusion,
oppressive Arabization, and prevention of activities by Amazigh associa-
tions and intimidations” while condemning the IRCAM as an “instrument
of the makhzan created to squelch the Amazigh movement.” As the Berber

movement split into warring factions, the Berber language issue became yet
another arena in which the forward momentum of the early years of
Muhammad VI’s reign appeared to grind to a halt.
A fourth platform of the new regime was the reform of the
Mudawwana, or Code of Family Law. Steps toward the rewriting of the
family code began under Hassan II, but the project became ensnared in
the question of the religious legitimacy of the monarchy and its conserva-
tive responsibility to uphold principles of Muslim law. Supported by a
modernizing faction who felt that outmoded traditional practices clashed
with the mood of the times, the new king decided to make reform of the
Mudawwana a pillar of his social policy. One of his first acts, on August
20, 1999, was to make a speech in which he questioned the rationale
behind subjecting women to second-class citizenship in a country headed
toward “progress and prosperity.” Spurred on by his words, women’s
groups took to the street in well-organized marches in Rabat and
Casablanca in March 2000 to urge the reform of the family code. Rather
than being upstaged by the activist civic associations, the king decided to
appoint a royal commission made up of a variety of actors – law profes-
sors, ulama, jurists, feminists – to consider the issue and draft a new family
code. Meeting behind closed doors for months, the commission failed to
reach consensus and presented two separate plans to Muhammad VI, who
exercised his authority by choosing the more liberal version. The new
Mudawwana was presented to parliament in September 2003 and passed
after a brief debate, but there was no doubt in the public mind that the
ultimate guarantor of this new law was the monarch himself, backed by his
prestige as Commander of the Faithful and head of the Islamic community.
The new family code was by most accounts revolutionary. The legal age
of marriage was raised to eighteen, each member of the married couple was
equal in the court of law, and women could no longer be repudiated
without the couple appearing before a judge. The code created divorce
by mutual consent and allowed women to initiate divorce proceedings,
even without cause. The law also protected the rights of women who were
divorced or repudiated, allowing them to keep their possessions and
children without being thrown into the street, and placed severe con-
straints on polygamy. While the Mudawwana was not secular law, its
greatest innovation was its establishment of the legal rights of married
women as their own agents in a court of law. The code was received with
enthusiasm by women activists, who saw it as a giant leap forward. But it
soon became apparent that application of the code was uneven, as judges
unfamiliar with its terms, or ideologically opposed to them, impeded its

implementation. Moreover, rural women were far less familiar with it than
urban women, and Islamist groups stood against it on political grounds. In
a July 3, 2007, interview with the German magazine Der Speigel, Nadia
Yassine, daughter of Shaykh Yassine, said that the new Mudawwana
favored the “small secular elite” who supported the king: “The king has
passed a law for women who go to high school,” she declared, “but not for
average people in the countryside.” Recognizing these problems, progres-
sive women’s organizations took the lead in sponsoring the dissemination
of the code in darija (spoken Moroccan Arabic) as well as in the Berber
dialects used by rural women.
Dramatic reforms created a sense of a progressive opening during the
early years of Muhammad VI’s reign, but the mood of optimism soon
faded as “business as usual” took hold. The arena of electoral politics is yet
another example of good intentions giving way to political pragmatism
and old habits of divide and rule. The experience of the Alternance of the
late 1990s demonstrated that transparent elections could generate an
atmosphere of confidence in the regime. But it was soon apparent that
despite the opening posited by the Alternance, further structural changes
in the mechanisms of rule were needed. Some kind of political “transition”
was clearly in the offing, but it was not the fundamental realignment that
many had hoped for. Sweeping powers remained the monarch’s alone:
the appointment of ministers, including the prime minister, the right to
dissolve parliament and legislate in its absence, the ability to declare a
state of emergency and to revise the constitution by national referendum.
These and other entrenched practices kept the prerogatives of absolute
rule intact.
Staging regular elections appeared to be yet another mechanism cloak-
ing the monarchy in a mantle of democratization, without giving up any
real measure of royal authority. The elections of September 2002 brought
this reality home with striking clarity. The first elections to be held in the
post-Basri era, the government took advantage of the current of fresh air
and organized a successful campaign to get out the vote, brandishing the
slogan, “The future is in your hands.” The results of wider participation –
51 percent of the eligible electorate went to the polls – were evident in the
stunning victory of the PJD, the Islamist party, over all other contenders.
The PJD success marked the end of the government of Alternance of
Youssoufi and the emergence of the pro-Islamists as the single most
important force in parliament. Despite their victory, the king chose as
his prime minister Driss Jettou, a businessman and loyalist who handed
out ministerial posts to the old parties of the Alternance, excluding the
PJD and ignoring its victory at the polls.
Working against the backdrop of the May 2003 terrorist attacks,
Jettou remained in office for five years, directing a program of rapid
modernization piloted by the king without parliamentary interference.
On the positive side, unlike Algeria, where Islamist leaders were violently
purged from political life, in Morocco after 2002 Islamist politicians were
allowed to participate in government, but they were held in close check
by the understanding that discretion was the key to their political sur-
vival. The unwritten accord between the palace and the Islamists assured
social peace while maintaining the façade of inclusiveness, allowing the
king to point with pride to a record of transparency and electoral fairness
unusual in the Arab world.
With encouragement from the palace, parties began to jockey for posi-
tion for the next electoral trial held on September 7, 2007, with the palace
again mounting an energetic publicity campaign to mobilize Moroccans
for the forthcoming vote. Despite these efforts, only 37 percent of the
eligible electorate turned out this time. The restrained number of voters
delivered a stunning defeat to the PJD in favor of the Istiqlal, prompting yet
another swing in the electoral pendulum. With the Istiqlal now the domi-
nant party in the parliament, the king appointed its leader Abbas al-Fassi
as prime minister at the head of a coalition government made up of a
multitude of small and ineffectual parties, many of them pro-royalist. This
return to the past both startled and relieved Moroccans, especially those
who feared the PJD victory erroneously prognosticated in the press. Yet, at
the same time, the low voter turnout was worrisome: Why such indiffer-
ence to electoral politics?
Despite the effort by the makhzan to build credibility by using elec-
tions as a touchstone of democratization, the Moroccan electorate chose
to desist from voting, exposing the fallacies of the makhzan’s strategy.
People deplored the alphabet soup of parties, the vacuity of their plat-
forms, the lack of clear policies or projects, their puppetlike obedience to
the palace, the whiff of corruption that emanated from backroom deals,
and the suspicion that votes were still being bought. In short, the elec-
torate demonstrated a genuine disillusionment with party politics, con-
vinced that the immense social and economic problems that plagued the
country would not find their solution through the electoral or legislative
processes. Most troubling of all was the indifference of young people.
The “depoliticization” of youth was a trend that accelerated after 2000,
according to surveys conducted by academic researchers, who found that
fi g u r e 3 2 . Demonstrations by unemployed university graduates protesting

limited job opportunities were a common sight in the streets of Rabat in 2008.
(Collection Susan Gilson Miller)
the majority of Moroccan youth made no distinction between left and

right, deplored the lack of “moral” content in political life, and favored
the religiously oriented parties. The poor turnout for the 2007 vote was
an early warning sign of the cynicism and the widespread disillusionment
with party politics among youth that burst out into the open during
Spring 2011.
The political transition of the first decade of Muhammad VI’s rule was
also accompanied by sweeping changes in the economic sphere, marked by
improvement in the regime’s ability to manage growth and investment. But
this transition, too, was managed from above with an eye to strengthening
the structural underpinnings of le pouvoir, as the regime was commonly
called. The practice of placing technocrats in key economic posts begun
under Hassan II was accentuated under the new king, a businessman par
excellence, whose personal fortune was estimated by Forbes Magazine at
around $2.5 billion in 2009, five times greater than that of the Queen of
England. The king’s economic advisers emulated his aggressive business
style, turning their backs on the “nationalist” economic policies of the
1960s and 1970s, and adopting instead an IMF-approved fiscal discipline
designed to attract direct foreign investment and reorient Morocco toward

European markets. Privatization had already begun under Hassan II, who
championed the opening of the Casablanca stock market in the 1990s
and invited foreign participation in Moroccan enterprises. These trends
gained momentum under Muhammad VI, who became Morocco’s chief
economic ambassador abroad, selling the “new-old” Morocco as a good
place to invest.
The Moroccan economy is heavily export-oriented; lacking energy
reserves and food security, it must import both, creating a permanent
trade deficit. The annual gap between exports (about $15 billion in
2008) and imports (about $35 billion) is partially filled by revenues from
tourism and remittances from Moroccans living abroad. Morocco’s
impressive growth rate in recent years (4.2 percent in 2010) is fueled by
foreign capital sunk mainly in projects in telecommunications, banking,
insurance, hotels, and port facilities, such as the huge Tanger-Med facility
on the Mediterranean coast between Tangier and Tetuan, soon to be the
largest port in Africa. Seventy-five percent of Morocco’s exports go to
Europe, and France is by far Morocco’s biggest foreign investor and
trading partner, a relationship fanned by the friendship between King
Muhammad VI and former French President Jacques Chirac. Next
comes Spain, and in third place, the countries of the Gulf: Bahrain,
Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Lagging behind are the United States
and China, although trade with these two giants is on the increase. French
investment is omnipresent in Morocco’s economy in every sector from the
national airline to the yoghurt industry, leading Driss Basri to say in 2004
that “France has bought everything.”
Among nonstate actors, the World Bank has played a key role in
Morocco, generously opening its coffers for development projects. After
2007, the IMF under Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a great friend of Morocco,
joined the parade, helping to burnish Morocco’s image as a potential
economic powerhouse. But in fact, the Moroccan economy remains fragile
and sensitive to fluctuations in the global economy, and its heavy depend-
ence on foreign investment for growth is a chief cause for worry.
Moreover, the agricultural sector, though not as important as it once
was, is still the primary employer and subject to sharp swings due to the
weather, reinforcing fears of vulnerability. The anxieties of a large pop-
ulation living below the poverty line – the official figure is 15 percent but
most observers agree the number could be double that – compounded by a
30 percent unemployment rate, contributed to the turmoil and anger
expressed in the street demonstrations of Spring 2011.
Economic troubles are at the heart of the massive human outflow that
has characterized Moroccan life for decades. Moroccan emigration after
independence was largely a movement of workers seeking factory jobs in
the booming postwar European economy; in recent years, it has turned
into a classic brain drain, as Moroccans have become better educated
and seek salaries commensurate with their experience. Doctors, engi-
neers, scientists, and technicians trained in Morocco or abroad make up
the movement. Morocco is the largest supplier of émigrés to Europe and
the Americas among the countries of the Middle East, surpassing
Algeria, Turkey, and Egypt; in 2007, nearly five million Moroccans
lived abroad, not counting political exiles and “clandestine” migrants
who live “below the radar.” Nearly three million Moroccans live in
Europe, not counting children, with the majority in France and Spain,
creating a huge overseas constituency that maintains ties with the home-
land. Moroccans in the hundreds of thousands reside permanently in the
Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Germany. About
three hundred thousand Moroccans live in the Arab East, with Libya in
the lead (where the effects on them of the 2011 revolution are as yet
unknown), while in the countries of the Gulf, Moroccan women hold
service jobs in health and education. As of this writing, over one hundred
thousand Moroccans live in the United States, and another eighty thou-
sand are settled in Canada, the majority concentrated in French-
speaking Montreal. The North American émigrés are especially well
qualified in terms of education, with Moroccans now holding teaching
and research posts at some of North America’s most prestigious
universities.
The future impact of this variegated and increasingly important over-
seas community is imponderable. Denied voting rights, but courted and
tabulated by the regime, they could wield considerable economic and
political influence in the future. The “return” of certain émigrés to manage-
ment posts within Morocco under Muhammad VI has significantly shaped
government policy, with their advanced expertise being felt in the tele-
communications, tourist, and banking sectors. Recognizing the potential
richness of this human resource, King Muhammad VI created the Hassan
II Foundation for Moroccans living abroad in an effort to keep émigrés
”within the family,” and he has deftly shepherded this cohort, who gen-
erally feel exceptional loyalty to country and king. State-sponsored proj-
ects help maintain close ties. Each year, the Moroccan government sends
hundreds of imams to Europe during Ramadan to act as “religious ambas-
sadors”; it offers aid to Islamic associations in Europe; and it has made the
“annual summer return” an occasion for celebration through the improve-

ment of port and customs facilities.
Linkages forged with émigré communities are only one part of a larger
diplomatic offensive launched by Muhammad VI to strengthen ties with
the wider world. He has carefully pursued foreign policy lines laid down by
his father, clinging closely to friendships in the West, maintaining low-key
relations with Israel, while warmly embracing his fellow royals in Jordan
and the Gulf. The most difficult issue handed on by Hassan II to his son is
the Saharan case; at his death, a cease-fire was still in force in preparation
for a referendum on the territory’s future. But agreement in principle on
who would vote in this referendum was never reached, and the UN proved
to be incapable of ending the deadlock. Meanwhile, the Sahara officially
remains non-Moroccan, to the chagrin of nearly all Moroccans, vexed by
the massive financial and human investments made in the contested terri-
tory over the past thirty-five years. Since 2008, the United States has
pushed for Saharan “autonomy,” but this plan has been rejected both by
the Polisario, who want full independence, and by most Moroccans, who
demand full integration. Meanwhile, practically speaking, the Sahara has
been fully absorbed from the Moroccan perspective, leaving the regime
open to the charge from erstwhile friends in Africa and Asia that it has
acted in a high-handed and “neocolonial” manner.
Consultation on the Saharan issue is only one aspect of an increasingly
close relationship with the United States, especially in the military/security
sphere. Morocco’s position at the entry to the Mediterranean has trans-
fixed American military strategists for decades, while its supportive stance
on the “war of terror,” its lukewarm yet positive attitude toward Israel, its
tough opposition to Islamic extremism, its dedication to some form of
democratization, and its pro-business king, are additional factors that have
endeared it to American policy makers. In 2004, the United States and
Morocco signed a sweeping free trade agreement that mutually lowered
most tariffs and raised the promise of greater U.S. direct investment in the
Moroccan economy. As a result, U.S. – Moroccan trade is steadly increas-
ing. The most recent evidence that Morocco under Muhammad VI is a
solid ally of the United States came in 2007, when U.S. President George
W. Bush announced that Morocco would allow the construction of a U.S.
military base at Tan-Tan to serve as a staging area for Africom, the newly
created U.S. military force aimed at policing terrorist movements in Africa.
Relations with Algeria, however, remain poor at best. The border
between the two countries is closed, despite persistent efforts from the
Moroccan side to reopen it. The Algerians have remained steadfast in their
refusal to do business, using as a pretext Morocco’s intransigence on the

Saharan issue; meanwhile, Algerian citizens eager to dip into the shopping
cornucopia of Morocco’s northern coastal cities are kept at bay, with
smuggling replacing legal business operations. Relations with Spain have
also had their difficulties, with the “lost” territories of Ceuta and Melilla
constituting a permanent stumbling block to otherwise mostly friendly ties.
In July 2002, an armed incident between Moroccan and Spanish troops
broke out on the rocky, goat-inhabited Island of Perejil (in English,
“Parsley”; and in Tamazight, “Tura”) located in the Strait of Gibraltar
close to Morocco. This confrontation perturbed relations between the two
countries until it was settled by international mediation. The incident
revealed once again that the Moroccan ambition to recover territories
long held by Spain on the Mediterranean coast would remain a sticking
point in Spanish-Moroccan relations for the foreseeable future.
Morocco is seen in the West as an “island of stability” in an otherwise
turbulent region, despite its endemic poverty, illegal drug trade, residual
corruption, runaway population increase, disaffected youth, political
paralysis, variable economy, and government of “enlightened” authori-
tarianism. King Muhammad VI is viewed as the centerpiece of this varia-
gated mosaic, personifying a widespread belief in the indispensability of
monarchical rule to the continuity of peace and stability. In the first decade
of his rule, King Muhammad VI managed to convince a majority of
Moroccans that they should put aside the near-mystical dread they felt
toward his predecessor and instead, embrace the monarchy as a source of
compassion, competence and professionalism, seeing it as the crucial
cement of national unity and the best form of governance for Morocco.
For many of his subjects, but not all, Muhammad VI fulfilled the prototype
of the “citizen monarch,” dear to his people, sharing their values and
aspirations, despite his slow but steady reversion to many of the autocratic
practices of the past.
This aura of calm was abruptly disrupted by the events of the winter and
spring of 2011, when the uprisings that began in Tunisia and Egypt rolled
across North Africa. The tumult of the Arab Spring that caused heads to
roll further East brought people out into the streets to protest a whole
range of grievances: the lack of jobs, official corruption, the thwarting of
Berber rights, and most of all, the long-sleeping issue of the monarchy’s
monopolization of politics. A big rally in Rabat and other cities on
February 20, 2011, marked the beginning of a youth-led movement that
was patently opposed to the royal monopoly on power. Once again, the
old dilemma between preserving tranquility versus limiting royal authority
raised its ugly head. Using social media to direct the rising tide of popular
feeling, the February 20 Movement kept up a rolling wave of protests in
major cities across the country throughout the spring of 2011. In March,
demonstrations turned violent, with considerable damage to government
property and banks, and dozens of casualties. Calling for jobs, democracy,
and constitutional reform, the February 20 Movement orchestrated the
demonstrations but showed surprising restraint, rarely openly attacking
the personhood of the king. Backed by a small but militant group of
educated and successful businessmen, the February 20 Movement repre-
sented an innovative coalition of young people and certain members of the
upwardly mobile, secularized, and Westernized middle class.
Heeding the seriousness of the demands, and fearing a replication of the
upheaval taking place elsewhere in the Middle East, Muhammad VI
reacted on March 9, 2011, by announcing the creation of a commission
to draft a new constitution. Charging it to work with haste, he set out the
guidelines for a new compact, promising among other things that in the
future, the prime minister would be chosen from the majority party and
would wield effective executive powers. At the same time, he appointed a
consultative committee to serve as a liaison between the drafters, the
political parties, and other civic groups, in order to supply ideas and
offer feedback. It is still unclear if any debate or genuine exchange of
views ever took place between this body and the drafters, who, like
previous constitutional commissions, worked in camera.
On June 17, 2011, the king announced details of the draft constitution
in a televised speech to the nation. Groups on the left, including the
February 20 Movement, rejected the document, saying it did not go far
enough, while mainstream political parties, including the PJD, endorsed
it with enthusiasm. On July 1, the constitution was approved by
98.5 percent of voters, with nearly ten million votes cast, representing
close to 75 percent of the eligible electorate. The new constitution tackled
many of the issues that had roiled the public sphere since Muhammad
VI’s ascent to power, such as the place of Islam, reconfirmed as the state
religion, and the status of Tamazight, now recognized as an “official”
language alongside Arabic.
The most important innovations, however, were the limitations on the
king’s ability to intervene in day-to-day politics. While the king’s role as
“supreme arbiter” of political life remained unquestioned, the new con-
stitution enhanced the legislative powers of the parliament and increased
the independence of the judiciary, moving at least in spirit toward a
separation of powers. What it did not do was to unequivocally limit the
king’s preponderant influence over public affairs, or move Morocco closer

to becoming a parliamentary monarchy; in other words, it stopped short of
remaking Muhammad VI into “a king who reigns but does not rule.”
On November 25, parliamentary elections yielded a clear victory for
the PJD, with the Islamist party capturing 107 of the 395 seats. On
November 29, 2011, Abdelilah Benkirane, head of the PJD and a one-
time member of the Shabiba Islamiyya, was named prime minister,
promising to defend a “controlled democracy” and “personal free-
doms.” Meanwhile, the anemic 45 percent rate of participation in the
elections signaled that many Moroccans still felt alienated from politics
and preferred to stay home on election day. Members of the February 20
Movement loudly boycotted the elections, while others voiced their dis-
illusionment with the political parties and expressed doubts about their
ability to tackle deeply rooted social problems.
Nevertheless, there was a wide consensus that Muhammad VI’s rapid
response to the demand for constitutional reform had kept his regime from
experiencing the life-threatening spasms felt elsewhere in the Arab world.
His political nimbleness coupled with other strategic gestures, such as
doubling food subsidies, opening up new government jobs, and increasing
the salaries of civil servants, tipped the balance in his favor, at least for the
time being. Once again, the monarchy mastered a situation in which the
institutional channels for expressing the popular will remain chronically
blocked. Moreover, while the king’s swift and decisive action seems to
have momentarily succeeded in restoring calm, there is no doubt that “the
street” and the politically engaged classes will continue to press for change.
Clearly, the main grievances of the protestors – and of most Moroccans –
concerning quality-of-life issues have not yet been met, neither by social
measures nor by constitutional reform. As of this writng, the following
questions are quietly but insistently posed: Will the PJD be able to succeed
where so many others have failed? Can the Islamists provide a means to
lead Morocco out of its unending crises? And most important of all: How
long will the patience of the Moroccan people continue to be tried?
Glossary of Arabic Terms
qadl. pl. qudul notary

amin, pl. umana Government tax collector, overseer, head of a pro-
fessional corporation
qaskar nizami The modernized professional army of the later nine-
teenth century
baraka Mystical power of saints and sharifs; miracle-working abilities
bayqa Oath of allegiance to the sultan
bled (Ar., bilad) Countryside, rural area
dahir Royal decree
dhimmi A non-Muslim, Jew or Christian
fatwa Legal opinion issued by one of the ulama
fiqh Islamic jurisprudence
habous, hubus, habus Religious endowment in perpetuity
harka Military expedition to the interior
hectare (fr.) Piece of land of about 2.5 acres
hurm A sacred sanctuary
islah (pl. islahat) Reform, religious and political
jaysh, gish Tribal military contingents offered in return for tax exemption
khalifa “Deputy,” heir apparent to the throne
khutba The Friday prayer in the mosque
latif A prayer for divine intervention in times of distress
millah, mellah Jewish quarter of the Moroccan city
madina The old city, the walled section of a town
mahalla Army troop on the march
makhzan Lit. storehouse or treasury; in Morocco, makhzan signifies
the government or the state
marabout, (Ar. murabit) Holy man, saint
239
240 Glossary
maks Non-Qurpanic taxes that raised popular resentment

mujahid Warrior in defense of Islam
mithqal Sum of money equal to ten dirhams (c. 1900)
pasha Governor of a large town
qaqid Governor of a rural area
salafi A member of the Muslim reform movement founded by
Muhammad qAbduh
shariah Islamic law
sharif, pl. shurafa Nobility; descendant of Prophet Muhammad
siba Dissidence, territory not under mahzan control
tabor A military unit of varying size, between three hundred and twelve
hundred men
tajir, pl. tujjar A member of the merchant class
tamazight The main dialect of Berber in Morocco
tanzimat The Ottoman reform movement of the nineteenth century
tartib A universal tax on wealth paid in cash
umma The Muslim community or nation
qushr, pl. aqshar Qurpanic tax of one-tenth on agricultural produce
zaqim Charismatic political leader
zakat A Qurpanic tax of 2.5 percent paid on capital goods and livestock
zawiya A religious lodge or retreat; a religious order
Notes
1. The Closing of the Era of Jihad (1830–1860)

1. C.-A. Julien, History of North Africa: Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, from the
Arab Conquest to 1830, transl. John Petrie, ed. C. C. Stewart (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), 126.
2. A. Laroui, The History of the Maghrib (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1977), 275–9.
3. Mohamed El Mansour gathered from various sources a rough estimate of
population size between the years 1771 and 1825 in his Morocco in the
Reign of Mawlay Sulayman (Wisbech, UK: MENAS Press, 1988), 6.
4. On al-Zayani, see M. El Mansour, “The Makhzan’s Berber: Paths to
Integration in Pre-Colonial Morocco,” in Berbers and Others: Beyond Tribe
and Nation in the Maghrib, K. E. Hoffman and S. G. Miller, eds.
(Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2010), 63–79.
5. Laroui, History, 276.
6. al-Zayani, Al-Tarjumana al-kubra fi akhbar al-maʻmur barran wa-bahran
(Rabat.: Wizarat al-Anba, 1967), 131–2.
7. On the building of Essaouira, also known as Mogador, see Mina al-Mghari,
Madinat mukadur-al-sawira ; Dirasa tarikhiyya wa-athariyya (Rabat: Dar Abi
Ragrag lil-tabaqa wa-al-nashr, 2006).
8. F. Harrak, “State and Religion in Eighteenth Century Morocco: The Religious
Policy of Sidi Muhammad b. qAbd Allah, 1757–1790.” Ph.D. diss., School of
Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1989.
9. El Mansour, Mawlay Sulayman, 22.
10. A. Jabarti, Napoleon in Egypt: Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle of the First Seven
Months of the French Occupation, 1798 (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1993).
11. El Mansour, Mawlay Sulayman, 67.
12. Ibid., 189. On the plague of 1818, see Dr. H. J. P. Renaud, “La Peste de 1818
d’après des documents inédits,” Hespéris 3,1 (1923): 13–35.
13. The best introduction to the motives and events surrounding the French
landing in Algiers (despite its near-complete dependency on published
French sources) is still C.-A. Julien, Histoire de l’Algérie contemporaine,
1827–1871 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1964), chs. 1 and 2. See
also L. Addi, “Colonial Mythologies: Algeria in the French Imagination,”
in Franco-Arab Encounters: Studies in the Memory of David Gordon,
245
246 Notes to pages 13–21
L. C. Brown and M. Gordon, eds. (Beirut: American University of Beirut

Press, 1996), 93–105.
14. A. K. Bennison., Jihad and Its Interpretations in Pre-Colonial Morocco:
State-Society Relations During the French Conquest of Algeria (London
and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2002), 47; M. Kenbib, “The Impact of
the French Conquest of Algeria on Morocco (1830–1912), in North Africa:
Nation, State, and Region, E. G. H. Joffé, ed. (London and New York:
Routledge, 1993), 38.
15. A. al-Nasiri, Kitab al-Istiqsa li-akhbar duwal al-Maghrib al-aqsa, 8 vols.,
M. Hajji, B. Bu Talib, A. Tawfiq, eds. (Casablanca: al-Najah, 2001–2005) 8:
39–41.
16. al-Nasiri, Kitab al-Istiqsa, 8:43.
17. C. H. Churchill, The Life of Abdel Kader, Ex-Sultan of the Arabs of Algeria:
Written from His Own Dictation, and Comp. From Other Authentic Sources
(London: Chapman and Hall, 1867), 2.
19. Churchill, The Life of Abdel Kader, 25.
20. Ibid., 62.
21. Julien, L’Algérie contemporaine, 105.
22. Churchill, The Life of Abdel Kader, 78.
23. F. Harrak, “Mawlay Ismaqil’s Jaysh al-qAbid: Reassessment of a Military
Experience,” in Slave Elites in the Middle East and Africa, M. Toru and
J. E. Philips, eds. (London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 2000),
185–190.
24. El Mansour, Mawlay Sulayman, 26; the quote is from the Moroccan Minister
Muhammad b. Idris al-qAmrawi.
25. al-Nasiri, Kitab al-Istiqsa, 8:47–50.
26. Bennison, Jihad, 115.
28. Ibid., 8:62. See also L. Valensi, Fables de la mémoire: la glorieuse bataille des
trois rois (Paris: Editions Seuil, 1992), 98–100.
29. S. G. Miller, “Crisis and Community: The People of Tangier and the French
Bombardment of 1844: The Purim of ‘Las Bombas’,” Middle Eastern Studies
27, 4 (1991): 583–96. The quotations are from Dr. A.-H. Warnier, Campagne
du Maroc, 1844: Journal d’Auguste-Hubert Warnier, chirurgien-major,
attaché à l’état-major du prince de Joinville, H-R. d’Allemagne, ed. (Paris:
Nouvelle revue rétrospective, 1899), 99; and from an unpublished Purim scroll
in the possession of the author.
30. qAbd al-Qadir was imprisoned in France until 1853, when he was finally
permitted to leave for the East, eventually settling in Damascus. For an account
of his later career, see B. Étienne, Abdelkader (Paris: Hachette, 1994), esp.
pp. 208–12, 221–52.
31. J. McDougall, History and the Culture of Nationalism in Algeria (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006), 177–183.
32. F. Cooper, “Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History,”
American Historical Review 99, 5 (1994), 1532–3.
Notes to pages 22–30 247
33. S. G. Miller, ed. and transl., Disorienting Encounters: Travels of a Moroccan

Scholar in France in 1845–1846: The Voyage of Muhammad as-Saffar
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 193–4.
34. J. Gallagher and R. Robinson. “The Imperialism of Free Trade,” The
Economic History Review, New Series, 6, 1 (1953): 1–15.
35. F. R. Flournoy, British Policy toward Morocco in the Age of Palmerston
(1830–1865) (London and Baltimore: P. S. King and Johns Hopkins Press,
1935), 31–36.
36. K. Ben Srhir, Britain and Morocco During the Embassy of John Drummond
Hay, 1845–1886 (London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2005), 59.
37. E. Burke, III, Prelude to Protectorate in Morocco: Precolonial Protest and
Resistence, 1860–1912 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 26–27.
38. Flournoy, British Policy toward Morocco in the Age of Palmerston, 236 n. 1,
based on statistics provided by consular reports from Tangier printed in the
Parliamentary Papers.
39. Ibid.,197; R. Carr, ed., Spain: A History (Oxford and New York: Oxford
University Press, 2000), 214; N. Erzini, “Hal Yaslah Li-Taqansut [Is He
Suitable for Consulship?]: The Moroccan Consuls in Gibraltar in the
Nineteenth Century,” Journal of North African Studies 12, 4 (2007): 521.
41. Diary of a Witness, trans. B. Keating (Memphis, TN: White Rose Press: 1988),
388–9.
42. Flournoy reports that the British investors in the 1861 Moroccan loan
were fully repaid by 1883 at the handsome rate of 8 percent interest: British
Policy toward Morocco in the Age of Palmerston, 212; see also J. D. Hay,
L. A. E. Drummond Hay Brooks, and A. E. Drummond Hay, A Memoir of Sir
John Drummond Hay: Sometime Minister at the Court of Morocco: Based on
His Journals and Correspondence (London: J. Murray, 1896), 214–20. For
calculating the value of nineteenth-century British pounds at today’s prices, see
http://www.measuringworth.com. See also J.-L. Miège, Le Maroc et l’Europe
(1830–1894), 4 vols. (Rabat: Editions La Porte, 1989): 2 :374–82.
43. G. Ayache, “Aspects de la crise financière au Maroc après l’expédition espag-
nole de 1860,” in Études d’histoire marocaine (Rabat: SMER, 1983), 97–138.
44. al-Nasiri, Kitab Istiqsa, 8: 116–17.
45. Hay, Brooks, and Drummond Hay, A Memoir, 218.
46. K. Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the
Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 15.
2. Facing the Challenges of Reform (1860–1894)

1. B. Dennerlein, “South-South Linkages and Social Change: Moroccan
Perspectives on Army Reform in the Muslim Mediterranean in the Nineteenth
Century,” Comparative Studies of South Africa and the Middle East 27, 1
(2007): 52–61.
2. The bayqa, or the election of a sultan, was the end point of a complex negotiation
among various social forces that, by dint of custom and religious law, were
entitled to participate in the process of selection. The contractual nature of royal
authority was made explicit through this process, since the ulama who “elec-
ted” the sultan were in theory representatives of the umma, or community of
believers. On the death of the reigning sultan, the ulama in each imperial city
hastened to confer the bayqa on a successor in order to head off a hiatus in
rule. Before the nineteenth century, rarely did the process of eliciting the bayqa
allow for an amicable resolution of differences of opinion. The process of
electing the sultan often became the chaotic arena for the playing out of
competing objectives among various groups and individuals, each with its
own pretensions to power. But by mid-century, the sultanate had accrued
sufficient authority to make the process of transition proceed more smoothly.
For a discussion of the concept from an anthropologist’s perspective, see
H. Munson, Jr., Religion and Power in Morocco (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1993): 38–39.
3. al-Nasiri, Kitab al-Istiqsa, 8:149; B. Dennerlein, “Legitimate Bounds and
Bound Legitimacy; The Act of Allegiance to the Ruler (Baiqa) in 19th
Century Morocco,” Welt des Islams 41, 3 (2001): 287–310.
4. A. Laroui, Les origines sociales et culturelles du nationalisme marocain (1830–
1912) (Paris: François Maspero, 1977), 77–81.
5. G. Ayache, “Aspects de la crise financière au Maroc,” in Études d’histoire
marocaine (Rabat: SMER, 1983), 97.
6. M. Ennaji, Expansion européenne et changement social au Maroc: (XVIe–
XIX siécles) (Casablanca: Editions Eddif, 1996), 60–72.
7. T. K. Park, “Inflation and Economic Policy in 19th Century Morocco: The
Compromise Solution,” The Maghreb Review 10, 2–3 (1985): 51–56. See also
al-Nasiri’s comments on inflation in 1845, which he blames on the increasing
number of foreign merchants trading in the Moroccan ports: Kitab al-Istiqsa,
8:66; and on the re-evaluation of the currency under Sultan qAbd al-Rahman,
see Kitab al-Istiqsa, 8:79.
8. P. Alarcón, Diary of a Witness (Memphis, TN: White Rose Press, 1988) 454.
10. T. K. Park, “Colonial Perceptions of Precolonial Administration: Creating the
Illusion of Failure,” unpublished paper. By permission of the author.
11. S. G. Miller, ed. and trans., Disorienting Encounters: Travels of a Moroccan
Scholar in France in 1845–1846: The Voyage of Muhammad as-Saffar
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 42–48.
12. For a close description of the functioning of the central government, see
E. Aubin, Morocco of Today (London: J. M. Dent & Co, 1906), 158–81.
13. K. Ben-Srhir, Britain and Morocco during the embassy of John Drummond
Hay, 1845–1886 (London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2005), 235–9.
Ben-Srhir makes a strong case that these fiscal reforms were British-inspired
and that Drummond Hay’s exceptional personal influence was crucial to
winning the sultan’s agreement. But it could also be argued that the notion
of reform was already “in the air” and Hay’s proposals were falling on
receptive ground. On the organization of the umana, see N. H. Tawzani, al-
Umana bi-al-Maghrib fi ʻahd al-Sult.an Mawlay al-Hasan (1290–1311/1873–
1894): Musahamah fi dirasat al-nizam al-mali bi-al-Maghrib (Rabat: Kulliyat
al-Adab wa-l-ʻUlum al-Insaniyya, 1979), 33–37.
14. A. Ibn Zaydan, Ithaf alam al-nas bi-jamal akhbar hadirat Miknas, 5 vols.
(Rabat: al-Matbaqa al-Wataniyya, 1929) 3: 379–89.
15. Tawzani, al-Umana, 295–6.
16. M. Lahbabi, Le gouvernement marocain a l’aube du XXe siècle (Rabat:
Editions Techniques Nord-Africaines, 1958), 136–8. E. Aubin, Morocco of
Today (London: J. M. Dent, 1906), 169.
17. Laroui, Les origines, 155.
18. Quoted in J. Dakhlia, “Dans la mouvance du Prince: la symbolique du pouvoir
itinérant au Maghreb,” Annales: ESC 43, 3 (1988), 735.
19. D. Nordman, “Les Expeditions de Moulay Hassan; essai statistique,”
Hespéris-Tamuda 19 (1980–81): 123–52, and especially, 148–9. Also on the
harka, see A. El Moudden, “État et société rurale à travers la harka au Maroc
du XIXe siècle,” Maghreb Review 8, 5–6 (1983): 141–5; M. Aafif, “Les
Harkas hassaniennes d’après l’oeuvre d’A. Ibn Zidane,” Hespéris-Tamuda
19 (1980–81): 153–68.
20. Dakhlia, “Dans la mouvance du Prince,” 735–60.
21. al-Nasiri, Kitab al-Istiqsa, 8: 215.
22. French colonial social scientists posited the image of a Morocco perpetually
divided between two competing zones, an area under government control
(bled makhzen), and the tribal “lands of dissidence,” (bled siba). Inaccurate
in the extreme, this stereotype became an touchstone of colonial policy mak-
ing, masking the complexity of state structures and smoothing over the vast-
ness of human interactions that took place within them.
23. A. El Moudden, “Looking Eastward: Some Moroccan Tentative Military
Reforms with Turkish Assistance (18th–Early 20th Centuries),” Maghreb
Review 19 (1994): 237–45.
24. A. K. Bennison, “The ‘New Order’ and Islamic Order: The Introduction of the
Nizami Army in the Western Maghrib and its Legitimation, 1830–1873,”
International Journal of Middle East Studies 36 (2004): 591–612.
25. Ibid., 600. See also K. Fahmy, All the Pasha’s Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army,
and the Making of Modern Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997).
26. Hay, Brooks, and Drummond Hay, A Memoir, 232.
27. Encyclopédie du Maroc/Maqalamat al-Maghrib (Sala: l’Association des
auteurs marocains pour la publication, 2005), s.v. “Muhammad b. qAbd al-
Rahman b. Hisham,” 21: 7017–19.
28. G. Ayache, “L’apparition de l’imprimerie au Maroc,” in Études d’histoire
marocaine, 139–58.
29. W. J. Rollman, The “New Order” in a Pre-Colonial Muslim Society: Military
Reform in Morocco, 1844–1904, Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1983,
574–75.
30. On the the tattooing of conscripts, see E. Amster, “The Many Deaths of Dr.
Emile Mauchamp: Medicine, Technology, and Popular Politics in Pre-
Protectorate Morocco, 1877–1912,” International Journal of Middle East
Studies 36:3 (2004): 417.
31. Bennison, “The ‘New Order,’” 603–07.
33. W. Rollman, “Military Officers and the ‘Nidham al-Jadid’ in Morocco, 1844–
1912: Social and Political Transformations,” Réforme par le haut, réforme par
le bas: la modernisation de l’armée aux 19e et 20e siècles. Quaderni di Oriente
Moderno 23:5 (2004): 217.
34. M. Manuni, Mazahir yaqazat al-Maghrib al-hadith, 2 vols. (Rabat:
Manshurat wizarat al-awqaf wa-al-shuqun al-islamiyya wa-al-thaqafiyya,
1973) 1: 156–78. On the makina, see Rollman, The New Order, 704–06; for
a detailed account of the Italian-run arms factory in Fez, see B. Simou, Les
réformes militaires au Maroc de 1844 à 1912 (Rabat: Université de
Mohammed V, Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines, 1995): 237–84.
35. Maqalamat al-Maghrib (Encyclopédie du Maroc) s.v. “al-Jibbas,
Mahammad,” 9: 2912–15; K. Ben Srhir, “Britain and Military Reforms in
Morocco During the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century,” in Réforme par
le haut, réforme par le bas: la modernisation de l’armée aux 19e et 20e siècles,
O. Moreau and A. El Moudden, eds. (Rome: Instituto per l’Oriente Nallino,
2004), 105–07.
36. J. Berque, L’Intérieur du Maghreb: XVe–XIXe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1978),
497; Miège, Le Maroc et l’Europe, 4: 139; S. G. Miller and Amal Rassam,
“Moroccan Reaction to European Penetration During the Late Nineteenth
Century: The View from the Court,” Revue de l’Occident musulman et de la
Méditerranée 36, 2 (1983), 51–63; W. B. Harris, Tafilet: The Narrative of a
Journey of Exploration in the Atlas Mountains and the Oases of the North-
West Sahara (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood and Sons, 1895), 208–09.
37. D. Nordman, “Les expeditions de Moulay Hassan,” 127. The practice of the
mahalla was not confined to Morocco. Deys (Algeria) and beys (Tunisia) also
used this method of asserting their sovereignty. For a description of this region
by a European who claimed to be “the first” to journey there, see W. B. Harris,
“A Journey to Tafilet,” The Geographical Journal, 5:4 (April 1895), 319–35.
38. M. Kenbib, “Structures traditionelles et protections étrangères au Maroc au
XIXème siècle,” Hespéris-Tamuda 22 (1984): 81; by the same author,
“Système impérial et bourgeoisie comparadore au Maroc au 19ème siècle,”
Revue d’histoire Maghrebine/Al-Majalla al-Tarikhiyya al-Magharibiyya 41
(1986): 90–91; Miège, Le Maroc et l’Europe, 2: 403–07.
39. H. C. M. Wendel, “The Protégé System in Morocco,” The Journal of Modern
History 2:1 (March 1930): 59.
40. Kenbib, “Structures traditionelles,” 84.
41. Miège, Le Maroc, 2: 554–555.
42. M. Kenbib, “Structures traditionelles,” 94–95.
43. A. Green, Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 135.
44. The Bulletin of the AIU, cited in Miege, Le Maroc, 2:570.
45. Always the shrewd politician, Montefiore no doubt added the reference to
Christians to solidify the alliance between his own brand of Jewish humani-
tarianism and the high moral purpose of his British Anglican counterparts.
A. Green, “Rethinking Sir Moses Montefiore: Religion, Nationhood, and
International Philanthropy in the Nineteenth Century,” The American
Historical Review (June 2005): 631–58.
46. L. Loëwe, ed., Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, a Facsimile of the
1890 Edition, 2 vols. (London: The Jewish Historical Society of England,
1983), 2: 45–46.
47. A translation of the dahir into English is found in T. Hodgkin, Narrative of
a Journey to Morocco in 1863 and 1864 (New York: Arno Press, 1971),
121–122. The Arabic text is in al-Wathapiq, 9 vols. (Rabat: al-Maktaba al-
malkiyya) Document #540, 4: 291. The circular letter to governors is in the
same source, Document #541, 4:294.
48. M. Kenbib, Juifs et musulmans au Maroc, 1859–1948 (Rabat: Université
Mohammed V, Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines, 1994): 159; Miege,
2: 568 n. 4.
49. Green, Montefiore, 314; al-Nasiri, Kitab Istiqsa, 8: 129
50. M. al-Manuni, “Mulakhadhat hawla baqda rudud faql al-mugharaba tujah al-
daqwa ila islah fi al-qarn 19, min khilal wathiqa mawduqiya,” Majallat kulliyat
al-adab wa-al-qulum al-insaniyya bi-al-Ribat (1982): 145–53.
51. K. J. Perkins, A History of Modern Tunisia (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004): 36.
52. E. F. Cruickshank, Morocco at the Parting of the Ways; The Story of Native
Protection to 1885 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1935),
chs. 5 and 6.
53. Miège, Le Maroc, 3:163; 4:47; Kenbib, “The Impact of the French Conquest,”
43–44.
54. S. G. Miller and A. Rassam, “The View from the Court: Moroccan Reactions
to European Penetration During the Late 19th Century,” International Journal
of African Historical Studies 16:1 (1983): 31, 37.
55. H. de la Martinière, “Au Maroc: Le règne de Moulai-El-Hassan.” Revue de
deux mondes 64:4, (1894): 398.
56. E. de Amicis, Morocco, Its People and Places, transl. M. H. Lansdale, 2 vols.
(Philadelphia: H. T. Coates & Co,1897), 2: 44–45.
57. A. J. P. Taylor, “British Policy in Morocco, 1886–1902,” The English
Historical Review, 66 (July 1951): 342–74.
58. J. Berque, L’Intérieur du Maghreb, 474–5; J.-L. Miège, “Hassan Ier et la crise
marocaine au XIXe siècle,” in Les Africains, 3 vols., C.-A. Julien et al., eds.
(Paris: Jeune afrique, 1977) 3: 238.
59. al-Nasiri, Kitab Istiqsa, 8: 75.
60. R. Guyot, R. Le Tourneau, and L. Paye, “La Corporation des tanneurs et
l’industrie de la tannerie à Fès,” Hespéris 21:1–2 (1935): 167–240.
61. Berque, L’Interieur du Maghreb, 489–92.
62. A. Sebti, “Chroniques de la contestation citadine: Fès et la revolte des tanneurs
(1873–1874),” Hespéris-Tamuda 24:2 (1991): 99.
63. al-Nasiri, Kitab al-Istiqsa, 8: 220 n. 337.
64. On this point, see the article of M. El Ayadi, “Du fondementalisme d’état et de
la nasiha sultanienne: à propos d’un certain réformisme makhzenien, Hespéris-
Tamuda 39:2 (2001), 85–107.
65. S. E. Holden, The Politics of Food in Modern Morocco (Gainesville: University
Press of Florida, 2009), ch. 1.
3. The Passing of the Old Makhzan (1894–1912)

1. F. Weisgerber, Au seuil du Maroc moderne (Rabat: Éditions La Porte, 1947),
63. Ba Ahmad’s younger brother was made allaf, or Minister of War; he was
described by Weisgerber as a bon-vivant about forty years old, “as indolent as
a dormouse and as proud as a peacock” (op. cit., p. 70).
2. W. B. Harris, Morocco That Was (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood and
Sons, 1921), 50–53.
3. E. Aubin, Morocco of Today (London: J. M. Dent & Co., 1906), 320. Aubin
was the nom de plume of Léon Descos, a French diplomat and travelwriter
whose account of Morocco in the years 1902–1903 shows penetrating insight
into societal themes. F. Pouillon, ed., Dictionnaire des orientalistes de langue
française (Paris: Karthala, 2008), 27.
4. A. Laroui, Les Origines sociales et culturelles du nationalisme marocain,
1830–1912 (Paris: F. Maspero, 1977), 337–8.
5. Aubin, Morocco of Today, vi–vii.
6. Ibid., 127.
7. Ibid., 11–12. G. Veyre, Au Maroc : dans l’intimité du Sultan (Paris: Librairie
Universelle, 1905), 11–12.
8. P. Jacquier, M. Pranal, and F. Abdelouahab, Le Maroc de Gabriel Veyre:
1901–1936 (Paris: Kubik, 2005), and esp. pp. 20–21, photographs taken by
Sultan qAbd al-qAziz.
9. L. Arnaud, Au temps des “mehallas” ou le Maroc de 1860 à 1912 (Casablanca:
Éditions Atlantides, 1952), 71, 129, 132.
10. Aubin, Morocco of Today, 127.
11. Weisgerber, Au seuil du Maroc moderne, 118; Laroui, Origines, 340.
12. E. Burke, III, Prelude to Protectorate in Morocco: Precolonial Protest and
Resistance, 1860–1912 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 54.
13. Aubin, Morocco of Today, 77.
14. A. Asqad, “Al-nidham al-jiba’i lil-tartib fi qahd al-sultan al-mawlay al-Hasan
al-awl,” in Le Maroc de l’avènement de Moulay Abdelaziz à 1912, 3 vols.
(Mohammedia: Université d’été, juillet 1987), 2:167–175.
15. N. Michel, Une économie de subsistances: Le Maroc précolonial. 2 vols.
(Cairo: Institut d’archéologie orientale, 1997) 1: 85–92; Maqalamat al–
Maghrib, s.v. “tartib,” 7: 2316; A. Ibn Zaydan, Ithaf aqlam al-nas bi-jamal
akhbar hadirat Miknas, 5 vols. (Rabat: al- Matbaqa al-Wataniyya, 1929)1:
394–6; A. Tawfiq, Al-Mujtama al-maghribi fi al-qarn al- tasi’ ‘ashar: Inultan,
1850–1912 (Rabat: Kulliyat al-Adab wa-al-ulum al-Insaniyya, 1983), 599–
604; E. Michaux-Bellaire, “Les impôts marocaines,” Archives marocaines 1
(1904): 56–96. See M. al-Manuni, Mazahir, 2: 85–100 for the text of the dahir
and related documents; Aubin, Morocco of Today, 203–05; G. Saint-René-
Taillandier, Les origines du Maroc français; Récit d’une mission, 1901–1906
(Paris: Plon, 1930), 158–65.
16. Arnaud, Au temps des “mehallas,” 126.
17. Weisgerber, “Les tribus du Maroc,” National Library and Archives, Rabat,
Fonds du Protectorat, Dossier F 126.
18. Burke, Prelude to Protectorate, 56–57.
19. Ibid., 71–75; P. Guillen, “La resistence du Maroc à l’emprise française au

lendemain des accords franco-anglais de 1904,” Revue de l’Occident musul-
man et de la Méditerranée 8 (1970): 115–22; and by the same author,
L’Allemagne et le Maroc de 1870 à 1905 (Paris: Presses universitaires de
France, 1967), 653–97.
20. Laroui, Origines, 340; K. Brown, People of Salé: Tradition and Change in a
Moroccan City, 1830–1930 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1976), ch. 8; and by the same author, “L’évolution de la société de Salé et la
pression européenne au XIXe siècle,” in Le Maroc de l’avènement de Moulay
Abdelaziz à 1912 (Mohammédia: Université d’été, 1987), 3: 107–14.
21. S. E. Holden, “Famine’s Fortune: The Pre-Colonial Mechanisation of
Moroccan Flour Production,” Journal of North African Studies 15, 1
(2010): 71–84; N. Michel, Une économie de subsistances, 2: chs. 7 and 8.
22. R. Bourqia, “Vol, pillage et banditisme dans le Maroc du XIXe siècle,”
Hespéris Tamuda 29, 2 (1991): 191–226.
23. David Hart, Banditry in Islam: Case Studies from Morocco, Algeria, and the
Pakistan North West Frontier (Wisbech, UK: MENAS Press, 1987).
24. Aubin, Morocco of Today, 89–108; 322–40; Burke, Prelude to Protectorate,
62–65; R. E. Dunn, “Bu Himara’s European Connexion; The Commercial
Relations of a Moroccan Warlord,” Journal of African History 21:2 (1980):
235–53; P. R. Venier, “French Imperialism and Pre-Colonial Rebellions in
Eastern Morocco, 1903–1910,” Journal of North African Studies 2:2 (1997):
58–59; qA al-Timsimani-Khaluk, “Watha’iq qan al- fattan al-daqi Bu Himara,”
Revue Dar al-Niaba 1:4 (1984): 35–37.
25. W. R. Rollman, “The ‘New Order’ In a Pre-Colonial Muslim Society:
Military Reform in Morocco, 1844–1904,” Ph.D. diss., University of
Michigan, 1983, 800.
26. Aubin, Morocco of Today, 335; W. J. Rollman, “Military Officers and the
‘Nidham al-Jadid’ in Morocco, 1844–1912: Social and Political Transforma-
tions,” Quaderni di Oriente Moderno 5 (2004): 217; R. E. Dunn, “The Bu
Himara Rebellion in Northeast Morocco Phase I,” Middle Eastern Studies
17:1 (1981): 31–48; and by the same author, Resistance in the Desert:
Moroccan Responses to French Imperialism 1881–1912 (London: Croom
Helm; Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), 125–129; M. Kenbib,
“Contrebande d’armes et ‘anarchie’ dans le Maroc précolonial (1844–1912),
27. F. Harrak, “State and Religion in Eighteenth Century Morocco: The Religious
Policy of Sidi Muhammad b.qAbd Allah, 1757–1790,” Ph.D. diss., School of
Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1989, 176–7; R. T.
Forbes, The Sultan of the Mountains: The Life Story of Raisuli ( New York:
H. Holt and Co., 1924); Arnaud, Au temps des “mehallas,” 215–30;
E. Michaux-Bellaire, “Le Cherif Moulay Ahmed Ben Mohammed Ben
Abdallah Er resouni,” Revue du monde musulman 5 (1908): 503–11;
M. Kenbib, “Protégés et brigands dans le Maroc du XIXe siècle et début du
XXe,” Hespéris Tamuda 29:2 (1991): 244–5; A. Temsamani Khalouk, “Les
Coups de Raïssouni (1895–1907),” Revue Dar al-Niaba 19/20 (1988): 1–30.
28. B. Tuchman, “Perdicaris Live or Raisuli Dead,” in A Sense of History: The Best
Writing from the Pages of American Heritage, B. Dobell, ed. (New York:
Houghton Mifflin, 1985), 548–60; Arnaud, Au temps des “mehallas,” 218–21;
A. Benjelloun, “Raïssouni: brigand, collaborateur ou résistant?” Revue d’histoire
maghrébine 26 (1999): 197–203. This incident was the inspiration for a
Hollywood potboiler, The Wind and the Lion (1975), in which the famously
corpulent al-Raysuni was portrayed by dashing Scottish actor Sean Connery and
Perdicaris was feminized and played by Candice Bergen.
29. R. Forbes, Sultan of the Mountains, ix; and the review by E. E. Mavrogordato
in the Times Literary Supplement no. 1165 (May 15, 1924): 297.
30. A. Temsemani-Khaluk, Al-haraka al-raysuniyya min khilal al-watha’iq al-
maghribiyya, 1909–1925, 2 vols. (Tangier: Saliki, n.d.)
31. This story is retold by S. Bazzaz, “Heresy and Politics in Nineteenth Century
Morocco,” Arab Studies Journal (2002/2003): 66–86.
32. See the perceptive monograph by S. Bazzaz, Forgotten Saints: History, Power,
and Politics in the Making of Modern Morocco, Harvard Middle Eastern
Monographs 41 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).
33. J. Cagne, Nation et nationalisme au Maroc: Aux racines de la nation mar-
ocaine (Rabat: Dar Nashr al-Maqrifa, 1988): 434; E. Michaux-Bellaire, “Une
tentative de restauration Idrissite à Fès,” Revue du monde musulman 5
(1908): 402–23. The quotation from al-Hajwi is found in Laroui, Origines,
378. For more precise details on the rise the Hafiziyya, see Burke, Prelude to
Protectorate, ch. 5.
34. R. Dunn, Resistance in the Desert, 48, 83, 117, 204–10; D. Nordman,
“L’armée d’Algérie et le Maroc; le dynamisme de la conquête (fin du XIXe
siècle–début du XX siècle),” in J. Frémeaux et al., Armées, guerre et politique
en Afrique du Nord: XIXe–XXe siècles (Paris: Presses de l’Ecole normale
supérieure, 1977): 33–51.
35. Nordman, “L’armée d’Algérie,” 42, citing A. Le Révérend, Lyautey écrivain
(Paris: Ophrys, 1976), 203.
36. G. Salmon, “Une opinion marocaine sur la conquête du Touat,” Archives
marocaines 1 (1904): 416–24; M. Abitbol, “Jihad et nécessité; le Maroc et la
conquête française de Soudan occidental et de la Mauritanie,” Studia
Islamica 63 (1986): 172–7; al-Moutabassir, “Ma El qAinin Ech-
Changuity,” Revue du monde musulman 1 (1907): 343–51; F. Correale,
“Ma’ al-qAynayn, il Marocco e la resistenza alla penetrazione coloniale
(1905–1910),” Oriente Moderno 78, 2 (1998): 227–78; S. Sayagh, La
France et les frontières maroco-algériennes 1873–1902 (Paris: Éditions
CNRS, 1986): 79–102; Laroui, Origines, 384.
37. The diplomatic moves of this period are covered in detail in Burke, Prelude to
Protectorate, 75–89; see also G. Saint-René-Taillandier, Les origines du Maroc
français, 356–60; Guillen, L’Allemagne et le Maroc, 837–50; A. G. P. Martin,
Quatre siècles d’histoire marocaine: Au Sahara de 1504 à 1902, au Maroc de
1894 à 1912 (Rabat: Éditions La Porte, 1994), 424; for a Moroccan perspec-
tive, Ibn Zaydan, Ithaf, 1: 396 and al-Manuni, Mazahir, 2: 191–232. See also
Cagne, Nation et nationalisme, 385–98, in which the author lists “consulta-
tions” under prior sultans, pointing out that this practice was not new.
38. J-C. Allain, “Le Maroc dans les relations internationales: au temps d’Algeciras
(1906–1912),” in Le Maroc de lqavènement de Moulay Abdelaziz à 1912, 3:
131–144; and in the same volume, S. Ihraï, “La conference d’Algéciras de
1906,” 3:193–201; al-Manuni, Mazahir, 2: 191–232; on the American role,
see P. Potter, “The Origin of the System of Mandates under the League of
Nations,” American Political Science Review 16:4 (1922): 579.
39. Miège, Le Maroc, 3: 469–92; J. Erckmann, Le Maroc moderne (Paris:
Challamel Ainé, 1885), 183–84; L. Karow, Neuf années au service du Maroc
(1900–1908), translated by M. and J.-L. Miège (Rabat: Éditions La Porte,
1998).
40. J. Baida and V. Feroldi, Présence chrétienne au Maroc, XIXème–XXème
siècles (Rabat: Éditions Bouregreg, 2005), 16–33; Aubin, Morocco of Today,
37–38; M. Kenbib, “Les Conversions dans le Maroc contemporain (1860–
1956): Présentation et étude d’un corpus, ” in Conversions islamiques:
Identités religieuses en Islam méditerranéen, M. García-Arenal, ed. (Paris:
Maisonneuve et Larose, 2002), 369–76.
41. J. G. Katz, Murder in Marrakesh: Émile Mauchamp and the French Colonial
Adventure (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006); E. Amster, “The
Many Deaths of Dr. Emile Mauchamp: Medicine, Technology, and Popular
Politics in Pre-Protectorate Morocco, 1877–1912,” International Journal of
Middle East Studies 36:3 (2004): 409–28.
42. Arnaud, Au temps des “mehallas,” 240.
43. Burke, Prelude to Protectorate, 122–3; Laroui, Origines, 385–99; A. Tawfiq,
“Ta’ammulat fi al-bayqa al-Hafiziyya,” in Le Maroc de lqavènement de Moulay
Abdelaziz à 1912, 1: 335–47; A. al-Kattani, Mufakahat dhawi al-nubl wa-al-
ijada hadrat mudir jaridat al-Sa‘ada (Fez: s.n., 1326), 5–10, a pamphlet written
by Muhammad al-Kattani’s younger brother, qAbd al-Hayy, and directed
against critics of the Fez bayqa. The last battle is described by Weisgerber, Au
seuil du Maroc moderne, 186–92.
44. Weisgerber, “Les tribus,” unpaged.
45. “Wa-lakin al-fatq kana fawq qudrat al-ratiq,” Ibn Zaydan, Ithaf, 1: 454.
46. Bazzaz, “Heresy and Politics,” 66–86.
47. C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections
and Comparisons (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 172; on the impact of
modernity on port cities of the Muslim Mediterranean, see M. J. Reimer,
“Ottoman-Arab Seaports in the Nineteenth Century: Social Change in
Alexandria, Beirut, and Tunis,” in Cities in the World System, R. Kasaba,
ed. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991), 135–56.
48. S. G. Miller, “Making Tangier Modern: Ethnicity and Urban Development,”
in Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa, E. Benichou Gottreich and
D. Schroeter, eds. (Bloomington, University of Indiana Press, 2011), 128–49.
49. M. Kenbib, “1767–1957: Du ‘paradis des drogmans’ à la cité ‘internationale,’
Tribune juive (Montreal) 2, 5 (1994): 62–73; S. G. Miller, “Apportioning
Sacred Space in a Moroccan City: The Case of Tangier, 1860–1912,”
City & Society 13, 1 (2001): 57–83; and, by the same author, “The Beni Ider
Quarter of Tangier; Hybridity as a Social Practice,” in S. G. Miller and
M. Bertagnin, eds., The Architecture and Memory of the Minority Quarter in

the Muslim Mediterranean City (Cambridge, MA: Aga Khan Program in
Islamic Architecture, Graduate School of Design, 2010), 138–73.
50. B. Meakin, The Moorish Empire, a Historical Epitome (London:
S. Sonnenschein, 1899), 535; L. Mercier, “La Presse arabe au Maroc,”
Revue du monde musulman 7 (1909): 128–33. Laroui, Origines, 380–81:
K. Ben Ghabrit, “S. E. El Hadj Mohammed El Mokri: Grand Vizir de
l’Empire chérifien,” France-Maroc 2:5 ( 15 May 1918): 141–3; Maqalamat
al-Maghrib, s.v. “al-Jibbas, Mahammad,” 8: 2912–15.
51. J. Baida, “Rasaqil maftuha ila al-salatinayn al-Mawlay qAbd al-qAziz
wa-al-Mawlay qAbd al-Hafiz,” in Mélanges offerts au Professeur Brahim
Boutaleb, ed. A. Kaddouri (Rabat: Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines,
2001): 493–529.
52. J. Baida, La Presse marocaine d’expression française: Des origines à 1956
(Rabat: Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines, 1996): 31–87; by the same
author, “La presse tangéroise: relais de communication dans le Maroc
précolonial,” in Miroirs maghrébins, Susan Ossman, ed. (Paris: CNRS
éditions, 1998), 21–28, and “La pensée réformiste au Maroc à la veille du
Protectorat,” Hespéris Tamuda 39:2 (2001): 52; Laroui, Origines, 381.
53. F. Abdulrazak, “The Kingdom of the Book: The History of Printing as an
Agency of Change in Morocco between 1865 and 1912, ” Ph.D. diss., Boston
University, 1990, 234; al-Manuni, Mazahir, 2: 375–85; M. al-Kattani,
Nasihat ahl al-Islam: Tahlil islami qilmi li-awamil suqut al-dawla al-islamiyya
wa-qawamil nuhudiha (Rabat: Maktabat Badr, 1989); Laroui, Origines,
328–33.
54. R. Bourqia, “Droit et pratiques sociales: le cas des nawazil au XIXe siècle,”
Hespéris Tamuda 35, 2 (1997): 131–45; al-Manuni, Mazahir, 2: 327–328;
J. Abun-Nasr, “The Salafiyya Movement in Morocco: The Religious Bases of
the Moroccan Nationalist Movement,” St. Antony’s Papers, 16, A. Hourani,
ed., Middle Eastern Affairs, 3 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1963): 98.
55. M. Ibn al-Hajj, qUlama al-Maghrib al-muqasirin (Casablanca: al-Jadida, 1992):
272–8; on Salwat al-Anfas, see E. Lévi-Provençal, Les Historiens des Chorfas:
Essai sur la littérature historique et biographique au Maroc du XVIe au XXe
siècle (Paris: Larose, 1922), 280–6; S. Bazzaz, “Reading Reform Beyond the
State: Salwat al-Anfas, Islamic Revival and Moroccan National History,”
Journal of North African Studies 13:1 (2008): 1–13.
56. Maqalamat al-Maghrib, s.v. “al-Hajwi, Muhammad b. al-Hasan,” 10: 3337–
3338; M. Gouvion Saint-Cyr and E. Gouvion Saint-Cyr, Kitab aayane
al-Maghrib al-Aksa: Equisse générale des Moghrebs de la Genése à nos jours
et livre des grands du Maroc, 2 vols. (Paris: Librairie orientaliste Paul
Geuthner, 2001), 1: 265–70; A. Bin ‘Addadah, Al-fikr al-islahi fi ‘ahd al-
himaya: Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Hajwi namudhajan (Beirut: Markaz
al-Thaqafi al-‘Arabi, 2003); M. al-Hajwi, “Al-Qawl al-fasl fi aqsa amad al-
haml,” in Thalath rasa’il: tajdid ‘ulum al-din (Salé: Matbaqat al-thaqafa, 1357/
1938); Abun-Nasr, “The Religious Bases,” 98.
4. France and Spain in Morocco: The Early Years

of the Protectorates (1912–1930)
1. G. Stuart, The International City of Tangier, 2nd ed. (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1955): 89–90; 127–30; G. H. Bennett, “Britain’s Relations
with France After Versailles: The Problem of Tangier, 1919–23,” European
History Quarterly 24 (1994), 53–84; C. Spencer, “The Spanish Protectorate
and the Occupation of Tangier in 1940,” in North Africa, Nation, State and
Region, George Joffé, ed. (London: Routledge, 1993), 91–101; S. Sueiro,
“L’Espagne et la ‘question marocaine’: La politique méditerranéenne de
Primo De Rivera (1923–1930),” in Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps:
Colonisations en Afrique (1993): 15–17.
2. L. Brunot and E. Malka, eds., Textes judéo-arabes de Fès: Textes, transcrip-
tion, traduction annotée (Rabat: École du Livre, 1939): 206; F. Weisgerber, Au
seuil du Maroc moderne (Rabat: Éditions La Porte, 1947): 284–293.
3. W. A. Hoisington, Lyautey and the French Conquest of Morocco (Basingstoke,
UK: Macmillan, 1995), 45; M. Gershovich, French Military Rule in Morocco:
Colonialism and Its Consequences (London: Frank Cass, 2000), 65.
4. D. Rivet, Le Maghreb à l’épreuve de la colonisation (Paris: Hachette, 2002), 216.
5. Hoisington, Lyautey, 6; quoted from H. Lyautey, Lettres de Tonkin et de
Madagascar (1894–1899) 2 vols. (Paris: A. Colin, 1920), 1: 71.
6. W. B. Harris, France, Spain and the Rif (New York, London: Longmans Green,
E. Arnold, 1927), 188; the text of the Treaty of Fez is found in LqAfrique
française, 22:6 (June 1912): 219–20; D. Rivet, Le Maroc de Lyautey à
Mohammed V: Le double visage du Protectorat (Paris: Denoël, 1999), 136.
7. A. Scham, Lyautey in Morocco; Protectorate Administration, 1912–1925
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 55–75; W. Hoisington Jr.,
“Designing Morocco’s Future: France and the Native Policy Council, 1921–
25,” Journal of North African Studies 5:1 (2000): 63–65.
8. H. Prost, “Le développement de l’urbanisme dans le Protectorat du Maroc de
1914 à 1923,” in L’Urbanisme aux colonies et dans les pays tropicaux:
Communications et rapports du congrés international de l’urbanisme aux colo-
nies et dans les pays de latitude intertropicale, 2 vols., J. Royer, ed. (Nevers:
Fortin, 1932) 1: 59–108; G. Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial
Urbanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991): 85–160; P. Rabinow,
French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (Chicago:
University of Chicago, 1995): ch. 9; and, by the same author, “France in
Morocco: Technocosmopolitanism and Middling Modernism,” Assemblage
17 (April 1992): 55; J.-L. Cohen and M. Eleb, Casablanca: Mythes et figures
d’une aventure urbaine (Paris: Hazan, 1998): 75–85.
9. D. Rivet, Lyautey et l’institution du protectorat français au Maroc, 3 vols.
(Paris: L’Harmattan, 1988) 3: 147 n. 716; S. G. Miller, “Of Time and the City:
Clifford Geertz on Urban History,” Journal of North African Studies 14, 3
(2009): 479–90.
10. H. de la Casinière, Les municipalités marocaines: Leur développement, leur
legislation (Casablanca: Imprimérie de la Vigie Marocaine, 1924), 12–14;
Hoisington, Lyautey, 129; Rivet, Le Maroc, 227–39.
11. O. Abi-Mershed, Apostles of Modernity: Saint-Simonians and the Civilizing

Mission in Algeria (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), ch. 5;
M. Le Glay, Nouveaux récits marocains de la plaine et des monts (Paris:
Berger-Levrault, 1932).
12. Hoisington, Lyautey, 50–53; K. Perkins, Qaids, Captains, and Colons: French
Military Administration in the Colonial Maghrib, 1844–1934 (New York:
Africana Publishing, 1981); R. Bidwell, Morocco under Colonial Rule:
French Administration of Tribal Areas, 1912–1956 (London: Frank Cass,
1973), 157.
13. On the battle of El Herri, see the first-person account by J.-M. Pichon, Le
Maroc au début de la guerre mondiale: El-Herri: Vendredi, 13 novembre 1914
(Paris: Lavauzelle, 1936), cited in M. Gershovich, “Stories on the Road from
Fez to Marrakesh: Oral History on the Margins of National Identity,” Journal
of North African Studies 8, 1 (2003): 43–58; D. Maghraoui, “From ‘Tribal
Anarchy’ To ‘Military Order’: The Moroccan Troops in the Context of
Colonial Morocco,” in Réforme par le haut, réforme par le bas: La modern-
ization de l’armée aux 19e et 20e siècles, O. Moreau and A. El Moudden, eds.
(Rome: Instituto per l’Oriente, C. A. Nallino, 2004), 235–236.
14. Hoisington, Lyautey, ch. 4; Gershovich, French Military Rule, 787.
15. L’Afrique française, 27:1–2 (Jan–Feb 1917): 18, quoted in Hoisington,
Lyautey, 103. Al-Hiba continued to harass French forces under the banner
of jihad until his death in 1919.
16. J. El Adnani, “Le Caïd El Glaoui et la Tijaniyya sous l’ordre colonial français,”
in Pouvoir central et caïdalité au sud du Maroc, A. El Moudden, A. Ammalek,
A. Belfaïda, eds. (Rabat: Université Mohammed V, 2010): 7–20; Hoisington,
Lyautey, 107.
17. H. Gaillard, La réorganisation du gouvernement marocain (Paris: Comité de
l’Afrique Française, 1916), 21–48.
18. Rivet, Lyautey, 2: 146–53.
19. M. Benhlal, Le collège d’Azrou: Une élite berbère civile et militaire au Maroc,
1927–1959, (Paris: Karthala, 2005), see the preface by D. Rivet, and ch. 9;
Rivet, Lyautey, 2 : 245–52; M. Jadda, Bibliographie analytique des publica-
tions de l’Institut des Hautes Études Marocaines (Rabat: Faculté des lettres et
des sciences humaines, 1994): 24; M. Bekraoui, Les marocains dans la grande
guerre, 1914–1919 (Rabat: Annajah, 2009): 225–37; M. Gershovich, “A
Moroccan St. Cyr,” Middle Eastern Studies 28:2 (1992) : 231–57.
20. S. G. Miller, “Gender and the Poetics of Emancipation: The Alliance Israélite
Universelle in Northern Morocco, 1890–1912,” in Franco-Arab Encounters,
L. C. Brown and M. Gordon, eds. (Beirut: American University of Beirut Press,
1996): 229–58.
21. S. Segalla, The Moroccan Soul: French Education, Colonial Ethnology, and
Muslim Resistance, 1912–1956 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009):
51–53; Benhlal, Le collège d’Azrou, 5: for a comparison of Morocco and
Tunisia in this period, see P. Vermeren, École, élite et pouvoir au Maroc et
en Tunisie au XXe siècle (Rabat: Alizés, 2002), 13–110; and by the same
author, “La mutation sociale de l’enseignement supérieur musulman sous le
protectorat au Maroc,” in Parcours d’intellectuels maghrébins: Scolarité,
formation, socialisation et positionnements, Aïssa Kadri, ed. (Paris: Karthala

1999), 43–60; J. Baida, “Situation de la presse au Maroc sous le ‘Proconsulat’
de Lyautey (1912–1925),” Hespéris-Tamuda 30, 1 (1992): 67–92; J. Damis,
The Free School Movement in Morocco, 1919–1970, Ph.D. diss., Fletcher
School of Law and Diplomacy, 1970, 65–70; on training women in the handi-
crafts, see H. Irbouh, Art in the Service of Colonialism: French Art Education
in Morocco 1912–1956 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), ch. 5.
22. Archives marocaines published between 1904 and 1936 is still a precious
source of information about Morocco for the early years of the twentieth
century. See E. Burke, III, “La mission scientifique au Maroc: Science sociale
et politique dans l’âge de l’impérialisme,” in Actes de Durham: Récherches
récentes sur le Maroc moderne, 13–15 juillet 1977 (Rabat: BESM, 1979) : 37–
56; F. Houroro, Sociologie politique coloniale au Maroc: Cas de Michaux
Bellaire (Casablanca: Afrique Orient, 1988), 14–22, 141–6.
23. M. Jadda, Bibliographie analytique, 39; G. Deverdun, “Institut des Hautes
Études Marocaines (IHEM)” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, Brill
Online, accessed January 30, 2011, at http://www.brillonline.nl/subscriber/
entry?entry=islam_SIM-8703; Segalla, Moroccan Soul, 119–23; Rivet,
Lyautey, 3: 246; P. Vermeren, École, élite et pouvoir, 38–40.
24. R. Fogarty, Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army,
1914–1918 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008): 78.
25. Ibid., 79–80, 215. Rivet, Lyautey, 2: 79.
26. Gershovich, French Military Rule, 172–5; M. Bekraoui, Les marocains dans la
grande guerre, 65–66, 127, 149; R. Fogarty, Race and War in France, 38.
27. Quoted in Bekraoui, Marocains dans la grand guerre, 157.
28. Ibid.
29. A. Hammoudi, “Aspects de la mobilisation populaire à la campagne vus à
travers la biographie d’un Mahdi mort en 1919,” in Islam et politique au
Maghreb, E. Gellner and J.-C. Vatin, eds. (Paris: CNRS, 1981): 47–55.
30. D. S. Woolman, Rebels in the Rif; Abd El Krim and the Rif Rebellion
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968), 5; Rivet, Lyautey, 3: 254.
31. A. Bachoud, Los españoles ante las campañas de marruecos (Madrid: Espasa-
Calpe, 1988), 79–94.
32. V. Sheean, An American among the Riffi (New York: Century, 1926), 154–86.
33. W. Harris, France, Spain and the Rif, 69–70; Rivet, Lyautey: 3: 255.
34. Woolman, Rebels in the Rif, 83–111: F. J. Romero Salvadó, The Spanish
Civil War: Origins, Course and Outcomes (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2005), 20.
35. C. R. Pennell, “Women and Resistance to Colonialism in Morocco: The Rif,
1916–26,” Journal of African History 28, 1 (1987): 112; and by the same
author, A Country with a Government and a Flag: The Rif War in Morocco,
1921–1926 (Boulder, CO: L. Rienner, 1986), chs. 7 and 8; and “The Rif
War: Link or Cul-De-Sac? Nationalism in the Cities and Resistance in the
Mountains,” Journal of North African Studies 1, 3 (1996): 242–3; D. M.
Hart, The Aith Waryaghar (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1976):
375–94, and, by the same author, “De qRipublik’ à qRépublique’,” in Abd
el-krim et la république du Rif: Actes du colloque international d’études
historiques et sociologiques, 18–20 janvier 1973 (Paris: F. Maspero, 1976):

35–45.
36. G. Ayache, “Les implications internationales de la guerre du Rif, (1921–
1926),” Études d’histoire marocaine (Rabat: SMER, 1979): 379; Rivet,
Lyautey, 3: 253–310.
37. Harris, France, Spain and the Rif, 239.
38. Hart, Aith Waryaghar, 394–403; D. Rivet, “Le commandment français et ses
reactions vis-à-vis du mouvement rifian, 1924–1926,” in Abd el-Krim et la
république du Rif, 118–31; S. E. Fleming and A. K. Fleming, “Primo de Rivera
and Spain’s Morocco Problem, 1923–27,” Journal of Contemporary History
12,1 (1977), 92.
39. D. H. Slavin, “The French Left and the Rif War, 1924–25: Racism and
the Limits of Internationalism,” Journal of Contemporary History, 26:1
(1991):10; R. Gallissot, “La parti communiste et la guerre du Rif,” in Abd
el-krim et la république du Rif, 237–57.
40. Harris, France, Spain and the Rif, 239, 246–7.
41. Woolman, Rebels in the Rif, 208.
42. Z. Daoud, Abdelkrim: Une épopée d’or et de sang (Paris: Sèguier, 1999):
349–87; A. al-Fasi, The Independence Movements in Arab North Africa
(Washington, DC: American Council of Learned Societies, 1954), 301–14.
43. J. Berque, French North Africa: The Maghrib between Two World Wars
(London: Faber, 1967): 169.
44. G. Ayache, Les origines de la guerre du Rif (Rabat: SMER, 1981): 331–41.
45. Rivet, Lyautey, 3: 7–11; A. Mejri, Les socialistes français et la question
marocaine (1903–1912) (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004), 193–200.
46. Y. Knibiehler, G. Emmery, and F. Leguay, Des français au Maroc: La présence
et la mémoire, 1912–1956 (Paris: Denoël, 1992), 43; A. Ayache, Le mouve-
ment syndical au Maroc, 2 vols. (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1982), 1: 12–14.
47. M. Thomas, “Albert Sarraut, French Colonial Development, and the
Communist Threat, 1919–1930,” The Journal of Modern History 77
(December 2005): 919–20.
48. Rivet, Lyautey, 3: 134, 146.
49. W. D. Swearingen, Moroccan Mirages: Agrarian Dreams and Deceptions,
1912–1986 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 20; and by the
same author, “In Pursuit of the Granary of Rome: France’s Wheat Policy in
Morocco, 1915–1931,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 17, 3
(1985): 347–50; J. Gadille, “La colonisation officielle au Maroc,” Les cahiers
d’outre-mer 8 (Oct–Dec 1955): 306–309; P. Pascon, Capitalism and
Agriculture in the Haouz of Marrakesh (London: KPI, 1986), ch. 2; D. K.
Davis, Resurrecting the Granary of Rome: Environmental History and
French Colonial Expansion in North Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press,
2007), ch. 5.
50. D. Rivet, Lyautey, 3:26. Knibiehler et al., Des français au Maroc, 44.
51. M. Nahon, Notes d’un colon du Gharb (Casablanca: Société d’éditions mar-
ocaines, 1925); see also the first-person accounts of settler life collected by
Y. Knibiehler et al., in Des français au Maroc, 119–56.
52. W. Swearingen, “In Pursuit of the Granary of Rome,” 363: M. Kleiche, “Aux
origines du concept de développement: Quand l’irrigation devient enjeu de
réforme agricole: Nouvelle mise en ordre du paysage rural marocain dans
l’entre-deux-guerres,” Herpéris-Tamuda 39:2 (2001): 179–89.
53. D. Rivet, Maghreb, 282.
54. J. Berque, French North Africa, 164–84; D. Rivet, Le Maroc, 242–50.
55. Ayache, Mouvement syndical, 1:17, 24.
56. Ibid.
57. Rivet, Lyautey, 3: 311; Berque, French North Africa, 170.
58. See, for example, the heated argument of nationalist Mohammed Hasan al-
Ouezzani against the characterization of Lyautey as the “architect of modern
Morocco” in Le Protectorat: Crime de Lèse-Nation (Fez: Fondation
Mohamed Hassan Ouezzani, 1992), 5–10.
5. Framing the Nation (1930–1961)

1. E. Gellner, “Do nations have navels?” Nations and Nationalism 10 (1996): 367;
E. Manela, “A Man Ahead of His Time? Wilsonian Globalism and the Doctrine
of Preemption,” International Journal 60:4 (2005): 1117–18.
2. J. Berque, French North Africa: The Maghrib Between Two World Wars (New
York: Praeger, 1967), 65.
3. Berque, French North Africa, 67; W. A. Hoisington, “Designing Morocco’s
Future: France and the Native Policy Council, 1921–25,” Journal of North
African Studies 5:1 (2000): 78–80: P. Vermeren, École, élite et pouvoir au
Maroc et en Tunisie au XXe siècle (Rabat: Alizés, 2002): 11, 25;
R. Montagne, “Un rapport secret sur les Jeunes marocains dans les années
vingt,” Revue d’histoire maghrébine 131 (2008): 141–2.
4. Plan de réformes marocaines, élaboré et présenté à S. M. Le Sultan, au gou-
vernement de la République française et à la Résidence Générale au Maroc par
le Comité d’Action marocaine (n.p.: Édition française, 1934), ix.
5. K. Brown, “The Impact of the Dahir Berbère in Salé,” in Arabs and Berbers;
From Tribe to Nation in North Africa, E. Gellner and and C. Micaud, eds.
(Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1972): 204; H. Rachik, Symboliser la nation:
Essai sur l’usage des identités collectives au Maroc (Casablanca: Le Fennec,
2003), 66–67: J. P. Halstead, Rebirth of a Nation: The Origins and Rise of
Moroccan Nationalism, 1912–1944 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1967), 161–77; J. Damis, “The Origins and Significance of the Free
School Movement in Morocco, 1919–1931,” Revue de l’occident musulman
et de la Méditerranée 19–20 (1975): 75–99.
6. M. Bekraoui, “Les étudiants marocains en France à l’époque du Protectorat,
1927–1939,” in Présences et images franco-marocaines au temps du protec-
torat, J.C. Allain, ed. (Paris: l’Harmattan, 2003), 89–111.
7. Berque, French North Africa, 76. Vermeren, École, élite et pouvoir, 110;
M. Sijelmassi and M. al-Saghir Janjar, Le Maroc au XXe siècle: Fresque histor-
ique des hommes, des femmes et des grands événements du siècle (Casablanca:
Éditions Oum, 2001), 125.
8. Hoisington, “Designing Morocco’s Future: France and the Native Policy

Council, 1921–25,” 86.
9. C. R. Ageron, “La politique berbère du Protectorat marocain de 1913 à 1934,”
Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 18:1 (1971): 51–53; E. Burke III,
“The Image of the Moroccan State in French Ethnological Literature: New
Light on the Origins of Lyautey’s Berber Policy,” in Arabs and Berbers,
175–99; P. Lorcin, Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice and Race in
Colonial Algeria (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1995), passim.
10. Ageron, “La politique berbère,” 63.
11. J. Halstead, Rebirth of a Nation, 276–7 for the full text of the dahir.
12. H. Rachik, Symboliser la nation, 64. C. Ageron, “La politique berbère,” 79–
80; K. Brown, “The Impact of the Dahir Berbère,” 209–13.
13. W. L. Cleveland, Islam against the West: Shakib Arslan and the Campaign for
Islamic Nationalism (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), 95; Ageron,
“La politique berbère,” 83.
14. Ibid., 83, 85; For a provocative discussion of the historical reinterpretation of
the dahir, see D. M. Hart, “The Berber Dahir of 1930 in Colonial Morocco:
Then and Now (1930–1996),” Journal of North African Studies 2:2 (1997):
11–33.
15. E. Balibar, “The Nation Form: History and Ideology,” in Race, Nation, Class:
Ambiguous Identities, E. Balibar and I. M. Wallerstein, eds. (London: Verso,
1991), 87–88; W. Hoisington, “Cities in Revolt: The Berber Dahir (1930) and
France’s Urban Strategy in Morocco,” Journal of Contemporary History 13:3
(1978): 444; see also J. Wyrtzen,“Colonial State-Building and the Negotiation
of Arab and Berber Identity in Protectorate Morocco,” International Journal
of Middle East Studies 43:2 (2011), 227–49.
16. J. Halstead, Rebirth of a Nation, 194; C.A. Julien, Le Maroc face aux
impérialismes: 1415–1956 (Paris: Éditions J.A., 1978), 170–1.
17. R. Rézette, Les partis politiques marocains (Paris: A. Colin, 1955), 267–90.
18. J. Berque, French North Africa, 180–1; E. G. H. Joffé, “The Moroccan
Nationalist Movement: Istiqlal, the Sultan, and the Country,” The Journal of
African History 26:4 (1985): 294; C. Stewart, The Economy of Morocco,
1912–1962, Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs 12 (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1964): 142.
19. F. Mernissi, Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood (Reading, MA:
Addison-Wesley, 1994): 118–22. Wearing the jallaba by women was frowned
on by social conservatives because it too closely resembled the male garment.
20. H. Rachik, Symboliser la Nation, 82–85, 97–112; J. Halstead, Rebirth of a
Nation, 203–4; A. Aouchar, La presse marocaine dans la lutte pour
l’indépendance (1933–1956) (Casablanca: Wallada, 1990): 60.
21. Halstead, Rebirth, 233; R. Landau, “Moroccan Profiles: A Nationalist View,”
Middle East Journal 7:1 (1953): 50; H. Bleuchot, Les libéraux français au
Maroc, 1947–1955 (Paris: Éditions Ophrys, 1973): 27.
22. Halstead, Rebirth of a Nation, 145–9; Aouchar, La presse marocaine, 29–38.
23. qA. al-Fasi, The Independence Movements in Arab North Africa (Washington,
DC: American Council of Learned Societies, 1954); 139; Comité d’action
marocaine, Plan de réformes marocaines, 21, 128–9.
24. Rézette, Les partis politiques marocains, 69, 87–90.

25. Halstead, Rebirth of a Nation, 242–4.
26. S. E. Fleming, “Spanish Morocco and the Alzamiento Nacional, 1936–1939:
The Military, Economic and Political Mobilization of a Protectorate,” Journal
of Contemporary History 18:1 (1983): 30.
27. J. Halstead, Rebirth of a Nation, 258; C. R. Halstead, “A ‘Somewhat
Machiavellian’ Face: Colonel Juan Beigbeder as High Commissioner in
Spanish Morocco, 1937–1939,” Historian 37:1 (1974): 46–66; C. Spencer,
“The Spanish Protectorate and the Occupation of Tangier in 1940,” in North
Africa: Nation, State, and Region, E. G. H. Joffé, ed. (London: Routledge,
1993), 103–4; Rézette, Les partis politiques marocains, 113–29. The theme
of convivencia was elaborated by the colonial writer Tomás García Figueras:
see G. Jensen, “The Peculiarities of ‘Spanish Morocco’: Imperial Ideology
and Economic Development,” Mediterranean Historical Review 20:1
(2005): 81–102; Cleveland, Islam Against the West, 143–4, 155–6; J. Baïda,
“Perception de la periode nazie au Maroc: Quelques indices de l’impact de la
propagande allemande sur l’état d’esprits des marocains,” in Marocains et
Allemands: La perception de l’autre, A. Bendaoud and M. Berriane, eds.
(Rabat: Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines, 1995): 13–19; Aouchar,
La presse marocaine, 33, 73; W. A. Hoisington, The Casablanca Connection:
French Colonial Policy, 1936–1943 (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1984), 146–7.
28. D. Rivet, Le Maghreb à l’épreuve de la colonization (Paris: Hachette,
2002), 272.
29. See many evocative passages of domestic life in this era in F. Mernissi, Dreams
of Trespass, passim.
30. D. Rivet, “Hygiénisme colonial et médicalisation de la société marocaine au
temps du Protectorat français (1912–1956),” in Santé, médecine et société
dans le monde arabe, E. Longuenesse, ed. (Paris: l’Harmattan, 1995), 105–8.
31. S. G. Miller, “The Sleeping Fetus,” Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic
Cultures, Suad Joseph, ed., 6 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2006): 3: 421–4.
32. Rivet, “Hygiénisme colonial,” 113; R. Pourquier, “La santé et l’hygiéne
publiques,” L’Encyclopédie colonial et maritime: Le Maroc, 3rd ed. (Paris:
l’Encyclopédie Colonial et Maritime, 1941), 165–167.
33. R. Gallissot, Le patronat européen au Maroc: Action sociale, action politique
(1931–1942) (Casablanca: EDDIF, 1990): 55–58, 71–74; A. Ayache, Le
mouvement syndical au Maroc, 3 vols. (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1982), 1:85;
R. Montagne, Naissance du prolétariat marocain (Paris: Peyronnet, 1952),
135–40.
34. Ayache, Le mouvement syndical, 1: 143, 185; Stewart, The Economy of
Morocco, 141; M. Kenbib, “Le Général de Gaulle et les nationalistes maro-
cains (1940–1946),” Espoir 80 (1992): 85; D. Rivet, Le Maroc de Lyautey à
Mohammed V : Le double visage du protectorat (Paris: Denoël, 1999), 136.
Moroccans were not officially allowed to join unions until the 1950s, although
many had informally joined before that time; see al-Fasi, Independence
Movements, 173–5.
35. M. Abitbol, The Jews of North Africa During the Second World War (Detroit:
Wayne State University Press, 1989): 56–101: Joffé, “The Moroccan
Nationalist Movement,” 301–2.
36. qA. al-Fasi, Independence Movements, 213.
37. B. T. Edwards, Morocco Bound: Disorienting America’s Maghreb, from
Casablanca to the Marrakech Express (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2005), 30.
38. E. N. Sangmuah, “Sultan Mohammed Ben Youssef’s American Strategy and
the Diplomacy of North African Liberation, 1943–61,” Journal of
Contemporary History 27:1 (1992): 131; L. B. Blair, Western Window in the
Arab World (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970), 96–97; E. Roosevelt,
As He Saw It (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946): 109–112; Hassan II,
La memoire d’un roi: Entretiens avec Eric Laurent (Paris: Plon, 1993), 18;
M. Kenbib, “L’impact americain sur l’nationalisme marocaine (1930–1947),
Hespéris Tamuda 37–38 (1988–1989): 207–23.
39. Kenbib, “Le Général de Gaulle et les nationalistes marocains,” 85, 88;
Hoisington, Casablanca Connection, 200–14.
40. Rivet, Le Maroc, 359–61.
41. D. Zisenwine, The Emergence of Nationalist Politics in Morocco: The Rise
of the Independence Party and the Struggle against Colonialism after World
War II (New York: Tauris, 2010), 24.
42. qA. al-Fasi, Independence Movements, 113.
43. P. Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 2–4; R. Pinta, “La lutte contre la
misère au Maroc en 1945,” Bulletin économique et social du Maroc 8:28
(1946): 285.
44. D. Rivet, Le Maroc, 148–9, 217–23.
45. M. Ben Barka, The Political Thought of Ben Barka: Revolutionary Option
in Morocco, [sic] Political Articles, 1960–1965 (Havana: Tricontinental,
1968), 44.
46. R. Landau, “Moroccan Profiles,” 50, 53; J. and S. Lacouture, Le Maroc à
l’épreuve (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1958), 134–5.
47. qA. al-Fasi, Independence Movements, 266–83, for a discussion of the ramifi-
cations of the visit from the Istiqlal perspective.
48. Landau, Moroccan Drama, 285; D. Rivet, quoting Balafrej in Le Maroc, 397.
49. A. Ayache, “Mouvements urbains en milieu colonial: les événements de
Casablanca des 7 et 8 décembre 1952,” in Mémorial Germain Ayache,
qUmar Afa, ed. (Rabat: Université Mohammed V, Faculté des lettres et sciences
humaines, 1994), 59–68.
50. M. Aouad and M. Awad, Les trente glorieuses, ou, l’âge d’or du nationalisme
marocain, 1925–1955: Témoignage d’un compagnon de Mehdi Ben Barka
(Rabat: Éditions LPL, 2006), 262–86.
51. M. Sijelmassi and M. al-S.aghir Janjar, Le Maroc au XXe siècle, 138; Landau,
Moroccan Drama, 310.
52. Quoted in Rivet, Le Maroc, 424.
53. G. Delanoë, Lyautey, Juin, Mohammed V, fin d’un Protectorat (Casablanca:
Eddif, 1993): 162–163.
54. On the colonial troops who participated in the war in Indochina, see
N. Delanoë, Poussières d’Empires (Casablanca: Tarik, 2002).
55. W. A. Hoisington, The Assassination of Jacques Lemaigre Dubreuil: A
Frenchman between France and North Africa (London and New York:
Routledge, 2005), and, by the same author, “Commerce and Conflict:
French Businessmen in Morocco, 1952–55,” Journal of Contemporary
History 9, 2 (1974): 49–67; Landau, Moroccan Drama, 367–8.
56. N. Bouzar, L’armée de libération nationale marocaine, [1955–1956]: Retour
sans visa, journal d’un résistant maghrébin (Paris: Publisud, 2002), 177–80;
L. J. Duclos, “The Berbers and the Rise of Moroccan Nationalism,” in Arabs
and Berbers, 224–9.
57. Maqalamat al-Maghrib, s.v “Al- Muqri, Muhammad,” 21: 7235.
58. Joffé, “The Moroccan Nationalist Movement,” 297–8; R. Bidwell, Morocco
under Colonial Rule: French Administration of Tribal Areas, 1912–1956
(London: Cass, 1973), 307–28.
59. P. Vermeren, Histoire du Maroc depuis l’indépendance (Paris: Découverte,
2006), 20–21.Vermeren leans heavily on M. Monjib, La monarchie marocaine
et la lutte pour le pouvoir: Hassan II face à l’opposition nationale, de
l’indépendance à l’état d’exception (Paris: l’Harmattan, 1992), ch. 1.
60. Rivet, Le Maroc, 420–1.
61. R. Leveau, Le fellah marocain, défenseur du trône, 2nd ed. (Paris: Presses de la
Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1985); part I.
62. See L. Cerych, Fin d’un régime colonial: Sociologie du conflit franco-marocain
(1930–1956) (Bruges: De Tempel, 1964), 50.
63. M. J. Willis, “The Military in Maghrebi Politics,” unpublished paper pre-
sented at the Middle East Studies Association Conference, November 2003,
4. My thanks to Prof. Willis for his permission to make use of this work.
64. Vermeren, Histoire du Maroc, 26; R. Leveau, Le sabre et le turban: L’avenir du
Magheb (Paris: F. Bourin, 1993), 207.
65. J. Waterbury, The Commander of the Faithful: The Moroccan Political Elite –
A Study in Segmented Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970);
245, 254–6; Tel Quel on line, http://www.telquel-online.com/341/maroc2_341.
shtml, accessed on June 28, 2011. The FDIC was founded in 1958 but did not
compete in parliamentary elections until 1963.
66. A. Boukhari, Le secret: Ben Barka et le Maroc: Un ancien agent des services
spéciaux parle (Neuilly-sur-Seine [France]: Lafon, 2002), 26; Vermeren,
Histoire du Maroc, 41; Tel-Quel on line, http://www.telquel-online.com/
162/index_162.shtml. Accessed on June 24, 2011.
67. Morocco refused to sign the Eisenhower Doctrine, designed to stop the
spread of Communism in the Middle East and North Africa, and the
United States, under pressure from the nationalists, agreed to close all U.S.
bases in Morocco in the early 1960s. C. Gallagher, The United States and
North Africa: Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1963), 240–1.
68. C. Geertz, Review of The Commander of the Faithful by John Waterbury,
Middle Eastern Studies 7:2 (May 1971): 251–5.
6. The First Age of Hassan II: The Iron Fist (1961–1975)

1. R. Leveau, “The Moroccan Monarchy: A Political System in Quest of a New
Equilibrium,” in Middle East Monarchies: The Challenge of Modernity,
J. Kostiner, ed. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000), 117.
2. M. Monjib, La monarchie marocaine et la lutte pour le pouvoir: Hassan II face
à l’opposition nationale, de l’indépendance à l’état d’exception (Paris:
l’Harmattan, 1992), 234–5, 240.
3. The quote is from R. Landau, Hassan II, King of Morocco (London: Allen &
Unwin, 1962), 84; see also Z. Daoud and M. Monjib, Ben Barka (Paris:
Éditions Michalon, 1996), 281–2; J. Waterbury, The Commander of the
Faithful; The Moroccan Political Elite – a Study in Segmented Politics (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 258.
4. Monjib, La monarchie marocaine, 239–52.
5. This would include the Spanish coastal enclaves of Ceuta, Melilla and Ifni, as
well as Mauritania and Spanish Sahara.
6. D. Ashford, “The Irredentist Appeal in Morocco and Mauritania,” The
Western Political Quarterly 15:4 (1962): 641–51; Monjib, La Monarchie
marocaine, 248–50.
7. I. W. Zartman, Morocco: Problems of New Power (New York: Atherton Press,
1964), 23–60.
8. Hassan II, Memoire d’un roi: Entretiens avec Eric Laurent (Paris: Plon, 1993),
85–86; Monjib and Daoud, Ben Barka, 300.; K. Farsoun and J. Paul, “War in
the Sahara: 1963,” MERIP Reports no. 45 (March 1976): 13–16; M. Ben
Barka, The Political Thought of Ben Barka: Revolutionary Option in
Morocco, Political Articles, 1960–1965 (Havana: Tricontinental, 1968),
183–186; Vermeren, Histoire du Maroc depuis l’independence (Paris: La
Decouverte, 2002), 38–39.
9. Daoud and Monjib, Ben Barka, 276, 299. For a brief biography of Ben Barka,
see, A. Ouardighi, L’itinéraire d’un nationaliste: Mehdi Ben Barka, 1920–
1965: Une biographie (Rabat: Éditions Moncho, 1982). For his political
writing, especially on Third World issues, see the collection edited by
R. Gallissot and J. Kergoat, Mehdi Ben Barka: De l’indépendance marocaine
à la Tricontinentale (Paris: Karthala, 1997) and R. Jean, Problèmes
d’édification du Maroc et du Maghreb; Quatre entretiens avec el Mehdi Ben
Barka, Tribune Libre, 52 (Paris: Plon, 1959).
10. B. Belouchi, Portraits d’hommes politiques du Maroc (Casablanca: Afrique
Orient, 2002), 65; Tel Quel on line, “Cheikh el-Arab: Itineraire dqun heros
sans gloire,” http://www.telquel-online.com/111/sujet3.shtml. Accessed on
June 27, 2011; Leveau, “The Moroccan Monarchy,” 118.
11. Hassan II, Mémoire d’un roi, 105–7; D. Guérin, Ben Barka, ses assassins: Seize
ans d’enquête (Paris: Plon, 1982); a recent account by a former member of the
Moroccan secret service (CAB1) is A. Boukhari, Raisons d’états: Tout sur
l’affaire Ben Barka et d’autres crimes politiques au Maroc (Casablanca: Ed.
Maghrébines, 2005); Vermeren, Histoire du Maroc, 47–48. Some quarters
claim that both the CIA and the Mossad were implicated in the plot, although
without offering conclusive proof.
12. C. H. Moore and A. Rothschild, “Student Unions in North African Politics,”

Daedelus 97:1 (1968): 29; Waterbury, Commander of the Faithful, 214–15;
M. Bennouna, Héros sans gloire: échec d’une révolution, 1963 (Casablanca:
Tarik, 2002).
13. Vermeren, Histoire du Maroc, 45–46. J. Waterbury, “The Coup Manqué,” in
Arabs and Berbers: From Tribe to Nation in North Africa, E. Gellner and
C. Micaud, eds. (Lexington, MA: DC Heath, 1972), 414–15; M. Benhlal, “Le
Syndicat comme enjeu politique au Maroc (1955–1981),” in Le Mouvement
ouvrier maghrébin, N. Sraïeb, ed. (Paris: CNRS, 1985), 228: The quotations
from El Ayadi and Hassan II appeared in Tel Quel #169, http://www.telquel-
online.com/169/sujet1.shtml,“Casablanca, le 23 mars 1965,” accessed on July 8,
2011. See also M. El Ayadi, “Les mouvements de la jeunesse au Maroc:
L’émergence d’une nouvelle intelligentsia politique durant les années soixante
et soixante-dix,” in Émeutes et mouvements sociaux au Maghreb; Perspective
comparée, D. Le Saout and M. Rollinde, eds. (Paris: Karthala, 1999), 201–30.
14. Vermeren, Histoire du Maroc, 52–53.
15. C. Daure-Serfaty, Letter from Morocco (East Lansing: Michigan State
University Press, 2003); A. Serfaty and M. Elbaz, L’insoumis: Juifs, marocains
et rebelles (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 2001); Tel Quel online, “Témoignages.
Abraham Serfaty, par ses Compagnons,” http://www.telquelonline.com/335/
maroc2_335.shtml, accessed on June 29, 2011.
16. M. J. Willis, “The Military in Maghrebi Politics,” unpublished paper pre-
sented at the Middle East Studies Association Conference, November 2003,
6; see also qA. al-Marini, al-Jaysh al-maghribi qabr al-tarikh (Rabat: Dar al-
Nashr al-Maqrifa, 1997).
17. Ben Barka, Political Thought, 18.
18. A. Doumou, “The State and Legitimation in Post-Colonial Morocco,” in The
Moroccan State in Historical Perspective, 1850–1985, A. Doumou, ed.
(Dakar, Senegal: CODESRIA, 1990), 65–66.
19. W. D. Swearingen, Moroccan Mirages: Agrarian Dreams and Deceptions,
1912–1986 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 143–145; H. Van
Wersch, “Rural Development in Morocco: ‘Operation Labour,’” Economic
Development and Cultural Change 17:1 (1968): 33.
20. Van Wersch, “Operation Labour,” 47; Ben Barka, Political Thought, 49; W. D.
Swearingen, “Morocco’s Agricultural Crisis,” in The Political Economy of
Morocco, I. W. Zartman, ed. (New York: Praeger, 1987), 159–72.
21. Ben Barka, Political Thought, 96–97; A. Belal and A. Agourram, “L’economie
marocaine depuis l’independence,” Annuaire de l’Afrique du Nord 8, (1969):
145, 154, 155.
22. Vermeren, Histoire du Maroc, 55; Leveau, “Moroccan Monarchy,” 126.
23. J. Waterbury, “The coup manqué,” 399.
24. Profiles of the main actors in the putsch are found in Waterbury, “The coup
manqué,” 418–420; for a sketch of Ababou, see http://www.telquel-online.
com/373/couverture_373.shtml, “Portrait-Enquête. L’homme qui a voulu tuer
Hassan II,” accessed on July 5, 2011.
25. A detailed account of the bloodbath is found in Waterbury, “The coup
manqué,” 406–13; see Paris Match, no. 1159 (July 24, 1971, with remarkable
photographs); Jeune Afrique, no. 550, July 20, 1971; L’Express, no. 1045
(July 19–25, 1971). More recent eyewitness accounts are found in the post-
prison narratives of participants in the coup who survived: A. Binebine,
Tazmamort: Récit (Paris: Denoël, 2009); M. Raïss, De Skhirat à Tazmamart:
Retour du bout de l’enfer (Maroc: Afrique Orient, 2002); A. Marzouki,
Tazmamart Cellule 10 (Casablanca: Tarik, 2000). See also Tel Quel online,
http://www.telquel-online.com/359/couverture_359.shtml, “Histoire. Les
minutes d’un anniversaire sanglant,” accessed on July 5, 2011; New York
Times, “Hassan II of Morocco Dies at Seventy,” July 24, 1999.
26. Waterbury, “The coup manqué,” 413.
27. A. Coram, “The Berbers and the Coup,” in Arabs and Berbers, 425–30.
28. It has been rumored that leading politicians from the Istiqlal, the UNFP, and
a clandestine organization headed by Muhammad “Fqih” Basri called
“Tanzim,” were in secret conversation with Oufkir, but so far, there is no
concrete proof of this allegation. http://www.telquel-online.com/244/
maroc3_244.shtml, “Interview Mohamed Aït Kaddour. “Quand nous étions
révolutionnaires,” accessed on July 21, 2011.
29. Hassan II, The Challenge: The Memoirs of King Hassan II of Morocco
(London: Macmillan, 1978) 154; S. Smith, Oufkir, un destin marocain
(Paris: Hachette, 2002), 342–366.
30. M. Oufkir and M. Fitoussi, Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail (New
York: Talk Miramax Books/Hyperion, 2001); see also Tel Quel: http://www.
telquel-online.com/244/maroc3_244.shtml, “L’affaire du Boeing: Révélations
sur le putsch de 72,” accessed on July 5, 2011.
31. Willis, “The Military in Maghebi Politics,” 14.
32. S. Hughes, Morocco under King Hassan ( Reading, U.K.: Ithaca, 2001), 234;
The Sahrawis’ tribal ancestors are the Beni Hassan of Yemeni origin; they speak
an Arabic dialect known as Hassaniyya. For the most part, they were traders and
pastoralists, wandering in wide arcs across the Western Sahara without paying
much heed to the borders of Morocco, Algeria, and Mauritania. See S. Zunes
and J. Mundy, Western Sahara : War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution
(Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2010), ch. 4.
33. J. B. Weiner, “The Green March in Historical Perspective,” Middle East
Journal 33, 1 (1979): 22.
34. J. Damis, “King Hassan and the Western Sahara,” The Maghreb Review 25,
1–2 (2000), 16.
35. See Hughes’s colorful eyewitness account, Morocco under King Hassan, 240.
36. J. Gretton, “The Western Sahara in the International Arena,” The World
Today 36, 9 (1980): 343, 349; J. Mundy, “Neutrality or Complicity? The
United States and the 1975 Moroccan Takeover of the Spanish Sahara,”
Journal of North African Studies 11:3 (2006): 275–303; R. B. Parker, North
Africa: Regional Tensions and Strategic Concerns (Westport, CT: Praeger,
1987), 29. The Moroccans detained Algerian prisoners at a military camp
near Rabat, where they remained for years.
37. The Wikipedia article on this topic is soundly documented: http://en.wikipe-
dia.org/wiki/Sahrawi_refugee_camps, accessed on July 8, 2011; see also
J. Harding, “Behind the Sandwall; Review of Toby Shelley, Endgame for the
Western Sahara: What Future for Africa’s Last Colony? (London: Zed, 2004),”
The London Review of Books (February 23, 2006), 8–11; R. B. Khoury,
“Western Sahara and Palestine: A Comparative Study of Colonialisms,
Occupations, and Nationalisms,” New Middle Eastern Studies, 1 (2011):
1–20.
38. Damis, “Western Sahara,” 30; Tel Quel online, http://www.telquelonline.
com/198/sujet1.shtml, “La vérite sur la Marche Verte,” accessed on July 24,
2011.
39. K. Mohsen-Finan, Sahara Occidental: Les enjeux d’un conflit régional (Paris:
CNRS, 1997), 86–87; P. Vermeren, Histoire du Maroc, 66–68.
40. M. Benhlal, “Le Syndicat comme enjeu,” 237.
41. Ibid., 241.
42. Ibid., 243
43. Vermeren, Histoire du Maroc, 83–84; on the Nador riots, see Tel Quel online,
“La révolte des “awbach,” http://www.telquel-online.com/259/maroc5_259.
shtml, accessed on July 8, 2011.
7. The Second Age of Hassan II: The Velvet Glove (1976–1999)

1. “Civil society” is a term defined in various ways. The definition put forward by
the London School of Economics’ Centre for Civil Society suits our purposes :
“Civil society refers to the arena of uncoerced collective action around shared
interests, purposes and values . . . its institutional forms are distinct from those
of the state, and market, though in practice, the boundaries between state, civil
society, and market are often complex, blurred and negotiated. . . . Civil societies
are often populated by organizations such as registered charities, development
and non-governmental organizations, community groups, women’s organiza-
tions, faith-based organizations, professional associations, trade unions, self-
help groups, social movements, business associations, coalitions and advocacy
groups.” See also James Sater, “The Dynamics of State and Civil Society in
Morocco,” Journal of North African Studies 7:3 (2002): 101–18.
2. M. Zeghal, Islamism in Morocco: Religion, Authoritarianism, and Electoral
Politics (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2008), xiv–xv.
3. qA. al-Fasi, Difa qan al-shariqa (Rabat: Maktabat al-Risala, 1966), 300, quoted
in Zeghal, Islamism, 69–76; M. Tozy, “Monopolisation de la production
symbolique et hiérarchisation du champ politico-religieux au Maroc,”
Annuaire de l’Afrique du Nord 18 (1979): 228–31.
4. M. El Ayadi, “Between Islam and Islamism: Religion in the Moroccan Public
School,” unpublished paper, n.d.; M. Tozy, “Réformes politiques et transition
démocratique,” Maghreb Machrek 164 (1999): 80.
5. M. Tozy, Monarchie et Islam politique au Maroc (Paris: Presses de la Fondation
nationale des sciences politiques, 1999), 198; Zeghal, Islamism, 79–142, and
esp. pp. 98–116.
6. M. Bennani-Chraïbi and R. Leveau, Soumis et rebelles: Les jeunes au Maroc
(Paris: CNRS, 1994), 257–85.
7. The building of the Hassan II mosque in Casablanca, announced by the king in
July 1988 and inaugurated in 1993, was aimed at demonstrating Hassan’s
mastery over the Islamic field. Built at the cost of $600 million tithed from
every segment of the Moroccan population, the mosque was a massive public
works project employing thousands of workers. Not everyone greeted this
Maoist-style fund drive with joy; shopkeepers prominently displayed their
certificate of donation, more out of fear of being tithed again than out of
pride in giving. Even middle class professors grumbled at the obligatory
nature of the collection. A gargantuan structure with a minaret seven hundred
feet tall sprawling across the Casablanca seafront, Hassan’s achievement
had manifold purposes, according to French historian Pierre Vermeren: the
mosque branded “New York–like” Casablanca with an unmistakably Islamic
feel, it soaked up millions of unspent dirhams at a time of runaway inflation,
and it reminded the faithful of the Sultan/King’s preeminence in the religious
sphere. See his Histoire du Maroc depuis l’independence (Paris: La Decouverte,
2002), 95–97.
8. Zeghal, Islamism, 178.
9. M. Zeghal and F. Fergosi, Religion et politique au Maghreb: Les exemples
tunisien et marocain, Policy Paper 11, K. Mohsen-Finan, ed. (Paris: Institut
français des relations internationales (IFRI), (2005), 32–33; see also F. Laroui,
“Democracy and Islam in the Maghreb and Implications for Europe,” in The
Other Muslims: Moderate and Secular, Z. Baran, ed. (New York: Palgrave,
2010) 71–79.
10. For example, the nationalist militant Malika al-Fasi was instrumental in
drafting the 1944 Manifesto of Independence, but her name does not appear
among the list of signatories. L. Akharbach and N. Rerhaye, Femmes et
Politique (Rabat: Éditions Le Fennec, 1992), 17–26.
11. J. Berque, Structures sociales du Haut-Atlas (Paris: PUF, 1955), 347.
A. Belarbi, “Le mouvement associatif feminine,” Prologues, 9 (May 1997),
28–33.
12. D. Rivet, Le Maroc de Lyautey à Mohammed V (Paris: Denoél, 1999), 319.
A. Baker, Voices of Resistance: Oral Histories of Moroccan Women (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1998), passim.
13. J. Mathieu, P. H. Maury, and A. Arrif, Bousbir: La prostitution dans le Maroc
colonial : ethnographie d’un quartier reservé (Aix-en-Provence; Paris:
IREMAM; Paris-Méditerranée, 2003) 11–35. See also C. Taraud, La prosti-
tution coloniale: Algérie, Tunisie, Maroc (1830–1962) (Paris: Payot, 2003).
14. Belarbi, “Mouvement associatif,” 30: F. Mernissi, Dreams of Trespass: Tales
of a Harem Girlhood (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1994), 118.
15. R. Naciri, “Engaging the State: The Women’s Movement and Political Discourse
in Morocco,” in Missionaries and Mandarins: Feminist Engagement with
Development Institutions, C. Miller and R. Shahrashoub Razavi, eds.
(London: Intermediate Technology Publications and the United Nations
Research Institute for Social Development, 1998), 87–111; Sater, “The
Dynamics of State and Civil Society in Morocco,” 106.
16. Belarbi, “Mouvement feminin,” 31.
17. A reformed and far more liberal Family Code incorporating significant
changes in many important areas of women’s status was promulgated by
King Muhammad VI in 2004.
18. Naciri, “Engaging the State,” 102, 105.

19. K. Brown, “A Few Reflections on ‘Tribe’ and ‘State’ in Twentieth-Century
Morocco,” in Tribes and Power: Nationalism and Ethnicity in the Middle
East, F. Abdul-Jabar and H. Dawod, eds. (London: Saqi, 2003), 206.
20. B. Maddy-Weitzman, “Contested Identities: Berbers, ‘Berberism’ and the State
in North Africa,” Journal of North African Studies 6:3 (2001): 25.
21. Ibid., 32, quoting BBC Monitoring, Summary of World Broadcasts 4, The
Middle East, August 23, 1994: 19–20.
22. Ibid., 34; M. Bensadoun, The (Re)fashioning of Moroccan National Identity,”
in B. Maddy Weitzman and D. Zisenwine, eds., The Maghrib in the New
Century (Gainsville: University of Florida Press, 2007), 18.
23. See J. Goodman’s account of the 1984 Berber Spring trial of Algerian activists,
“Imazighen on Trial; Human Rights and Berber Identity in Algeria, 1985,” in
Berbers and Others: Beyond Tribe and Nation in the Maghrib, K. E. Hoffman
and S. G. Miller, eds. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010): 103–
125; S. Slyomovics, “Self-Determination as Self-Definition: The Case of
Morocco,” in Negotiating Self-Determination, H. Hannum and E. Babbitt,
eds. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006), 135–57.
24. Slyomovics, “Self-Determination,” 138–9.
25. Quoted in Écritures marocaines contemporaines (Maroc: Printemps, 2001), 14.
26. Z. Daoud, Les années Lamalif: 1958–1988, trente ans de journalisme au
Maroc (Casablanca: Tarik, 2007); V. Orlando, Francophone Voices of the
“New” Morocco in Film and Print: (Re)Presenting a Society in Transition
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 10, 21–24.
27. F. Ramirez, “Le stéréotype ambigu: Aspects de la représentation du Maroc
dans le cinéma colonial,” in Présences et images franco-marocaines au temps
du Protectorat, J.-C. Allain, ed. (Paris: l’Harmattan, 2003), 179–93; M. D.
Jaïdi, Histoire du cinema au Maroc: Le cinéma colonial (Casablanca: Najah
al-Jadida, 2001); R. Armes, “Cinema in the Maghreb,” in Companion
Encyclopedia of Middle Eastern and North African Film, Oliver Leaman, ed.
(London: Routledge, 2001), 426; K. Dwyer, Beyond Casablanca: M. A. Tazi
and the Adventure of Moroccan Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2004), 122–4.
28. Dwyer, Beyond Casablanca, 155–6, and “Chronology,” unpaged.
29. K. Dwyer, “Moroccan Cinema and the Promotion of Culture,” Journal of
North African Studies 12:3 (2007): 278; by the same author, Beyond
Casablanca, 281–3, and esp. n. 21, p. 395; B. Edwards, “Marock in
Morocco: Reading Moroccan Films in the Age of Circulation,” Journal of
North African Studies 12:3 (2007): 287–307.
30. S. E. Waltz, “Interpreting Political Reform in Morocco,” in In the Shadow of
the Sultan: Culture, Power and Politics in Morocco, R. Bourqia and S. G.
Miller, eds. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 282.
31. C. Daure-Serfaty, Letter from Morocco (East Lansing: Michigan State
University Press, 2003), xi–xiii: Tel Quel online, “Hassan II a facilité mon
marriage,” http://www.telquel-online.com/365/interrogatoire_365.shtml,
accessed on July 16, 2011.
32. Waltz, “Interpreting Political Reform,” 292; Vermeren, Histoire du Maroc,

91–95.
33. A. Laroui, Le Maroc et Hassan II: Un témoignage (Québec: Presses Inter
Universitaires, 2005), 162. The genre of Moroccan prison literature is exten-
sive; among the most memorable is Ahmed Marzouki’s Tazmamart, Cellule 10
(Casablanca: Tarik, 2000). In English, Prix de Goncourt–winning author
Tahar Ben Jelloun used the memories of a former prisoner to write a contro-
versial fictionalized account of this same prison entitled This Blinding Absence
of Light (New York: New Press, 2002); for an anthropologist’s view of the
prison experience and its memorialization, see S. Slyomovics, The
Performance of Human Rights in Morocco (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2005).
34. Tel Quel online, “Tabit, La vraie histoire,” http://www.telquel online.com/
281/couverture_281.shtml, accessed on July 16, 2011; Jonathan Smolin,
“Moroccan Noir: The Genesis of the Arabic Police Novel,” unpublished
paper by permission of the author. Prof. Smolin informs me that he believes
no one associated with the Tabit affair is still in jail. (July 2011); for an unusual
perspective on the affair as it was reflected in popular culture, see A. Lakhsassi,
“Scandale national et chansons populaires,” in Miroirs maghrébins,
S. Ossman, ed. (Paris: CNRS Editions, 1998), 99–119.
35. M. Tozy and B. Hibou Tozy, “Une lecture d’anthropologie politique de la
corruption au Maroc: Fondement historique d’une prise de liberté avec le
droit,” Hespéris-Tamuda 39:2 (2001): 226–233; Tel Quel On-line,
“Assainissement: Dix ans après,” http://www.telquel-online.com/179/eco_su-
jet_179.shtml, accessed on July 20, 2011.
36. Slyomovics, Performance of Human Rights, 22.
37. E. G. H. Joffé, “Morocco’s Reform Process: Wider Implications,” Mediterranean
Politics 14:2 (2009): 151–64; A. Maghraoui, “Monarchy and Political Reform in
Morocco,” Journal of Democracy 12:1 (2001): 73.
38. M. Cherkaoui and D. Ben Ali, “The Political Economy of Growth in
Morocco,” The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance 46 (2007): 746.
39. Vermeren, Histoire du Maroc, 97–105; J. P. Ketterer, “From One Chamber to
Two: The Case of Morocco,” Journal of Legislative Studies 7:1 (2001): 135–50.
40. B. Belouchi, L’Alternance, les mots et les choses (Casablanca: Afrique Orient,
2003), 34.
41. World Trade Organization Country Profiles, http://stat.wto.org/CountryProfile/
WSDBCountryPFView.aspx?Country=MA&Language=E, accessed on July 19,
2011.
42. A. Rhazaoui, “Recent Economic Trends: Managing the Indebtedness,” in The
Political Economy of Morocco, I. W. Zartman, ed. (New York: Praeger,
1987), 141; in the same volume, R. Pomfret, “Morocco’s International
Relations,” 173–85; see also C. Dawson, EU Integration with North Africa:
Trade Negotiations and Democracy Deficits in Morocco (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 2009).
43. J. Marks, “The Concept of Morocco in Europe,” in Morocco and Europe,
E. G. H. Joffé, ed. (London: SOAS, 1989), 15; and, in the same publication,
B. Boutaleb, “Morocco and Europe: From Protectorate to Independence,”
60–64; see also M. Catusse, “L’entrée en politique des entrepreneurs maro-

cains: Formation d’une catégorie sociale et réforme de l’ordre politique dans le
cadre de la libéralisation économique,” EIU Working Paper RSC 2001/25
(European University Institute, 2001), 16.
44. C. M. Henry, “Crises of Money and Power: Transitions to Democracy?” in
Islam, Democracy and the State in North Africa, J. Entelis, ed. (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1997), 199.
45. S. Cohen, “Alienation and Globalization in Morocco: Addressing the Social
and Political Impact of Market Integration,” Comparative Studies in Society
and History 45:1 (2003): 168–189; Maghraoui, “Monarchy and Political
Reform,” 76; S. Tangeaoui, Les entrepreneurs marocains: Pouvoir, société et
modernité (Paris: Karthala, 1993), 161–2.
46. B. Maddy-Weitzman, “Israel and Morocco: A Special Relationship,” The
Maghreb Review 21:1–2 (1996): 36–48.
47. J. Damis, U.S. Arab Relations: The Moroccan Dimension (Washington, DC:
National Council on U.S-Arab Relations, 1986).
48. J. Entelis, “Libya and its North African Policy,” in D. Vandewalle, ed., Libya
since 1969: Qadhafi’s Revolution Revisited (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2008), 181.
49. Hassan II, The Challenge: The Memoirs of King Hassan II of Morocco
(London: Macmillan, 1978), 172.
50. O. Bendourou, “Bourguiba et le Maroc,” in Habib Bourguiba: La trace et
l’héritage, M. Camau and V. Geisser, eds. (Paris: Karthala, 2004), 499.
51. B. Stora, “Maroc-Algérie, retour du passé et écriture de l’histoire,” Vingtième
Siècle: Revue d’histoire 68 (2000): 109–18; and, by the same author, “Le
Maroc et l’Algérie: Reflexions sur des relations complexes, difficiles,” Les
Cahiers de l’Orient 58 (2000): 11–24.
8. Summation: In Search of a New Equilibrium

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Equilibrium,” in Middle East Monarchies: The Challenge of Modernity, Joseph
Kostiner, ed. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000), 122–23.
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A History of Modern Morocco

Susan Gilson Miller is Professor of History at the University of California,

© Cambridge University Press 2013

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

First published 2013

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

isbn 978-0-521-81070-8 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or

List of Maps and Illustrations page viii

1 The Closing of the Era of Jihad (1830–1860) 7

2 Facing the Challenges of Reform (1860–1894) 28

The rise of an assertive bourgeoisie 49

3 The Passing of the Old Makhzan (1894–1912) 56

4 France and Spain in Morocco: The Early Years of the

5 Framing the Nation (1930–1961) 120

8 Summation: In Search of a New Equilibrium 214

9 Postscript: The Long Decade of Muhammad VI (2000–2011) 221

Key Abbreviations 237

18 Riﬁan War Hero qAbd al-Karim al-Khattabi On His Way to

Levy, Susan Ossman, Joelle Bahloul, Daniel Schroeter, Gregory White,

The transliteration of Moroccan personal and place names poses difﬁcult

1830, July 5 French landing in Algiers

1912, November 27 French-Spanish treaty institutes Spanish

1956, December 26 First congress of the UNEM (Moroccan

1965, October 29 Ben Barka kidnapped in Paris

1979, June 24 AMDH (Moroccan Association of Human

1996, September 13 Constitutional revision calling for a bi-cameral

2009, July 30 Celebration of tenth anniversary of

Ababou, M’hamed (d. 1971) Head of military academy at Ahermoumou,

Ben qArafa, Mawlay Muhammad (d. 1976) Puppet ruler imposed by

al-Hajwi, Muhammad (d. 1956) Religious scholar, reformer, propa-

el-Malki, Habib Economist, minister, member of USFP

The present work retells the story of state-societal relations in Morocco

does implicate a dimension of Moroccan history that is often forgotten;

Finally, it should be noted that this study is a synthetic history covering

The Closing of the Era of Jihad (1830–1860)

In 1830, Morocco found itself under attack by an assertive and expansive

rebuilding the moroccan state

bedrock of state ﬁnances. Commercial ties with Europe dried up and

the fall of algiers and the people of tlemcen

the Wazzaniyya and Darqawiyya maintaining important lodges in

Once again, a Moroccan sultan found himself in a dilemma at the center

morocco and qabd al-qadir’s resistance

natural leader of the resistance. Anointing himself with the mantle of a

the revolt of the wadaya

sharply diminished his popularity and in no time at all, dissidents rose up in

the battle of isly and the wages of defeat

Moroccan state had never previously experienced,” pronounced the his-

his mission, and no contemporary monument or historical monograph

1830, he emerged as a star performer, a leader capable of resisting but also

engagement with the outside world

In the ﬁrst quarter of the nineteenth century, spearheaded by the rapidly

and receiving more than two-thirds of its exports.38 British manufactures

the war of tetuan and its burdensome legacy

relics from the seventeenth century that belonged more properly in a

Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, a young Spanish soldier-writer who was

fi g u r e 2 . British Representative Sir John H. Drummond Hay greeted by Sultan

ruination of native crafts, and the undermining of a stable currency. It