I was fortunate to be entrusted, still young, the opening of the Muslim College of Marrakech, and I am not about to forget the joys of this creation. Upon my arrival, in September 1936, two orders of research immediately occupied me: knowledge of the Moroccan city (the Medina), and as a result, the establishment of the directory of its streets, which were both necessary for the good performance of my duties. And that’s how, starting from the plan of the districts of Marrakech, I gradually extended my curiosity to its big families, then to its monuments and finally to all its history. These latter tasks presented serious difficulties.

There was no specialized library in Marrakech. The important collection of manuscripts and printed matter of the Ben-Youssef Mosque was well put in order and saved from the disaster by my care, but if the legal literature, an essential source for the study of the social and private life of a country or era, occupies a large place there, the historical documentation proved to be extremely weak. The administrative library of the General Secretariat of the Province contained some interesting works, but too few. I live in the obligation to gather at the College, even the necessary documentation. And it was not without difficulty despite the generous donations from the Institut des Hautes-Etudes Marocaines and the General Library of Rabat. Orientalists know the scarcity and the price of certain books or collections of magazines, and my means and those of the establishment that I managed were not always sufficient to meet purchases, which I sometimes had to give up. However, the college library, now Lycée Mohammed V in Marrakech, now has unique documentation on southern Morocco. The dear ones will, however, have to bring all their vigilance to the distinction, always compulsory until the beginning of the XXc century, between the direction of Morocco (city) and Morocco (country).

The discovery of new manuscripts as part of our program, but it was in vain. The late Lévi-Provencal, MM. G.S. Colin and Allouche have been exploring southern Morocco for far too long to hope for further sensational discoveries. With what pleasure would we have hailed the work of some scholar who would have spoken to us about life in Marrakech under the Merinids or the great reign of Ali b. Yusuf, the Almoravid! It was necessary to resolve to accumulate details are taken everywhere, legal decisions, unpublished inscriptions, unexpected mentions of small local events, poetic allusions, and even data of folklore to manage to fill the gaps and connect the scattered elements of our documentation.

At the same time, my research focused on the iconography of the city. It is quite rich but almost always second-hand, therefore without great archaeological value. The large print by Adrian Matham, the engravings by Hôst, are, however, of considerable importance for the knowledge of the imperial kasbah.

The plans brought me the most useful contribution. The extraordinary document of 1585, found at the El Escorial by R.P. Koehler, has made it possible to elucidate many of the numerous problems posed by the Casbah; the plan of the French merchant Lambert published since 1867 and never used in France, we do not know why, those of captain Larras, dated 1899, finally the “aerial view” of the city in 1917, represent working instruments of high value. We must also cite the thousandth plan drawn up in 1924 for the city’s municipal works department from aerial photographs. Marrakech was certainly one of the first cities in the world to be able to use such a document.

We could have expected a lot from the registers (hawàla) where the pious foundations were recorded. It was a disappointment. Despite the importance of the institution under the Saadians, the records preserved do not go back beyond the nineteenth century. In addition, no inscription devoted to some pious foundation was found.

The Sommiers des Domaines which were established following a Christian letter from Moulay Hasan have been taken over by the administration of the former French Protectorate, but they only provide details, sometimes contradicted by legal documents.

If the public records have not been of much help to me, the private records do not exist. Without them, it isn’t very easy to reach the truth, if ever it can be, and to establish solid foundations for a historical construction. It was by chance that I came across a collection of letters kept by the family of a former Muhtasib from Marrakech, but these documents are recent and quite unfortunate for urban history.

The details provided by this work on the history of Marrakech would be much less interesting if the Inspectorate of Historical Monuments of Morocco did not take the initiative not only to start important excavations on certain limited historical places but also to do conduct, at my request, surveys. Both made it possible to confirm hypotheses whose consequences were not negligible. Archaeological excavations have singularly served the fame of the Almoravids and returned Marrakech its birth certificate: the casbah of Abü Bakr.

Given the poverty of our written sources, the critical use of monuments seemed essential to make a contribution, not to the history of Moroccan art, but to that of the city, which is the object of this work and that the annalists make us know very little about. The Muslim West is no exception to the common rules of science.

If the study of the main buildings of the city was easy after the masterful publications of Mr. Henri Terrasse, my duties were nevertheless often an obstacle to visiting religious monuments. The curiosity of the researcher must have sometimes given way to the discretion of the Muslim headteacher or disconcerting passive resistances. I don’t regret anything since I knew it, but the district of my investigation.

A publication parallel to this gave the results obtained by my epigraphic research. They are far from being as negligible as I first thought, and they give us, especially for the Saadian and Alawite dynasties, details that we would vainly seek elsewhere.

Oral surveys among the population of the city, where old families are rare, have not been very successful. I was told in 1936 that not a single inhabitant of the city could boast that his father and grandfather were born in Marrakech.

I must, however, point out that an old mason, son, and grandson of masons employed by the Alawite dynasty in Marrakech, gave me precise unpublished information, most of which withstood the overlaps. I believe that these details are as valuable, no more, but no less, than those that a literate Moroccan scholar could have put in writing a century ago.

Ultimately it is the texts of the geographical and historical works of Arab authors that served as the basis for our work, and we know all the difficulties they present for the historian of Western Islam. The late Lévi-Provençal called them back a long time ago. The reason is that Muslims, even from the Maghreb, do not ask themselves the same questions as Westerners. They oppose a scientific conception of our scientific conceptions, which leads them to lose interest in the sense of history. The concern to understand evolution does not appear in their works. History is in their eyes, only a successive series of happy or unhappy events by which the divine will manifests itself and where man is absent. We rarely have a common thread to find what Vécrivain wanted to say or guess what he did not say. It is in this sense that Lévi-Provençal was able to speak of the discouraging aridity of the historical sources thanks to which, however, in thirty years, he succeeded in entirely renewing the medieval history of Muslim Spain and the Maghreb.

Let us add that the historians of Morocco by conceiving the history that, according to the central authority, are more able to write well than not to flatter and make little room for the essential elements constituted by the urban populations and the problems that they posed.

Useless to insist after ‘Ibn Haldün on the exaggerations of the Western Arab historians, so poorly able to appreciate the numbers, nor the plagiarism which is still in Islam, as with us in the Middle Ages, “the most innocent of the world. ” The author (who may still be alive) copies, often naively, someone from his predecessors without subjecting the facts or details reproduced to verification. He sometimes embellishes them for moral ends because the chronicles always have a distinctly religious tendency: anecdotes and marvelous details hold a very large place, are dangerously mixed with truth, and very few are critical reflections. Moral honesty is not in doubt, but the concern for truth and accuracy remains superficial, and, for a European spirit, the careful study of the historical sources of this country too often reveals them partial and biased. One rarely feels “the shock of the authentic” at their contact because the perpetrators always hide behind their authorities and do not say, or very rarely, what they saw. They almost never testify; the case of Baydaq, the Almohad, is an exception, so his Memoirs are of considerable interest.

I have obviously read most of the books that provide information on Marrakech. But I do not pretend that my bibliography is absolutely complete. Firstly because it identifies with that of Morocco which, as we know, is huge and still imperfectly known, secondly because I did not believe I should include second-hand work that did not learn anything or publications without any scientific or literary character and each page of which would require numerous corrections. To point out all the errors made about Marrakech seemed to me without interest.

It would be difficult today to write the history of Marrakech without the documents that Lévi-Provençal has already published and without the multiple details that are given to us by the numerous publications of Mr. G.S. Colin. Our work owes a lot to these two masters.

Four Arabic texts make a large contribution to the knowledge of the history of the city, the Kitäb ​​al-Istibsär, development of the work of Bakri, which deserves a new scientific presentation, the road of Ibn Fadl-Alläh al – “Umari, translated and annotated by Gaudefroy-Demombynes, the Almohad part of the Bayän of Ibn ‘Idäri, which Mr. Huici has just translated into Spanish and the Hulal al-Mawsiya which the same author has translated into the same language by following the edition of M. Allouche. Finally, the Almoravid part of the aforementioned Bayän, still handwritten and incomplete, provides unique details on the events which surrounded the creation of the Marrakech camp. By confirming our beliefs and our deductions, it allowed us to rectify familiar errors that should not have stood up to scientific truth for so long.

We must point out here the meager help that Ibn brings us Haldun. Not only did he never come to Marrakech, but he did not pay much attention to South Morocco, about which he is poorly informed. This is not the case of Leon J’Africain, who at COnSacré in Marrakech very useful pages, and everywhere reproduced, but which are far from being worth those he wrote On Fez, then capital of Merinides.

As for the Cherifian history of Marrakech, it owes a lot to the publications of the great organizers of the incomparable collection of unpublished sources which all, gone forever or always at work, will have worked well for the knowledge of the Moroccan past, even distant. The Africa of Marmol and the History of the Sheriffs of Diégo de Torrès are essential works for the entire Saadian period and remain precious for the period, which immediately preceded it.

We must also mention two Moroccan names who have well deserved from Marrakech: Muhammad ibn al-Muwaqggqit, recently deceased, whose two lithographed volumes constitute a topographical directory of celebrities of Marrakech of great practical value, the cadi “Abbas b. Ibrähim, whose first of five volumes (out of ten to be published) from his dictionary of illustrious people of Marrakech and Aghmat has collected, but without subjecting it to the rules of criticism, abundant documentation on the capital of the South and on its history.

Finally, let us add with gratitude the notice dated 1867, from the French merchant Paul Lambert whose information is still valid and the details still essential to understand the evolution of Marrakech in the nineteenth century. These are the basic works of understudy’s history of the city.

We may be surprised not to see cited here some English authors whose literature on Marrakech is abundant, especially in the nineteenth century, but generally, these travelers or these diplomats were only interested in the picturesque ”Only the relation of lieutenant Washington (1830) seems to us to be specially pointed out.

This is how I unearthed shreds of history while respecting what was inexplicable. I did not easily resign myself to neglecting the men who lived this history, but in truth, the people of Marrakech escape historical analysis. Among all the adventures that we will describe we rarely meet it, and still, we arrive at it by imposing on us a psychological effort, after all questionable, because we cannot perfectly judge these ancient times from ours, we do not we no longer have the same way of seeing and appreciating. So I was careful.

If I multiplied the analyzes and if I never hesitated to dissociate the facts to describe them better, I did not feel free to make gratuitous assumptions, and I contented myself with saying the little that I knew or that, in good faith, I thought I understood. I planted milestones so that a happier one would write a better story later. My development does not pretend to solve all the problems; nothing is finished.

The complexity of the facts still to unravel would have required the researcher an encyclopedic spirit that I do not have, and this is what is specific to urban problems, particularly in Islam: they are only treated by collecting the most diverse data from linguistics, archeology, ethnography and the history of religious institutions. The immense field of urban studies is thus constantly increasing. It is gradually revealing combinations of elements that are as relevant to the human sciences as to the natural sciences. But have I put, following the article by P. de Cénival in the Encyclopedia of Islam, only a little order in place of disorder, and after what perplexities! That this long work was not wasted.

These three works allowed me to quickly go over the general historical conditions which governed the destinies of the city. It was useless to repeat – and not so well – the presentations which one will easily find in these now-classic textbooks.

The dynasty presented the history of the city. It was the best means of exploration, certainly Without originality, but which had the advantage, by refusing to arbitrary alignments, to connect better with the publications of which we have just spoken.

Several plans and sketches, most of them unpublished, and numerous photographs were chosen solely for their documentary, and historical value will provide this book with an illustration that will make it easier to read.

In principle, we were inspired by the “Rules for editions and translations of Arabic texts” by M. R. Blachère and the late J. Sauvaget, but the transcription of the Arabic and Berber words is that which is recommended by the Institut des Hautes Etudes Marocaines.

We have preserved in geographic ROMS, a few tribal names, tick words, and civilization terms the spelling that has been adopted either in Larousse, where they are numerous or in the Blue Guide to Morocco of the late P. Ricard. We wrote, for example, Koutoubia, but the index will give the exact transcription Kutubiyya, in its place, with reference to the popular transcription.

Our information ends on February 1, 1957, with rare exceptions.

Table of Contents

• • ABBREVIATIONS USED
• MARRAKECH GEOGRAPHY
  • The Geography of Marrakech
  • The Site
  • Marrakech Weather
    • General Features
    • The Khettaras 
    • Social, political, and religious organizations.
• MARRAKECH AT THE END OF THE ALMORAYIDES
  • THE WORK OF THE ALMORAVIDS IN MARRAKECH:
    • IBN TÜMART
    • THE BEGINNINGS OF ABD AL-MU’MIN
    • THE TAKING OF MARRAKECH (1146-1147)
• Marrakesh Historical Heritage
  • • THE END OF TRIBALISM
    • THE TRIBES OF HAOUZ

ABBREVIATIONS USED

MARRAKECH GEOGRAPHY

1. The geography of the Marrakech.
2. The site.
3. Marrakech Weather.
4. The water.
5. The Ground Table.
6. The Khettaras.
7. Local resources.
8. The geographic region and urban life. The High Atlas Chleuh. The country of Rehamna Roads.

The Geography of Marrakech

Morocco, a country of more than 500,000 square kilometers, is between 36 ° and 27 ° 40° parallel north latitude, on the other hand, 12 ° and 2 ° west longitude of Greenwich. Its physical personality is made of sharp contrasts: if it borders the Mediterranean by a high wall, its low Atlantic coast opens widely to the winds of the ocean; it includes the highest mountain ranges in North Africa but also its most extensive plains. Finally, history has allowed it to bite on the steppe highlands of Orania and part of the Saharan shield.

The most original and lively part of this empire, the best known as well, is the vast western region situated between the hemicycle of the Atlas and the Atlantic Ocean. To the south of this immense succession of plains and plateaus, descending in tiers towards the sea, extends, at the very foot of the High Atlas, the Haouz of Marrakech. It is a flat and arid basin which descends, gently sloping, from the Atlas, the old Dren, towards its main collector, the Tensift wadi, and which then rises slightly towards the long peeled Sierra of the Dijebilet (the small Mountains).

This plain, whose major axis is oriented substantially east-west, has a length of 150 to 175 km and an average width of 30 km. It is a vast depression of complex synclinal origin, the evolution of which cannot be conceived without involving climate changes to which periods of backfilling and digging due to wadis descended from the Atlas.

The relatively uniform filling hides the irregularities of the primary basement, which appears in the plain in rocky points.

The traveler who quickly crosses this flat and dusty country may have the feeling of emptiness and uniformity, but for MJ Dresch, to whom we owe the best of our knowledge on the relief of southern Morocco, we can distinguish three essential parts, well individualized.

The Western Haouz, formed by the plains of the wadis Nfis, Mellah, and Chichaoua, where one can observe three series of steps from south to north, plain of Amizmiz and Sektana, plains of Tamesloht and Mejjat and plain of pink silts of Tensift.

The central Haouz, formed of low plains made entirely of gravel and spreading silt crossed by three powerful and destructive wadis: Ourika, Zat, and Rdat and where the mountain range of the High Atlas falls directly on the flat country.

The eastern Haouz, formed by the valleys of the Tessaout and Lakhdar wadis, which lead to the watershed of the Oum er-Rebia, while the first two parts are drained by the Tensift wadi.

But whatever the real complexity of Haouz, adds Mr. Dresch, the unity of the plain is not a simple illusion, a mirage caused by the dust and the vibration of distant places in the heat of the day. It is also a living whole that man has made and defeated for centuries, and it is in the middle of this “world apart” and, with more precision in central Haouz, that the city of Marrakech is located at 31 ° 37 ° 35 ° ‘latitude and 7 ° 59’ 42 ” longitude (Greenwich), at an altitude of about 465 meters.

The city is 155 km from Safi, the closest ocean port, 242 km from the economic metropolis of Casablanca, 530 km from Fez via Tadla, 225 km from Taroudant by taking the Tizi road n- Test. This central position vis-à-vis the whole country did not make Marrakech particularly suited to the role of capital, which it nevertheless played for a long time.

The Site

The Marrakech site has long struck travelers. It is difficult to imagine a more striking opposition in relief than the approximation of the heavy vertical mass of the Atlas, raising often snowy peaks at more than 4,000 meters and the infinite and arid plain which, starting from the piedmont, will come up against the steep slopes of the Djebilet.

In this monotony, emerge in the central part of the Haouz and near the Tensift, two small massifs of primary hills. The most important, the Guékiz, is only 527 m high, the second, the Koudiat al-Abid (the hill of black slaves), only 490, but they present, with the neighboring plain, such a sharp contrast that they appear much higher than they actually are. It is from their heights that the site of Marrakech is clearly defined.

4 km north, flows the Tensift, in a wide bed like that of the Rhône and which the floods of autumn or winter can fill in a few hours; 4 km east, we can see the ravine dug by a tributary of the left bank of the Tensift, the Issil wadi, born in the Atlas under the name Asif Tallakht. This torrent, almost always dry, can suddenly become violent, get out of bed and go to threaten on its left bank the old ramparts of the earth in Marrakech.

The history of the capital, until 1972, was written between the river, the ravine, and the Guéliz with the seven peaks. Never has the city dared to step over the Issil wadi, except to bury its dead, never has it tried to get closer to the river (when it wanted water, it lay down towards the Atlas) and she never tried to lean firmly on the nearby rock.

From the top of Guéliz, Marrakech, ancient Morocco, appeared before 1912, like a fabulous world of cubes, defended by kilometers of crumbling walls and dominated by the Koutoubia, majestically isolated in the middle of an oasis of a hundred thousand trees.

Marrakech Weather

If the climate of Morocco is to be classified among the Mediterranean climates which, as we know, are not only found on the shores of the Mediterranean but at neighboring latitudes, in California for example or in Australia, that of the region of Marrakech is a semi-continental variety of Mediterranean climate characterized by the high amplitude of extreme temperatures. It is enough to have crossed in August the plain of Haouz, in its non-irrigated parts, not to forget that summer is the dead season there like elsewhere in winter.

Temperatures and sunshine: The highest temperatures accompany the chergui, east wind, and the sirocco, south wind, which bring masses of Saharan air. These air masses, after crossing the Atlas, heat up as they collapse in the plain of Marrakech and sometimes reach the coast.

If the extreme values ​​that can be recorded in summer at Marrakech are not among the strongest in Morocco; at least it remains excessive. Temperatures above 40 ° can last for several days (average July maximum: 39 °). In winter, frosts are very rare (30 days in 25 years) and occur, especially during clear nights of the dry winter period (average of January minima, s °). It is easy to deduce from these January and July averages that the temperature differences can be very large in Marrakech.

The duration of sunshine is considerable in Haouz, where light has absolute purity and evaporation ruinous importance.

The distribution of hours of sunshine during the day varies a lot according to the seasons, and this diurnal variation has a markedly local character. In winter, sunshine is more lasting in the afternoon than in the morning: the opposite is true in summer. This must be attributed, for the winter, to the nocturnal and morning condensations which the sun dissipates little by little; for the summer, the clouds due to the updrafts which form at the end of the day above the superheated ground.

Precipitation: Even more than a relatively low total rainfall, the climate of Marrakech is characterized by infrequent rainfall, short durations, and especially by a long summer drought. Also, the rain is for this region, the dominant factor of the climate as well for the spontaneous vegetation as for agriculture.

In Haouz, there is a decrease in rainfall from west to east, as we move away from the ocean with a new increase as we approach the mountains.

The detail of the distribution of rains during the year shows that the rainy season which extends from October to April, presents two maxima in November and March, separated by a period of good winter weather, around December and especially January, which is the coldest months. This double oscillation of the rain regime is perfectly characteristic of the Moroccan climate and is found in all the stations.

The number of rainy days is naturally small and irregular; November is the most important month. Hail is not unknown and falls 5 to 10 days a year.

Precipitation is rarely long, but if torrential rains are exceptional, they do not exist any less, and Marrakech has often endured severe floods; Moroccan annalists have kept the memory of it for us. These heavy rainfalls are most often linked to stormy phenomena.

These indications would be incomplete if we did not mention the considerable variations which the quantity of rainwater may have from one year to the next. The history of famines is a sad illustration. Thus in Marrakech, where the average annual rainfall is 243 mm, it did not fall during; months, from February 1, 1931, to January 31, 1932, that 97 mm of water.

In the presence of such significant variations, one could wonder if the succession of wet and dry years was done at random or if it followed, on the contrary, some rules presenting a certain character of periodicity. Messrs. Debrach and Bidault were able, in their research, to detect three-year and six-year periods. The three-year period is the most marked, but it is not very constant.

We could also say that POUT Marrakech, one year in three, the drought is excessive – or even that one year in three the climate takes on the Saharan character.

As for snow, it is not unknown in Marrakech, but it is extremely rare and only stays on the ground for a few hours. In the Atlas, snow patches are maintained in crevices throughout most of the summers and, formerly, during this season, a mule convoy, in the service of the Sultan, was responsible for transporting ice between the high mountains and the imperial palace in Marrakech.

The atmospheric humidity passes like temperature by accentuated extremes. When the chergui blows, the hygrometer can drop very quickly to zero, especially in July, which is the driest month of the year (h = 33%), the wettest months being January and December.

Great droughts are naturally accompanied by low cloud cover, but mists are quite frequent in summer and completely obscure the view of the Atlas.

The winds: Generally, in Morocco, geography and isobaric situations regularly control the winds. In the interior, they have no privileged direction. In the Marrakech region, they are relatively infrequent (63% calm in winter, 68% in summer) and not very violent. North and northwest winds accompany good weather, clear skies and moderate temperatures in all seasons. If the westerly winds are cool and humid in winter, and generally followed by rain, in summer, with those of the southwest, they mark the climate of a very particular character. These are dry, generally hot, sometimes burning winds, which can bring temperatures over 35 ° and can exceptionally reach 45 ° on the plain. They mostly blow during the day.

Their characters are far from constant; sometimes they blow in violent gusts, up to a hundred kilometers an hour, lifting and transporting clouds of red clay dust and gravel and which can end in thunderstorms; sometimes, on the contrary, hot and dry air slowly invades the country in calm weather; hardly can we then speak of a wind, it is the slow invasion of a suffocating atmosphere. This wind, well known to Moroccans, is the chergui (the oriental).

The heat and dryness of the chergui can be explained, not only by its Saharan origin but also by a thermodynamic effect which, when it crosses the Atlas, links it to the fœhn of the Alps and aggravates its misdeeds.

The harmful physiological effects of these winds on humans, animals, and plants have given rise to numerous studies. They bring about a period of nervous excitement, which soon turns into depression and even into prostration.

Stéphane Gsell has found and translated two passages from African authors, which give exact descriptions of these effects. Victor de Vite, the historian of the end of the fifth century, speaks of a terrible drought from which Africa suffered in its time. Here is what he said among other details: If, by chance, some grass, vegetating in a humid valley, began to offer the pale color rather than green of the emerging fodder, immediately a burning, inflamed wind, ran up and completely dried out, for the storm, roasting all under this dry sky, had come to cover the whole country with its clouds of dust.

And Corippus, the poet of the following century, adds: Africa, which vomits flames, begins to burn the ground of its breath and destroys the force and the heat of the troops. All bodies are stretched under the breath of this fiery wind. The tongue dries up, the face blushes, the panting chest breathes with difficulty, the air passing through the nostrils is ablaze, the mouth burns, bitter and empty of saliva, the fire devours the dry throat, all the sweat escapes tissue and soaks the skin, but the harmful heat of the air dries it out and lifts it warm from the surface of the body.

All those who, in their life, suffered from the heat in Marrakech, have not a word to take away from these lines, which prove that the climate has not changed in North Africa since Roman antiquity, and even before.

General Features

According to the late G. Roux, former head of the Physics of the Globe and Meteorology Service in Morocco, to whom we owe all our documentation, the main meteorological influences which exert their action on the region of Marrakech are those of the polar front, desert, ocean, and latitude.

The polar front, which, with its procession of depressions, causes most of the rains, thunderstorms, storms, and cold waves in Europe, only affects the Marrakech region during the winter season, from November to April, and attenuated. Still, this period is generally cut by a period of good weather, corresponding to high barometric pressures, which often exceeds one month, and takes place around January. It is to the distance from the polar front that we must attribute in winter the calm of the atmosphere, the clearness of the sky, and the low rain.

The desert influence generates the hot summer, the hot winds, chergui and sirocco, and the thunderstorms of the beginning and the end of the summer, which accompany the Saharan depressions. These storms are often without rain due to the strong heating of the air.

The proximity of the ocean exerts its usual effects on the coast and, to a lesser degree, on the western part of the region of Marrakech: increased humidity, lower diurnal and annual variations in temperature, delay in temperature maxima, breezes sea, etc.

Finally, the geographic latitude of this region translates into the relative length of winter days. On the winter solstice, the length of the day in Marrakech is about 1.5 hours longer than in Paris; as a counterpart, the day is shorter there in summer.

THE WATER

When, after having traversed the arid expanses which separate the Oum er-Rebia from the Diebilet, the traveler approaches the palm grove of Marrakesh from November to April, there is no shortage of SUR, struck from the crossing of the Tensift wadi, by the number small streams encountered at all times that give life to the fresh and dense gardens bordering the road. This impression of abundance that he will acquire at his first contact with the city of the South will impose itself more and more on his mind, as he travels the immediate surroundings of the city, which he will see, in the gardens. of olive and orange trees, dispense the beneficial water without parsimony and that during walks his car will get muddy because the track will have served as a route for a nonchalant cultivator to bring distant waters to his garden. Everything contributes to inspiring this idea of ​​plethora / and waste: Aguedal and Menara gardens with vast pools of sleeping water, Bahia basins and large houses whose murmur never subsides, monumental fountains where the water carrier fills his skin, holes in the street, surrounded by a brat swarming in a puddle of mud, but at the bottom of which runs this dant clear water and, further away, dominating the whole, the sparkling mass of Grand Atlas whose white dress, attractive and promising, seems to conceal inexhaustible treasures. And the visitor – if he sees no longer – leaves with the vision of eternal snow, large canals to build, thousands of hectares to be delivered to irrigation.

How many hopes did such a quick visit to Marrakech give birth to, that a more in-depth study has shown to be impossible!

Does this mean that Marrakech and Haouz are poor in the water? Fortunately, this is not the case. There is no shortage of hydraulic resources, and they are of two types: some come from the diversion of surface waters, carried by streams, in torrential regime, fed by the marvelous reservoir that constitutes the high reliefs of the Grand chain -Atlas; the others are won by the capture of groundwater from the water table which permeates the subsoil and which, ingeniously drained by the original process of galleries, called khettaras, lead to the creation of artificial sources and the flow of water collected by simple gravity. In both cases, under the illusion of the horizontal, the steep slope of the alluvial cover of the Haouz is decisive.

The Tensift basin and the diversion seguias of the two different watersheds that make up the Haowuz, only that of the Tensift wadi interests Marrakech and its hinterland. That of Oued Tessaout is part of the hydrographic system of Oum er-Rebia.

The land surrounding Marrakech is mainly served by three tributaries of the Tensift: Ourika, Reraia, and Nfis.

These rivers have, by their seasonal regime and their appearance, the character of temporary torrents carrying a very variable flow according to the seasons and in direct correlation with the local rainfall incidents. They know an epoch of high water which corresponds with the rainy season and then present variations of amplitude often considerable with flash floods which coincide with the fall of the rains followed by prolonged periods of recession. On the tormented reliefs of the great chain, very conducive to runoff, these differences are only very partially corrected by precipitation, in the form of snow, on the mountains at high altitude and the gradual melting of snow reserves which disappear almost entirely in the first part of the hot season. The Atlas can also experience early or late snowfall, the rapid melting of which brings brutal floods. The winter period of abundance quickly succeeds that of scarcity and famine, interspersed with passing floods when thunderstorms break out in the mountains. As summer progresses, the flow of rivers, fed only by the rare springs which arise in the deforested and steep mountain, approaches the absolute low water level, which immediately precedes the first rains of autumn.

The Marrakchis naturally had the idea of ​​borrowing part of their water supply from these wadis, which emerge from the last foothills of the Atlas about thirty kilometers from the city. This idea was realized during the course of the 11th and 12th centuries. At that time, we built important diversion seguias on which we still have minimal information.

On each wadi open a large number of séguias, often more than fifty. These séguias all feed during floods, some during snowmelt, one or two during low water. Of the three main wadis reported, the séguias that have priority are precisely those that come to Marrakech. But these diversion waters hardly count in the supply of the city itself. With one exception, the seguia al-Bachia which comes from the wadi Reraia and which waters the Aguedal, they are used exclusively for irrigating crops throughout the region which extends 20 km south of the city over an east-west width of about 10 km. all this area is crisscrossed by a vast network of irrigation canavx which either belong to the State, or communities or more rarely to individuals, the most important of which follow the south-north slope of the land. They are joined to each other by other smaller canals which run obliquely from south-west to north-east or vice versa. The result is a kind of mesh whose complication is extreme and the layout inconsistent. They are subject to perpetual modifications according to the needs of irrigation from one hour to the next according to the picking of the cultivators; they fill up, dry up, change course, direction, flow, etc. There are only constants in the large bypass lines themselves, of which none reach the city walls.

In winter, the diversions spread out along the rivers and allow the fertilization of large areas; but, when the flow decreases, the diversions dry up, starting with those located furthest downstream, and there are soon only the privileged channels which have their grip at the level of the first foothills, at the very outlet of torrents in the plain, which feed on the modest summer flow.

These pipes do not have any original construction features. These are large, well maintained, deep seguias, with an ordinary width of about 1.50 m where the height of the water reaches on average 0.50 m, which runs over the surface of the ground and which are remarkable for the speed of their current. The manufacturers also made them describe a series of hooks, the reason for which can only be explained by the need to break and delay this too brutal current. The water of a seguia is shared between the various users according to old customs.

The water thus conveyed seems to be of fairly inferior quality. It comes out pure and clear from the wadis where it is trapped, but the clay of the terrains it crosses makes it muddy and cloudy. It is unfit for consumption by Europeans. Moroccans drink it willingly, and once the wealthy families of Marrakech used to get it for cooking because it was known to cook vegetables well.

The groundwater table

From the Chichaoua region in the west to the foothills of Demnate and Tenant in the east, the same water table shows itself continuously. It is a vital part of the agricultural economy, but it is irregular in-depth and inflow. It occupies an immense basin, the bottom of which is probably primary, where water circulates in all directions, in detrital formations of tertiary or quaternary age, which are very heterogeneous: sands, pebbles, free or cemented, embedded limestones, conglomerates, etc. , of essentially Atlas origin.

The question of primary artesian aquifers has not yet been definitively clarified. However, it is believed that the existence of such aquifers is unlikely.

It is also false to believe that as a result of the detrital composition of alluvial deposits, the soil and the subsoil are essentially permeable. On most of the plain, fine surface alluvium (silts and clayey silts) are on the contrary very little permeable, and therefore it is incorrect to say that the rains feed the aquifer. The water which falls on almost the entire plain trickles and does not infiltrate. This is a very important fact that hydraulic research in recent years has brought to light. The aquifer is only fed by the infiltration of water from the Atlantic torrents, most of it passing through the ground to the outlets in the plain on the coarse and impermeable elements of the debris cones. It would also be wrong to believe that water easily infiltrates through the deposits to stop at the primary base.

Although the phenomenon is not exactly established, it is generally believed today that water is suspended relative to the primary floor, thanks to the impermeable layer formed by oligo-Miocene alluviums.

The underground circulation takes place, throughout the aquifer, from south to north, but the aquifer has two different outlets: to the west, it feeds the Tensift, which serves as a gutter, general collector; to the east, it feeds the Oum er-Rebia basin through the lower Tessaout valley and the EI-Kelaa bottleneck.

As a corollary to this underground circulation, it will be noted that the salinity of the waters increases from south to north. At the foot of the Atlas, the waters are very pure, while at Tensift, the salt content is very high. This is a very important and very regrettable observation for Marrakech, and which probably had not escaped its founders.

This marvelous water table did not give rise around the city to real sources, and the inhabitants to obtain drinking water had to use first the wells, then the Khettaras.

There are only a few left, especially inside the ramparts; numerous observations made throughout the city prove that their number must have been considerable in the past. Their depth is variable and cannot be appreciated properly because they are very easily confused with the aeration wells of Khettaras. But we know that in Marrakech the water table is about twenty meters deep.

The Khettaras 

It is by far the most important and, therefore, the most attractive mode of supply in all respects. The Khettara is a long underground gallery that drains the water captured in the water table and which leads them to the irrigable surface by a regular slope lower than the general slope of the ground. This gallery, for the needs of its construction and maintenance, takes day and air by wells equally spaced (33). Captivating towards its origin, simple driving throughout the rest of its journey, the gallery is the soul of the Khettara. Wells are only organs necessary for its construction, as for its maintenance, and which can become harmful.

Khettaras are not born at random from the village. Three conditions must be met to decide on their construction:

1. The existence of a large and shallow water table,
2. A calm relief but with a fairly steep general slope,
3. A fairly permeable aquifer, but with sufficient “hold”, the wells of the Moroccan Khettaras not being built.

For construction, we sometimes dig up to 40 m of depth, at distances varying between 10 and 20 meters (sometimes much less or a little more), a series of wells which a gallery then leads to their bases. As a result, barring an accident or deterioration, the Khettara everywhere is of sufficient caliber to allow a very curved man to enter and circulate there. Water flows to the bottom of this channel. After a long line of wells in chains, so characteristic of the surroundings of Marrakech, the Khettara approaches the level of the ground to the point of being exposed to it, and then the water generally circulates still for a certain time in the open sky constituting a simple Seguia. Finally, for the needs of urban distribution, water ends up in watertight masonry or terracotta pipes, which the Marrakchis call “gädous.”

The qädous are formed either from a cemented and covered masonry pipe or from a series of short terracotta pottery pipes that adjust to each other and are wrestled with plaster and oil. These pipes circulate on the surface of the ground, in which case they are protected by a brick vault of the rather fragile remainder, or else they are drowned in the masonry of the various constructions. Their size is very variable and naturally decreases constantly as the water supply runs out.

When the drain is well done, and the circumstances are normal, the flow is constant, but the Khettaras are exhausted when they are too close or too numerous to capture the same aquifer region.

The length of a Khettara is very variable, especially if we include its extensions, channels, and pipes. To consider only the underground course, the extent is considerable and can reach 4 to 5 kilometers; the Khettara then has nearly 300 wells. At least this is the maximum observed in Marrakech. We emphasize this notion because it is very far from what, to our knowledge, has already been written on Khettaras. These underground and mysterious conduits which run far across the countryside, lending themselves, by their complications and their multiplicity, to the errors of observers, have intrigued for a long time the rare travelers who entered the region before French pacification.

They generally believed with Leon the African and probably because of him that they brought to Marrakech the water of the Atlas taken at the very foot of the mountain. If the length of the Khettaras is sufficient to honor the merit of their builders, it is not such that the figures are given, twenty thousand, thirty thousand, etc., are not extremely exaggerated.

The Khettaras closest to Wens Tensift are much shorter due to the increase in the slope of the ground and the very presence of the river. This length decreases as one goes up the Tensift and the Khettaras manage to count no more than a dozen wells.

1. – LOCAL RESOURCES

After the foregoing studies, it is clear that the resources offered by the Marrakech site for agriculture and trade are limited. The soil of the spongy or impermeable alluvial plain, the very harsh summer climate, the rain regime and the absence of sources are in principle not very favorable for the development of plant life.

The spontaneous flora is no less important. We must first mention the thorny jujube tree, with small deciduous leaves and large isolated tufts more or less tight which, in its true domain, covers immense areas and forms a particular landscape. It is a stubborn obstacle to cultivation, but it deserves special mention because, as it grows in loose and deep soil, when it is defended against the cattle tooth, each of its tufts can constitute a small reserve of ‘humus, and the land covered with huge jujube trees are, after clearing, the best in the region. The bush in the jujube, a veritable climax, most certainly once extended almost without discontinuity in the plain of Haouz, as evidenced by some remarkably isolated trees or miraculously spared bouquets, and many Muslim cemeteries inside which the vegetation was respected.

Along the wadis grows the Tamarix, which lives on all piles of earth and which has the rare advantage of being disdained by cattle, even by goats! In salty land, the watchman (Atriplex halimas) dominates with smaller species; soda, samphire, etc. The very perennial lookout prevents sheep and camels from starving to death in a bad year.

Saw palmetto, so widespread in Morocco, is completely absent in Haouz, much too dry for it. In spring appear the false mustard, cruciferous poeticized in Ravenelle, which covers thousands of hectares and gives a taste so disagreeable to the milk and the meat of the animals which feed on it, and also, by immense surfaces, mallows whose Moroccans appreciate berry fruits. Among the grasses, we must first mention quackgrass, then wild oats, the two plagues of irrigated crops.

All these spontaneous spring plants provide a mass of forage which is sometimes considerable, but which has two major faults: a short duration and a bad composition. The herbaceous period lasts only two to three months, and the Ravenelle dominates by far in quantity all the other species.

As for the cultivated flora, it is represented for the most part by barley, the cereal that requires the least water. Sown at the beginning of the rainy season, it ripens before the end of May, sometimes earlier, and provides fruitful harvests as long as the winter precipitation has reached its average height. Durum is also grown but does not succeed unless it is irrigated. The native corn has very fast vegetation and gives two poor harvests per year. Finally, the cactus is planted en masse by rural people inland lacking aquifer resources. All these plants, of the spontaneous origin or cultivated, are found in Marrakech even in the gardens and it is certain that the ground on which the city extends had to be sown also in the same way as long as it remained free of construction or became it again.

Mediterranean plants adapt admirably: the fig tree, at home since always, the olive tree, naturalized for millennia, the vine whose culture has never suffered from the Muslim prohibition that strikes wine, are the essential elements of the landscape from the suburbs of Marrakech, with, since the arrival of the French, the Australian eucalyptus which has invaded Morocco, giving useful wood and appreciated shade.

It seems difficult to forget the tall palm tree, which came from the East like the camel since it is today the quintessential tree of the city. But to tell the truth, if it grows well in the humid soils of Haouz, it does not bear fruit there very well, for lack of heat. It is, moreover, poorly looked after by native arborists. Its fruits, even harsh, are consumed by the poor population, its trunk is used for the construction of roofs and its dried fuel palms for lime kilns. M. Capot-Rey in a masterful book wrote a beautiful page on this biblical and Koranic tree (^ J. (PI. VII.)

Citrus fruits do admirably; plum and almond trees too: there are some beautiful varieties of these trees. Apricot trees can reach surprising sizes.

Along the wadis, grow many reeds whose local trade makes a significant use and traffic.

Among the market garden plants, one hardly finds anything but watermelons, whose water is drawn from paradise, would have said Mahomet, pumpkins, melons, and peppers as summer crops, and as winter crops, cardoons, carrots, turnips, and onions.

Finally, let’s say that Marrakech is the city of roses and flowers.

We, therefore, find a whole series of plant species perfectly suited to bright and dry summers such as rainy autumns and bright winters and which concentrate oil, sugar, and perfume in their fruits and flowers. The whole is remarkable and the care of man continues to perfect it.

The surroundings of Marrakech do not lack the mineral resources essential for the establishment of a real city. There is no shortage of building materials of unequal value. The Guéliz blue sandstones have been used since the origin for the shell of large constructions, a certain variety even lends itself to size (Koutoubia). On the other hand, the inhabitants quickly knew how to make lime using the limestone crust of tuff which is found not very deep in the very soul of the city. The summer never ran out of brick and pottery, which allowed the creation of a real industry. Sands are abundant in all the wadis beds.

Timber – except palm – has always been scarce in the suburbs, but there were in abundance, in the Atlas and its green valleys, cedar logs, walnut beams, cedar planks.

As for the food resources that the surroundings of Marrakech could provide to the city, they obviously had to depend on the activity of the populations, their number and the development of the soil by the irrigation works. They proved to be very important when the French took charge of the country’s development. They must have been in the past. In the absence of precise information, it can be argued that the supply of the city was easy, whenever the hostility of the surrounding tribes did not intercept communications and did not prohibit livestock (sheep and camels above all) to reach the urban slaughterhouses.

1. – THE GEOGRAPHICAL REGION AND URBAN LIFE

Thus, on examination, the not very encouraging characters that we are tempted first of all to attribute to the site of Marrakech diminish to a reasonable extent. This site proves to be favorable for the development of an agglomeration.

The climate is harsh in summer, but the sun is the great agent of public health. Historically, the most serious epidemics have always occurred in winter.

The subsoil of the city offers fairly thick benches of grainy alluvium, capable of withstanding enormous pressures (Koutoubia). The soil itself contributes to the general slope of the plain, however, the flow of water is quite poorly assured.

Building materials can be found at reasonable distances: in Guéliz for building stone, in the Atlas for wood, in Djebilet for millstone, mills, presses, and mortars. Their transport did not pose an insoluble problem.

The deep lands around Marrakech are numerous and vast, and their products fairly easily meet the needs of a large urban area.

But are these resources sufficient to justify the formation of a huge urban center? Couldn’t other points of the plain have more advantages than the site of Marrakech? In particular, all those who, closer to the Dir or the foothills, could by that very fact have been able to solve the serious and essential problem of water, still present in Marrakech.

To what can we attribute the fortune of this military creation?

We do not see an answer elsewhere than in the elements of permanent prosperity that offered him not the site itself but the geographical setting, because regional conditions in Marrakech are inseparable from local conditions.

1. i) The High Atlas Chleuh (PI. III). – If the Haouz is a creation of the High Atlas by the game of the three phases of ablation, transport, and deposit of the materials torn from the mountains during geological times, it would only be a sterile gift without the reserves of Massive water, the powerful snow barrier of which in summer provides it with the moisture resources accumulated during the winter, while protecting it from the dreaded desert influences and invasions of grasshoppers.

It is to the High Atlas, and to him alone, that we owe on the latitude of the 32 * parallel, that of the confines of the Algerian Sahara, the existence of this zone, so privileged (it is irrigable) that it was the real interior province from which the unity of historic Morocco was achieved.

In its deep valleys, “corridors of life in the human void of the mountains” (J. Célérier), we harvest maize and barley, the basis of the agricultural economy of Chleuh peasants and we cultivate almond and walnut, the fruits of which are exchanged for manufactured objects. In its gardens, the bees will make their honey. In its alpine pastures every year the numerous herds of goats and sheep that make up the wealth of its inhabitants, always more numerous as one descends towards the plain.

From its forests come wood and charcoal. It’s often because of its salt mines or salt marshes that we often fought.

2) The country of Rehamna. – The Rehamna country is a peneplain which erosion has stripped of its sedimentary cover, but which has not been deeply dissected. On this thankless soil, no permanent rivers and the lowest rains in all of Morocco. This peneplain is bounded to the north by the valley of the Oum er-Rebia and to the south by the Djebilet, whose peaks peak around a thousand meters, carved into acute pyramids, to the Saharan, by the arid climate.

Everything betrays the Arab origin, the type, the costume, the language and especially the customs. Thus the Berber mountain opposes the Bedouin plain. This is the domain of pastors. Excellent shepherds, they did not work the soil, partly ruined by their flocks, only reluctantly.

It is a real country of steppes where one has, especially in summer, the desert impression. However, the fixity of the douars surrounded by the hedge of dry thorns of the jujube tree is at least as frequent as their mobility. Many of these centers, made of classic nouallas (huts), are linked to a water point, to cisterns surrounded by prickly pears, to a small wadi that was once barred to divert rainwater from the land always dry.

The Rehamna themselves have nothing to expect from their country other than livestock products (butter, meat, wool and skins), but these descendants of the nomadic hordes have at least the advantage of giving value economic to these recent steppes, which without them would remain unproductive, and to be the best customers of the city.

3) The roads. – Marrakech is in the center of a region which has the remarkable advantage of being at the point of contact of some great natural routes, imposed by the topography and especially by the needs of men. History has illustrated them.

The city is at the point of convergence of the great Atlas valleys which lead to the great passages, the Tizi n-Tichka (2,235 m) towards the countries of dates, Tafilalet and the Sahara, the Tizi n’Test (2,094 m) and the Tizi n-Maachou (1375 m) to the Sous and Mauritania; the latter, having the advantage of never being banned by snow in winter, was once the main official route between the Haouz and the Sous.

Towards the west, the plain, without any difficulty, leads straight along the Tensift to the ocean and its ports. Towards the east, by the old atlas piedmont road, it is the access to the Tadla and the old Fâzâz, and the shortest way to connect Marrakech with Fez and the easiest in the past, because it avoided the passage great rivers.

The combination of these elements is a guarantee of prosperity for urban life. All these regions, with an incomplete economy, a plain deprived of wood and charcoal, a mountain lacking in wheat and manufactured objects, steppes devoid of anything that is not produced by livestock farming, will establish currents of exchange which will allow thatch of them to obtain what it needs to live. But how can we exchange goods without markets, how can we redistribute resources without building up reserves? So many opportunities favorable to the development of trade, and therefore of urban life.

The roads will allow the arrival of raw materials that neither the Haouz, the Atlas, nor the steppes of Bahira produce themselves. The Atlas passes will see convoys of slaves and loads of gold dust from the Nigerian horizon pass by. Camels have never been lacking and the profession of camel-driver is noble: was it not that of the Prophet Muhammad!

Through the ports on the Atlantic coast, it is Europe, it is the world that has reached Haouz since ancient times. By the road to Fez, whether it be that of ancient Tâmasnà or that of T former Fâzâz, it is an Andalusian civilization that will conquer southern Morocco.

The geographical framework is therefore much more favorable than one could have thought in urban life. Besides, it met needs so real that some of its benefits and problems had been known long before the creation of Marrakech. The story of the little vüles of Dir who have stayed like Demnate and Amizmiz or who have disappeared like Aghmat or Neffis, is there to bear witness.

Already in these rural capitals, the people of the plains and mountains liked to meet there to exchange their products and redistribute them throughout the region and perhaps beyond. We will see later that historical sources, without having noted it with precision, sometimes reveal this invigorating trade between complementary regions, the most suitable for urban development.

But to believe that the geographical coordinates of Marrakesh mark exactly the crossroads where the roads of this country without measure “necessarily had to cross, wealth to develop and populations to come together, would be to fall back into the old errors of geographical determinism, which wanted to explain all human history.

It is all the central Haouz which marks the knot of the roads and not the very site of Marrakech which is not the “central point of the Maghreb” as an Arab historian suggests. And the slowness with which the man of these vast spaces found his capital eloquently confirms this conclusion.

Ultimately, the physical environment offered to man the possibilities of urban creation, but it is the man himself, by his choice, his tenacious will, and his “active adaptation” as sociologists say, who has been able to transform the virtualities of a site into a glorious success.

HISTORICAL CONDITIONS

1. – Morocco in the middle of the 11th century. The great tribes. Social, political and religious organizations. The kinds of life. Urban development.
2. The Almoravid movement.

III. – The conquest of South Morocco.

1. – Urban life in the twelfth century in southern Morocco. Neffis and Aghtnat.
2. – The site of Marrakech before the Almoravidcs

MOROCCO IN THE MIDDLE OF THE 11TH CENTURY

Today’s Morocco was formed very late, and, in its very history, Marrakech only entered the 12th century. Little was known about this century. We know a little more today than the historical sources we have, especially Bakri, provide more data on northern Morocco and the Sous than on the region that interests us.

The great tribes.

We too often forget that North Africa had remained very populated during the centuries which followed the Arab invasion: the geographers are there to remind us of the multitude of human settlements in the country.

Morocco was in all its western part, from Ceuta to the Atlas, the country of the sedentary Masmouda (Masmüda) and it is with the existence of this block, extending in a continuous way from the Sous to the Mediterranean, that all of western Morocco must have formerly carried the name of Sous, a designation already attested by Yâqüt.

The Masmouda were divided into three groups: to the north, from the Mediterranean to the Sebou wadi, the Ghomara (Ôumâra); in the center, from the Sebou wadi to the Oum er-Rebia, the Berghouata (Bargwâta); to the south, from Oum er-Rebia to the Anti-Atlas, the Masmouda proper, which were subdivided into two groups: those of the plain and those of the mountain. The main tribes of the plain were the Dukkàla, the Banü Mâgir, the Hazmïra, the Ragràga, and the Hâha.

The tribes of the Grand Atlas, too numerous to list, were in place but already closely mixed with the nomads Sanhaja (Sinhâja) that the old routes brought more and more around the Sous, the Anti-Atlas and the Dra valley.

The Sanhaja seem to have populated the best of the Central Atlas and the Middle Atlas and even part of the Rif. Thus the Masmoudian occupation of Atlantic Morocco was opposed by a Sanhajian triangle whose summit was pushed towards the Mediterranean and whose base rested on the flourishing territory of Moroccan oases.

The third great Berber race, the Zanàta, nomads who came in successive waves in the footsteps of the Muslim conquerors, were represented mainly by the Miknàsa, the Banü Ifran, and the powerful Magrâwa. His tribes, without ever having formed a united and important block, mainly occupied eastern Morocco and infiltrated into Atlantic Morocco through the Taza corridor; they then formed principalities around the kingdom of Berghouata in Salé, Tadla, Aghmat. They mixed quite easily with the Masmouda and the Sanhaja, and their establishment in the plains, as in the oases, seems not to have affected the very character of their relations with the other inhabitants of Morocco in the eleventh century.

As for Arabs and foreigners, they were only a minority in Morocco in the twelfth century. Fez was still a Berber city, but Sijilmassa had attracted the Orientals, eager to take part in the profitable trade which developed between the two edges of the Sahara.

Thus, as M. H. Terrasse says, Morocco in the eleventh century remained purely Berber, except in a few towns or villages, and included elements of all the white Berber races. But the interbreeding, according to Arab geographers, had started in the southern oases which would have been populated, from the beginning, by the populations of color.

Social, political, and religious organizations.

Morocco, since the ninth century, was a conglomerate of Berber republics where political fragmentation was never the cause of anarchic institutions. The passion for independence, as well as the hatred of personal power, were unceasingly the motives of many tribal conflicts, but the mechanism of leffs had a calming and stabilizing power.

Morocco remained at this time outside the great history of the barbarian invasions, which swept over the Mediterranean world, and lived only happier. It will take nine centuries to find this era of peace!

Islam had nothing to do with this serenity; on the contrary, it had brought about religious wars, but the memories of the Khajism which had shaken the country hard only survived among the Berghouata alone. The Shiite influence only survived in a few places, especially in the South.

On the other hand, we have no valuable information about the Israelites of this time, and we ignore the importance of their rural Judeo-Berber communities. Finally, if we don’t know anything about the Christian tribes, it is probably because they no longer existed. According to Bakri, small centers of paganism still existed, which worshiped a ram god. These idolaters would have lived in the Grand Atlas. But it is undoubtedly under the veil of Islam, as has often been pointed out, that Berber paganism was best maintained and defended.

Officially Morocco was from the Idrisides, a land of Islam, with a Jewish minority, a land of narrow and dry Malekism, in accordance with the uncompromising Berber formalism, but opposed to the naturist tendencies of the old local cults.

Morocco remained a country of Berber dialects, which should be understood by all, but Arabic was gaining ground. It is characteristic of civilizing languages ​​to win over those who are less so. Yet Arabization, even in the North, did not follow the pace of Islamization, which had walked with great strides. The history of pseudo-Korans in Berber provides us with proof that the Berghouata and the Ghomara were attached to their old dialects – or that, at the very least, the Koranic language was not yet very widespread in these tribes.

The kinds of life.

The great nomads are only reported in the Sahara; they ignored agriculture and even the use of cereals and lived only on the product of their breeding and the income of the caravans which crossed their lands.

The Atlantic Saharan tribes seem to have been the richest and most powerful, but most of the Saharan traffic passed through the prestigious Sijilmassa, which already had a great history. At the other end of the desert, the city of Audaghost (Awdagust) fulfilled a similar role and enjoyed similar prosperity – but it was under constant threat from the black kingdoms. It was the still little-known era of the great prosperity of the Sahara. There were many cities and oases, flourishing trade, lasting peace, at least according to ancient authors.

It was undoubtedly also a time blessed for the North of Africa and, in particular, a large part of Morocco where peasant and sedentary life reigned. M. H. Terrasse writes: t All the geographers are ecstatic about the agricultural wealth of the Atlantic plains where mixes the productions of the hot countries and the cold countries and which fed an abundant and varied cattle. They insist that these sedentary Berbers lived in ease, dignity, and peace. Agriculture and breeding mixed harmoniously. The tree then held a great place in Morocco: botanical geography studies have shown that a large part of Atlantic Morocco had, until recently, been rich in forests. Al-Bakri describes Oujda as surrounded by forests and orchards. The Grand Atlas was, according to the same author, “full of forests, brush, and orchards. The oases themselves seem to have, apart from palm trees, owned more trees than today. The banks of the Middle Dra were covered with hedgerows and fruit trees. Throughout Atlantic Morocco, the orchards were numerous and flourishing: many times, the geographers point out the abundance, the variety, and the cheapness of the fruits.

The vine is often reported, but Arab authors never speak of wine. Sugar cane was known.

This peasant life would not be understood without the advantages of a sedentary life. The villages were numerous, often close together, sometimes fortified, but most often open, especially in the South.

This wealth and dispersion of the population cannot be imagined without security and, although we have no official testimony of it, we can think that peace reigned in the countryside.

Urban development.

Morocco did not have large cities, at least in the sense that we mean today, but it still had many medium-sized urban centers.

The Idrisides, Zanàta and Miknàsa chiefs were founders of cities; Fès, Meknès, Salé bear witness to this in the North of Morocco, but the South will not escape urbanization. Le Haouz had its two capitals: Neffis and Aghmat, on which we will expand further.

Morocco in the eleventh century was singularly close to the Capetian France and the countries of Western Europe. It was a country of well-to-do, hardworking, and enjoying peace and security. Islam had introduced its passions and its wars there, but the hardest moments had passed. The height of the Bughouata, however, was still a shadow for the Maliki intransigence, which sought to bring into the Maghreb the rigid rules of Koranic morality. One wonders to what extent in isolating South Morocco, this heresy did not allow it to keep forces intact when the North was more or less associated with the significant events of Mediterranean history. The Almoravids, whose movement will be born on the Saharan margin of Islam, will know how to take advantage of the wealth of men and resources of a country with immense potential.

THE ALMORAVIDE MOVEMENT

It is a long story of which we will never know everything, and to try to understand it, we must go back far enough in the facts. In the IV centuries of our era, the massive introduction of the camel into the Sahara gave the great confederations of the Sanhaja tribes who occupied the two banks of the Sahara, a marvelous instrument of conquest. The great nomadism was born with the camel. What animal could have endured without drinking the many days of walking which separate two water points, two oases. Thanks to this auxiliary, the man had at the same time amount and a beast of load, milk and meat, and the possibility of making his coat, canvas, and leather harness. We understand that for the Arab tribes, the word which means camel (evil) has come to designate fortune commonly.

When Islam had entered the desert, ü gave these camel drivers, on whom weighed as on all the nomads of the world the massive inheritance of pillage and guerrilla warfare, the taste for religious conquest and that of temporal power.

The Sanhaja of the desert, the Sanhaja in the litham, because they had the lower part of the face veiled, were fixed at the ends of the Great Desert: Their country separates the black world from that of the Moslems, says Bakri. They formed numerous tribes or confederations, which, in Western Sahara, were in contact with southern Morocco. The most powerful of them was created by the Sanhaja of the Mauritanian region, which included the tribes of Lamtüna, Massüfa, and Gudàla. From the ninth century, these fierce Berbers had known how to impose their obedience on many Negro kingdoms and had installed their capital at Awdagust. This city was not just their capital, it was with Sijilmassa also one of the two poles of the transaharian trade where the caravans found, after the hardships trials, places of relaxation and security. The primary beneficiaries of this trade were the Sanhaja themselves. They knew how to have expensive paving, either the rental of their camels or the protection they gave to caravans.

After vicissitudes about which little is known, this Sanhaja confederation was re-united around the middle of the 12th century to retake Awdagust, which the black kings had captured.

It was around this time that circumstances brought together two men to whom the Alraoravids will owe their entire epic.

Yahyâ b. Ibrâhîm, head of the Sanhaja confederation, had noted, during his pilgrimage to Mecca, that his people did not respect all the divine prescriptions and all the maxims of the law. So in 1039, he brought back to the tribe a Moroccan scholar, “virtuous and skillful,” of Maliki rite, by the name of Abd-Allâh b. Yàsïn and native of a Sanhajian tribe, the Gazüla. From his installation among the Lamtüna the reformer began his teaching and quickly passed from theory to action. As ü loved nomads no more than the Prophet himself, ü became a rigid censor of their extremely relaxed morals. But he neglected to set an example, and his reforms were only accepted as long as his protector Yahyà b. Ibrâhîm.

This dead, the new head of the confederation Yahyà b. Umar could not prevent his contributions from chdisseï the reformer who took refuge in dan, a ribât (a military convent for the defense and propagation of the faith), founded on an island in Saguiat-al-Hamra. Yahyà b. Jmar and his brother Abü Bakr joined him. Despite the extreme rigor of the obligations he imposed on his faithful, naturally unruly, Ibn Yâsïn quickly saw the number of his followers increase for the greater glory of the Maliki doctrine.

The inhabitants of the ribât were the Murâbiün, a word that became Almoravides, including Spanish. If we neglect all the legends surrounding the beginning of this great adventure, the fact remains that Abd-Allàh b. Yâsïn and Yahyà b. Umar, the religious and military chief, very quickly found themselves at the head of a real armed force, made up of a thousand men. It was too much for the desert; these fanatic and poor soldiers, they had to be fed, therefore used. The first opportunity was seized with eagerness, and the request for help launched by the Sanhaja of SijAmassa against their zenet enemies the Magrâwa emirs enabled Abd-Allàh and Yahyà to fly to the aid of their brothers, in the name of trampled Islam.

Mr. H. Terrasse has clearly shown that this attitude if it was valid in form, did not presume anything substantive. The real reason for the attack on the empty Almoras is not to be found in the religious cause: the inhabitants of Morocco, like those of Sijilmassa, were certainly more Maliki karite Muslims than the Saharan reformers. These somewhat new champions of a rather thin religious cause had other reasons to surge towards Morocco. They hated black people, masters of the oases they coveted. They hated the Zenites who occupied the Moroccan gates of the Sahara, where the caravan lines ended, from where they drew the best of their power and their riches. They hated the Masmouda of the Atlas, who prevented them from leading their herds to graze on the plains of Sous.

It was above all a question of emptying the Sahara of the overflow of the population that happy years had probably caused among these strong races but fleeing the effort, where the natural selection only allowed to live the vigorous men, too full relative which it is not necessary not to exaggerate the importance. Mr. F. Braudel reminded recently that the victory of the desert was never a victory of numbers and that the Almoravid settlement crisis had not transported as many men as camels.

Religious migration was to be replaced by the great joyful and exhilarating raid, the initial motive of which, if we are to believe Ibn al-Atir, was the drought from which the Mauritanian regions suffered. This clarification would confirm, if necessary, the importance of the economic factor in the sudden expansion of Almoravid.

WHO OWN THE KHETTARA

Water extraction using animal energy

Then again, drawdown is discovered uniquely on little properties straightforwardly abused, never on the ranches of partners (khebbaz) reliant on enormous proprietors; what premium would they have in contributing, by introducing a well ashore the satisfaction wherein isn’t ensured to them? Because of this framework, a massive classification of fellahs can live, in any event in Ouidanc and Jnanate. From a human perspective, this is even more striking since they speak to in Haouz’s agribusiness, a generally unique segment, meaning to improve its creation, even inside the system of conventional methods.

This must be exhibited in the improvement of these drawing frameworks, in contrast to all other conventional frameworks. Honestly, the drawing methods, regardless of whether by dlo or by Sania, are troublesome because there are numerous covert establishments. The stream taken by siphoning from the Haouz spring can be assessed at 70 million/year.

Notable state siphons separate 540 l/s or around 17 million m3/year; private siphons were assessed at about 17 million m3/year, private siphons were evaluated from the outcomes gave by the simple model at 1630 l/s; or a little more than 51 million m3/year.

It is tough to characterize the degree of the siphoning stations and their accurate size for a few reasons. From the start, states of appearing to bind them to confined zones, where the water table is near the ground, and there is no other water asset, particularly surface water, with less exorbitant access. These are the reasons why up to this point, the entirety of the siphoning was in the lower part of the plain, profiting just from rising water, and where the spring was under 15 m profound, frequently only a couple of meters away. A favored region has seen its especially critical advancement west of Marrakech to Nfis, a quadrangle delimited in the North by the Tensift, in the South by the Essaouira street. Two purposes behind this marvel: there was not. As in the east of Marrakech, khettara validating an old turn of events and apportionment of the dirt, and irritating the establishment of siphoning from a straightforward hydrogeological perspective (the peril of bringing down of the water table and evaporating of khettara still being used).

Toward the west of Marrakesh, ashore in the state or group’s space, abused broadly, settled European “authority” and “private” pioneers. Possibly they had no significant water asset (Souihla, M’Rabtine: last seguia of the right bank of the Nfis, streaming just a couple of days a year), or they thought about inadequate assets, anyway calculable contrasted with those appreciated by traditional horticulture (Targa region with fixed rights served by the Lalla Takerkoust dam), the homesteaders, for the most part, introduced a few siphoning stations on every one of their properties upgraded by present-day methods. On the off chance that the development didn’t pick up energy until 1939, many were at that point introduced in 1939. Since 1945. furthermore, more especially since 1956. there has been duplication of siphoning establishments, simultaneously as a topographical scattering in Haouz territories where they were up to this point obscure. This dissemination can have a few causes:

– First, as we have seen, it isn’t just close to the Tensift that the water table is shallow: (Freita, Tamelelt); it is under 10 m starting from the earliest stage. However, long we don’t leave the initial two climatic patios at the edge of the watercourse; siphoning stations have been introduced in the valley of Oued Zat close Aït Ourir and the valley Oued Ourika nearly to the extent Souq Tnine.

– At that point, the accommodation to common conditions isn’t supreme. All the more precisely, it is less so than 20 or 30 years prior: we go to bring water increasingly more profoundly, and every year reproves set back the lower furthest reaches of siphoning. Around 1935, it was viewed as not, at this point gainful to get water past 12 to 15 m; today, in outrageous cases, we go down to more than 30 m.

Technical enhancements to the hardware and states of being (bringing down of the water table after abuse, in regions with high siphoning thickness: the Targa for instance) don’t clarify everything; an economic reality should likewise be considered: ranches have been set up in territories flooded by unregulated aqueducts and which don’t have an adequate amount of enduring water (low water levels excessively low in summer); to dodge the disasters of parched years like 1961, we needed to set up crisis siphoning stations, working just in critical need, however getting water where it is, in other words – to state profoundly and in troublesome conditions. This is the situation in the settlements of Aghouatim and Tassoultant, where the consolidated waters of the seguia Bachia (oued Rhirhaïa) and Tassoultant (oued Ourika) are not adequate to keep up the estates for two to four months of the year.

This improvement was just made with another origination of the utilization of the siphoning station. At this point, it is not utilized uniquely to meet the changeless water needs of a homestead that has almost no different assets. It is considered more to be more as fulfilling the diverse needs of a ranch previously supplied with calculable assets, however lopsided as indicated by the seasons, in other words, not adjusted to agricultural requirements. From this perspective, the siphoning station is just requested little amounts of water in total worth. However, in any case, entirely fundamental for the endurance of the homestead. This character is significant for the assessment of the cost of water, which, taken in separation, is pricey (low utilization of the material creation deterioration costly), yet which must be supplanted in the entire reliable monetary framework to utilize less expensive water in other words, that of the channel.

There is one final reason for the current augmentation of siphoning, the most evident and the most significant; for quite a while, this framework was nearly the quality of present-day cultivates, in other words, basically those of European pioneers, thus the topographically focused area; particularly since 1956, another development is coming to fruition, connected to the very advancement of agribusiness in the Haouz: a fundamental aspect of the customary segment, a term that ought to be characterized, attempts to adjust on its homesteads, in the estimation of present-day character. For the most part, this doesn’t begin with the acquisition of a farm truck that the State can gracefully, however, by establishing a siphoning station, a considerably more dire interest in the Haouz’s particular states.

As to the absolute volume of water pulled back by siphoning, it was hard to survey this until the simple model development. Yet, we can refer to the accompanying figures, which indeed reflect both an improvement in the information on the spring, yet additionally in its misuse, without it being conceivable to honestly know the portion of every one of these two autonomous marvels.

The industrialist arrangement: it is the one utilized in present-day abuses. The complete model, practically ideal, met with the west of Marrakech’s European proprietors in Targa in Souihla, at M’Rabtine. It was examined and composed so that:

– From one viewpoint, the cubic meter of siphoned water returns as economically as expected under the circumstances:

– Then again, the cubic meter is expanded by acceptable use.

The Jrais of the first foundation, by and large, completed for quite a while, speak to in total worth significant ventures. This is even more so since they are satisfied with the most extreme consideration: the wells are cemented, to evade any danger of a breakdown in the detrital materials, frequently inadequately solidified of the Haouz plain; they are burrowed at the start to a profundity a lot more prominent than that of the waterway, regularly twice, which suggests from the beginning exceptionally great accessibility of capital. In this way, during activity, the gear can be utilized at max throttle unafraid of depleting the well, the water level consistently more noteworthy than 10 m, at times arriving at 30 m. This is the principal standard for this water system framework: not to fear making high speculations to guarantee the hardware’s ideal activity. Experience has indicated that this figuring is generally beneficial. The virtual offices (wells, structures to house the hardware, bowl never missing to guarantee total water control when it is conveyed to crops.) They are entirely worked with recruited work from outside the homestead. Despite its affordability in Haouz, they carry speculations to their most powerful figure contrasted with some other water system framework.

The siphoning gear itself requires high capital before any turn of events: the engines must be of high force to siphon a large stream, potentially at incredible profundity, without being abused. Here, as well, the venture is arranged from the beginning, with a drawn-out viewpoint that will make it conceivable to generally compensate for an exact increment in use: the diesel motor is promptly wanted to the petroleum motor, which is anyway less expensive, however, which it would need to be supplanted soon due to too costly fuel utilization (mainly if there is no assessment discount). The establishment of electrical gear is advancing, obviously, however more slowly than one may accept: In this unlikely possibility that the item seems to have an inherently lower margin if it is commonly more vigorous if its taking care of is more comfortable. It subsequently requiring less work (particularly for reconnaissance), there remains not least, that the utilization of costly power puts substantial weight on the cost of the m3 siphoned.

Since what makes this framework reliable is the minimization of working and support costs, the hardware’s effectiveness is most significant, for a low vitality utilization, by the ideal utilization of the establishment. Accordingly, the gear’s amortization time is all the more drawn out, its substitution being delayed in the more extended term. No fix is because of ill-advised utilization of equipment, and if the workforce is minimal, it is, in any case, commonly qualified with technical understanding (if not merely the proprietor, at any rate, a talented laborer). The outcome is a general cost for each m3 of siphoned water, which may appear to be very high from the outset. Assessments shift, to some extent contingent upon neighborhood states of being and the pretty much significant achievement of each experience: in a 50 ha property at M’Rabtine, it is 3.50c to 4c per m3, in Aghouatim-Tassoultant, it appears to arrive at 6c per m3, figures which can be viewed as limits.

To have careful energy about these figures, it is essential to put them with regards to abuse where the water caught is productive however much as could reasonably be expected and this, in two different ways (this doesn’t go into the investigation of water system frameworks, yet we can’t overlook it without ignoring a significant component of understanding the issues):

The utilization of another method for appropriating water to crops: sprinkling. Rather than letting the water stream by specific gravity as it appears to be simpler to do, the water brought to the outside of the ground is again siphoned (yet by a material of low force) and returned in plastic channels, which circulate it in a good downpour because of sprinklers. The different offices it requires speaking to a high venture: for a zone of 10 ha, the hardware costs 15,000 Dirhams (10 ha is viewed as the base zone that can guarantee the productivity of the activity, which as of now extensively restricts its augmentation). As the prepared territory builds, the cost diminishes: for 50 ha, it is just 40,000 Dirhams. In either case, there are numerous sprinkling requirements that also make it easier to keep track of. Initial, water sparing of 30 to half at plot level: the dissemination of water is with the end goal that 85% of the amounts. It can be utilized by the harvest to be watered; on sandy ground, the activity is incredibly productive: a water system of 600 m3 can supplant a water system of 1,500 m3 by drenching by sprinkling. This significantly lessens the cost per m3 of siphoned water, without considering the numerous agronomic focal points, which are hard to acknowledge (soil that inhales better since it isn’t obstructed, the expulsion of development techniques, no draining, and so forth.).

The sprinkler water system is as yet not far and wide in Haouz, substantially less than in Souss. It settled on huge present-day ranches in the settlements due to its capital prerequisites and specialized labor. However, strikingly, it ought to be noticed that despite everything exists just on the ex-properties of the “normal pilgrims,” in other words, from 50 to 100 ha, and not on the vast properties of open restricted organizations. For instance, the normal colonization was what abused the most totally and the most seriously the surfaces that it had. Rehearsing no doubt the most noteworthy ventures per hectare; it was likewise the most powerful; notwithstanding, sprinkling was deserted on a Rabtine property during its retrocession to a Moroccan proprietor, living in Marrakech.

Besides, the water acquired by siphoning is utilized in an entrepreneur sort of agribusiness and equipped towards advertising. Ranch farming (particularly citrus) where the m3 of water on the off chance that it isn’t spared in its utilization (at Souilah, we appropriate up to 15,000 m3 of water for each year and per hectare of natural citrus products, on “twofold” estates, it is valid). By and by takes an exceptionally extraordinary worth contrasted with the volume of creation that it permits and the advantages of it.

Nonetheless, this siphoned water system framework, introduced on an advanced homestead, isn’t liberated from issues that essentially influence water cost. The most troublesome is that presented by the steady drop in the water table in specific regions, principally west of Marrakech. There is an awkwardness between the unnecessarily high thickness of siphoning at high stream rates and the flexibly of the water table by the invasion, which happens in the coarse alluvial stores of the Dir’s cones. In dry years, the awkwardness increments in the two ways, and the circumstance can, as in 1961, become disastrous if:

Don’t happen a few stormy years like 1968-1970, to revive the water table and raise the water level;

Tyrant measures are not taken to initially control, at that point limit, the critical streams, the very territory of harvests with high water necessities. Meanwhile, every rancher attempted to tackle the issue by his methods: compelled to inundate a similar territory (the estates can’t be decreased voluntarily, as are grain crops), he made new speculations, to get the fundamental water no matter what.

This has prompted either the reproducing of existing wells or the burrowing of new wells, since the water table which streams along advantaged channels, from south-east to north-west, might drop in one place and stay flawless two or three hundred meters close by if it has not been misused. On account of reproducing the current wells, the work was even more costly, as the parallel catchment exhibitions were discovered and suspended over the new degree of the spring. Futile; thus, all the time, rather than burrowing new ones that may immediately get old, we liked to burrow the well more profoundly. Much of the time, this has brought about a change or transformation of the gear to the new conditions, bringing about an expansion in water costs.

The alteration of the establishments to the phreatic level was just seldom restricted to solitary volunteers: it appeared as a battle between the pioneers, the water of the spring turning into a valuable mineral asset that it is to misuse as totally as could be expected under the circumstances, in case the neighbor do it to your impairment, subsequently the intermittent and misrepresented reproving, now and again taking a preventive structure, even past the idea of benefit (consequently to M’Rabtine in 1960, on a 50 ha property worth 300,000 Dirhams, penetrating and siphoning establishment work was completed at its expense. The degree of the money related assets required in this division guarantees the necessary endurance of abuse. One can think about who can experience the ill effects of this battle.

It was undoubtedly at Souihla and the M’Rabtine that it was generally striking. Take the case of the “Plantations of the Tensift,” property of 355 ha. Since 1941 and 1943, three siphoning establishments (2 approvals adding up to 65.6 liters/second); Might be one of the first one to move externally, they have since a long time ago gave the vital streams to the water system. However, mainly since 1954, there has been an increase in wells in the region. Outstandingly those of the Ouled Sidi Cheikh in Saada, only upstream from the plantations like this drawing from a similar vein. Therefore the decorative liner has dropped continually. In three progressive stages, we can sum up the activities that were important to keep up the water flexibly to the plantation: stuffing, increment in motor force, vitality change:

Notwithstanding these turns of events, part of the offices has been charged. One of the wells, aside from the most established, which has one, is outfitted with two assortment exhibitions opposite to the spring’s overall progression, one arranged toward the east, the other toward the west, and long from 20 to 55 meters. The three old wells were held for local use (on one of them, the gear was destroyed and supplanted by a low-power engine for filling a pool), the three new wells utilized for the water system work 24 hours per day. Finally, reality shows the money-related and specialized prospects of such misuse, regardless of its troubles. Control well without siphoning office is saved for the perception of changes in the property’s hydrostatic level. These are entirely factors as indicated by the spring’s flows and their pretty much heavy nearby use.

Whatever the nearby issues presented to this siphoning station water system framework, it is by a wide margin the most complex, and the one in particular that merits the capability of current since it is completely incorporated into an advanced working framework. That the nonattendance of divergence around there is a specific factor for progress, we will better comprehend this by moving toward the equivalent siphoning framework yet introduced under totally various conditions.

The blended arrangement, which ought not to be mistaken for the cutting edge, is siphoning station. This is the way toward introducing little, low-stream engine siphons on ranches, as a significant aspect of customary cultivating. This answer for the water system issue has spread to all edge regions, where the water table’s profundity doesn’t surpass 15 m. In other words, on enormous zones: the plain of lower Nfis, all the lower part of the focal Haouz.

Toward the west of Marrakech, this was done in the stretches left free by colonization; toward the east, the spans were not involved by the khettara. More than 100 such establishments in this vast territory, the vast majority of them later (after 1956). In most cases, their proprietors are supplanted to conventional water withdrawals that just permitted too little regions to be flooded, requesting one hectare while the abuse is broader. This longing to improve the dirt all the more completely. Assumes that the most urgent requirements for self-utilization are fulfilled and demonstrate the will to move halfway to a higher specialized stage in any event. It is the consequence of two unmistakable classifications:

The normal proprietor, with a 5 ha territory and needs to develop it, however, which does not have the principal component of any turn of events: water.

The large proprietor, abusing his territories in a circuitous way (region of khebbaz), and broad, with rising water or faïd, a first side effect of the advancement of medieval misuse; he chose to prepare on a little surface, an adequate volume of water for a restricted turn of events, however, more escalated, and mostly turned towards advertising (arboriculture and market planting for the neighborhood or local market: Marrakech).

What are their separate odds of achievement? Standard models may give thought.

There are different multiplications from the primary case, with certain varieties because of neighborhood conditions or specific social circumstances like this little fellah from douar Baqqa, headed for Ouidane, which has 7 ha of bour earth. In 1959, he burrowed himself a well, on which he introduced permitting him to get water at 6 m: he subsequently flooded 1/4 ha or 1/2 ha. In 1972, he chose to purchase for 3,600 DH, a pre-owned 6 HP engine siphon, which will permit him to inundate, on the off chance that it works appropriately, in this zone where the water table is shallow, ten hectares. We can see the lopsidedness between the territory to be inundated and the gear’s conceivable outcomes, inappropriate to the activity. Yet rather than thinking about an organization with a neighbor before establishment, the proprietor wants to think about selling his water, which can be beneficial amid the incredible dry season. However, the remainder of the time, he won’t discover a purchaser, and his hardware will be underused, without knowing whether he will have the option to reimburse the credit he needed to make. Note the irregularity of its establishment: an engine siphon exceptionally positioned on the edge of a well, which is just a fundamental gap burrowed for the duo, not solidified (the dividers are disintegrating now), where the plane of water is only 2 m profound.

Another model concerning a 20 ha ranch will give a thought of a more established encounter. On the left bank of the Nfis, close to the street from Marrakech to Essaouira, parcel additionally inundated by 1/5 ferdia de la séguia Amezri (intermittent deliveries) from the Nfis dam and significant floods feed it). Oats profit by the progression of the seguia, that of the siphon being held for trees and market cultivating. The very much was burrowed, upon allotment in 1947-48, entirely by recruited work, the proprietor taking an interest not the slightest bit in the activity (100 specialists succeeded one another, contingent upon installment prospects).

Altogether, the burrowing of 14 m, made troublesome by the landscape conditions, boils down to 4,500 DH. As gigantic as this figure appears, it was deficient because:

– The dividers have not been solidified: notwithstanding the perpetual disintegration, there was a breakdown in 1969, which required a fix of 400 DH.

– The profundity is 14 m, of which just 2.50 m is water, and there are no sidelong displays to deplete the spring there (since 1966, this has dropped by 2.50 m). The outcome is self-evident: after not precisely 30 minutes of siphoning, the well is dry, and it takes a stop of 4 hours per day in any event, and the most exceedingly terrible conditions. For sure, a yearly wiping did by four salaried specialists, for 15 days, doesn’t keep the siphon from sucking up water brimming with mud: the channels are obstructed, the rings and the sifter “bounce,” the motor warms up.

The central arrangement, enlisting, is not, at this point, conceivable today, since it would require, out of nowhere, a venture that the obligation of the proprietor does not permit anymore.

Concerning the gear, it was purchased in 1968 gratitude to an advance: a 12 CV engine which is more than adequate, however which, in light of its irregular activity, doesn’t gracefully enough water for the main trees planted. It is also essential to deal with all the stops because of the exceptionally regular fixes resulting from it (three or four times each year by and large). They’re effectively over the full cost in itself. The way expands that the proprietor is bumbling; every one sentences him to 2 or 3 outings to Marrakech found 29 km away. At last, the development of a bowl was initially embraced, be that as it may, because of the absence of cash-flow to pay the laborers, can’t be finished. Additionally, the disintegration was liable for corrupting what had just been done, making more massive a solidifying fix. The data gathered permits, for this situation, to gauge the cost of the m3 of water siphoned at 8.70 pennies. The detail will better show the shortcomings of the framework, its lopsided characteristics:

The cost of this water is even more hard to shoulder since it is utilized inappropriately, on uneven ground, in tanks that might be made, and because it is used to water trees, some portion of which isn’t in any case underway age. Honestly, all topics may not be as apparent among little siphon proprietors. Not every one of them experiences such a mix of harmful components. In any case, many don’t have available to them such a vast zone which ought to permit great utilization of the hardware; without a doubt, on a region of 1 or 2 hectares, even a motor of 8 or 4 CV is underused, so the cost of m3 of water in this framework isn’t under 7 c.

In the subsequent case, enormous proprietor to attest it in a roundabout way, the models are more uncommon, however similarly as critical. Take that of a massive proprietor of Ouidane. In 1966 to introduce a station with an amazing enough engine (20 CV) to flood youthful olive estates. It was challenging to leave helpless before the sporadic progression of the seguias downstream of the channel Zat.

All activities concerning the administration of the establishment and its alterations are left to a chief, who is additionally liable for managing the proprietor’s khebbaz and khammès, abusing food parcels on practically the entirety of his territory. If we need to contrast it with the past case, we should think about two viewpoints:

– Financially and in fact, the attributes are the equivalent: ventures are inadequate, and the gear endures the results. So an old very much was first utilized, which we reproduced a bit. Be that as it may, the earth and the stones continually top it off (a seguia of flood passing close by complements these disadvantages). The motor: situated on iron bars over the well, it wound up falling! Such dramatic occurrences unmistakably show that the underlying intensity of the engine is the main component of likeness to the siphoning stations of current tasks;

– Be that as it may, the diverse social conditions present subtleties. Indeed, all are burrowing and getting work is completed by work assembled by truck, on the proprietor’s other land, modest book since monetarily needy (this is content with favorable circumstances in nature not fixed ahead of time). We comprehend for this situation the decrease before speculations requiring the work of representatives outside the ranch, as costly materials. However, when the establishing of the well as of late demonstrated essential notwithstanding everything. It was not helpful to get to pay the expenses because the additional worth acknowledged on different terrains of land lease, even with a broad misuse, was adequate to permit oneself financing of the enhancements made in such a little segment.

This idea of siphoning, as it ought to permit the more escalated advancement of a little aspect of the abuse, or occasionally supplement inadequate surface water reports, turns out to be increasingly successive and muddles the productivity appraisal. Since it must be supplanted in the entirety of the abuse, the vast majority of which creates the capital utilized.

As we would like to think, this long diversion was essential here to get ready, without foreseeing, an endeavor to clarify the composite character of the rural economy in the Haouz. We would close excessively fast by blaming the heroes for “blunder,” in other words, by deciding financial and social conduct by contrasting it with another behavior viewed as more “normal” than the just industrialist endeavor. In any case, we can, ideally, in the third aspect of this work, give a key to “inward understanding” of the marvel, to supplant it with an outside judgment, which is time after time concentrated on conventional or blended abuse.

End ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE HAOUZIAN AREA’ 

The physical system where Marrakech’s suburbia’s social history will be played out must be here a little schematized and conceptual so that the peruser can keep a rearranged picture of the room’s structures the principle reference figures.

Fundamentally, the Haouz is comprised of four bowls situated south-north and masterminded from west to east: Nfis, Rhirhaïa, Ourika, and Zat; the two boundaries being individualized and progressed towards the north, the two medians combining downstream.

Every bowl is partitioned altitudinally, and therefore from south to north, into four zones of inconsistent significance, as per the bowls, which are

• the pretty much lush mountain;
• the Avant-mont and the Dir (except for the forum), slopes involved by prairie courses, taking care of the faïd framework and the very flooded forum;
• the cone watered by the séguias;
• the low plain, passing horizontally to the banks of the Tensift, inundated by the underground spring (Ouidane and Oulja).

The zone of the séguias is partitioned into the same number of areas as seguias (or nearly). Which are the domains overwhelmed by each channel and flooded by a declining slope in water system boxes, which are the spaces inundated by a merchant (mesrej), and in town Jinages, which can possess all or part of at least one storage spaces? These can comprise a solitary town terroir, or be separated into a few. The terroirs are divided into territories of the enduring water system and tree and vegetable occupation in the spring water system region (oats and vegetables). In a whole oat shaded winter water system region, there is a peaceful profession in an area. Finally, the rooms are separated into plots, properties, and the property being unpredictable gatherings of stories quite often situated in a few regions, regularly in a few storage spaces.

In the territory of groundwater water systems, space is secured with improvement focal points, diminishing around the wells and the outlet of the khettara, with an exceptionally irritated and minimal abused periphery upstream of the last mentioned.

This graph’s effortlessness must be qualified by the presence of blended seguia-khettara-well zones and by the nearness of unexploited streaks. Middle of the road zones or little zones of uncommon courses of action imitating, in littler, the Haouz’s overall example as around from Tamesloht.

THE CONQUEST OF THE SOUTHERN MOROCCO 

Mounted on camels on the side of which hung a large leather shield, the Almoravids were armed with spears and swords. A long veil concealed their lower face and fell on their chest, and another hid their forehead and head. It was thus equipped that they began their raids in the immense valley of Wadi Dra, where the camels of the Zenic emir of Sijilmassa grazed. The emir was killed defending his animals, and the camels were kidnapped.

Around 1053-54 Sijilmassa was taken, all the Magrâwa were created, and the city received a governor and an empty Almor garrison. Abd-Allâh kept the promises he had made in the desert, the jars of wine as well as the musical instruments were smashed, the non-Koranic taxes removed and the booty distributed according to Muslim rules. The fuqaha, by receiving their quint, thus began a fertile career in prerogatives of all kinds and in substantial advantages, often very far from the Koranic recommendations.

But the Zenetes, who had long enjoyed an (urban oasis civilization) (G. S. Colin), did not tolerate the domination of the coarse and brutal Saharans. A revolt was quick to rid the city of it by the massacre of its governor and its garrison.

When the news reached the desert, it was necessary to preach the holy war again with the Almoravides, to find men who wanted to leave their tribes again. The Gudâla refused to embark on a new adventure; wanting to punish them, Yahià b.cUmar was killed, and his brother Abü Bakr was designated to replace him at the head of the Lamtüna and part of the Gazüla.

This time the new chief took his precautions and organized a base of operations at the crossroads which go from Sijil- massa to Sudan and from Dra to Touat; the Tabelbala oasis was created, and the return of empty Almoras to the Tafilalet oases took place without a blow.

Then the Almoravids well led by two excellent warlords, Abü Bakr and his cousin Yüsuf b. Heap end, threw themselves on the valley of the wadi Dra, then on the Sous, and seized its two main cities: Taroudannt and Massat, that their masters do not seem to have been able to defend. The loot, according to the chroniclers, was considerable, thousands of camels, horses, and cattle, slaves, large amounts of money fell into the hands of the victors.

Then in 450/1058, the Almoravids under the command of Abd-Allah b. Yâsin left Sijilmassa again and headed for Aghmat. It is difficult to imagine these camel drivers in the big passes of the high massif of the Atlas. It is likely that they had to take either the easier pass of Tizi- n’Maachou, according to the Bigoudine-Imintanout route, or perhaps to be the path of the coast which was not however reported at the time by Bakri.

When they reached the plain, where Os was once again at ease, they easily took over the small towns of Chichaoua and Neffis and the lower Tensift territories.

But the rich city of Aghmat still had to be occupied. Abd-Allâh returned to seek reinforcements at Sijümassa and Abû-Bakr, strong with a body comprising 400 horsemen, 800 camel drivers, and 2,000 infantrymen, kidnapped him in 1058 to the emir Lagüt who took refuge with the Ifrenid prince of Tadla. The victors pursued him and, in turn, drove out the Ifrenite emir of his principality. Lagüt was taken and killed, and Abû-Bakr brought into his harem his widow Zaynab, originally from the Nafzâwa (south of Kairouan). She was famous throughout the country for her beauty and intelligence; we thought she was a magician.

The Almoravids then tried to subjugate Atlantic Morocco, that is to say, the country of the Bergbouata heretics. They passionately defended their independence during a fight Abd-Allàh b. Yâsm was killed and buried near the wadi Korifla, a tributary of Bou Regreg, where his tomb is still known.

The death of “Abd-Allâh was a severe blow! But why did he fight by exposing himself? Did he not remember the advice he had given himself to Abü Bakr, accompanied by lashes:” A leader must never enter the fray of combat because on his life or his death depends the salvation or the loss of the army.”

It was such a hard blow that the empty almora body remained, according to Ibn cIdârî, under the orders of Yüsuf b. TaSfin returned to its bases of departure, perhaps even it was forced there by the obstinate resistance of Berghouata. The real story of Marrakech will begin.

URBAN LIFE IN THE 11TH CENTURY IN THE HAOUZ AND THE SOUTHERN MOROCCO 

Before creating Marrakech, the Almoravid nomads had come into contact with urban life and were not reduced to inventing everything.

We do not yet have many details on their desert cities, Awdagust and Aretnenna; their sites are not determined. The ruined Tabelbala Oasis still exists, but we have very little information about what it was. Its old prehistoric site and its dialect are better known than its recent past.

Sijilmassa, founded in the middle of the wine century by Zenites, the Milcnàsa, champions of Kharéjite schism in the Maghreb, has had a great history that remains to be written. Its influence on southern Morocco, until its final ruin, was undoubtedly more important than one presumes it and its fame was carried very far.

According to a text, walls with stone foundations and the crowning of bricks would have made a belt to a city of great extent, where neighboring very compact built districts and large irrigated gardens, as still today in Marrakech.

South Morocco has better known other cities of lesser importance, no doubt spontaneously created by natives, on the northern edge of the Atlas, at the points where traffic and transport have to adapt to new conditions. They were simple village agglomerations established around a market in the middle of important olive groves, as today are Amizmiz, Demnate or Imintanout, and that their chiefs applied themselves to develop, without embellishing them, until the moment when the founding of Marrakech gradually led to their economic and political decline.

At that time, South Morocco appeared to us as a prosperous region whose Masmouda inhabitants occupied villages and hamlets made up of stone, brick, or adobe houses, with terraced roofs. They are men, according to Bakrî, active, knowing how to cultivate their lands, but eager for gain. Although mountain peoples are fairly refractory to human progress and to urbanization, some localities have been promoted by history to the rank of cities. The two main ones are Neffis, the city of gardens, and the double Aghmat.

Neffis (or Niffîs or Naffîs)

It is no longer known exactly where this city was, which seems to have played an important role in the Muslim history of southern Morocco. Without the Andalusian geographer Bakrî), who finishes his book in 1068 and dies in 1094, we would know almost nothing about this locality; ü is our only original source. The edition of Kitàb at-Taiawwuf by Ibn az-Zayyât will give us some details but, to date, Neffis does not appear on the major geographical indexes, Ya’qübï and the Encyclopedia of Islam ignore it. And if any annalist mentions his name, it is through a quotation from Bakrî. To our knowledge, no currency has been found that would have been minted at Neffis. Baydaq l’Almohade speaks well of a fortress of Naffîs, of the mountain of Naffis, of the valley of Naffîs, but absolutely not of the city which doubtless no longer existed as a large agglomeration. Where was she?

Doutté launched, without proof, the hypothesis that the important ruins of the Zaoulat ech-Cherradi, which are at the confluence of the Nfis wadi and the Tensift wadi, could be those of the city of Neffis. The map of stages in the Haouz in the eleventh century, established according to Bakrï, leaves no chance for this suggestion, at least in the state of our information.

Recently a Moroccan scholar, the idrisid Sharif Si ‘Abd-al-Hayy al-Kattànï did not hesitate to identify the city (modified) of Neffîs with the Ribât Sâkir, Ribat Chiker from our maps, located about sixty kilometers west of Marrakech, on the track from Chemaîa to Chichaoua and on the right bank of the Tensift. His argument is by no means convincing. Bakri’s routes, if not the logic of the road economy of time, are opposed to admitting that the city of Neffîs was located so far west of the current Nfis wadi.

According to a sketch, Idrisî places the city to the west and south of Aghmat and Marrakech, which is consistent with Bakrï, but very vague.

Lévi-Provençal, as early as 1935. was able to locate the site of Neffîs on the Nfis wadi, as authorized by a text from the beginning of the 14th century of which he has just given us the translation and which specifies that Neffîs was (we will remember the past tense) between Tànzalt and Darkâla. These two toponyms have not been found, either on the maps published so far or in the field after searches that were, in fact, too quick.

The exact site of the city, therefore, remains to be identified. Only systematic research could allow this to be done with certainty. The investigations should, in our opinion, be done between Tameslouht and the new village of Lâlla Takerkouzt (Cavaignac dam), although according to Idrisî. It seems to have been perched higher since it says “Neffîs de la Montagne”.

If we had to try to imagine the city, we could propose the hypothesis of an “archipelago city,” according to the excellent formula of Mr. H. Terrasse. The city would have been made up along the Kfis wadi of a series of enclosed gardens with scholarly irrigation dominated by a succession of ksour, in the inextricable jumble of walls and alleys, houses where the Berbers still love to live and where each large family can isolate themselves with their customers, their reserves and even their herd. We must not allow ourselves to be misled by Arab historians who frequently use the name of Neffîs with the value of “Neffîs region, that of” Sijümassa “to designate the oases of Tafîlalet and who name Dra sometimes the city of this name and sometimes the long valley of this Saharan wadi.

What we know about Neffîs must obviously be asked of Bakri, who has only collected traditions that have already been altered. It was a city of great antiquity. One can indeed think that Neffîs was part of these agglomerations, which, from a very remote date, were born in the Dir of the Atlas, the mountain. Rich, irrigated, and consequently populated area, a real hinge between plain and mountain. It was a link in the chain of localities which goes from Amizmiz to Beni-Mellal via Aghmat, Demnate, Sidi Rahal, Bzou, etc.

It is especially known by the raid of TJqba, one of the companions of the Prophet, who came to seize it in 681-682 AD After having tightly blocked it, ü took it away from the Christian Berbers who had taken refuge there and chastised the Masmoudas so rudely that he forced them to recognize Muslim domination.

According to Bakri, the minbar mosque of Neffîs is due to the initiative of the famous Uqba, whose name it has long borne. But the recent text published by Lévi-Provençal raises serious doubts about this foundation. The author of Bayàn, he does not dispute the existence of the religious building, but he attributes the construction to the people of the city, on the very place where TJqba would have stopped. Idrisï, who is a serious man at (W. Marçais) and who undoubtedly passed to Neffîs, speaks well of the mosque but does not venture to attribute it to the famous Arab conqueror.

Two centuries after ‘Uqba, Idris II would have made an expedition, in 812-13, against the infidels Masmouda and would have seized Neffîs. Fifteen years later, on the death of this sovereign, the empire was divided between his sons on the advice of their grandmother Kanza, and Ibn Haldün informs us that the South Moroccan, with Neffîs as capital, had been attributed to Abd – Allah. The importance of the principality is unknown to us, but we can imagine that the lord of Neffîs extended his command more easily over the tribes of the plains than over those of the high mountains.

At the end of the ninth century, according to Yaqùbï, a descendant of Abd-Allâh still reigned in Neffîs.

Finally, Bakri, in the eleventh century, teaches us that the city’s mosque is still standing, that it is always unique and with only one bath, which is very little for a city known to be populated, but normal for a Berber agglomeration of this time, and that it has several souks, that is to say, a few specialized streets around the mosque. At best, Neffîs should have been a town like Demnate today or more simply Bzou. But in the twelfth century, this stage of urbanization was not to be overlooked.

The population belonged to various Berber tribes of the Masmouda confederation and always had an idrisid, Hamza ibn Ja’far, descendant of eUbayd-Allah, grandson of Idris and who originally had no received from the principality because he was too young. It is indeed one of the greatest surprises in this history to see that the Almoravids, around 1050, will have ended the government of a family which had governed there for two and a half centuries. Should we believe it completely?

In all these historical testimonies, no mention is made of any industry. We simply know from Bakri’s note on Aghmat that the Nfis valley, probably in its upper part, exported apples with a charge of mullet worth half a dirhem and by Idrisï that the Nef fis raisins were of a flavor exquisite, highly esteemed throughout the Mediterranean West. They were probably exported through the port of Goua, a three-day walk on the Atlantic, at the mouth of the Tensift wadi. Nothing about the Jews, nothing about the Christians. In short, a purely Berber rural living environment.

After the Almoravids, it is the complete night: the upcoming creation of Marrakech will consume the ruin of Neffi, which will decrease more and more in importance in order to be erased from the cards and erased from the memories.

Aghmat

As there were two Tahert and two Fez, there were two Aghmat: that of the plain and that of the mountain. Doutté easily found the site of the first, Agmàt-Urika, named after the tribe that surrounded him at the time. In 1901, the site was still full of life. The clear waters leaped into a bed of greenery and thick shading, and there were clearly some vestiges of the prosperity of the former capital of Haouz. Unevennesses of the ground showed that there had been an important agglomeration there, but the apparent ruins were reduced to little things. Doutté did not find a single piece of marble in the traces of enclosures that he spotted around the place exactly called Aghmat.

Agmàt-Urika was therefore located in the plain along the wadi of the same name, an hour’s walk north of the current town of Dar-el-Ouriki, which commands the entrance to the river gorges. The opulent city of the Middle Ages left its name only to a market that is held every Friday.

As for the mountain town, Agmàt-Aylàn, which was said to be Bakri eight miles south of the first, Doutté identifies it with the village of Igil-n-Aylân, at the foot of the old Almoravid fortress of Tasgïmùt. Igil-n-Aylân would correspond to Agmàt-Aylàn of Arab authors whose population of the valley has lost memory.

Doubtless, it is not far to think that the two Aghmat were only one city, but Baydaq is formal; there were two Aghmat.

According to Ibn Sa’id, Aghmat would be the work of the Apostles while the famous Berber tribe of the Hawwâra claimed its foundation; but it only enters into history when ‘Uqba besieges in 681-82 the Christian Berbers who were there and seize it.

According to the Bayan of Ibn ‘Idâri, after’ Uqba, Mùsà b. Nusayr was the first Arab governor (703-711) to enter the Moroccan South and rally without resistance, and definitely, his people to Islam. He then raised the Aggmat mosque, whose minbar was set up in 85/704, as indicated by the inscription on his file.

Idrisi then tells us that after the Kharite revolt, and despite the rumors that it will spawn, millet and rifles were taxed at Aghmat. (These taxes were to last until the city was taken by the Almoravids.)

We have already seen that in 828-829, at the death of Idris II, his son Muhammad handed over to his brother Abd-Allâh, Aghmat, Neffïs, the mountains inhabited by the Masmouda, the country of the Lamta and the rest of the Sus al-Aqsa.

Aghmat recalls at the end of the twelfth century when a group of Zenith Magrāwa, under conditions we do not know, and which Ibn Çaldun also regretted ignoring, managed to seize part of Haouz and to establish a principality between the Berghouata of the Atlantic Plain and the Masmouda of the mountain. This small kingdom is the oldest state whose history is mentioned in these regions, the capital was Aghmat, the “ancient court of the Masmouda,” as Mar Mol says, and its small dynasties will last as far as the Almoravids. It is already known that the last of these, Lagüt b. Yùsuf b. eAlï, who had the beautiful, skillful and famous Zaynab as his wife, was killed by Abü Bakr’s troops.

Aghmat has recently been made a Resistance Center of the Jewish Berghouata, which was eventually destroyed by the Islamist Berbers, who were the empty Almora. This victory, at this point, would mark the decline of Judaism in the Maghreb. Without wishing to take a position on this question, as on all those raised by the history of Jews in Morocco, this hypothesis remains to be demonstrated.

Instead, Aghmat seems to have been a center of influence in Cairo. The riots that bloodied the Ifriqiya and illustrated by the fall of Kairouan in 1057 enriched the city with a scholarly emigration. Mr. A. Faure, who is preparing the edition of the Kitàb at-TaSawwuf, will, I hope, show us what some biographies and the presence of Zaynab, the Nafzá-wiya, have long suggested. The Dadès-Todga corridor thus appears to have played a large role between Aghmat and Kairouan from where the Tlemcen and Sijilmassa Canal scholars and ideas came from.

We do not know anything about Ahmmat’s relationship with the mountain, but in this “worn-out story,” as Mr. H. Terrasse said, no trace of hostile hostility to these newcomers is known. One can even think that their relationships were good. The flourishing business of the city could not have developed in an era of insecurity and without the proper functioning of the institutions of the emirate founded by the Magrawa. A detail sheds light on the relations between flat country and piémoni. The beautiful Zaynab, before being the wife of the unfortunate Lagüt had been the concubine of a chief of the mountain.

The descriptions left by Ya ° qübï, Bakri, Idri- si and taken up by many other authors, allow having rather precise ideas on Aghmat. It was an open city, in an admirable site, sitting on an excellent ground, covered with vegetation and furrowed by white waters flowing in all directions. Perfumed by the smell of grasses and trees, it was surrounded by gardens, vineyards, orchards dominated by the olive tree.

It was crossed from south to north by a small river which seems to have carried the name of Taqîrùt or Tagïrüt and whose water only flowed through the city four days a week, the others being reserved for irrigation upstream. The mills that she operated were numerous, and sometimes she froze the winter, which made the joy of the children who then had fun sliding on the ice as Idrisï saw it himself. But its water was brackish as is still today the water of the tributaries of the Tensift when they arrive in the plain. A pond or a basin may have existed in the city. Geographers have made it a wonderful thing. The land was very fertile, and its products were abundant. Since many of the residents were pastoralists, there was no shortage of livestock products either. The people of Aghmat lived in separate quarters from each other, in ksour of brick and hardened mud, of learned and complex architecture. Houses, like those of today’s ksour, had several floors joined by well-designed stairs, terraces, covered passageways. At night the animals were kept in the yards.

The charge of the emirate would have been annual and subject to the choice of the people, which doubtless did not prevent the Mârâwa from remaining in power since Bakri said: “that the election was always done amicably.”

As far as the information which has come down to us is concerned, the most curious concerns economic activity. Aghmat was, first of all, a market, a local Sunday fair where the whole region came to get supplies. Up to a hundred oxen and a thousand sheep were killed there that day. Without seeing any real statistics in these figures, we can conclude that the market was large and very crowded.

The inhabitants were the most industrious of men and the most ardent in the pursuit of wealth. They forced their wives and young boys into profitable trades.

They were not unaware of certain banking operations. They organized, and this was their main profit, caravans across the Sahara. They sent red to copper to the black country in ingots, woolen fabrics, and clothes, glass objects, mother-of-pearl, drugs, perfumes, iron utensils. Each trader could load 70 to 180 camels! We imagine, without difficulty, that on return, these animals brought back what Niger and Sudan have always exported: gold powder, ebony, spices, and slaves – and it is the rest in inquiring in Aghmat itself, with caravanners as well as with slaves, that Idrisî brought us precious information on Sudan. The caravans also brought back the cane sugar that the plain of Sous then produced. We also exported the leather called gadàmisi prepared with tannin from the spurge and which looked like silk as it was so soft. It is not forbidden to suggest that this leather could have been exported to Andalusia and Europe through the port of Ribàt Gouz, a four-day walk away, where ships arrived from “all countries,” says Bakri.

A detail given by Idrisî seems quite contrary to Berber nature. The wealthy merchants of Aghmat are said to have placed poles at the door of their houses with signs intended to indicate the importance of their wealth. When we think that even today public opinion among the Berbers, based on the prestige of egalitarian institutions, prohibits the rich from having a house more beautiful than that of the poor, we remain perplexed on the real reason for this ostentation of upstarts.

No doubt, many of them were foreigners, re that modern Morocco has taught us to know better the commercial provisions of the inhabitants of this country.

Were the people of Aghmat happy? Arab geographers did a lot of advertising for the Haouz scorpions who were numerous and dangerous, but the natives probably had, as nowadays, preventive and curative means against their painful bites, without forgetting the marvelous talismans which can put at the shelter mosques even against the presence of these animals.

The air in the region was reputed to be bad, but Idrisi believes that the climate was, on the contrary, very healthy. In fact, people had a “yellowish complexion. Can we conclude that it was under the effects of malaria, this old plague that animates the Mediterranean pathology for centuries? A thousand poorly maintained canals were to encourage mosquito breeding.

Wealth and malaria have never made men happy. We can better understand that the Muslims of Aghmat have managed to divide into two rival sects, on which we have no information, which in turn occupied the old mosque founded by Müsâ b. Nusaÿr.

Arriving in Haouz, we, therefore, see that the Almoravides found themselves in contact with old urban habits and an organization of which we know very little but which existed and which could only strike the minds of the victors from Sijilmassa again.

All vagabonds are incorrigible. And undisciplined as they were, Islam, this “civilization of city dwellers” (W. Marçais), was going to put them in front of urban problems to be solved, and one can think that what they knew about Neffîs and d’Aghmat was not useless to them and prepared them to receive the great lesson of Andalusian civilization.

“Do you like cities? “One day, the great Caliph‘ Umar asked the Berber envoys who appeared before him. “No,” they replied, “We make a big deal of horses, and we don’t like to build.” If this episode is not apocryphal, we can say that they would change their mind.

THE SITE OF MARRAKECH BEFORE THE ALMORAVIDS

While the Atlas valleys are inexhaustible mines of petroglyphs, cup stones, the most diverse prehistoric stations, the rocky slopes of Guéliz, or at least what remains after the opening of numerous quarries, have not yet delivered anything to researchers. All the investigations were unsuccessful.

The soil of the city itself has grown so much over the past eight centuries that, barring good luck, it does not seem that we can hope to find surface industries on its site.

Has Haouz known closer civilizations? Should we follow the conclusions of a local researcher who believes that he can explain by Sumerian all the toponyms which do not come from Berber roots and which are particularly numerous along the Tensift and around the city? The question goes far beyond our competence to answer it.

It has also been claimed that invaders from the sea could, in ancient times, go up the Tensift on flatboats, when the river received all the water from its tributaries, and reach the height of today’s Marrakech. This adventurous hypothesis will be taken up again when the island of Mogador has revealed all its treasures. Furthermore, it is without any likelihood that certain authors, following Marmol, located Marrakech on the site of Bokkanon, Boccsl post, cited by Ptolemy in a list of cities located inside Tingitane; this name corresponds to that of Tunis Buconis of the anonymous Geographer of Ravenna which makes it a city of Mauritania Gaditane whose coastline extends that of Tingitane.

1. de Mas-Latrie has published a list of the twenty-five former bishoprics of Tingitane Mauritania, where the name Bocanum Hernemm is noted, which the publisher locates “near Morocco.” The list was compiled by Mas-Latrie himself, using all the sources at his disposal, but which unfortunately he does not cite. He does not say in particular where he took this bishopric from Bocanum Hemerum. It is probably in Morcelli, a work that did not inspire the confidence of the late P. de Cénival, according to one of his handwritten notes.

Father Mesnage does not give information on the origin and date of this list of bishoprics, most of whose names are probably not found in Tingitane. Yet it is in Tingitane that Ptolemy places Bocanum, and the Geographer of Ravenna does the same since his Mauritania Gaditane is the one where Tingi (Tangier), Lixus (Larache), Salty, etc. are located.

A map published in Paris in 1663 confirms these locations. Bocanum is placed on a river that appears to be the Bou-Regreg and at a latitude slightly lower than that of Volubilis.

As for Besnier, he says that Boccana Specula or Turris Bocconis is of unknown location. And it still is today.

In short, there is little chance of discovering the Punic or the Roman in Marrakech or in its close suburbs, and, to tell the truth, the direct influence of these civilizations is currently very difficult to perceive in Haouz.

THE ABU BAKR B. UMAR FOUNDATION

1. – The abandonment of Aghmat.
2. Reason and underlying reasons.

II – The terrain is chosen.

III. – Exodus and organization.

• – The casbah (qasr al-hajar).
• – Date of foundation: 1070.
• – From the name of Marrakech.

ABANDONING AGHMAT

Let us now resume the course of historical events in the Haouz. In fact, it would be difficult to get involved without the text of the Hulal al-Mawsiya. We have a good edition of this anonymous work of the fourteenth century. A recent Spanish translation, by M. A. Huici, was able to complete it thanks to the use of new manuscripts. It is an important source in the history of the Almoravids in Marrakech. We must naturally add to it the Almoravid part of the Bayân of Ibn Idârï, of which I was able to become aware late and of which the Hulals are clearly inspired. The details provided by this manuscript are very important. It is, therefore, difficult not to follow these two books in explaining the facts. It seems very acceptable to us: nothing legendary, no golden history, precise details, likely psychology. The discussion will come next, especially for the dates.

Reason and underlying reasons.

Residents of a city taken by force are rarely satisfied with the occupiers, and one imagines that those of Aghmat, like those of Sijilmassa a few years ago, saw the Almoravid looters arrive without much pleasure, not to mention hatred. Their people and their property could only suffer from the rudeness of their victors, but the Almoravids themselves probably did not like the walls they had conquered. We know the horror of the Saharans, like that of all the nomads of the world, for the hard roof; for them, only the tent is noble! Accustomed to the immense horizons of the deserts, they were not yet accustomed to staying in a tight agglomeration, they lacked air and freedom there and let themselves be won over by nostalgia for space.

Thus the Almorvids were not made for Aghmat, and Aghmat, with its gardens and canals, was not made for them, for their tents and for their camels; this was what Abü Bakr could only observe after the death of Abd-Allah.

It is all this that the author of Bayân and that of Hulal let us guess, when they show us the overcrowded and disorganized city and the chiefs of the tribes Urika and Haylàna intervening, unceasingly, near the emir to make him accept the idea of ​​going to build a city (Madina) elsewhere. He finally allowed himself to be convinced and made the decision to choose a new site for his residence, better suited to the circumstances and the demands of the time. At first, he refused to settle on the banks of the Tensift, whose “banks did not suit Saharan customs.” Was he afraid of the sudden floods of the desert wadis of the tsetse fly that lives only near rivers? We do not know. In order to avoid any jealousy between the tribes, we quickly agreed to establish the new city between the territory of the Haylàna and that of the Hazmira, which allows us to admit that, by and large, the wadi Issil separated the two tribes, unless it was the Tensift wadi itself.

The point chosen had advantages that will shed light on the underlying reasons for the transfer. The new site accepted, it was pointed out to the emir that the “Nfis valley would be his garden, the lands of the Dukkàla his granary and the reins of the Atlas government … in the hands of his master”.

We can find in these reflections the real reasons for the choice: to approach a day of walking in the nourishing regions; moving away from the mountains and moving west, avoid any surprise attack; effectively control the Masmouda of the Atlas more difficult to pacify in their haunts than those of the plain and, so numerous, tells us Ibn yaldün, that only the Creator knew the multitude. It was no longer a question of monitoring one of their valleys as one could do with Aghmat, or with Neffîs, but to turn one’s eyes to all of them at the same time.

1. THE SELECTED GROUND

In the plain, there was no shortage of space, and the presence of the Guéliz mounds must not have been foreign to the orientation of the research, although the texts do not tell us about it.

The Hulals tell us only one thing: the bare and flat land on which Marrakech was created was between the territories of the Haylâna and Hazmira tribes; it was, therefore, neutral ground.

Some authors speak of a marshy lowland. It may have existed, but the double slope of the city, south-north, and east-west makes this precision not very defensible, without forgetting that the unhealthiness of a place should not escape the founders of a camp.

Idriâ, followed by others, in particular by the author of Qiriàs, was the first to point out that the land came from a purchase made by Yùsuf b. TaSfin to the inhabitants of Aghmat; another said to the Masmouda of Neffîs; Mu’jib to a black slave. ” Nâsirî in Isiiqsâ adds: “It is also said that on the site of this city existed a small village, located in the middle of a forest and that inhabited a tribe of Berbers.” These details are acceptable if we are to admit that the forest was made up of large tufts of jujube trees, and not willows as Djennâbi specifies because we know the horror of all the nomads for the forest as for the mountain.

For our part, we would gladly offer the following explanation, which takes into account the old economy of the Moroccan countryside. By its situation, between two tribes, and by its flat and bare aspect, the ground on which Marrakech was founded represented the ideal position of a rural market filling up once a week, according to the theoretical law of the distribution of fairs in a closed cycle. His outfit must have gone back to a fairly distant time since, in a country where the brushwood was so strong that it could be called a forest, its soil had not retained any.

Besides, would it be very adventurous to imagine that the Almoravids applied one of the oldest principles of any peaceful conquest by allowing the mountain dwellers to come and refuel in the plain? In Berber, the concept of protection extended to commerce is familiar. There are many rural markets under the aegis of a religious or political figure responsible for ensuring their security. They constitute a kind of neutral ground where enemies can meet without fighting. These notions were not to be foreign to the Almoravid chiefs.

Thus, without going so far as to say that Marrakech owes its fortune to the political circumstances which favored the development of this hypothetical weekly market, it would not be forbidden to think that the choice of the people of Aghmat and Abü Bakr did not been instinctive. There is no absolute beginning in history, and it has long been remembered that the initial element of the Muslim city is not an oppidum, but a market, especially when it comes to nomads.

Subsequently, the soil and the subsoil of this land proved to be excellent. The large and heavy minarets that Islam built there have never suffered from a lack of firmness in the foundations of their foundations, and the water table has always been abundant and shallow, the water fresh and exquisite.

III. – THE EXODUS AND THE ORGANIZATION

Abü Bakr, probably having considered, according to an old Arab axiom, that the three essential conditions for an establishment were fulfilled: water, firewood, and animal food, one day gave the order for the transfer. We saw him, on horseback, accompanied by his suite of Lamtùna, the Masmouda chiefs (of the plain), and the principal notables of Aghmat going to occupy the chosen site, which was only a large, sterile and naked place (fina).

We have no information on this exodus, which for us Westerners represents considerable problems of organization and preparation. It is nevertheless very likely that certain rules were adopted to distribute the districts between the human groupings, or between the chiefs. The conditions of this distribution are unknown to us, but a line from Bayân suggests that the Almoravids sheltered “their people and their flocks according to the customs of their country,” which suggests that the tents were numerous. As for the Masmouda, they built adobe houses according to “their fortunes and their needs.”

The whole of the city-camp was then surrounded by an enclosure of “thorns of jujube tree.” But was such a foundation solid? Its relief, since we had not wanted, or not known, to use the Guéliz to make it an oppidum, offered no serious obstacle to stop the march of a numerous assailant; the hedge of thorns, even if it was high and thick, did not give the defenders an indisputable superiority, it could burn in a few minutes.

So we understand that the Almoravid chief, generally informed, ordered, from the first day, the construction of a casbah whose shell would have been completed about three months later. It was the Qasr al-Hajar (the stone palace) that the author of Bayân expressly attributes to Abü Bakr and not to Yüsuf b. Your end, as we always believed and wrote.

The year 460, the Almoravids, etc. “Certainly, as G. de Slane reminds us, Bakri is neither very well, nor very quickly informed about what is happening in the Maghreb, quite concerned that he is about the gravity of the Andalusian hour, but how does this Cordovan specialist would he not know, in 460, that, as Qirtàs will later affirm, the veiled Saharans, five or six years earlier, occupied Fez, founded a city and recruited a militia in Europe itself! The news has always been transmitted so quickly in the land of Islam! In our turn, and after Lévi-Provençal, we have the right not to give credit to the chronology of the Qirtàs, even if it was adopted without discussion by a historian of the value of Ibn îjaldün.

If the date of 454 inspires us the most lively reservations, that of 470, advanced by Idrïsi, the first Arab geographer who mentioned Marrakech in his works, even if it is reproduced by Yâqüt and Watwàt which are far from being experts about the South Moroccan, seems to us to delay the official creation of the capital too much. It may represent an event that, in the state of our knowledge, we are unable to define. Note, however, that the first author who sought to specify the date of the founding of the city gave a very late compared to that which is commonly accepted. This is all the more reason not to believe in Qirtàs.

It then seems very difficult not to admit for the effective foundation of Marrakech a date going from 459 to 462 with guarantors like the author of Ylstibsàr who lived in the city, Ibn al-Atîr, whose compilation “is of the greatest value “and especially the Bayàn d’Ibn ‘Idâri, of which Lévi- Provençal, the best master in the matter, thought that it was the most important and most detailed source among those who are currently susceptible of being exploited in the early ages of Islam in Berber.

It now remains to explain why the Almoravids who took Aghmat in 450 / 1058-59 (the date is Bakri) would not have evacuated the city, which wanted more of them, only after nine years, maybe seven, or even twelve, as the Hulals say after the Bayàn.

Should we imagine, as Bakri’s text seems to authorize us, that after the death of Àbd-Allâh and the resistance of the Berghouata, the Almoravids not only withdrew to Aghmat but pushed with their spoils to the desert, to come back a few years later? A text by Ibn Haldün relating to the history of the Banü Hammad could help us to admit it. We read: “Buluggin having known that the Almoravids ordered by Yusuf b. Tasfin had tamed the Masmoudian populations, he marched against them in the year 454 (= 1062-63) and threw them back into the desert”. And this precision takes on extreme importance for us since it puts Ibn Jialdün in contradiction with himself. Won’t he say a little further than Marrakech was precisely founded in 454?

If we now had to choose between 459 and 462, (1067 or 1070), and again that we do not see the point of trying to maintain that Marrakech started on such and such a time, we would gladly trust the dating of Ibn’ Idâri, because his book was composed in Marrakech, in the “very conservative environment of the Berbers of southern Morocco, and that it is not abnormal that, a little more than two centuries later, episodes relating to local history were kept in the memories of men.

In conclusion, it seems reasonable to give Abü Bakr the honor of having chosen the site of Marrakech, to have settled there first, probably in May 1070, and to have started to build there the first Kasbah of Almoravid history. He is the founder of Marrakech.

This merit does not detract from that of Yüsuf b. Taèfin, whose political genius will give the city the empire that will make it a significant capital of the Middle Ages. It is by a natural consequence of the admiration that this extraordinary man aroused among the people of his time that all the honor of the founding of Marrakech fell on his name. Thanks to Ibn cIdàrî, we can do justice to his cousin Abü Bakr b. Umar and associate them both in a common glory.

1. – NAME OF MARRAKECH

The question has already been partially studied by A. Ruhlmann, who owed all his documentation to P. de Cénival and to M. G.S. Colin. The Mas-Latrie collection also provides a great deal of information.

The ancient and classic form of the name under which the city was known from its foundation is Marrâkus, and the current pronunciation is Merrâkus, that is to say with the two R empathized and vocalized in Along the first A taking a neutral value and the final U hardly being heard anymore.

However, in a unique manuscript dating from the 12th century and kept at the Library of the Al Qarawïyin Mosque in Fez, we find the spelling: MRWKS which must_match according to MGS Colin to a MARRÜKüS pronunciation and must be at the origin of the Spanish Marruecos or the Hispanic novel responds to the hushed medieval.

The Murràkis form is posterior and, despite the authority of several considerable authors including Ibn Hallikân, Hajji Halïfa and the author of Qàmüs, seems to be a creation of Moroccan scribes, eager to give the name a more Arabic form.

But what is the origin of the word? The etymologies advanced by the authors seem very fanciful.

For Marrâkusï, it was the name of a black slave who had settled there to practice brigandage. The word küs, which has come to mean Negro, must not be foreign to this etymology.

Ibn Hallikàn gives an etymology by a pun. The meaning of this name in the language of the Masmouda would have been: “Go away quickly” because the place where today stands Marrakech was a place of ambush for the brigands and those who passed there said these words to their fellow travelers.

It seems wiser to adopt the solution of P. de Cénival and to think that it was probably a very old locality. Does the word have a Berber meaning? According to L. Rinn, “Marekouch would be a name of the third form, derived from Arkouch, that is to say, Ourkouch, son of Kouch.” Marrakech would, therefore, mean, according to this author, “the land of the sons of Kush.”

Finally, note that the French merchant P. Lambert, author of a very substantial Notice on the city of Morocco, reports that the city would have received its name, like Kairouan perhaps, from a well that is now dry, located almost in the center of the city, which is not impossible. Whatever its etymology, Marrakech appears from the thirteenth century in Western documents.

We find Marrochs in an undated letter from Reverter, Viscount of Barcelona, ​​captive in Marrakech, which is from the beginning of the reign of Ramon Berenguer IV, king of Aragon, that is to say, one of the years which follow 1131 Then appears the “king of Morroch” in a peace agreement with the Pisans, dated 1133 “. For the middle of the twelfth century we have two testimonies of: “Régis Marroch” (around 1141) in Orderic Vital and in Chronica Adephonsi imperator is recounting the splendors of Alphonsus VII, King of Leon and Castile, who reigned from 1126 to 1147:

“Marrocos, in civitatem quœ dicitur”

“Marrocos, in civitatem Marrochinorum.”

At the end of the century (1198), the rex Marochetanus received a letter from innocent III.

From the twelfth century, the quotations relating to Marrakech multiply, and we refer to the work of Mas-Latrie (p. 66) and to the study of Ruhlmann (p. 53) to note that the use of the lesson Marochium becomes more and more fixed.

For the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, we have the Italian portolans and the Catalan maps, the latter quite remarkable from the point of view of cartography. They can easily be found in the magnificent work by Ch. De la Roncière on the discovery of Africa. The planisphere of Angelius Dulcert (Majorca 1339) still gives a “Marochus”; that of the Venetian brothers Pizzigani (1367) a “Marrochuum” the Catalan Atlas of Charles V (1375) a “Maroch” and a Genoese planisphere, later (1457), a “Maroco.”

Then Marrakech opens up to modern geography thanks to Leon the African who signs his manuscript of Y Africa in 1525-26 “Marocco” and to the Portuguese anonymous to whom we owe a description of Morocco (Marrocos) dated 1596.

From the list of all these lessons, we can, with Ruhlmann and his advisers, draw the following conclusion. In the etymological Berber form of the word Marrükus, the final we US was later confused with a Latin nominative in us (pronounced us in late epoch novel). This detail explains secondary repairs such as Marchio, Marochium, Marrochinorum. But the word was ultimately reported, in European languages, by removing the ending of the nominative, to a truncated radical Mar(r)oc, hence the modern forms: Marocc-o in Italian, Morocco in English, Marrokko in German, and Maroc, in French. The Hispanic novel, on the contrary, has kept the original Berber from Marruecos (pronounced elsewhere in Castilian Marruecos), a form barely adapted, by its vocalism, to the phonetic laws of Spanish.

The name of Morocco then applies to the entire kingdom, as we did for Tunis, Algiers, or Tripoli.

1250 de Cénival had found a Latin text which shows that the name of Marok is given, from the fifteenth century to the whole country. To this unique example, on which with his usual rigor, the late scholar did not want to rely too much, another, illustrious, can be added, and we will take it in the Divine Comedy. We know all too well what passionate interest aroused for a long time the problem of the sources of the masterpiece of Dante like that of the influence exerted by Islam on Western civilization in the Middle Ages, to be surprised. We will be even less remembering the numerous relationships which existed in the thirteenth century between Italy and the Almohad dynasty, in particular, the contests of Ceuta with the Genoese in 1234 f65) and the correspondence exchanged between the last of the Almohad princes and the Pope in 1250. In Song twenty-sixth of Hell, Dante describes the last voyage and the death of Odysseus. Full of his old ardor to know the world and the humans, the famous navigator, with his old companions, takes the high sea again and says:

[Around 105] “I saw the two shores as far as Spain (Spagna) as far as Morocco (Morrocco) and the Island of Sardinia (Sardi) and the other islands that this sea bathes around …

[To ioç] So that no one dared to venture further. So I left Seville (Sibilia) in the right hand. On the left, already Ceuta (Setta) had left me. ”

The text is too clear to insist. Dante, who opposed Seville to Ceuta, can only oppose Spain with Morocco.

And it is not indifferent to us to note that it is in one of the masterpieces of universal literature that Marrakech gave, for the first time, its name to the extreme Maghreb.

It should be noted, however, that if Dante wrote around 1300, his work was not published until much later and that the first complete French translation of the Divine Comedy dates only from the second half of the sixteenth century.

Despite this illustrious precedent, it was not until the middle of the eighteenth century that the word “Morocco” appeared quite often with its current meaning.

The first example to be found is in Bidé de Maurville in 1755 (72). The author usually writes, according to ancient usage, “the king of Morocco,” “the Empire of Morocco,” but already (p. II of the introduction): “For several years, there has been talking of ‘a peace between France and Morocco.’ It is an ellipse for the “kingdom of Morocco.”

A play by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814) is entitled “Empsael and Zoraïde, or the white slaves of the blacks in Morocco.” We read page 3: “The blacks are all-powerful in the empire of Morocco.”

It is not forbidden to reconcile the favor of the word with that of the city, which is reborn thanks to the care of Sultan Sidi Muhammad b. Abd-Allah. He did not reign until 1757, but he had already restored some splendor to his capital at the time when he was still in Marrakech, only his father’s fyalifa. In any case, it was under his reign that the practice arose, which became a habit in the middle of the nineteenth century, to call Morocco the whole country.

In 1814, in his “Voyages,” Ali Bey always writes the “kingdom of Morocco,” “in Morocco,” but he seems to designate by these words as well the whole country as the city of Marrakech and under the name of “ Moroccans,” residents of the whole country.

In 1844, Ch. Didier titled his book published in Paris, “Promenade au Maroc”; in 1846, E. Renou his, * Geographical description of the Empire of Morocco … followed by itineraries and information on the country of Sous and other southern parts of Morocco “. We find in the preface (p. 3): “The text of the authors who have written on Morocco” but also: “a trip to Morocco.”

In 1853, the excellent Carette repeated several times “the empire of Morocco,” but the following year Father Migne came back again to oppose the kingdom of Fez to Morocco proper. ”

In 1860, Léon Godard published in Paris, in two volumes, a “Description, and History of Morocco … with a general map of Morocco”, and the following year Barbié du Bocage wrote a “Geographic notice on Morocco.“

Since then, the current usage is fixed, “Morocco” is generally used to designate the country; it will, however, continue for some time to apply also to the capital.

But while the name in the form of Morocco passed from the city to the empire among the Europeans and that it was maintained in the countries of Arabic language where the Maghreb is still called Marrûkus or Murrâkis, the dialect form Merrâkes gradually regained the favor. As the western travelers went to visit the city and as the word Morocco applied to the whole country, the dialect form would gradually impose itself on the need for distinction. It had never been ignored or forgotten. Here are some examples among many:

– D’Herbelot, in 1776 gives the two forms Marakasch and Marrakech.

– Venture de Paradis heard Merakich in 1788, from the mouths of Moroccans who came to Paris.

– Gràberg de Hemos in 1834 writes, “Marocco or more exactly Maraksce or Meraskasce.”

– In 1833, Charbonneau called our capital Marrakech.

– In 1839, Ad. Balbi writes a Geography Abridge, which he publishes in Brussels, where a chapter is reserved for the Empire of Marock s Capital Morocco or Marok (Merakasch) ”.

– Finally, we find very exactly the current spelling. Marrakech, in 1886, in the new Universal Geography by Élisée Reclus.

But it is likely that this name was not commonly used before the Recognition in Morocco of Ch. De Foucauld. In 1891 did E. Mercier in his History of North Africa not call the capital Morocco yet?

In conclusion, from a possible Marrùkus and a certain Marrâkus, the capital of the South has arrived at a time which seems fairly recent to most often take the name of Marràkis. But from the highest that our information goes back, the dialect form of the toponym (Merrâkes) has always been used.

Until the end of the nineteenth century, the city most often bore the name of Morocco in French, which, however, from the eighteenth century, began to apply commonly to the whole empire.

In 1912, the evolution of the French was finished. The name of the city had become what it is today, Marrakech, St Morocco officially became the name of the whole country.

CHAPTER III

THE CAPITAL OF YUSUF B. TASFIN

1. – Yusuf b. Tasfin: man.
2. – Yüsuf b. Tasfin, lieutenant of Abü Bakr.

III. – The break with the desert.

1. – The Sanhaja Empire.
2. – The capital in formation.
3. – The tomb of Yüsuf.

VII. – Table of empty Almora sovereigns.

1. – YUSUF B. TASFIN: THE MAN

When Yüsuf b. Tasfin takes power and settles in Marrakech, he is over sixty years old, but his physical and intellectual resources are intact. He is a chef born from the constant selection of the desert, this school that forgives neither the weak nor the faint-hearted. One will quote once again the excellent portrait of the Qirtâs: “brown complexion, medium size, skinny, little beard, soft voice, black eyes, aquiline nose, the wick of Muhammad falling on the end of the ear, eyebrows joined together.” ‘to each other, frizzy hair’ (maybe he was black!) ‘He was courageous, resolute, imposing, active, constantly watching over the affairs of the state, and the interests of his cities and his subjects, carefully maintaining his fortresses and always busy with the generous, beneficent holy war, he disdained the pleasures of the world, as well

mother, just and holy, he was modest even in his clothes, however great the power that God gave him, he never dressed except with wool to the exclusion of all other material; he ate barley, meat, and camel milk, and kept strictly to this food until his death. ”

The Hulals further add: “He never inflicted a punishment stronger than imprisonment in time. He honored jurists and revered scholars; he referred them to public affairs to get their advice that he was keen to follow. ”

In short, a true nomad, a monk and a warrior at the same time, but who would have had time to get married, to raise his children with care, to surround himself with quality women, to take, the first in the Maghreb, the title of the emir of Muslims and found a united dynasty, the only Moroccan dynasty that has known neither fratricidal struggles nor palace assassinations.

A rough man likes this stranger who never returned to his desert tribe. Its history, if we knew it better, would illustrate in a striking way the transition from nomadic life to sedentary life that the great sociologist Ibn $ aldün considers as the normal evolution of clans and empires.

1. – YUSUF B. TASFIN, LIEUTENANT OF ABÜ BAKR

Yüsuf, after the departure of Abü Bakr, chief of the Almoravids, went to Marrakech and took the reins of power seriously. He understood that the Saharans, already weakened by the death of Abd-Allah, were again weakened by the departure of his cousin and the main body of the army, who, in truth, should never have been very numerous. He immediately decided, in order to prevent any help from the mountain, to hasten the defense work and doubtless to make the Qasr al-Hajar invulnerable.

Having then a solid defensive position, it needed troops to be able to pass to the offensive movements. Also, the following year, he sent to recruit in Andalusia a personal guard of 240 to 250 European horsemen whom he reassembled, and he made buy or hire at his expense about 2,000 black Sudanese, intended for his militia on horseback.

The money necessary for this operation was largely supplied by an extraordinary tax imposed on the Jews; according to Bayàn, it brought in more than 113,000 dinars. On the other hand, he was far too devout not to have immediately thought of building the mosque that history attributes to him. And one wonders if in the eyes of Muslim annalists, this pious creation of land did not count much more than the stone castle of Abü Bakr and if it is not for this reason that all the honors have returned to that one rather than this one.

We have not found this mosque in toub (adobe), and therefore we do not know if it was inside the fortress as in Sijilmassa, or outside. The discovery of a basin in the casbah may suggest that an Almoravid mosque was nearby, this is the opinion of the Qirtàs. But another historical text teaches us that the mosque, which today bears the name of Alï b. Yüsuf was built in place of another, which was in use. This is an interesting clarification, which does not exclude the tempting hypothesis that the first mosque in Marrakech rose in the very center of the city.

All we know, according to the Qirtas, is that like the Prophet Muhammad who worked in person on the construction of his mosque “to encourage Muslims to do the same,” Yüsuf, covered with bad clothing, rolled up his sleeves and mingled with the artisans responsible for raising his own. One cannot find a more suggestive illustration of the renunciation of this nomadic chief to the life of the desert, so unfavorable for the fulfillment of the Koranic prescriptions.

One can believe that, as he did in Fez, Yüsuf b. TaSfin demanded that every street in Marrakech have its oratory, although it must be noted that, until his death, the texts known so far do not speak of the existence in the city of any other mosque.

Yüsuf’s resources, as well as his needs, quickly became important. He created a monetary workshop (dût as-Sikka) in Marrakech, which struck round coins in the name of Abü Bakr.

He organized two expeditions, one to Moulouya, whose inhabitants submitted, the other to the region of Sijilmassa where certain Zenet tribes which had entered into dissidence were raided.

Finally, to crown his success, Zaynab gave him a son, Tamïm al-Mu’izz bi-llâh.

III. – THE BREAK WITH THE DESERT

However, his happiness was suddenly obscured when he learned that, after peace had been restored in the Sahara, Abü Bakr was returning. He then realized that it would be extremely painful for him to give up the power he had exercised in an absolute manner, by simply keeping Abü Bakr informed of what he wanted to say to him. Abü Bakr returned in 465 / 1072-73. He stopped outside Aghmat, and his troops camped around him. No doubt he was already informed of the progress made by his cousin, the fortifications established, the mercenaries recruited and he immediately understood that Yüsuf, well chaired by his wife Zaynab whose intelligence and spirit of opportunity he knew, did would not easily hand over to him a power which he had imprudently delegated to him. His warriors understood him before him, and many of them hastened to greet Yüsuf by offering him their services. Yüsuf, in the feelings he was in, could only receive them with favors and promises. It was more than enough to keep them.

Abü Bakr only had to save face, and God knows if it is important for the nomadic tribes. He asked his cousin for an interview, and the two met in the middle of the countryside, exactly halfway between their two cities. Abü Bakr was not without noticing that his competitor was not dismounting before him as before, and they both dismounted to discuss business, in ancient simplicity, on a burnous thrown on the ground. Abü Bakr tried to put on a good face. He declared to have come simply to regularize the situation and after declarations of friendship, and in the presence of all the notables, chiefs, scholars and courtiers and in particular of the Masmouda emirs, the first interested, he officially handed over the command of the lands of the Maghreb to his cousin, who did not fail to thank him.

Through the text, we feel all the coldness of the meeting of the two emirs, both attentive to their respective gestures, ready to order the attack or to defend themselves. The ceremony must have been less enthusiastic, and each of the two groups quickly returned to their quarters.

On the way back, Yüsuf b. Tasfin, obeying Zaynab’s suggestions, had considerable gifts loaded on 150 mules and mules of choice, had them led by one hundred and fifty slaves, and offered them all to the man he still recognized as his nominal chief. The convoy also included (I put some order in the list) 25,000 dinars of pure gold; 70 horses including 25 all harnessed with gold carrying 20 young virgin slaves (the five others probably carrying dinars); 70 sabers, 20 of which are decorated with gilding, 20 pairs of niellated spurs, 7 large standards, one of which is made of silk, 70 cloth coats, 32 long dresses of scarlet cloth, 200 ordinary dresses, 200 tunics of various varieties and colors, 700 white garments or dyed, 1,000 pieces of linen fabric, 200 burnous of various colors, 100 light coats, 100 turbans, 400 caps, 10 pounds of fragrant wood, 5 pounds of musk, 2 of fragrant amber, 15 of ambergris, etc., etc., not counting a herd of cattle and sheep and loads of wheat and barley.

This royal mailing was accompanied by a beautiful letter in which Yùsuf apologized for not being able to do better and which we would like to read if it was well written!

Abü Bakr, who had lost everything, was satisfied with the process. He could enter his tribe, and he was in charge of loot, the honor was saved. He kept his word and never tried to return north, too busy fighting in the desert for the greater glory of Islam and his own.

This brave champion of the Islamic faith was killed at the pass that bears his name in the Tagant mountains where his lapidary epitaph was found. The “gesture” of Abü Bakr ended in 468 / 1075-76. His son Ibrâhîm came the following year to Aghmat to claim the crown from his father, but he received advice of prudence, and substantial gifts rewarded his erasure.

This is how the Hulal and the Bayàn tell us the facts that are at the origin of the city. But different or contradictory details are not lacking from other authors, and we will have to review certain problems closely, without having the hope of always finding a solution. At least we will have asked them.

1. – THE SANHAJA EMPIRE

Having broken with the desert, well-armed, well sheltered in an impregnable casbah, Yùsuf b. Taâfin was able to begin the conquest of his empire. This great work was done in two very distinct periods. He went first to the nearest and the most urgent; after having entrusted the nominal government of Marrakech, Aghmat, the Atlas and the Sous to his young son Tamïm, barely four years old, he began in 1074 the conquest of North Morocco and the central Maghreb before to be pushed, by events as much as by ambition, to seize Muslim Spain from the Mtilük at-Tawa’if.

The conquest of North Morocco. – It proved difficult due to the fierce resistance of the Zenetes. The takeover of Fez, giving it a base of operations, enabled it to gradually extend its authority from Tangier to Moulouya.

Then the Almoravids went to subdue Oran and the region of Ouarsenis to finally remove the last capital of the Zenites, Tlemcen, near which Yüsuf b. Tasfin created Tâgràrt, the current Tlemcen. The Almoravid armies only stopped in front of the mountains of Kabylia. Finally, in 1083, Ceuta fell. This victory, crowning the work of conquest of the great Saharan chief, now master of a territory which stretched from the Atlantic to Algiers and from the Mediterranean to the Atlas, was also a prelude to the Spanish expeditions.

The conquest of Muslim Spain. – Yüsuf would perhaps have remained deaf to the calls of Andalusian emirs, frightened by audacity and the Christian reconquest, if, in 1085, Toledo had not been returned by a Muslim chief to Alphonse VI. Islam saw this occupation as insulting and Yüsuf b. Tasfin, freed from worries on the side of the Zenetes, was able to join in the general humiliation by promising to act. The following year the Almoravid armies won a great victory at Zallaqa, and their leader, who had personally directed the expedition, returned to Marrakech with huge booty and the honorary title of Amir al-Muslimin wa nâsir ad-din ( commander of Muslims and defender of the faith).

But he was caught in the spiral, and following new setbacks suffered by Spanish Islam, he crossed the strait at the head of his troops. As a result of the revolt and the duplicity of the Andalusian Muslim princes, he suffered a failure before Aledo. He returned to Morocco ulcerated and decided to take revenge by subjugating Muslim Spain, as all those who had an interest in seeing his authority settle on the old Umayyad lands should suggest to him.

In 1090, the emir of the Muslims crossed the sea for the third time, and, in the name of a decision (jatwâ) of the doctors of Islam, he annexed the principalities of Granada and Malaga. The other Andalusian chiefs took fright and turned to the Christians. Yüsuf was only waiting for these new impious alliances to provoke new decisions from his learned jurists. And Tarifa, Cordoba, Ronda, Carmona, and Seville were thus annexed. In the Levante, Almeria, Murcia, Jativa soon fell. In 1094 it was the turn of the kingdom of Badajoz. Alone, the Cid successfully resisted Valencia, but in 1102 the principality fell like the others.

At the beginning of the 12th century, Yüsuf was, therefore, the master of the provinces of Muslim Spain. He had collected for the first time almost all the lands of Western Islam under the authority of the Sanhaja. Marrakech was no longer the small fortress intended to monitor the roads of the atlas but the capital of a Maliki and Berber empire, a large city in the making.

1. – THE CAPITAL INFORMATION (14) (PI. VIII)

Nothing is known about the relations of Emir Yüsuf and the city. We know better its role in Fez. He unified the city of Idris by ordering the destruction of the walls, which made them two cities. He also ordered the expansion of the Kairouan mosque and championed Malekism. He demanded that each district have its oratory and entrusted to craftsmen from Cordoba the construction of fondouks, mills, and baths and also of a casbah, where he concentrated his troops before undertaking military campaigns. He organized the markets, etc.

We have the right to think that Marrakech, without being treated as well as Fez, was not absolutely forgotten, although Yüsuf spent in the northern city most of his existence and that the idrisid capital had on its rival from the South two centuries in advance and already long past in the service of Islamism and Hispano-Moorish civilization.

We know nothing of the numerous problems which arose with the administration of the city, they would be very difficult to define exactly. It is that in the beginning, Marrakech should not be compared to a Chleuh village of today, but to a semi-sedentary, semi-nomadic center, where the exercise of religion had to be long enough the only essential urban fact, and even the only excuse for the nomad who became sedentary.

We do not know by what processes we went from the noble tent to the uncomfortable gourbi or the bourgeois house, and from the necessary poverty of the light and solid furniture of camel drivers to Andalusian comfort, this comfort which kills courage, say the Bedouins.

The ease with which the Saharans passed this formidable course is obviously linked to their Spanish conquests, but who knows the nomadic world, has no trouble realizing that it is the woman who has accomplished the work of transformation. It is that very often it had to be taken on the spot, like the famous Zaynab (which, in truth, came from further away).

In any case, the Almoravid tents only had time. Many sedentary Masmouda came to gather in the camp. And all these men, where vagabonds and adventurers must have been numerous, built at random. All means we’re good for the construction of their residences, as soon as they felt the need to settle down. The Guéliz stone was far away, the shallow water, the excellent clay, the subsoil rich enough in lime so much reason to think that the adobe constructions must have risen fairly quickly. To cover them, the Dir forests were only a day’s walk away and the Masmouda sold beams and logs with profit, therefore with pleasure.

The framework of the city gradually changed as a result of the developments that the occupation of the land made necessary. But as the surfaces were flat and the planning and construction methods little varied, the urban ensemble must have had a certain unity. Tents, cowsheds, and houses mixed at the beginning in a proportion which it is impossible to fix.

Whether our initial market assumption is correct or not, Marrakech is rapidly growing its business. A market quickly flourishes if it meets in a constant location and if a police force can guarantee the safety and the freedom of the commercial exchanges.

The wealthy merchants of Aghmat, fallen to the rank of a “forced residence,” certainly followed the consumers, not to mention the courtesans of whom Marrakech has always made fame.

As the ancient nomads adapted more easily to commerce than to culture, one might think that a real division of labor was organized. The Almoravids engaged in fruitful traffic between Spain and Niger, and Marrakech gradually ruined Aghmat; the Masmouda chose to work the soil, using ancestral techniques, but with the results of relative safety.

Should we ask the question of the origin of the palm grove? Did the first Almoravids really have the idea of ​​founding one? It’s doubtful. These warriors were only passing by and were not interested in the degrading culture. They knew that if date palms live long, they only grow slowly and that, for nomads, it is not necessary to plan to be happy. The Almoravids came, moreover, from a region, Mauritania, where the palm groves were never prosperous and where the inhabitants never had that few cultural traditions.

Thus Marrakech does not reveal in its origins any intention of metropolis. A casbah, a few residences for the harems of the chiefs, elsewhere poor constructions, cattle pens, but a life teeming in Bedouin filth, a picturesque jumble of soldiers, courtesans and peasants, a continual fair for merchants always more numerous, the first bateleurs and also the first influences of Andalusia, this is how one can imagine this curious agglomeration of which we do not know at this moment the extent, the true limits and the importance of its population.

Yüsuf b. Tasfin, by sending his cousin back to the desert, probably did not want to found a capital. We have the right to think that for him, as for those around him, the Maghreb city, it was Fez and it is indeed to this city that he devoted his efforts. And now his creation escaped him. It had become a populated city, the capital of an empire, whose genius, accustomed to vast spaces, does not seem to have been surprised.

A great city was being organized, which was to experience unusual glory for two centuries, presiding over the destinies of a country which was unknown to itself and which Western influences will soon transform into a land of art and culture. For the Almoravids, reformers as they were, could not, in contact with a higher civilization, not experience the needs of luxury, comfort and renewal, the effects of which we will soon see.

VI – The Tomb of Yusuf b. Tasfin

When Yüsuf b. Tasfin, after a long illness, died in Marrakech, at the start of Muharraro 500 (early September 1106) the centenary could look back. The little chief of the Sanhajas was at the head of an empire that went from the Tafalalet to the Ebro, from the Ocean to Algiers. He had won a great victory in Spain, at Zallaqa, in 1086, the same year when, for some, Abü Bakr was killed in Tagant. He had been offered to free himself from Abbasid vassalage by allowing himself to be called “Prince of the believers,” he knew how to be satisfied with the title of “commander of the Muslims” which then appeared on the currency which he had beaten in his name.

He had created modern Morocco and its administration. Admittedly the conquest and the organization remained to stabilize, but the great work of the Andalusian civilization was started. So well stated that, like the Umayyads of Cordoba, the old emir was buried in his palace.

However, soul’s sensitive to beautiful verses will reproach him for his conduct and his severity towards the famous sovereign of Seville, the poet al-Muetamid whom he had exiled in Aghmat and who died there miserably in 1095.

The author of the Sa’âdat specifies that he was buried at a place called as-Sujayna, as was Sidi Qàsim Bü Sajda, whose qubba is known. The excavations of J. Meunié, by updating the Stone Castle “revealed that this qubba and the cemetery that it overlooks were inside the fortress. The tomb of the founder of the city is, therefore, “over there,” we do not know where.

The people of Marrakech, who love their saints, did not readily admit the disappearance of such an illustrious tomb. On a date that is difficult to fix, he began to venerate a tomb located two hundred meters south of the Koutoubia. In a line of adobe walls, along a very old seguia of running water, undoubtedly the oldest in the city, a small dilapidated door, indifferent to the passing stranger, gives access to a modest enclosure ( Hawi) of a few square feet. In the middle, in an east-west position, is a block of masonry in the form of a molded prism, painted with lime. It is approximately 3 meters long and 0.80 m in base and height. There is no date or registration. We know absolutely nothing about this set whose simplicity surprises the visitor and to which Western travelers have done a lot of publicity.

It may be a cenotaph, Marrakech knows of others that will have been raised in honor of the sultan whose name was pronounced in more than 1,900 chairs (Qirtas).

It is said that Sidi Muhammad b. Abd-Allah, who reigned from 1859 to 1873, and to whom the city owes so many restorations of religious buildings, had deliberately neglected to take care of it. The ignorant were astonished, but the learned approved this abstention, Yüsuf having ordered, before dying, that he was made the tomb of the humble servant of God, which does not include a panegyric engraved in marble, nor a funeral chapel. Sultans, or pious souls, would have forgotten this recommendation, but each time a dome was raised above the tomb, the shadow of the great conqueror came to collapse it.

True tomb or cenotaph, the whole in its abandonment, does not lack grandeur. And if these four walls do not bear the imprint of popular fervor, visitors do not lack, however, because the pilgrimage has the virtue of healing fluxions. Poor women, on Thursday, lead their children and ask the illustrious dead, whom they still believe to be present, to deliver them from evil.

1. Yusuf Ali                                             3. Tasfin (1143 – 1145)

→                                  ﹛ 

(1071 – 1106)                           (1106 – 1143)                                  4. Ishaq (1145 – 1147)

ALI B. YUSÜF,

MARRAKECH AT THE SCHOOL OF SEVILLE

1. – AIî b. Yüsuf. man (1106-1143).
2. – The miracle of khettara. – III. – The problem of the palm grove.
3. – The monumental work: private constructions.
4. – The monumental work: public buildings.

1. – THE MAN

Alî was the son of a Christian slave from Spain named Qamar (Moon) who bore the nickname Fâd-al-Husn (More than perfect!). He was born in Ceuta in 1084-85 and had been carefully raised in this famous port. When, in 1103, he was designated as presumptive heir, with the disinterested assistance, it seems, of his brother Tamïm, the son of the beautiful Zaynab, his father, who began to be wary of worries of power, allowed him to familiarize himself with certain affairs of the State and he succeeded there to the satisfaction of all despite his young age. So it was without hesitation that his family and learned scholars, towns, and countryside recognized him at twenty-three as the prince of the Muslims.

Tall, with a lively complexion and black eyes, he was good, a friend of continence and an enemy of injustice. But if he was first a brave warrior and a wise administrator, knowing how to surround himself with collaborators of great merit, he soon granted all his preferences to the study of the Law and Religion and gave too much importance to fuqahâ ‘malekites who scandalously took advantage of the considerable influence which the new sultan allowed them to acquire at the court.

Heir to a peaceful and wealthy empire, he was also a friend of the arts and a great builder. He had monuments erected during his long reign of “hitherto unknown scope and decorative richness” in the Muslim West. This Andalusian of heart and mind knew how to root Hispano-Moorish civilization in the Maghreb and make his capital a replica of the great Andalusian cities.

We know more and more in Morocco the importance of the work of the Almoravids; we will soon know the rediscovered splendor of the Kairouanese mosque in Fez.

In Marrakech, despite the purifying destruction of the Almohads, patient research and fruitful excavations have made it possible to restore to the Saharan dynasty works, which honor the city and which we will never stop admiring!

However, history always criticizes cAlï for having authorized, out of hatred of theology and theologians, the burning of the books of the great Gazâlï who had too great a hold on the cultivated minds of his time.

He died in 1143, following an overly energetic antidote. This precision is the only medical episode that Maimonides reports in his works. It is found at the end of his book on asthma: it is a consultation that took place in Marrakech before the death of Ali and of which Maimonides told the story of the sons of Avenzoar, of Ibn al-Mucallim and of eAlï b. Yüsuf.

1. – THE MIRACLE OF THE KHETTARA The khettara

Ali seems to have understood, from his advent, that the first task that fell to him upon entering Marrakech was to provide residents with sufficient water. It is that water is an extremely important thing in a country of Islam where its problem prevails over all the others. It is not only a question of drinking, giving water and watering; it is also necessary to purify. Now ritual cleanliness is a real obsession for the believer in the Muslim religion. We then understand the imperious subordination of the Almoravids to the tyranny of water, which was not offered to man in the form of a source, river, or pond, but which was hidden in the ground. When the very pious sovereign planned to build a grand mosque for his city and a grand palace for his use, he had to think of fetching water where it was found.

The wells dug in the water table were no longer enough for the big city that was becoming more and more every day. Marrakech. A historical text indicates that the engineers of the emir thought, first of all, to bring towards the city the water of the torrents of the Atlas, and more precisely, of Ourika. But it was the Almohads who said the same text, completed the work.

We know what solution was finally adopted to face the problem: it was that of the khettaras. We explained at length that the khettaras were formed by wells connected to each other by an underground gallery, which brings the water flush with the ground by a slope softer than the slope of the plain. The technique of this process was introduced in Marrakech, according to Idrïsï, by an engineer named Abd (or eUbayd) Allah b. Yünus al-Muhandis during the reign of Ali.

Mr. G.S. Colin wondered what the origin of this specialist was. The Andalusian affinities of the prince, the Spanish origins of the craftsmen as well as the scientists with whom he surrounded himself, the name “Abd-Allah commonly worn by converts, the name of the father, Yünus, that is to say, Jonah, who was at the time carried by the Christians and the Jews rather than by the Moslems, the profession of muhandis (engineer) finally seldom exercised by the Arabs, all contributes for the learned master at making suppose that the technique of the underground galleries was introduced in Marrakech by a foreigner. MGS Colin still thought that the khettaras were only specific to the desert regions, he had therefore concluded that the engineer was Jewish and that he had imported this technique from the Saharan oases and in particular from Gourara and Touat where precisely the current natives attribute the foundation to the old Jewish population which dominated in these regions until the persecutions of the fifteenth century.

But recently Mr. Oliver Asin published, in a study on the water problem in Madrid, the plan of underground pipes of the Spanish capital. Their toponymy is obviously of Arab origin. Should Marrakech still owe Spain the man and the principle that for centuries have allowed it to drink? We would understand better than that it was under the reign of Ali that the khettaras were introduced in Morocco. If they had come from the desert, why would the Saharans of the first generation not have thought of it themselves since the reign of Yüsuf b. Tasfin?

However, the thesis of M. G.S. Colin does not seem to us to be definitively invalidated.

First, because today in Marrakech, the specialized workers who have the monopoly on drilling khettaras come from the valleys of the southern slope of the Atlas and folklore, if we wanted to take the trouble to ‘Organizing research, would undoubtedly make it possible to raise this specialization in the chronology of southern Morocco quite high. Is this not the consequence of the fact that the first master craftsman who succeeded in the city came from Todgha? Note, however, that the builders of khettaras, mediocre in their country of origin, do not improve until they arrive in Marrakech. In the city itself, it seems that their district, the “Dcher Todgha,” has always existed. Their patron is Sidi ^ JP * Ahmad b. Kàmil who died in Marrakech in 1196.

Then, it seems inexplicable to us, if the Moroccan khettara comes from Spain, that it has not adopted the name of qanât, which it still carries in Madrid and which is the one under which it is known throughout the Muslim East.

Whatever the origin of the real civilizing hero who was the son of Yünus, Moroccan Islam thus acquired the heritage of a millennial practice which had flourished in Mesopotamia and Persia and which had probably been introduced in the Sahara at the same time as the camel, unless it was simply by the many Persians who came to North Africa with the Arab conquest.

Alï filled Ibn Yünus with presents and marks of consideration. Faced with the assurance of never running out of the water, the rich owners of cultivable land hastened to adopt this marvelous process for the vegetal conquest of the soil. The tapping of the suburbs of Marrakech was started.

No doubt Ali, or his advisers, though not only of supplying the city’s mosques and the cisterns of the palace but also of creating gardens in the city and near the city to supply the ever-increasing inhabitants. On this subject, one can still wonder if Ibn Yünus had not worked for his former co-religionists who could, since the city was forbidden to them, settle in the periphery, dig wells and grow vegetables from which they would have benefited by selling them to the inhabitants of the city. We will return later to the Jewish question in Marrakech at that time.

Soon Marrakech, which Idrisi said had only one garden, soon had a large park on its south face, as-Sâliha. The traces of one of its basins are still visible, only on aerial photographs, south-east of Bab Aghmat, in the middle of the tombs of the largest cemetery in the city.

Other gardens were planted east of the city, beyond the Issil wadi, and took the name of buhayra. One of them will be the site of one of the most dramatic days experienced by the Almohad warriors.

III. – THE PALMERAIE PROBLEM

We have no details on the conditions under which the palm grove of Marrakech was created. (PL VII.)

Like Spain, Morocco has known palm trees since antiquity. The tree is already on the coins of King Ptolemy, son of Juba II. The Haouz has certainly known the palm in diffuse form for a long time, and perhaps even a particular species vegetated there as residual flora. Bakri told us that all around Agmât-Urika were gardens and “date palms,” but neither he nor Abü-l-Fidâ, who confirmed it, were eyewitnesses.

1. de La Chapelle pointed out, with good reason, that the Zenetes were probably the creators of most of the Saharan oases, in particular those of Tafilalet and Haut Dra. We do not see well indeed the Sanhajian nomads, without agricultural traditions, create plantations of trees with very long fruiting, and maintain them.

Did the Almoravids try, when they had the possibility of fertilizing their land with water from the khettaras, to plant date palms because, for the people of the desert, “it is the only tree that counts,” and because was an oasis “the only foundation they could make”? Nothing is less sure. Mr. Capot-Rey has just reminded us that the palm tree was not only absent from the central Sahara because of the cold, but also, because of the excessive cloudiness, of the entire Atlantic coastal area and in particular of the Seguiet al-Hamra, the cradle of the empty Almora.

No ancient Arab author tells us about the date palms of Marrakech, and how could we have forgotten to tell us about them if they had existed in the natural or maintained forest?

Kitâb al-Istibsâr said clearly, towards the end of the 11th century: “Marrakech is the city of the Maghreb where we find the most gardens and orchards, where we find the most grapes, fruits and fruit trees of all kinds … It is mainly the olive tree. ” Not a word on the date palm.

Another text talks about the palm trees of Sijilmassa, the dates of Biskra, Gafsa or the acid fruits of Tozeur, but remains silent on the palm grove of Marrakech.

Yet another reports a palm grove in Taroudannt, palm trees in Aghmat, but not a tree in Marrakech. Finally, if Ibn Said agrees to write that the city is “today surrounded by a belt of fruit trees of all kinds,” he traces it back to the Almohads.

Let’s add? These arguments a silentio that the Almoravids of the time of Ali were no longer Saharans were no longer nomads. Yüsuf b. Tasfin never returned to the desert; CAU, his son, completely ignored him.

As for the inhabitants of Haouz and Dir, these millennial olive growers, how would they have thought of planting date palms, and why would they have created only a palm grove?

The fact remains that the khettaras were the work of men who, if they came from the Saharan oases, had long been familiar with the “tree of life,” as the Chaldeans said. But these landless well-diggers, and moreover attached to their tribes of origin by powerful links, how could they have had the opportunity to plant? What is certain is that the dates, therefore the stones, came from all points of the desert and that the date palms of all species grew more or less spontaneously, as they still grow today in Marrakech, where the soil quality and the proximity of the aquifer allows them to develop.

Undoubtedly also the Almoravids respected and used these blessed trees, praised by Muhammad and in the shade of which the Koran gives birth to Christ, but they did not indulge in an intensive culture to which disappointing results would have quickly led them to give up. If we cannot, therefore, speak of involuntary creation, we at least think that the palm trees grew slowly without anyone realizing it very exactly and that we respected them and then used them.

The palm grove of Marrakech, therefore, does not seem to be an economic error, as Gautier said, nor is it simply the result of man’s work, an effect of his will. It is a bit miraculous because the man had better things to do. The spectacle of the Dir’s large olive groves, always rejuvenated by spring sap for millennia, showed him the way to go, and the grafted olive tree replaced the wild argan tree, as the author of VIstibsâr suggests.

1. – THE MONUMENTAL WORK OF ALI:

PRIVATE CONSTRUCTIONS

The new palace

The casbah erected by Abü Bakr, and inside which the great Yüsuf had come to die, could not be enough for a young cultivated ruler, rich and full of Andalusian experiences and memories.

So Ali undertook to build a palace in the south of the Kasbah, and undoubtedly it is necessary to take the date provided by a chronicler (520-1126) as that of the end of the works and not of their beginning.

Nothing was known about this building, or at least it was known that it had been razed by the Almohads to make way for the Koutoubia. But the excavations undertaken in Marrakech by M. H. Terrasse and carried out by M. J. Meunié with great scientific rigor made it possible to find important vestiges of it (a patio, a Riyad, a monumental door and two large cisterns). If they are far from constituting the whole of the palace, which was to extend far beyond the excavation area, it is likely that they were part of it, a detailed examination of the places which made it possible to declare them after the fortress and identify some details. It was probably the part reserved for the family of the sovereign or his servants of a higher rank. The staterooms were elsewhere, probably further south.

The door of the palace.

1. Meunié cleared a right door against the eastern corner bastion of the Yüsuf Kasbah. It is a kind of corridor more than ten meters long, limited at its two ends by a semicircular arch which has collapsed today. If the east side is partially built of adobe, the two north and south facades are large blocks of Guéliz stone, which explain why the building was often called: qaws al-Hajar (the stone arch).

The west side is different, entirely built in stone, with walls two meters thick, it envelops the bastion on three sides and considerably strengthens it.

The corridor between the two arches was probably not vaulted, a simple floor resting on enormous beams could be enough to support the roof or the floor on which we have only one information. Ali Bey el-Abassi published in the Atlas of his Voyages an engraving which shows, not far from the minaret of Koutoubia and roughly towards the location in question, a quadrangular and elevated tower of three or four floors. The drawing is not very precise but, as all the information given by Ali Bey on Marrakech has always proved to be accurate, there is no reason to doubt the existence of this tower at the beginning of the 19th century. Was this tower built above the door that has just been discovered? We would like to believe it. Does it date from the Almoravid era? We do not think so or with very later modifications. In any case, it is quite likely that a large room was located above the corridor door and that the open staircase in the corner bastion was used to access it. (PI. XVIII, a.)

By carefully examining the different walls that join or overlap at the meeting point of the fortress of Yüsuf, his son’s palace and the Almohad mosque, J. Meunié noted that the stone door that he had cleared had been built not only after the fortress, but after the palace and before the mosque, and he deduced therefrom that this monumental gate must have given access to all the buildings reserved for the sovereign.

As was the case later with the great door of the Kasbah of Marrakech and that of the Oudaïa in Rabat, it was not built for a defensive purpose, but rather with a decorative thought. It was probably a front of the palace where the guards made visitors wait before introducing them to the prince.

Nothing prevents us from suggesting that the sultan himself could come to administer justice once a week, as has always been the custom among Muslims and, in particular, among the Umayyads of Spain. We know the fortune in the East of the expression “go to the Door,” which is to say to the official audience of the sovereign.

This monumental door could, therefore, have been built by Ali, and no other door could, as well as this deserve to bear his name. His device is similar to that of the minaret of the nth prince that I found in the center of the city near the current Ben Youssef mosque, and a text reinforces our hypothesis. Relating to the capture of Marrakech by the Almohades, an author says that Abd-al-Mu’min captured by force his citadel and those who were entrenched there. Some who remained refused to surrender and grouped themselves in an upper room (gurfa), which was above the door known as “Bab Ali b. Yüsuf “, then they asked for forgiveness, etc.

Perhaps it should be seen in the upper room that covered the door a veritable gallery, like the one the Almohad will soon have near the entrance to their new Kasbah Palace. The qubbai-as-suwayra (Mogador pavilion) of the current imperial palace marks the end of the evolution of this kind of building.

The patio of an apartment.

Part of the courtyard, on the ground floor, was surrounded by a sidewalk, bordered by a row of bricks laid in the field. This very narrow sidewalk on the east and west faces was widened in a portico with two pillars on the other two faces; so that the two porticoes each preceding a room faced each other.

We are not surprised to see that this is the classic plan of a small bourgeois house (dâr) today, of which one could cite a hundred examples in the city.

Riyad.

1. Meunié has found a charming little interior garden. It includes a basin with drain and overflow, the plaster of which was still painted in red, and two paths in dess, which, by cutting in the center, delimit four rectangular flowerbeds; small pottery pipes passed beneath the paths so that the water coming from the basin could successively irrigate the four rectangles. The aisles ended, except on the side of the basin, by three steps, giving access to the raised perimeter while lengthening the perspective.

Riyad and patio are extremely interesting. Until their discovery, Leon the Africans did not seem to have known them; it was thought that this type of residence was fairly recent. If its distant origin is difficult to determine, at least we can see there, with J. Meunié, an Andalusian import, for lack of another probable hypothesis. The Hispano-Moorish tradition is moreover underlined in these vestiges by the richness of water, which runs everywhere and the discovery during the excavations of a magnificent Umayyad tent.

Marrakech, therefore, has the pending new discoveries, the patio, and the oldest Riyad in Morocco.

Twin tanks.

To consider only the position of the tanks in the courtyard of the first Koutoubia, one would be tempted to consider them as almohads all the more since the texts of Idrisi and Leon would not oppose this attribution. But the excavations brought archaeological details that confirm the Almoravid origin.

The reservoirs of which Idrisi speaks must, therefore, be sought elsewhere, unless, as the very text of the Arab geographer suggests, these cisterns were started by the Almoravids and completed, by transforming them, by the Almohads.

We know that these did not lack practicality; we will see it later.

Large, built-in bricks, their barrel vaults are supported by three double arches and rest on straight feet of about one meter in height. The dividing wall is pierced, at its base, according to a very old technique, with curved holes that ensure communication between the two tanks. Higher, other smaller openings, in the form of a broken arc, were made.

“The tanks are fairly irregularly constructed, their plan is not exactly rectangular, their sides are not parallel to those of the courtyard, and their ends are not perpendicular to their own sides” (J. Meunié). All horizontal or vertical inside corners are trimmed with a quarter circle. A staircase at the eastern end of the tanks seems to have been the only way to draw water since there was no coping.

As for the small openings that are found irregularly arranged in the vault of the tanks, they were probably placed to allow the masons to see clearly during construction. That’s why they were found completely clogged when the tanks were cleared.

The feeding was to be carried out by a small seguia coming from the west of which we found some vestiges and which was probably a derivation of the Almoravid pipe, which entered the casbah by its southern door and which probably came from a khettara dug in the southern suburbs of the city.

The Pelvis.

Among all the discoveries of J. Meunié, nothing is more charming than the set which he studied under the title of the basin and of which we summarize his technical description. Located inside the fortress and leaning against its wall immediately to the right when entering through the south door, this basin has the shape of a segment of a circle, and the thickness of its edges, larger towards the middle, accentuates its elongated aspect by tapering its points. Water gushed out through a lead pipe in the center of the basin.

Another pipe of copper placed outside was used to evacuate the overflow. A brick sidewalk surrounds the basin and supports four pillars. In the south, the part found has two mandes, and the central pillar is wider than the others.

Shallow, flat-bottom niches on the north face of the pillars were probably topped by an arc. The pillars were joined together by twin arches resting on a small column and two half-columns.

One can wonder what could be used for this basin, which had to be covered if only for the protection of the decor. Was it a fountain? The water level was too low above the ground. A midha? The set lent itself quite well, and the midha Almohad would have taken its place behind the rampart. Maybe the cold room of a bath.

Whatever its true destination, what makes the price of this small set, it is not only its unique plan in the archives of Muslim archeology but above all its beautiful interlacing of red stripes, painted on plaster (PI. IX, a), which have been carefully noted by Ch. Allain. What characterizes them is the predominant use of the curve, the multi-lobed medallion taking the place of the usual star polygon. The use of the circle and its derivatives allowed the artist to express his fantasy in a purely geometric design.

From the comparative study carried out by J. Meunié, one can date this decoration and undoubtedly the building of the Almoravid period. J. Meunié does not dare to specify whether it is appropriate to attribute the paternity to Yüsuf or to his son Alî. We will not have the same scruples. It would be a misunderstanding of the character of the first to imagine that he could take pleasure in ordering or appreciating such work, he who in the desert had often been able to use only sand to make his ablutions (tayammum). Her son Alï, raised in Andalusia, was undoubtedly much more sensitive to this game of subtle arabesques.

This charming edifice perhaps represents the young sultan’s first reaction against the austerity of the paternal casbah while waiting for his new palace to be completed. In any case, with the Umayyad marquee found in the excavations of the Koutoubia, he lets us guess what the palace might have been on the site from which the Koutoubia mosque is built today.

1. – PUBLIC BUILDINGS

The 0AU mosque and its outbuildings. (PI. IX, b)

It was believed for a long time that there was nothing left, but Moroccan scholars still know very well how to recognize its old limits, which, to tell the truth, can easily be read on the maps at 1/1000 or at 1/2000 in Marrakech. We know indeed how often is the creation, around an important architectural ensemble, of streets which retrace its outline long after its disappearance.

The mosque was limited: to the north by Zaouiat al-Akhdar Street which passes in front of the Habous Inspectorate and along which there still exists a venerable adobe wall, solid and thick, still bearing some tall windows; to the west, by the rue des Baroudiyin whose shops hide the stone minaret that I found under a huge pile of garbage; to the south, by a line parallel to the north wall and articulated on the bend in the rue des Baroudiyin; to the east, by the current rue de la Médersa in its part parallel to rue des Baroudiyin and which, through the médersa, was to join the eastern end of rue Zaouiat-al-Akhdar.

The surface thus delimited formed a regular rectangle of approximately 120 by 80 meters, which made this oratory the largest of the Almoravid mosques known.

The importance of this building offers no reason to be surprised, Marrakech, which has become the capital of the Muslim West minus Ifriqiya, was undoubtedly a very populated city.

On the other hand, on the death of his father, ‘Afi had found a public treasure, colossal for the time, which allowed him to satisfy his lavish tastes. According to Ibn al-Qattan, the building of the mosque would have cost sixty thousand dinars.

The date.

The date on which the mosque was built or completed is not easy to determine.

Ibn al-Qattân, followed by the author of Hulal and Zarkasi, places it immediately after the battle of Buhayra, in 520/1126. This date can only be accepted as that of the end of the works since the Hulals bring Ibn Tü-mart into the mosque in 514 / 1120-21 and Zarkalî in rabr I 515 / May-June 1121. These last dates are from elsewhere confirmed by Ibn IJaldün and Ibn al-A | îr.

As for the minaret, only one author gives details; Ibn al-Qattan tells us that it was built in two stages. The first third was first built, and it was not until three years later, in 527/1132, when the strength of the foundations was reassured, that the other two-thirds were completed.

Ali Bey believes that the mosque was built in 1152 AD, which is impossible since the Almohads kidnapped Marrakech in 1147 and, at the very least, closed the mosque of Alî.

The yaws. (PI. IX, b)

It is very difficult to restore because there are only a few sections of the walls left. Nevertheless, by analogy with the Andalusian oratories and in particular that of the great mosque of Cordoue, whose influence was obviously exerted on the minaret, we can admit that the prayer hall would have had roughly the form of” a square of 80 x 80 meters and the courtyard (Sahn) that of a rectangle of 80 x 40 meters.

As the minaret found does not seem to have been in the axis of the presumed mihrab we could deduce, while waiting for excavations to confirm our hypotheses, that a door was in the middle of the west wall, at the very foot of the minaret, as in Cordoba before the expansion of al-Mansür.

Two doors of the current mosque are open on two corridors whose external ends perhaps represent old doors of the primitive mosque. The harmonious symmetry which reigns, as a rule, in Muslim oratories, and in particular in that of Cordoba before the last enlargement, does not allow us, despite some likelihood, to add to our hypothetical sketch ccs two doors lined with their symmetrical openings. As for the leaves of these doors, they would have come from Andalusia according to an amphigouric text of low time.

About the orientation of this mosque which, at least according to our sketch, was obviously defective, we have two texts which bring us very interesting information.

In the Rihla du Marabout de Tâsaft, and according to the muwaqqit ar-Rasmükï (1720-21), when it was a question of building in Marrakech the mosque called the Fountain (masjid as-siqâya) which was the name of the mosque of eAH under the Almohad: “the commander of the believers Ali b. Yùsuf had gathered in this city forty jurisconsults, among whom was Abü-l-Walïd b. Rusd »

We find the same detail in a recent book on Safi, where the author reports that Prince Alï b. Yüsuf to orient his mosque well surrounded himself with forty jurists, among whom was Malik b. Wahayb (1130-31) and Abù-l- Walid b. Rusd (1125-26).

It will be noted that this number of forty corresponds to the urban Ayt. This term designates in almost all of Berber Morocco, the Central High Atlas, the Middle Atlas, and the Rif, the assembly of notables in a tribe, or an independent fraction. The Almoravid dynasty had, therefore, remained, despite its intransigent malekism, very attached to the old organization of the Masmouda on which it had nevertheless imposed its domination.

The minaret. (PL X)

It was not without luck, or without all kinds of trouble, that I found the vestiges of the minaret which Ch. Allain finished clearing. It was an imposing Guéliz stone construction ten meters wide. If the minarets of this era were three times the height, it is, therefore, a monument of around thirty meters, which was to dominate the neighborhood. But has it been finished?

The release of this minaret made it possible to find the door which faced the mosque and opened into the sahn. From this door went two staircases, one on the left, one on the right. This arrangement recalls exactly that of the minaret of Cordoba, specifies similarities that there is every reason to believe intentional and justifies our assumptions on the plan of the mosque. But were these two stairs separate to the top? In the absence of text, it is difficult to say. Perhaps they stopped on a first platform?

We have already seen above that the minaret had been built in two stages and finished in 1132-33. I imagine that the upper parts left without care during the great Almohad period, as the symbol of the fallen dynasty, could gradually collapse and that Moulay Sulaymàn, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, did not have much to do to shave the upper part of the building.

The pulpit to preach.

We know that Koutoubia today contains a venerable masterpiece of Hispano-Moorish art, and we now know, thanks to J. Sauvaget, that this pulpit is Almoravid. Indeed, if the added koufic inscription which adorns the outer edge of its magnificent file tells us that it was made in Cordoba, this same file contains another koufic inscription of which J. Sauvaget has precisely emphasized the great historical value.

Originally this inscription included three cartridges / one of which, the one in the middle has disappeared, but the text of the first and third allows the restitution of the second, the whole calling for divine benevolence on an emir who can only be the prince Ali b. Yüsuf.

That this chair is Almoravid, there is, therefore, no doubt. That it belonged to the mosque of Al Ali, we know absolutely nothing about it. But where could she come from?

From Cordoba, where the Almohads could have taken it from the Great Mosque, as they did for the famous Qur’an said to cUîmàn? Under these conditions, why would the chroniclers keep so many memories of the transfer of the second and absolutely none of that, so difficult, of the first? Is it not more likely that this transfer could have taken place quite secretly when, the first Koutoubia completed, he quickly needed a pulpit, and someone then thought of the one that was deposited in the mosque of Alï, disaffected for a long time, and that few Almohades had been able to admire, probably locked up in a room where its sacred character had allowed it to escape looting? It is not unreasonable to believe it.

Unfortunately, this pulpit has suffered a lot from time and deserves, after the essential repairs, to be deposited in a museum protected from any destruction, for the enchantment and the profit of all those who are interested in masterpieces, universal work of art. Its beauty has not escaped the attention of chroniclers whose texts remind us of the high esteem in which we held this famous piece of furniture.

It is of imposing size 3.86 m in total height, 3.46 m in depth, 0.87 m in width. It is a nine-degree minbar, very classic in shape, where mosaic and carved wood combines admirably. At the start and at the end of the staircase, there is an arch, the lower one higher than the other. They are connected by a coarse ramp, obviously added afterward. Inside and outside, the decoration of this minbar is incredibly rich, particularly in the large upper hanger forming the high back. “It constitutes a sort of symphony where precious woods and ivory combine their resources in a unity of harmony, where each panel is a motif whose subtle inflections are difficult to detail. We feel that this minbar is the fruit of a long artistic effort; it represents the masterpiece in the sense of our Middle Ages, the best or the best Cordovan workshops. We would like to know the names of the masters who composed and sculpted it.

The marble ablution tank.

In the madrassah, which today bears the name of  Alï b. Yüsuf owing to its contiguity with the mosque of the same prince, a marble vat was discovered adorned with three floral registers and, on a reverse / carved with winged quadrupeds and heraldic eagles. A Koufic inscription indicates that it was made on the order of the famous Hâjib oraeyyade Abd-al-Malik, who lived at the end of the tenth century. It has been argued that it must have been brought to Morocco by the Almohads. Nothing is less sure. If the princes of this dynasty had it transported, it would certainly have been to adorn their palaces or their mosques. But would their Puritanism have appreciated an animal decor? We don’t think so.

It is more likely that the transfer had to be organized following an order from Sultan Ali, in order to decorate his grand mosque or one of its annexes with an object that was worthy of it in all respects. The tank could also simply come from Fez, where it is known that the hajib Abd al-Malik had a fountain installed.

And crossing, thanks to its weight and its size, all the vicissitudes of the history, it was preserved in the very places where it had undoubtedly been extremely difficult to make it arrive. This rare piece is today the oldest monument in the city.

Water distribution: the monumental fountain and the basin

sheltered under a dome.

Close to the mosque, and probably beyond the width of a street, the Almoravids created a whole set intended to provide the faithful with the water they could need for drinking, making their ritual ablutions and perhaps even water their mounts.

1) The monumental fountain. It occupied a rectangle of 14.5 m x 4.5 m approximately, divided by two arches into three compartments open on the street by three bays in the form of arches, probably in a semicircular arch. J. Meunié and Ch. Allain believe that each basin was covered by a ridge vault whose births were located substantially above the arches. The whole was fitted with Guéliz stone. The floor in front of the fountain was tiled to avoid the inconvenience of the mud.

The building, therefore, had the monumental appearance of the large and beautiful fountains of today, of which it was obviously the venerable prototype. Originally, however, it did not include the usual three large pools, but troughs along the walls. These troughs communicated with each other, and their edges were lined with black stone slabs. The water came through bronze pipes from a small rectangular tank covered in a vault and located behind the fountain.

It is likely that this Almoravid monument remained standing for a long time. In any case, the leveling works which made it disappear date from the construction of the qaysânya of the Fâsïs (nineteenth century).

2) The basin and its dome (PI. XI). – The initial rectangular basin, surrounded by a double channel and a step, was found by J. Meunié, under the materials of four successive elevations, with a total height of 1.70 m. Like those who replaced him, he offered no particular interest. It seems difficult to see in it anything other than the reservoir made available to the faithful to draw from it the water necessary for their ablutions, the court which has always surrounded this basin having long been made up of small cells where the faithful could s ‘isolate.

But this basin was covered and defended from the sun like rain by an extraordinary building, a kiosk, says M. G. Marçais. It is a qubba built on a rectangular plan with four strong piers marking the corners. The piles are joined together over the lengths (around 7.30) by two twin arches, bypassed and broken, falling on a small pillar of square plan with cut corners. The widths (around 5.50) are made up of lobed arches. Above these openings, the façades have a smooth, slightly protruding strip, then a row of five (length) or three (width) arches, surmounted by a new strip and merlons with stairs. The roof consists of a large brick dome, adorned with interwoven arches and decorated with chevrons surrounding a seven-pointed star.

To reduce the basic rectangle to an interior square, on which the dome rests, each of the lobed arches of the widths is doubled by a semicircular arch of one meter thick, forming a vault.

Inside, above the top of the arches that frame the basin, an epigraphic cornice in caves, supported by a strip of straight and curved tracery, marks the level of the floor.

The magnificent characters of the inscription recalled the name of the founder Ali b. Yùsuf. Unfortunately, they were most probably hammered by the Almohads after the capture of Marrakech in 1147, and their reading was extremely painful.

Above the headband, and without the support of angle tubes, the eight large ribs of the dome leave directly from the cornice leaving four empty spaces at the corners and by narrowing from the classic octagon on which rests the small octagonal dome at the top. There is, therefore, no correspondence between the rectangular plane of the exterior and the octagonal plan of the interior, just as there is none between the internal dome and the external dome, which takes the place of the usual pavilion of tiles with four slopes.

In construction, stone, brick, wood and false joints so expensive at the time, were used with obvious happiness, since the building, of unique elegance, was revealed extreme solidity.

But more than the strangeness of the plan, the documentary interest of the inscription, or the primary destination of the building, it is the interior decor that makes all the value of this magnificent qubba. It reminds us of the finest hours of Spanish art in the 11th century and shows us to what extent the invention and the taste of these artists could be combined. The art of Islam has never surpassed the splendor of this extraordinary dome. (PI. XII.)

The Tensift bridge.

The geographer Idrisî also tells us that Prince Alî had a bridge built over the Tensift. He had brought for this purpose Spanish architects and other skillful people; the work was built with all possible solidity. Idrisï adds that after a few years, the waters, coming with an irresistible force, carried off the major part of the piles, dislocated the arches, destroyed the bridge from top to bottom, and dragged the materials into the sea. Mention of this Almoravid bridge, the first built in southern Morocco by Muslims.

Its economic importance was great, especially in winter, when the river was in flood and prohibited the passage of fords. It then allowed permanent communications between North Morocco and the capital.

ALI B. YUSUF:

MARRAKECH, STRONG PLACE OF ISLAM SÜNMTE

1. – The construction of the city walls. The decision i. The date. The rampart and the stars. The route. The south face. Matter: the adobe. The wall and its annexes. Conclusion. –
2. – Doors and their problems. Their number. Bab Aylen. B b ed- Deb’oagh. Bab el-Khemis. Bab Taghzout. Bab Massufe. Bab Doukkala. Bab Laraïs [Bùb ar-Raha). Bab el-Makkzer Bab aS-Saria. Bab Effis. Bab as-Salika. Bab Aghmut.
3. – THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE REMPARTS OF THE / ILLE The decision.

If Alî, more and more devout as he got older, seemed to think only of indulging in religious and spiritual practices, he did not neglect ps, as Marràkuàî said, “In an absolute way the interests of his subjects.” We want proof of this, not only the great religious sanctuaries which he had built but in; if the number of fortresses with which he knew how to garnish the mountains of the Aragon to contain the increasingly serious attacks of Almohad, which we will deal with soon.

The most important of these works was the construction of the wall of Marrakech, construction, which should have only been eight months, according to the author of the Hulal, and would not have cost 70,000 dinars in gold.

cAlï had not taken the decision of the constitution alone: ​​he had requested a consultation with the legal experts on. Most prominent of the time and had even taken advantage of the press, this in Marrakesh of the chief cadi of Cordoba Abü-l-WaUd b. RuSd, the grandfather of Averroès, to ask the question. It was precisely the latter who convinced the prince to surround the city and its inhabitants with a solid bulwark when otherwise men, according to Azammüri were not disposed to advise a job which seemed ruinous for the Treasury. According to the same source, Abü Ali-Allah Muhammad b. Ishq b. Amgâr, the holy sheriff of Tït (near Mazagan), would have sent part of his goods to ‘Ali to help him in his defensive enterprise. No doubt, he was not the only one.

The date.

The authors do not agree on the date of this work. The Kitâb al-Istibsâr, the first to give us one, fixes it at 514; he will be followed later by QalqaSandi.

In the sixteenth century, the Qirtàs, always followed by Ibn Haldiün, gives 526, the Bayàn. 527. The Hulals and then ZarkaSï reduce the date to 520, but another manuscript (XI) pushes it back to 522, and Ibn Saïd al-Garnâtî moves it away until 529.

The date of 526, and a fortiori that of 529, is false because, at the time of the affair of al-Buhayra dated with great precision by Baydaq of May 524, the city already has its walls before which the Almohads are forced to stop. In addition, we know that the grandfather of Averroes who advised Ali to build the rampart died, at the earliest, in 5197

The date of 514 is on the contrary too early because it is the same year when, still, according to Baydaq, Ibn Tümart arrives in Marrakech then withdraws in the mountain. He was not proclaimed Imàm al-Mahdï until 518.

The year 520 / 1126-27 is, on the contrary, very likely. Ibn Tümart has already raised part of the mountain and seems threatening enough to justify the construction of walls to defend the capital. This was, moreover, the opinion of P. de Cénival. It is therefore from Jumâdâ I of the year 520, that is, in May-June 1126, that we must date the beginning of the construction of the ramparts of Marrakech; they had to be finished around January-February 1127. Most of the work was carried out during the dry season, particularly favorable for the adobe, but the finishes, therefore the doors, were not finished until autumn. This immense construction several kilometers long represents a considerable effort, in which the entire population of the city had to participate with joy, and perhaps with profit.

The rampart and the stars.

The passionate interest that the Arabs have always brought to the study of astrology is not the effect of pure curiosity. They believed, they still believe, in the influence of the stars on human events. When they founded a new city, the location and especially the very moment of the foundation were determined by astrological observations and calculations. The Abbasids did this for Baghdad, and Fatimid General Djawher did the same for Cairo. Astronomy was encouraged in Andalusia by al-Hakam II.

If Leon the African is to be believed, Marrakech was built with the doctrine of learned astrologers. The Rihla du Marabout de Tâsaft teaches us much more. Its author received

in 1702 from a muwaqqit named Muhammad b. Ali As-San-Hâjï, who lived in Marrakech, the following information: “When the scholars of the king builder of the wall of Marrakech, by his order, questioned the stars about the time of its construction, the astronomers agreed to say that construction had to start when the moon entered a stable zodiac sign.

“Then we placed ropes around the edge of the city to give the (future) wall the shape of a quadrilateral surrounding all that there were houses in the city. The workers were ordered that none of them should start building until they saw the ropes move, except on one side which was designated for them. Then we observed the stars. The king watched for the right moment. When the moon descended in one of the stable signs, it was the first second of Scorpio, we considered at the same time (the position of) certain stars of the horoscope of the question. Perhaps they formed an “aspect of enmity, a quintile or an octile, which, according to scholars, is the most fatal.” When, at that very instant, a passing raven landed on the rope, which stirred before the moment awaited by the observers. All the workers began to build, and it was impossible to stop them because of the great distance which separated the various points around the city. God had so decided. This is why the walls of Marrakech have never been solid and require constant maintenance”!

This pretty story would be perfect if Maqrïzl hadn’t already told it about the founding of Cairo and, before him, Mas’ ùdi for the founding of Alexandria. The crow is wrong to be black! It is still a bad omen.

Whatever may be of this legend, we remain convinced that soothsayers with which the emir cAlï had surrounded himself, and in whom he believed, according to Ibn Haldün, did not fail to draw the horoscope before letting work begin the wall.

The route. (PI. VIII)

We have no information on the reasons which pushed the Almoravids to adopt a particular route, nor any reason to doubt the age of the current route. Diego De Torrés remarked already in the sixteenth century: “let the Moors say, that the walls which one still sees there today, and which seem quite good, are the same which were there at the time of the foundation.” There is nothing very normal in this: the establishment around the city of a complete defense system is too large an undertaking to be repeated often. We prefer to maintain it or rebuild it on its foundations rather than resigning ourselves to starting all over again.

Naturally, the Almoravid layout did not include, in the north, the whole religious district of Sidi-Bel-Abbés, attached much later to the city, nor the casbah, an Almohad creation of the end of the 12th century, nor the enlargement which had preceded.

The Almoravid layout, therefore, had the shape of an irregular polygon of about fifteen main sides, with a very long south face and an obtuse angle returning to the north face. No doubt, local circumstances imposed them in 1126. One could also imagine, to explain the two re-entrant angles of the west face, a sudden change of plan, repentance. An initial route would have provided for the summits of the two angles of the west wall to be connected with the angles of the Yüsuf fortress, and, at the last moment, we would have preferred to isolate the fortress inside the city and annex the gardens of the palace.

The author of the plan did not have to adapt to the flat terrain, but no doubt had to respect acquired rights, cemeteries, small religious buildings, or simply be tempted by the slightest effort.

As it was the perimeter represented approximately 9 kilometers which roughly corresponds to the dimensions of Idrisï:

“More than a mile long and about as wide,” the length being counted from east to west and the width from north to south.

But if the recognition of the route does not present any difficulty on the north, east and west sides, it is not the same on the south side where a large part of the original wall, as well as three doors, have completely disappeared.

The south face.

Let’s start from the east angle, which is safe. The wall rests on Bab Aghmat and goes straight to the west, but suddenly disappears in contact with the Mellah. How to continue?

We can see in the eastern part of the Mellah that the alleys which cut the imaginary extension of the rampart coming from Bab Aghmat, present, at this point, a surprising donkey ride; we deduce that this sudden rise in ground level can only be explained by the foundations of the old wall itself. It was the opinion of an old rabbi, who has since died.

So I lengthened the wall coming from east to the middle of the Mellah, and I suppose it was difficult for him not to join Bâb as-Sàliha. But as we do not find thereafter the speed bump in the following parallel streets, I imagine that the wall then directed towards the south, following an abnormally wide street of the Mellah, up to a point where it met with the extension of the wall which came from Bâb as-Sàliha and which precisely coincides with the main street of Mellah.

We are sure of Bâb as-Sàliha; moreover, superficial excavations have revealed some vestiges to us. Then I see no reason to doubt the age of the route of the current high wall between the city and the casbah. To my knowledge, no text, no testimony can be opposed to this attitude. That the curtain wall was often repaired, that the towers which supported it on its south face have passed over the north face at an indefinite time, that doors or posterns have been fitted out or condemned, no doubt all this has happened, but the route has not changed. When he moved, the wall disappeared. And it disappeared from the angle it currently forms with the wall that defends the Saadian Tombs.

There is still today a high and old wall that goes from this point towards the north. Does it indicate the old route? Perhaps, because it would connect a little further with the hypothetical wall which arrives from Bâb Neffïs and whose existence, in our eyes, rests only on the presence of a few old sections of niur raised long ago and some of which have now disappeared. One of them, exactly to the north of the Kasbah mosque, still exists, pierced with a small door. It has clearly preserved a few meters from the old walkway and can, without risk of error, be considered to be Almoravid. This is the opinion of my friends J. Meunié and C. Allain, whose substantial archaeological work is known.

Arriving at Bâb Neffïs, the wall was bound to join the curtain wall to the north, which, most probably, occupied the current street of the Mamounia hospital. The wall that protects the Arsat-ben-Dris to the east is undoubtedly a witness to this route.

It, therefore, appears that the layout of this south face can be found, and we will see that subsequently, the indications provided by the texts of the low period will not contradict our hypotheses put forward after long research in the field.

The material: the adobe.

When concern and fear had taken over, and the construction of the wall was decided, there could be no question of stone construction. Time was running out, and the Guéliz quarries were far away, the adobe was essential. We already knew that the reddish clay of Marrakech was excellent. The adobe also stood out for its ease of work and the low importance of its cost price. It required a lot of water, but the khettaras were in full development, and undoubtedly we managed to send water to this interminable site by channels duly drawn rather than by an expensive and tedious transport of millions of ‘wineskins.

The adobe technique was known. It comes from so far; it was found in Phrygia in the eighteenth century before our era! The Phoenicians knew it, but we cannot exactly locate the time when it spread in Morocco. The Arabic name of the adobe, tābiya, would go back to low Latin via the Spanish. On the other hand, all types of adobe architecture houses are from Roman sources, in particular, the house with patio and storey, which came from Rome through Andalusia. A recent survey has also made it possible to put forward the hypothesis that the adobe technique could have been introduced into Saharan Morocco via the oases.

Anyway from this origin, MH Terrasse does not hesitate to write: Even if the Saharan Sahajans long accustomed to adobe had a natural tendency to adopt Spanish concrete, the walls of Marrakech, with its thick towers and spaced out and its vast doors, represented at the same time the last state of the Hispano-Moorish fortification.

Ibn Haldùn in the Prolegomena (Art of the building) describes in detail the way of building using the adobe form. We prefer however the tasty description which follows: This manner of construction is very particular; the Moors have kinds of tables of the length and width necessary for this use; two of these tables joined together by two iron or wooden bars have a void between two conforming to the wall they want to build; in this void, they put red sand and lime mixed together, and with an instrument, which is only a big stick which ends in mass, they strike these two materials by throwing water on them from time to time until it seems to them that the mixture and the union are perfect; so that with several tables put in the same way, they raise a wall as much as they want and make it as thick as they like. This way of building is so good, and the red sand and lime unite so well together, that these walls last longer than if they were rubble.

The adobe is now known in Marrakech and elsewhere in Morocco under the Arabic name of lüh. Its appearance is characteristic because the coating with which it is covered disappears fairly quickly, and the birch holes reappear on the walls in their regularity. They become the nests of birds of all kinds and of insects of all kinds.

The solidity of the adobe wall may seem questionable to us, but experience shows that these walls, left in the open air and to the extent that their richness in lime is sufficient, are able to withstand all weathering; exposed without coating to the rain, they resist better than protected. Their worst enemy, however, is humidity. Saltpetre infiltrates by capillary action, and the base of the wall is constantly crumbling. By reinforcing with linked rubble stones, the bases which fall apart the resistance of the wall can withstand centuries.

The wall and its annexes

The curtain has resisted well for more than eight centuries, and if, very often, it had to be redone or repaired, it was with the same clay and the same procedures that it found height and color.

It is, on average, six to eight meters high, sometimes nine, but it is very difficult to say whether originally a uniform elevation was imposed.

Its thickness is impossible to assess with precision, but it never exceeds two meters at the base and never has less than 1.40 m.

For the surveillance of its immediate surroundings, the curtain was flanked every 25 to 30 meters of slender and hollow towers simply attached to the wall, according to Andalusian tradition. Many have disappeared.

The wall was crowned by a very narrow walkway (0.60 m) protected by a parapet with merlons; only a few of them have apparently defied time (PI. XIII, a). Capped with their pyramidion, they strangely resemble those who surmount the Porte de Cordoue, in Seville, and that the texts date precisely from eAlî, and at the latest from 1221-22 and to those of the precincts of Rabat for which the Almohads adopted, without doubt, the Almoravid type.

A question arises: was the rampart lined with a ditch? We know that the Tafilalet ksour, like those of Touggourt and Ouargla, was protected by a ditch parallel to their surrounding wall, those of Gabes too. Many authors, from Ibn Haldün, to travelers of the nineteenth century, have spoken of the ditch which preceded the walls of Marrakech.

In Marrakech, on a few points, this gap seems to have existed, without having played a particularly defensive role. No doubt, it was simply formed by the cuttings that served as materials to build or repair the curtain wall and the towers that support it. On the part of the eastern face of the ramparts, there is today a deep ditch, but it is that of a fairly recent khettara—the cadi Abbàs b. Ibrâhîm even thinks that it was after the digging of this khettara that Bab Larissa was condemned.

Conclusion.

It is worth remembering that in the thirteenth century in Europe, and in France in particular, the rebirth of cities was due, first of all, to the protection they offered to populations against invasions, looting, and robbery.

The ramparts of Marrakech have played a similar role, in front of the Almohads who have become more and more aggressive, by concentrating wealth and the arts within this immense polygon of raw earth. It was the decisive step; the former open camp became a closed city of Islam. It remained a center of Hispano-Moorish civilization, but in the middle of a huge Berber country, which was more and more hostile from this crystallization of the urban spirit and feeling in Marrakech, was perhaps born the divorce between the city and the countryside. This legal separation, the history of which we still do not know, and which should never cease to be reinforced through the ages, remains today for specialists one of the fundamental data of Moroccan society.

II – THE DOORS AND THEIR PROBLEMS

The late Lé vi-Provençal has already said the difficulties encountered by the historian of Islam in the face of the problem of locating doors and districts attested by the chronicles, but now disappeared. In Marrakech, the clues provided by ancient texts and the excavations carried out by the Inspection of Historical Monuments in Morocco allow us to be fixed with sufficient accuracy on the missing doors and, therefore, on the layout of the Almoravid wall.

Their number:

We have no indication of the number of city gates during the Almoravid era. Ibn Sa’îd advances, without comments, the number of seventeen doors, then adds that some have since been deleted. Leon, the African followed by Marraol, says twenty-four. Diégo de Torrés, followed by Father Dan, adds one. But none of these authors explicitly states that he is talking about the time of the Alraoravids.

Note also that the word bab designates in Moroccan topography not only the main doors of the city but also the interior doors. We saw it for the door of the palace of Ali, or simple posterns accessible to pedestrians alone.

The historical texts that we have consulted do not allow us to give Marrakech in the Almoravid era more than twelve doors. Sijilmassa had the same number, but Cordoba would have had only seven.

For the study of the doors, you have to go from the simple to the complicated and start their enumeration starting from the eastern wall, which has benefited since its construction of great stability (the wadi Issil must be there for something ) and move counterclockwise.

1) Bab Aîlen (Bâb Aylân). – This single elbow door, outside the wall, represents perhaps the door least touched up since the Ahnoravid era. It has been famous since the day when the Almohads suffered, under its walls, the famous defeat of Buhayra (1130). His original name was Bâb Hay- Iâna. The Haylâna constituted a small tribe of piedmont, which had emigrated among the Gadmïwa.

The current form Aylân corresponds to the Berber pronunciation and is found in Bakri. The prosthesis of laryngeal ha ‘in the Arabic transcription of Berber names was common in the Middle Ages. Ibn Haldün himself took care to inform us that the word he wrote Hintàt, hence the name Hinlàta, was pronounced Inti among the Berbers.

Haylâna or Haylân would also be a woman’s name where G. de Slane thought he had found Hélène. This first name is no longer used in Morocco.

2) Bab ad-Debbagh (Bâb ad-Dabbâgïn: Porte des tan nors). – This door is often attested upon taking Marrakech by the Almohades in 1147. It is the door of the quartier of tanners which is still in place. It is also the door one of the main cemeteries in the city. His five neck plan des, which is not an Almoravid, has often been reworked.

3) Bab el-Khemis (the door to the Thursday market). Formerly it was Bâb Fâs (the door of Fez). Legend has it that its leaves were brought back from Spain by a victorious sovereign. It seems to have lost its name during the meridian eclipse. The author of the Sa’âdat attests that this door is also known as Bâb as-Sayh Abï-l-Abbàs as-Sabtï.

Little remains of the Almoravid door, which had only an elbow and a semicircular bay between two rectangular bastions. (PL XIV, a.)

4) Bab Taghzout (Bâb Tagzüt). – This door, which became interior much later, has nevertheless retained its name, which is quite surprising, because we no longer know very well what it means, or at least what it represents.

It is a word that is frequently noted in the Berber toponymy and which indicates a depression, a valley, a garden, fractions of tribes. There is talk of a Tadla village of this name in Kitâb at-Taïawwuf. It is undoubtedly this center that gave its name to the gate of Marrakech unless it is quite simply the Tensift valley to which the gate faced.

Exactly placed at the top of the obtuse angle of the north wall, it still offers to the eyes a semicircular bay recessed Under an arc of the same shape. But the whole has suffered a lot and has been reworked. Of the two bastions which surrounded it, only the western one has been preserved, the bent part and its superstructure have disappeared.

5) Hypothetical door – Bâb ilussüfa (or Massüfa?) I57). – A long street that leaves from the center of the city and which is the outlet of the old Riad-el-Arous district (Riyâd al-‘arüs). It comes up against the rampart about four hundred meters north of Bab Doukkala; it is obvious that it led to a door that has disappeared. From the presence, nearby, of the tomb of a marabout who was the protector of a door, Gaudefroy-Demombynes had deduced, with much likelihood, that it was Bâb ar-Rahà ‘pointed out by Ibn Fadl- Allaah al-Umari.

A document came to bring us proof to the contrary (infra n ° 7). It is necessary to place, on the Gaudefroy-Demombynes map, Bâb ar-Rahà ‘two doors away, in place of “Bâb Massüfa,” and as it is impossible in our state of knowledge to locate Bâb Massüfa elsewhere, we are led to admit, until further informed, that this hypothetical door would have carried this name of great and illustrious Almoravid tribe.

6) Bab Doukkala (Bâb Dukkàla). – It is a door, and an old name of Masmoudian origin, both attested many times.

The region is known today as Doukkala once occupied, and until at least the sixteenth century, a more extensive territory which went as far as the Tensift and included what today constitutes that of the Abda, Ahmar, Rehamna, and Sghama.

This projecting door presents between its two imposing an uneven square bastion, a passage with a double elbow, said with a bayonet. It is the only door in Marrakech where this arrangement is located, but its plan seems very Almoravid.

7) Bâb ar-Ratyâ ‘= Bab Laraïs (al ~’ Arâ’is: engaged or newlyweds or al-arà’is: gardens) or Bab Larissa (al-Arïsa: of the little bride) (PI. XIV, b). – This door, of which only the bay remains, and which was walled until recently, is the old Bâb ar-Rahà ‘; it was a single curved door, turning to the right, which two solid semi-octagonal bastions still frame. Their exterior facing is in regularly matched stones. The merlons surmounted by pyramids that crown the summit are certainly old.

The tahbis (pious foundation act) of the mosque of Bao Doukkala, preserved in a unique manuscript of the General Library of Rabat, the Kitâb al-Muntaqd of Ibn al-Qâdî (1616) tells us that this building is located between districts of Bàb Dukkàla and Bâb ar-Rahà ‘. According to the well-known position of this mosque, it is impossible not to logically deduce that Bâb ar-Rahà ‘was the current Bab Laraïs (which was therefore still open at the end of the eighteenth century).

This identification was spontaneously confirmed to us by the tomb attendant of “Sidi Messaoud”, a holy character about whom we no longer know anything except that he bore the nickname of Mül-bāb ar-Rahà, that is to say, patron of Bàb ar-Rahà ‘, but would have had nothing to do with the hypothetical door (supra n 5) near which he was buried.

In Marrakech, an old mason and a man of letters, Si Muhtàr as-Sûsï, today a counselor of the Crown in Rabat, gave me the same declarations as to the attendant. The cadi cAbbàs saw Bàb ar-Rahà ‘even further, at the site of Bàb al-Mahzan.

As for the word Raha, it can mean abundance, well-being, and, by extension, cheapness. But we do not know on what occasion this name was given to the door and on what occasion it lost it.

Should we make a connection between the modern name “the door of the bride” and the Riyàd al-cArüs district, “the garden of the groom”? The street from the door leads straight ahead.

8) Bab al-Makhzen (Bâb al-Mahzan). – This is the walled door that Gaudefroy – Demombynes called Bâb al-Muhriq following a poor reading of the Arabic text. The Constantinople manuscript literally says: “Next comes to the door of the Sultan’s Mahzan, which was there.”

Gaudefroy-Demombynes places Bâb Muhriq = Bâb Mahzan on the west face of the city only to respect the order of ‘Umari, but it is better to rely for this on the Almohad Chronicle which suggests that Bâb al-Mahzan is quite close to Bab aâ-§ari’a. Here’s what she teaches us. During the sudden Almohad attack on the unarmed crowd who were walking in front of Bab aS-§arica, a man from the suite of Sultan e Ali b. Yüsuf said to him in the midst of the disorder: “O Almoravid, go therefore to one of the doors where there are no crowds.” The Chronicle adds: “The sultan fled and passed by Bab al-Mahzan”.

The excavations of this ancient walled door, very skillfully carried out by Ch. Allain, showed that it had first been a powerful bent Almoravid bastion, flanked by two towers that the Almohads more or less rebuilt as it happens to be the closest door to the Kasbah of Yüsuf b. Your end, it really is no exaggeration to see in it the particular door of the Sultan, whether he was Almoravid or Almohad. Besides, I noted that in Marrakech, this door was sometimes called “the palace (Bab al-Qasr).

‘Umari also tells us that it is near this door that there were huge palaces. They are still there: Mamouia, Dar Moulay Ali, Dar Moulay Ibrahim, Dar Moulay Mustapha, etc.

We did not appear when this door was closed, probably under the Merinides. It is remarkable that it gave birth to a “well-preserved street which still leads straight today to the El-Ksour district (the palaces).

9) Bab ai Sarfa (Door of the open-air oratory = musal- there). – This door was demolished on the orders of the second Almohad sovereign and rebuilt further south. Its exact location has not been found, but can be fixed, we will see later, with some likelihood.

10) Bab Neffis- – This door has also disappeared. It had to be necessary to the west or south of the city, and rather to the south if we consider the position of the city of Neffîs in relation to Marrakech. If we had to strictly follow the order of the doors given by TJmari, it would have been necessary to place Bâb Neffîs before Bâb as Saria, but we think that there was an error at the origin. Our author says, after quoting Bâb as-Saria (trad. P. 188): <Very close is the door of Neffîs, by which one exits to go to the town of Neffîs, famous for its waters and for its grapes. In front of her is a pool in which young people learn to swim.”

But a few lines above, before having spoken of Bâb as-Sarica, he had said: (transl. P. 187) “Then a door through which the second stream flows (ü has already spoken of the first above ) which enters Marrakech, and it is at this door that water is shared in fixed quantities between the palaces of the inhabitants. The wastewater flows into a stream which, through the city, passes on the other side in the middle of the souks and the district beyond; there are basins there that the water fills”.

To these two citations, we add two details:

1) Ch. Allain and I found in the angle formed by the current southern rampart and the west face of the quadrilateral of Bàb Rubb a large pool of 70 m x 44 m, whose shallow depth is exactly suitable for teaching young people to swim inexperienced people. And this basin seems very Almoravid since the wall of the Almohad enlargements is built on the part of its north wall and on the entire length of its east wall.

2) The basin was fed by the oldest water pipe in Marrakech. It is its extensions that supply not only the Koutoubia mosque but also which pass through the only door found in the Kasbah of Yüsuf b. Finally, before going to irrigate the souks.

In these conditions, can we not consider that the two texts cited only apply, without overlapping, to one and the same door, Bâb Neffïs, and that that of page 188 has been purely and simply extrapolated? One would talk from the outside, the other from the inside of the door?

Placing this door on a map becomes easy, especially since, according to Bayàn, it was not very far from the new Bâb as-Sarica, which it is therefore as distinct as it was from the Ancient. We also know that it still existed in 1585 on the Portuguese map of the Escorial under the certainly vague name of “first door” and which opposed the door of the Campaign (Bab JRobb today). Since the author of the Portuguese plan did not know the name of Bab Robb, we understand that he could have ignored that of Bab Neffi.

According to the excavations carried out by Ch. AUain, this door could very exactly be placed in front of the entrance to the Arsat ben Dris (Hotel of the Governor of the Province).

Bâb Neffïs would have been placed in a corner, which seems quite inexplicable, but so many things are inexplicable and which must have seemed very clear in the past.

11) Bab as-Sâliha. – The old authors know it well: Baydaq, Ibn cIdàri, that of Qirtâs cUmarï, finally Ibn Haldün. She, too, has disappeared completely. It could only be found to the south of the city since it was the door to the large garden of the same name, Gaudefroy-Demombvnes understood this well.

Besides, we know that the Almohad Kasbah, which is located south of the city, was built “on the side of as-Sàliha.” Finally, as-Sâliha had become the name of a district of the Saadian mellah, which was leveled by a flood in 1639.

Where exactly to place this door? The plan of 1585 indicates in the northeast corner of the casbah an opening making it communicate with the city in a north-south direction. Matham’s print shows us, at the same point, a very altered and walled door which was to communicate in an east-west direction the casbah and the countryside or the mellah after the creation of the latter. It is obviously the same door, with a straight elbow, and which must have been projecting from the Almoravid wall like today Bâb Aylàn. There is no doubt that this door can only be Bâb as-Sâliha.

If new justifications were needed, one could notice that the interior cemetery, located today in front of the door of the mellah, bears the name of Sidi Kamel. This character is perhaps the one that the Kitâb at Tasawwuf killed in 592/1196 and declared to be precisely buried in Bâb as-Sâliha. But even without this detail, the existence of the cemetery near the wall is already proof of the proximity of a door. It is a rule in Marrakech even more than elsewhere in Islam.

Finally, since all the major arteries that arise in the center of the city head almost in a straight line towards a door, we must absolutely attribute an exit to the long street which, starting from the Ben Youssef mosque, comes up against today the wall of the mellah under the name of Riad Zitoun Jdid. This exit can only be Bâb as-Sâliha.

12) Bab Aghmat – (Bâb Agmàt) and (Bâb Yintân). – The door of Aghmat is well known, it is attested from 1147, but the building itself seems to have been curiously modified since the exterior door opens in one of the two bastions instead of opening in the middle of them.

Umari (p. 190) cites the Bâb Agmàt and Bâb Yintân gates next to each other. As he tries to quote the doors in order, one can conclude that Bâb Yintân would be to the north of Bâb Aylàn, between this door and Bâb ed-Debbagh. If it existed at this point, I could affirm that it has left no apparent trace and, once again, note that the Masâlik order seems doubtful.

Lévi-Provençal, according to the author of Sa’âdat, supposes that Bâb Yintàn (or Nitàn) corresponds to Bâb Aylân because of the similarity of the spelling of the two Arabic words. If these two gates were one, it would have to be admitted that the Almohad contingents attacked, in 1147, on the eastern face of the city, two fairly close gates, a tactic which facilitated defense and hampered attack

Bâb Yintân would it have been placed on the south face of the wall? Kitàb at-Tasawwuf mentions that three figures were buried in its surroundings. I believe in having found one buried a few kilometers south of Marrakech on the edge of the old pipe, which brought precisely to water the Ourika wadi. Those who have the charge and the profits of his tomb were absolutely unable to give me any information on this character, as were the authorities of the time or the Moroccan leaders. This tomb is reported by the Sa’âdat as dependent on Bab Robb while not fail to add “outside of Bâb Yintân”!

We could, therefore, deduce from this clarification that Bâb Yintân opened on the south, but the same work adds that two other saints buried in front of this door are to be sought in front of Bab ed-Debbagh or even Bab Aïlen, where I have not found them.

What to conclude? I believe that Bâb Yintàn was not a door, today disappeared, but rather the second name of Bab Aïlen or rather Bab Aghmat. We would then better understand the indecision of the manuscripts at esHulal.

Yintàn was the name of a man; many characters carried it under the Almoravides and the Almohades. Was it that of the manufacturer of this door? According to an old master craftsman in construction, the Yintâwun formed, at a certain time, an agglomeration or a fraction of tribes of masons of Sous. But this information, perhaps precious, was not cross-checked by any of my information.

Conclusion.

Thus can be located the twelve main gates of the empty city Almora. For some, the most numerous, no difficulty arose; for others (Bâb Massüfa, Bâb Neffîs, and Bâb Yintàn) the problem is not clearly resolved, whereas it seems to us to be solved for Bâb ar-Rahâ ‘, Bâb al-Mahzan, Bâb aS -Saria and Bâb as-Sâliha. But very little remains of the empty Almora architecture of these doors, when it has not completely disappeared. Finally, we must not exclude the possibility of the existence of some posters.

1. RELIGION

The history of Almoravid part of the rigid discipline of a military convent (ribàt) ends in Marrakech in general corruption. The rigor and humility of the father were transformed, with Ali, into awkward rigorism and guilty weakness.

If Yüsuf b. Ta§fin had given pride of place to the malekite faqih, Ali went even further on the honors that were due to them. They took the opportunity to forget even more the tradition of the Prophet and fall into a rigorous formalism, heartless, and unintelligent. As in Byzantium, we began to love theological quarrels, and the religious spirit is corrupted in discussions of poor interest. We asked ourselves questions like this: Are the Almoravids (who had retained by assignment the Saharan habit of covering their faces with a veil) forced to remove their litham during prayer? No, replied the Maliki scholars, because by observing this peculiarity, the quadruple realize their large number, and this upsets the infidels and contributes to the power of Islam!

We were there first! We went much further. When the Renaissance of the religious sciences of Abü-Hàmid al-Gázàll (1058-1112) reached Marrakech, Alî, under pressure from those around him, and also to respond to his convictions, delivered him to the stake and threatened with death any reader or holder of this book.

And when in Almeria, in Spain, the first and only cry of collective protest resounds against the ex-communication and the auto-dafé of the books of al-Gazàlï, one made him pay very dearly to the Sufi Ibn al-Arif who, on the “Ali’s call came to die poisoned in Marrakech, to the great satisfaction of the Maliki faqîh and despite the sincere and too late repentance of the emir.

When another Sufi, Ibn Barrajân, called from Cordoba to Marrakech, died in prison, his body, at the request of the faqïh, was thrown in the garbage, without prayer, and it took all the courage of two men for him to receive a burial decently. Thus uncompromising and sclerotic malekism fiercely defended its positions.

We are surprised to discover through the texts that all the Almoravids, including the faqïh and the prince himself, were convinced of the imminent end of the dynasty.

The crisis was not far away. Ibn Tümart, the Faqîh du Sous, the Mahdi, had started his destructive work. Its principles did not touch the people much, but its soldiers were going to sweep the Saharan dynasty and impose its reform and a new religious life.

Cemeteries.

When the city was born, we had to bury it anywhere, with the remark that it must have been tempting enough to take advantage of the Issil wadi ravine to isolate the dead from the living. The first cemetery reported is precisely that of Bâb ad-Dabbàgin, where Ibn Hâqàn was buried in 1141.

After the construction of the rampart, in 1126, burials most often took the direction of the outside. A cemetery was formed in front of each main door of the city where space was not measured in the world of the dead, as it became inside, that of the living. However, we continued to bury intramural characters marked with holiness, especially during the terrible Almohad siege. Ibn Barrajàn was buried in 1140 near the wheat market. Ibn al-Arif, who died the following year, was near the mosque of eAlï, in the funerary enclosure of the cadi Abù cImràn-Müsà b. Hammad, the Sanhâji, who died a few months earlier. According to the Algerian fashion, the tombs of the characters were covered and decorated with prismatic marble slabs, imported from Spain. The unique mqàbriya (prismatic stele) found to date makes one regret, by its beauty, the very probable destruction of others.

1. LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC CULTURE

The name of Marrakech begins to be mixed with the scientific development of the Muslim West, from the end of the 12th century, when the Almoravid sovereigns, who reign over Spain and Morocco, bring their campaigns back to the peninsula scientists who are at the same time their doctors or their secretaries.

Abû-l- Alâ Zuhr, our Avenzor of Seville, first came to Aghmat, in 1092, to treat his former sovereign al-Mu’tamid b. Abbàd. In his Tadkira (memento) addressed to his son, Abù-l-‘Alà ‘speaks of the endemic diseases of Marrakech. First dysentery, and it comes, he says, from the water that stays too long in the pipes, because the city has no slope, then hepatic colic, coryza, leg tumors, fever. It incriminates the excessive dryness of the air, which produces attacks of cough, as well as dust. Twentieth-century medicine has nothing to change with these findings. On his death in 1130, Sultan Alï b. Yüsuf, who had disgraced him for a while, had the scattered sheets of his clinical observations collected in all the cities of Morocco, the Mujarrabât, which have been preserved for us.

His son Abü Marwân Abd al-Malik Ibn Zuhr is the famous Avenzoar of the Christian Middle Ages. He dedicated his first work, Kitàb al-iqtisâd, to his protector Prince Ibrâhîm, brother of Ali, but he too incurred the disadvantage of the sultan, who kept him in prison for a long time.

Abü Bakr Ibn Bajja (Avenpace), the remarkable mystical philosopher and vizier of the governor of Zaragoza, had to bow to the orders received and follow the Almoradid princes to Marrakech; but he did not stay there long and went to die poisoned in Fez in 1138.

This is because Fez, opposite Marrakech, marks under the Almoravids, the Moroccan center of intellectual resistance and the place of exile of the discontented, the suspects, and all those who no longer pleased the Almoravid court, or no longer liked it. Like this Ibn Habüs, a poet insight but sharp language, of which Mr. H. Pérès translated some satirical verses against the envious who served him with the ruling family and made his stay in the southern capital dangerous. We will find Ibn Habüs under the Almohads as well as Ibn Aüya, the young secretary of the Almoravids, whose fortune must have been great and whose destiny was tragic.

But how would poetry have fed her man in Marrakech with a sovereign who, hardly hearing classical Arabic, understood the poetic quotes of famous authors backwards and needed explanations to understand their full meaning; or with a prince like Ali, very keen on legal controversies and whose sister Tamïna, who prided herself on poetry, was relegated to Fez.

Yet al-Fath Ibn Hâqân, the famous secretary of the emir Tasfin b. Alï, the third Almoravid sovereign, was looking for rhymed verses and proses, the collection of which was to form the Qalaid al-Iqyân (necklaces of pure gold) by crossing not only Andalusia but also Morocco, and ended his life in 1141, murdered in a fondouk in Marrakech.

A great malekite name dominates the Islamic sciences of that time, that of the cadi cIyâd b. Müsâ died in Marrakech in 1149, but who, frankly, exercised most of his activity elsewhere than in the city where he sleeps his last sleep, and of which he became one of the Seven Patrons. His work, the Kitâb aS-Sifâ, which extols the merits of the Prophet and his rights to universal veneration, is one of the most well-known breviaries of the cult that the Muslim world has not ceased to render to him since the development of Sufism and of the adoration of the saints.

It would also be astonishing if the first historians of Morocco, who were contemporaries of the Almoravids, had not made prolonged stays in the new capital.

Thus, despite the very hard pages that Dozy wrote on literary life under the Almoravids, Marrakech had nevertheless become, especially during the reign of Alï, the point of attraction for the Maghreb and Andalusian intellectuals. And Marràkusï could write, not without exaggeration, that the Almoravid court resembled that of the ‘Abbasids at their beginnings.

But it was hardly allowed to think or speak out loud; literary life existed, but it was imposed and traveled by orthodox routes. Nevertheless, it thus contributed to constituting in this city, populated by Berbers, an intellectual environment, of the Arabic language, necessary for the renown of the young capital, without however allowing it to compete with Cordoba, become the intellectual metropolis of the Muslim west again.

III. – THE URBAN ECONOMY

The creation of a city and its sudden development is not without serious economic problems, first of all, that of food. An urban agglomeration, in fact, can only subsist by importing the foodstuffs which it extracts from outside. Marrakech should not escape the rule, and we have seen that the geographic reality of its region had ensured the economic development of the city. But this nourishing effort in the region required the city to make a similar production effort. Trade was not only a permanent neighborhood service but also a balance in which it was expressed in value or in value.

Marrakech, at its beginnings, therefore, had to respond to a double imperative: to grow and produce, that is to say, to develop its industry and its trade. We know very little about all this.

Ancient industries.

When the Almoravids gave names to the gates of Marrakech, only one name of the district was retained: that of the tanners, dabbàgïn, located on the edge of the wadi Issil. It is, therefore, reasonable to think that the famous craftsmen of Aghmat had very quickly abandoned this city to come and practice their old techniques in the new capital. Their industry found in Marrakech not only more raw material but also more outlets. Let us not forget, as Ibn ÿaldün rightly points out, that tanning (like weaving) quickly becomes an essential part for any Berber tribe that has chosen to settle permanently.

The leather industry has earned Marrakech a worldwide celebrity. From the sixteenth century, Rabelais knew Morocco.

It is not surprising that the tanners have settled where they are still. Their industry demanded water, the Issil wadi or its resurgences could give them; otherwise, the wells were shallow; they needed space for drying the skins; they had the uninhabited and uncultivated banks of the torrent; finally, they were away from the population, not only because of the unpleasant odors which escape from their pits, frequent sources of diseases for the simple people but also because of the geniuses whose slaughterhouses and tanneries are the places of election. And God knows whether to fear the malignity of these evil “people”! May God preserve the author and the reader! (PL XV).

Near the tanners, with the same need for water, we find the potters and bricklayers district, Tabhirt (Berberized form of buhayra: garden), which is distinguished from afar by real hills of ash, in the middle of which is buried since 1195-96, their boss, Sidi al-Fahljâr (Mgr. the potter), so old that nothing is known about him, not even his name. The need for bricks and tiles must have been such in Marrakech, from its creation, that we can legitimately date this district from the origins of the city.

We then do not hesitate to date the eleventh century the inner village of the people of the Tudga (Dcher Todgha), specialists in khettaras whose Almoravid origin has been reported and whose patron saint, Sidi Ahmad b. Kâmil, died in 1196, is buried in front of the only door which, in Marrakech, received a garden name, Bâb as-Sàliha.

Finally, if we are to remember that Haouz was already famous in the 12th century for its beautiful olivettes, it is not unwise to write that Marrakech quickly had its oil presses. We find them today grouped near Bab el-Khemis (alias Bâb Fâs), where a street still bears an evocative name, Bayn-l-mcàser (between the presses).

Thus, from the Almoravid era, a large district of inconvenient trades had been created in Marrakech, which certainly included other corporations, that of soap makers, and that of dyers, for example. If it is curious to note that this specialized district had, like in many other cities of the world, developed towards the east, it is even more interesting to note that this concern of the distinct localizations should not be practiced in Europe only from the thirteenth century.

Trade.

Despite the absence of any precision, the specialization of the shopping districts and their cantonment in souks are the too classic features of any city of Islam not to think that, from the construction of the great mosque of ‘Ali, the souks of Marrakech have gradually been organized around this monument, from where they have not moved since despite the Almohad attempts that we will see later.

But we have no details. A text gives us, however, the name of a fondouk, that of the orange (Naranja), where al-Fath b was assassinated. àqân, the famous author of Qalaid al-Iqyân. He disappeared about ten years ago, transformed into a private house by a Nazir. He was near the mosque of ‘Ali b. Yüsuf. It was certainly not the only fondouk in the city. We can hardly imagine a Muslim city without a fondouk as without a mosque. Trade in the land of Islam has always needed these vast interior courtyard houses and galleries, where merchants, travelers, and bad boys always find shelter for them, their parcels, and their beasts of burden.

Another text indicates the existence of a wheat market “rahbat al-hinta”, disused today, but near which is still buried the famous Sevillian Sufi Ibn Barrajân, which the people made in Marrakech Sidi Abïr-Rijâl.

Finally, let us quote Idrisï once more: “The inhabitants of Marrakech eat grasshoppers; in the past, thirty loads were sold daily, more or less, and this sale was subject to the so-called qabala tax or royalty, which was levied on most professions and on the sale of basic necessities such as millet, soap, copper, spindles to spin, whatever their volume and according to their quantities.

And that’s all we can say about trade in those distant times. It is little when one thinks of the financial aristocracy that the Almoravids had managed to constitute and their prestigious currency of such extraordinary wealth; the maravédis or marabotin made premium on the European markets. This abundance of gold obviously explains the development of the city and its influence. Unfortunately, there is a lack of information on the relations between Marrakech and Sudan.

But if we judge by the currencies found to date, the monetary workshops of Marrakech were not the most productive, probably because, in the capital, coins arrived in large numbers from all points of the ‘Empire.

The Chronicle of Ibn al-Qattân reported the presence of silos in Marrakech during the Almoravid era. Would foresight be so quickly passed into the customs of our great camel nomads? Or rather the Masmouda of the plain, who had come to settle in the city, did they continue to live on their rural economy? Does the habit of having your cow at home, still common in Marrakech, date from this time?

Transport.

When we think of the difficulties that had to be overcome to transport an object as heavy as the ablution tank or as delicate as the pulpit to preach from the mosque of Ali, we have great admiration for the transporters of this time. We certainly have an exaggerated idea of ​​the lack of means of communication in Morocco in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; the construction of the Tensift bridge, which was too quickly removed by the water, certainly met the needs of heavy traffic. Exports from the port of Ceuta (skins, wax, almonds) undoubtedly came largely from southern Morocco.

1. CHRISTIANS, JEWS, AND BLACKS Christians.

According to the Hulals, the first Christians to arrive in Marrakech were those of the militia recruited in Catalonia and southern France, by Yüsul b. Tasfin and not by his son Ali. In the beginning, it was volunteers of free condition that the necessity or the taste of the adventure carried away from their country. But after the passage of the Almoravids in Spain, the militiamen were taken from among the prisoners reduced to servitude. They had their organization and its service apart. They obeyed the heads of their nation and their religion but received their pay and the orders of the prince. Ibn Yaldün sought to justify their employment by the Moslems by making European soldiers very rare praise under the pen of a Mohammedan. “On the battlefield, the Franks stand firm … so they form stronger troops than those of any other people.”

On the other hand, Ali, the son of a Christian, complacently surrounded himself with Christians. He entrusted them with high jobs, charged them to collect the taxes, and brought them closer to his person. The leader of the Christian militia was Reverter, the Raburtayr of Arab historians, who played a leading role until his death.

By organizing around them a Christian guard, the Almoravids took up a tradition from Byzantium and Baghdad, which the Caliphs of Cordoba had introduced into the military apparatus of Muslim Spain as early as al-Hakam P. de Cénival explained that the Christians residing in Morocco had probably not waited for the martyrs of the Almohad reign to have a beginning of the organization and to receive from a clergy, probably captive, the essential religious help, but MH Terrasse pointed out to me that he saw no text confirming this assumption.

One can, however, think that, under the Almoravids, Marrakech had not only its district of the Christian militia, perhaps inside and in any case near the Kasbah of Yüsuf, but perhaps also its church. Baydaq speaks of a city garden which, in 1155, bore the name of Suntulülya, a term in which Lévi-Provençal found Santa Eulalia or Olalia. Perhaps it was the site of an old chapel dedicated to Saint Eulalia, virgin and martyr, especially venerated in Barcelona where General Reverter was born, and which would have been demolished by the Almohads, in 1147, after the capture of Marrakech.

Let us add, to be complete, the precious information that Ibn al-Ajir gives us. The capture of Marrakech by the Almohads would have been due to the betrayal of the Christian militia, which, tired by the length of the siege, delivered to the besiegers a door of the city, Bab Aghmat.

The Jews.

We know only one thing: ‘Ali, according to Idrisi, would have forbidden the Jews to settle in Marrakech, and even to spend the night under pain of the most severe punishments. However, we wanted to see in the reign of Alï a time of flowering and freedom for Moroccan Jews. Protected by the princes of the dynasty, and despite the opposition of the faqîh, they could have engaged in trade as in science, in complete security. This is undoubtedly true for Spain but remains to be demonstrated for Marrakech.

If the Jews were not allowed to live inside the city, they were not forbidden to enter it during the day for “the affairs and services of which their nation deals especially. These words from Idrisi must no doubt be understood in the light of what was happening in Sijilmassa that the Almoravids knew well and where the Jews filled the humiliating trades of emptiers or masons, and probably those of the money trade.

Bab Aylàn was perhaps reserved for them, as was the agglomeration of Aghmat Aylàn. And that is perhaps the reason why there were two doors in the name of Aghmat and the explanation of the geographical error, which consisted of not giving to each of these doors the name which the position of the urban centers which they respectively faced.

A Jewish suburb probably existed near Bâb Aylàn. It is indeed tempting to think that the Jews when night came, left Marrakech and went to find their families in a well-closed ghetto. But it’s only a hypothesis.

Black people

We have little information on these poor people whom the hazards of the trade had brought to Marrakech. The chronicles speak very little about it, but undoubtedly the Sudanese were more numerous in the city than the Christian militiamen. This is because human importation from the land of blacks dates from the Caliphate of Cordoba. Men were renowned for their endurance, and women for their qualities as servants and concubines.

Under the Almoravids, as under the Umayyads of Spain, there was no shortage of mulattoes in the aristocracy. Remember that Yùsuf b. Maybe Tasfin was a black man.

The Negro blood that has flowed and still flows through the veins of Moroccan dynasties also flows through the people. Slavery, war, Islam have given rise to crossbreeding whose history and degrees remain to be studied.

MARRAKECH AT THE END OF THE ALMORAYIDES

1. – THE LAST EMPTY ALMORA (1143-1147)

The city, a real scandal for the old heroic survivors who could compare the past and the present, seems to live in abundance. The empty Almoras have forgotten the milk and dates from the desert. They are hungry for enjoyment and refinement. Sovereigns and their generals soften. We take refuge in fortresses. If one is not afraid of death, one fears the future, and it is very sad that ‘Alï died in January 1143. As he had asked, before leaving this world, he is buried anonymously among Muslims. This decision will probably save his burial from the Almohad profanations.

His family will last a few more years before disappearing completely.

His son TaSfin (1143-1145) died tragically near Oran, beaten by Almohad troops, and his head, salty, was sent to Tinmel; his grandson, Ishâq, will be beheaded after the capture of Marrakech, in 1147, which will end the dynasty. We never knew what became of the empty Almoras after that date. Many gradually came to join, in the Balearic Islands, the Banü Ghaniya and participate in their prodigious adventure.

As for the stages of the Almohad revolt and victory, they will be studied below.

THE CITY MAP 

The work has been considerable. Three generations were enough to transform a corner of the steppe into a large Hispano-Moorish capital.

Marrakech now has its immense new rampart, nine kilometers long, and pierced with twelve doors. Its plan is wonderfully radio-concentric as in a modern city. It was, moreover, the plan of the least effort and ü imposed itself by itself for a single cause, a “single generating element,” the presence in the center of the city of the Great Mosque, traditionally surrounded by the souks. Poorly prepared by the spectacle of the cities of Roman Spain, the Andalusian architects probably did not foresee the influence of this large central religious group on the development of the town of Yüsuf.

Nothing is known about the subdivision of the first dwellings. Still, it seems reasonable to admit that the main streets that ran from the center outwards predate the construction of the enclosure and the installation of the doors. The large units that populated the Marrakech camp under Abü-Bakr all had to be given access to the center and another to the outside.

MR Le Tourneau notes that it is a general phenomenon observed that the different ethnic or religious groups each occupied a district, a derbt and that the first Berber city of Fez was an agglomeration of small units installed next to each other, but not yet melted in an organized community ”. It may have been like this in Marrakech, but we absolutely cannot prove it.

We also suppose that the Bab-Aghmat to Bab el-Khe- mis (Bâb Fàs) and Bab Neffis to Bab Doukkala axes are very old, because they allow you to cross the city without going through the always busy and crowded central business district, and, at night, inaccessible since regularly closed. The Bab Neffis axis at Bab Aghmat seems relatively recent, at least in its western part.

The sovereign, his family, his courtiers, his services, his guard lived in a particular district: the Makhzen district. It consisted of the fortress of Abü Bakr (Qasr al-Hajar), the palace of Alï and large gardens. To the outside, it was served by a particular door, Bab al-Makhzen; towards the city, a monumental arch marked the main entrance to the palace of the emir. We believe we can say that this entrance was located on a large square, at the origin of Jama-al-Fna square today.

In the center of the city were the Great Mosque and its annexes. The commercial district that of the souks seems to have been constituted above all in a natural connection between the religious center and the government casbah. On the main streets leading to the doors, wide enough for a camel to pass, the fondouks followed one another. Perhaps they were already specialized: dates, salt, fatty substances, skins, etc.

Near the shopping center, we can, with some likelihood, place two living quarters. The Hart Soura owes its name to as-Süra, the sister of the emir Alï and the Asoul district, to the north of the central mosque, should take its name at a place called Àswàl, where, according to the unpublished Almoravid Bayân, the first house in Marrakech was built.

We only have one document for the many baths that the city used. One of them was in the eastern part of the town and was named after a Cordovan, which is quite significant.

III. THE CITY ADMINISTRATION

We know that the status of cities has not been the subject of any specific provision by Islamic law. Administration of the capital and the country merge in the hands of the prince, helped by the vizier, but controlled one and the other, in law much more than in fact, by the Cadi in chief of the capital, himself assisted, in principle, by the prefect of the city and the muhtasib who must make rule and virtue reign in the city.

But we have no information on the first administration of Marrakech. Like every big city in Spain and Morocco, it had a musrif; little is known about this function (téràf), but it seems that its holder held a large part of the civil authority. The death of the late Lévi-Provençal deprives us of documents from Almoravid history that this great specialist was to publish and annotate soon.

All we know, according to Abd-al-Wahid al-Marràkusï, is that Prince Alî, at the end of his reign, no longer exercised direct power. All of his devotions, he never left his palace, and everyone did as he pleased. The government was despised, the army and the people ridiculed it. The women themselves began to command and to be heard. “Each of those who belonged to the main families of the Lamtüna or the Massüfa set out to protect rascals and villains, brigands, wine merchants, and innkeepers. No doubt the historian is in favor of the Almohads, but he did not invent everything; Ibn Tümart will soon attract the attention of the city authorities by claiming to exercise censorship of morals in squares and markets and by reproaching the Almoravids for having kept their wives the independent and arbitral role they held from ‘Berber ideal.

Also, let us not forget to specify that a prison existed in Marrakech under the Almoravids. It is cited twice in the texts. In 1140 Avenzoar, imprisoned by the wretched Ali, “taught a disciple there; before him, in 1134, a scholar had composed a work on Sufism there. Thus at the beginning of the 13th century, the prison system did not, therefore, exclude the spread of culture!

The craft district was vast and occupied the eastern part of the city. It was well placed in relation to the prevailing winds which could not bring the odors towards the town, but, on the contrary, swept them towards the countryside.

As inside all the fortified medieval cities, there were still gardens and orchards which doubled the rampart of a framework of greenery, except at the doors where one can imagine, from this time, the small traditional district rural.

To the south, the large as-Sàliha garden, which does not seem to have been enclosed by a wall, had given its name to the nearest door. It was bordered to the west by the musallà or oratory in the open air on feast days, in front of which opened the door aS-Saliha and, to the east, by a small quarter of lepers and perhaps Jews.

To the east, another garden, the Buhayrat ar-raqaiq, was to be the site of a famous battle.

In front of all the doors, as in all the cities of Islam, untidy tombs, a slaughterhouse, lime kilns, and piles of garbage!

The city did not lack water thanks to the khettaras and had to be very populated, but when we know that Marrakech is uncomfortable within its walls, today, with less than two hundred thousand inhabitants, it is tough to give it a hundred thousand in its greatest Almoravid prosperity. However, this is the figure put forward by Leon and reproduced by Marmol.

THE WORK OF THE ALMORAVIDS IN MARRAKECH:

THE CIVILIZING ROLE OF ALÏ B. TASFIN

A big city was born in three-quarters of a century, the creation of which would be surprising if we forgot the urban successes of which Islam could already boast, and precisely in North Africa with Kairouan and Fez, the most famous.

But the seat of an empire does not arise spontaneously. Long internal work prefaces it. It is made up of problems to be solved, and which have been resolved, and the solution of which still excites our admiration and our astonishment.

Starting from nothing, in a hostile country, with terrible heredity of nomads, what path had these Saharans traveled! These desert people, the most conservative on earth, had to forget their tribes, their horizons, and almost all their traditions to adapt to the life of the cities of Morocco and Spain. At the end of the dynasty, what was left of the habits of the past? Some proper names and the litham, carried by snobbery.

What was left of the first Marrakech, in 1147, when the Almohads went to take the city and plunder it? The outline of the plan because the warriors of Abu Bakr did not settle down without a rule.

It is that the victors less advanced in civilization than the vanquished, whether they were from the Maghreb or Spain, had received from them all that they lacked. And first of all, the organization, admittedly reduced to their scale, but bearing the mark of Cordoba and the great cities of Spanish Islam, rich in an order which forces and captivates all respect. But it was still necessary that an emir of exceptional quality be able to understand it, establish it and make it respected to the demands of evolution, Alï b. Yùsuf replied with the rarest taste and the keenest passion for architecture. This sultan gave himself the glory of adorning his city with a large religious complex and a palace without which “we would not have spoken of Marrakech.”

If Marrakech did not start to civilize until after the first expeditions of Yùsuf b, Tasfin in Spain, at least Ali knew how to make it capital by giving it the means to develop, to defend itself under the shelter of a long wall, to live and prosper thanks to the water supplies, and d ‘to be able to receive from Andalusia, scholar, and artist / the civilizing current that made modern Morocco. Ali b. Yùsuf must be placed among the greatest sovereigns of Morocco.

Mr. F. Braudel said, eloquently, speaking of the Mediterranean cities, to which we can compare Marrakech, that they were the “strong matrices” of civilization and that “the barbarian man, the human-animal, they take it from his mountains or its plains, squaring it, using it, polishing it and forming it in the life of houses.” This is why it is advisable to praise without reserve the creation Almoravide like all that carries in itself powerful germinations.

IBN TÜMART

His doctrine.

If in Spain, under the efforts of Alphonse le Batailleur, the Almoravid retreat is announced from mo and is amplified seriously from 1118, in Africa, still in 1125, none of the latent weaknesses of the empire of Ali was made clear. The Almoravid lands were calm and prosperous.

But in the Atlas Mountains, the rebellion of the southern Masmoudas was to be born; the oldest of the inhabitants of Morocco will revolt against the foreign masters in the country and against their narrow and clumsy malekism. A man of incredible will and rare intelligence knew how to synthesize these ethnic forces and these religious tendencies, the Mahdi Ibn Tümart, who started, in the name of Almohad doctrine, the revolt of these crude mountain people. Almohad, or unitary doctrine, takes its name from a strictly narrow conception of divine unity, the dogma (tawhid) of which is the essence of the Islamic faith. For Ibn Tümart, God is the only spirit, and those who, by interpreting the Koran to the letter, arrive like the Almoravides to represent God in a human form, are anthropomorphists and must be condemned as well as the Christian polytheists.

Furthermore, the omnipotence of God entails absolute predestination, which does not prevent the strictest observance of the moral prescriptions of Islam. Every believer must not only practice good (ma’rùf) but prescribe it around him, not only to avoid evil (imunkar) but to censor all blameworthy acts. The use of wine and musical instruments, like the greed of faqihs, always aroused the reprobation of the one who soon took the titles of Mahdi and Imam Impeccable, even gave himself an alid genealogy, personified the faith itself for the Berbers of southern Morocco, and demanded that Muslim law be based solely on the direct study of the Book and the Tradition of the Prophet, and not, as the Malekites still admit, on qiyàs (reasoning by analogy) or even Yijmàf (agreement of the doctors of the same time).

As early as 1125, the Aimohades, encouraged by small successes, took the initiative of operations. They were to keep it until their total victory in 1147.

It is not that the Almoravids did not understand the danger represented militarily by the coalition of Masmouda organized with mastery by their Mahdi, but they often lacked decision and confined themselves in a defensive, courageous moreover, but sterile and gradually lost confidence in themselves and in their too often defeated troops. They put all their hopes in the Christian militia, which was, after the death of its leader Reverter, finally overwhelmed and demoralized. Of course, Spain was watching Moroccan affairs closely, and the African decline of the dynasty led to the collapse of its authority in Spain.

Ibn Tûmart’s action in Marrakech.

It was only when the “Faqîh du Sous,” Ibn Tûmart, returned from his long trip to the East where he had gone to study with the great Muslim masters, in particular, Abü Bakr at-Türtüsi and s’ introduce to the science of legal works, that the turning point is going to be taken. We know, thanks to the Memoirs of Baydaq, published by Lévi-Provençal, how the Mahdi of the Almohads left Egypt by sea for Ifriqiya. He immediately began to exercise his reforming action in a twofold form: teaching doctrine in mosques, applying it in the street. It does not seem that the city administrations easily accepted the healthy pedagogy of this spoilsport, which knew how to make itself heard by its Muslim listeners. Ibn Tùmart had to flee from city to city, from Mahdia to Tunis, from Tunis to Constantine, from Constantine to Bougie where he came across by chance and became attached, around his 17, with insight, a future man of genius, Abd-al-Mu’min, then from Bougie to Tlemcen where the people admired him, then to Oujda, to Guercif, finally to Fez. In this city where all the dissatisfied with the Almoravid authority met, he knew sympathetic audiences, but the jurists, unable to follow him in the speculative discussions, declared that he whacked “the brains of the ignorant people” and obtained that he was still expelled.

He quickly passed with new setbacks through Meknes and Salé and finally arrived in Marrakech in 514/1121, with his small group of disciples. The Imam installed himself, along with Abd-al-Mu’min, in a mosque with a clay brick minaret, which could not be identified and which no doubt disappeared. No one noticed them, but the Friday following his arrival Ibn Tùmart went, with the whole community, to the Grand Mosque where the prayer was to be presided over by the founding prince, Alï b. Yùsuf.

Put in the presence of the Sultan, he refused to greet him and did not hesitate to make him disagreeable comments on clothing details. Finally, it seems that he waited outside the mosque for the end of the ceremony and the exit of the faithful to re-enter and “discuss with the faqïh, on whom he completely prevailed.”

The discussion did not stop there. Ibn Tümart, having settled in another mosque, that of ’Arafa (disappeared today), was summoned by the sovereign to participate in a news conference. It turned again to the disadvantage of the Almoravid scholars, little used to a contradiction.

So the faqïh were afraid of such a great science and such a lively faith and frightened the sovereign on the consequences that could have the presence of the reformer in Marrakech. They understood immediately that the adoption of the doctrine of al-Asari, which Ibn Tümart proposed, would diminish their importance by compelling them to render legal decisions according to a route traced in advance. Full of envy and anger, they would have liked to treat it as they had treated Gazàli’s book and throw it into the fire to maintain their influence and protect their threatened interests. And undoubtedly, the incidents which the Almohad reformer caused in the streets and the markets of the city while attacking the empty Almora manners directly, were sufficient to impose its removal.

According to Ibn Haldün, Ibn Tümart publicly reprimanded Süra, the prince’s full sister, because she circulated in the city of Marrakech without a veil, as did her followers.

Meanwhile, the reformer meeting the emir in the city reminded him that the sovereign must account to God for the faults of his people and that all the sins which he did not repress will be put on his load on the day of the last judgment. “Know,” he said, “that you will be charged with any guilty words spoken in the streets of Marrakech before the supreme judge.” The frightened emir only knew how to respond and, as Marmol says, “did not want to suffocate this monster from birth, or deploy his forces against a man of nothing.”

Ibn Türaart then withdrew to a tent in the cemetery (jabbàna) of Ibn Haydùs where he began to profess his doctrine with increasing success. But even though he had pointed out that the land of the dead did not belong to the emir, he quickly understood that it was better to follow the advice by allusion given to him by a generous Almoravid and flee into the ‘Atlas where the power of the prince stopped at the first slopes.

Ibn Tümart in Tinmel.

Ibn Tümart’s hegira began. He was soon going to proclaim the Mahdi announced by God for the end of time, the Mahdi, who must fill with the law and justice the world then filled with iniquities, that is to say, according to the beautiful Koranic formula, order the good, prohibit evil. “The Mahdi in Tinmel is the prophet in Medina.” The way which, by the Nfis wadi and its poor villages, connected the Haouz to the small interior plain of Tinmel was only a path in the ledge on abysses; it was nonetheless the historical link that linked an empire to its cradle. Tinmel will remain for a long time the pilgrimage of worried or grateful Almohads.

The “Faqîh du Sous” before dying was going to have the joy of launching its first and its last expedition against the Almoravids; it was a defeat, he had to die.

The defeat of al-Buhayra (1130).

According to the unpublished documents of Almohad history, from 524/1130, the Almohads could take the offensive seriously or rather counterattack. After defeating the people of Agmatam and inflicting severe losses on them, the Almohad troops, under the orders of al-Basir, suddenly arrived before Marrakech. The surprise was complete, and the Almohads rushed to the curious and disarmed crowd that had gone out by Bab as-Saria to welcome them. The amazement and the fear were such that, in their flight, the inhabitants crashed in front of the door, too narrow for their number. Many more perished suffocated in disorder than killed by Almohad weapons. Ali b. Yûsuf even risked being caught. He had to gallop and return through Bab al-Makhzen, another gateway to Marrakech. The attackers did not try to attack and then went to the east of the city, at a place called Buhayrat-ar-Raqâ’iq (enclosed orchard, now disappeared, at least by name) and seized the community elevators there. It was at the beginning of April 1130. They held the blocked city for forty days and distinguished themselves with a thousand feats. The Almohad corps included about 3,000 infantrymen and 300 horsemen. But Almoravid reinforcements arrived from all sides, in particular from the Gharb. When these were in place, they encamped on the side of the Almohads. The Marrakech garrison then made a vigorous exit, and the Almohads, although leaning on the garden walls, were caught between two assailants and suffered serious losses. Their leader, Basir, was killed. They then rallied around Abd-al-Mu’ min with whom they replaced the one who had just fallen.

“The fight resumed and continued all day long, so much so that at the height of the fight Abd-al-Mu’ min had, for the first time in the Maghreb, to say” the prayer of fear “at the Koranic hours of noon and three hours.”

The Almohads were saved from a general massacre by a miracle, and the rain began to fall in the evening. Oued Issil, whose regime we know well, “had to quickly go into the flood and thus prohibit the Almoravids from resuming combat by isolating the Almohads on the east bank. They then took advantage of the night to flee to the mountain. They arrived there well diminished in number. Five members of the Council of Ten remained on the ground.

His death.

The Mahdi was not to survive this failure. But when he gave up his soul to God in August 1130, his heart full of hatred against his opponents, he had had time to organize the mountain and its tribes and start the fight to the death against the Almoravids “at heart black.”

As he said, when the al-Buhayra affair returned, nothing was lost since Abd-al-Mu’ min was alive.

THE BEGINNINGS OF ABD AL-MU’MIN

Ibn Tümart left the command to his favorite disciple Abd-al-Mu’ min, but he did not take it until three years later, in 1133, thanks to the help of the most active member of the Almohad movement, Abü Hafs Umar Intï. The results he was able to obtain were immense: he maintained the cohesion of the Almohad tribes under a yet foreign chief, he destroyed the empty Almora dynasty and the profiteers of his regime, he conquered the Maghreb and Spain and founded a great dynasty. It took a man of genius to create an empire. He was.

Speaker full of seduction, diplomat fed with science, warrior as courageous as hard with fatigue, realistic to cynicism, often cruel as are the Berbers (he was a zenet of the tribe of Kümya, fixed not far from Nédromah in Oranie), he was also going to reveal the most beautiful qualities of clairvoyance and patience if he had, as Ibn ffallikân says “his head in the Pleiades,” he also knew how to “keep his feet in the dust” and give the measure of his eminent qualities as a statesman and organizer.

Realizing quickly that Marrakech would be very difficult to remove, he began to conquer the Maghreb, starting with the mountains where the Masmouda did not have to fear the formidable Christian cavalry commanded by the famous Reverter. In fifteen years, South Morocco, the Atlas, the Saharan oases, the North of Morocco were subjugated after numerous battles and a few setbacks. Ali b. Yüsuf died in 1143, his successor Tasfin in 1145. The same year, Reverter, general of the militia, was killed, his troop destroyed. Fez and Meknes fell, then Salé; Ceuta submitted with the Almoravid fleet.

‘Abd-al-Mu’ min was told to take Marrakech before the crops could be harvested and silage-fed. Azemmour and the Tadla fell again, and the conqueror presented himself in front of the capital where sixteen years earlier, he had been beaten.

THE TAKING OF MARRAKECH (1146-1147)

Headquarters.

Baydaq informs us that the Sanhâja of Tîsgart sent to Abd-al-Mu’ min, then in Meknès, an ear of wheat with a message thus conceived: Hurry to come and get your hands on the grain of the Dukkàla so that it n ‘Do not enter Marrakech; otherwise you will never take the capital.’

The chef did not hesitate. He went south, crossed the Tensift, reviewed his troops, removed the old Aghmat, and in Muharram 541 / June-July 1146 had his red tent pitched on the Guéliz massif.

The Marrakech garrison attempted to oppose the city’s investment, but on the fifth day, an Almohad counterattack brought it back with very serious losses to the gates. The Almoravids were demoralized and resigned to the siege. Abd-al-Mu’ min would then have methodically built a camp where each tribe had its place, a mosque, and a very high minaret from where he dominated the blocked city. He could thus monitor its surroundings and, in particular, the flat ground which separates the Guéliz from the ramparts of Marrakech. Nothing remains of these constructions today.

The city defended itself courageously, tried frequent exits to loosen the effective embrace of the siege, but the empty Almoras often fell into very deadly ambushes. Inside the city, the blockade became more and more painful. Famine began to rage and the trade of profiteers too. We slaughtered beasts of burden to feed on them. The Hulals speak of horror scenes, especially in prisons. In the city where the dead multiplied and where corpses infected the atmosphere, the besiegers would have added to the desolation using their war machines.

The chronicles indicate that demoralized Almoravid chiefs passed to the enemy by delivering to Abd-al-Mu’ min the secret of the weak points of the defense. One can also imagine that they informed him of the famine which reigned in the city after a whole winter of the tight blockade and which acted powerfully on the minds and hearts of the unfortunate population.

The assault and the fall (March 23, 1147).

If we believe the “New Fragment,” Abd-al-Mu’ min, before giving the order to assault the city, moved to the middle of the Buhayra and set up the “victory camp” there (“Dâr-al-Fath”). If this decision was well taken by the Almohad chief, no doubt that by wanting to get closer to the point of the ramparts where he was going to put all the effort of his army, he also thought of erasing the memory of the defeat suffered sixteen years earlier on the same ground. Abd-al-Mu’ min was sentimental.

The caliph then distributed scales to the armed contingents of his tribes, and the order for the attack was given on March 23, 1147, in the morning. (PI. XVI.)

The people of Tinmel and the Hintàta attacked in the west towards Bab Doukkala, the Sanhaja, and the Abid of the Guard in the east, on the side of Bab ed-Debbagh; the Haskùra and the other tribes on the side of Bab Aghmat (or Yintàn) to the southeast.

The north and south sides were deliberately neglected because of their difficulty of access; they were preceded by gardens where the canals, the holes of the khettaras, and undoubtedly the surrounding walls complicated the approach steps and facilitated the task of the defenders.

The garrison resisted, but according to the author of the Hulal, followed by Ibn al-Atir, Bab Aghmat was delivered to the attackers by the Christian militia (or what remained of it since the death of Reverter), disgusted with the fatigues of ‘such a long siege and guaranteed, it seems, to be saved. The victors rushed into the city by this route; the massacre and looting began. They were to last three days, say the Hulals, seven, says the Kâmil, and 70,000 Almoravids were killed, a number very clearly exaggerated. You would have to divide by ten, maybe more.

The Kasbah was the last point of resistance; she too succumbed when an Almoravid girl, Fannü, who fought dressed as a man, was killed after having amazed the Almohads by her “conduct in combat” and the “bravery with which God had endowed him”.

The small staff of the palace was put to death in Bab as-Saliha. The child sultan and the last remaining empty Almora chiefs, who had taken refuge above the main gate of the palace, were taken to Guéliz to be executed in front of Abd-al-Mu’ min. The victor had a moment of pity for the young Ishàq, but the Almohads put him to death like the others not to raise against them “the cubs of lions”. Almoravid leaders knew how to die with great courage. The chroniclers tell us a few scenes that allow us to keep our sympathy for the unfortunate defeated.

Marrâkusî informs us that one of the first concerns of the Almohads was to seek the tomb of Ali to destroy it, but in vain, it seems. The chronicler adds: “The divine will keep it hidden after his death just as it had kept it hidden during his lifetime. This is the ordinary and excellent way of making God, with regard to men of good reformers”. And this tribute is all the more moving because it comes from a writer, born in Marrakech, who wrote in the time of the Airaohades. The dynasty, as we can see, had not left bad memories in the city it had created.

Dating (March 23, 1147).

The chroniclers, with the exception of one, agree to fix the month of Sawwal 541 / March-April 1147 & fall of Marrakech.

The author of Hulal (p. 114) like that of the “New Fragment of Anonymous Chronicle (p. 88) and ZarkasI (p. 9) specify that it was on Saturday 18 (March 23, 1147) that Marrakech was removed, Ibn Haldün is content to say that it is at the end of sawwàl (before April 4). The Qirtàs advances the date to Saturday 8, which is probably a simple copyist error.

There is less agreement on the duration of the operations. For Baydaq, witness to the siege, everything happened in 541 (from June 13, 1146, to June 1, 1147. The Hulals bring the Almohad army into Muharram (June-July 1146). The new fragment says June 1, June 13. The blockade would, therefore, have lasted more than nine months, which Zarkasî confirms (p. 9). Ibn Haldün reduces operations to seven months. Fagnan, Zarkasî’s translator, notes that the expressions used by Ibn Haldùn are identical to those of Zarkaiï and allows us to think of a copy or spelling error, the nine and the seven is often confused in the manuscripts.

In any case, the date of Ibn Yaldün is not admissible, since it would fix the investment of the city towards the month of RabiI 541, that is to say in August-September 1146. However, at this time, the harvests are finished in Haouz (except that of olives) and more or less stored; the decisive advice sent by the Sanhaja of Tîsgart to Abd-al-Mu’ min would no longer be justified.

Finally, for Ibn al-Atïr the siege lasted eleven months, the Almohads would have arrived in front of Marrakech, in 541 (June 13, 1146 – June 1, 1147) and the takeoff of little Ishàq would have taken place in 542 (June 2, 1147 – May 21, 1148 ). But it is more likely, as the Hulals and the New Fragment indicate, that operations should not begin before June 1146, and end on March 23, 1147.

First problems.

Marrakesh taken, the Almohads seem to have been embarrassed. To give time for reflection, it was first decided that for three days, no one would enter or leave Marrakech.

Abd-al-Mu’ min seems to have quickly understood that new duties awaited the successor of the Almoravids. “He knew how to respect their work: he felt heir to them as much as their conqueror” (H. Terrasse). Perhaps he also remembered the teaching of Ibn Tümart and his chapter on the Holy War (and it was one he had just won), full of ideas of moderation and generosity. Ideas which, moreover, already existed in Islam as well as in Christianity. We must spare women and children and even the commander-in-chief, we must refrain from unnecessary damage, cut down trees, destroy the unnecessary animals, etc. It was obviously a little late, because for many months his warriors had been devastating the Haouz to starve Marrakech.

It was an incredible chance for the Almohads to have for chief a man born and raised in this kingdom of Tlemcen, already so charged with history and civilization, and not a mountain dweller, one of these people “from above” who “Have for them violence, harshness, vitality, ruthless savagery,” and which would have let with joy unleash the old Berber instinct of anarchy and plunder and ordered to shave the city of turpitude, abominations, and heresies.

First of all, he quickly stopped the carnage. Although he can be criticized for having often spilled the blood of Muslims, he was not unapproachable. He was touched by the youth of the emir Ishàq, who had been found hidden under a pile of coal in a room of the palace and had retired to his tent “full of irritation” after his execution. He had “proclaimed that I forgave the many inhabitants who had been able to hide”. He saved them from the fury of the Masmouda and had as much concern to save them as he had taken to defeat them. It is, he says to his warriors, craftsmen, and shopkeepers who will be able to be useful to us “. He did not forget that he was only the son of a potter! Then he thought of the city he had probably decided to keep as its capital. But how do you convince the sectarian Masmouda?

The faqïh came to ask the Almohads to live in the city, but they did not acquiesce because the Mahdi Ibn Tümart said: “Do not enter it until you have purified it”. A solution had to be found. It was of good Islamic tradition. A commission of sayants, undoubtedly inspired by the Almohad chief, decreed that to purify the city, it was enough to destroy the religious buildings which were badly directed towards the qibla and build more. The faqïh accepted this kind of purification, and the Alraoravid mihrabs were torn to pieces. This destruction was accompanied, says Idrisï, by scenes of looting and trafficking in illicit things.

Then they sent trusted men into the city with the vizier, and the captives surrendered to the Mahzan, Allah increases his resources! Their jewelry, their belongings, and their weapons. All that was in the city was brought to the Mahzan: the women were sold, and all the proceeds from the capture of the city returned to the Almohad treasury.

Then the caliph entered Marrakech and divided the streets between the Almohads. These cruel soldiers, with violent and harsh customs, bloodthirsty and merciless, for whom existence until this day had been a perpetual battle, we’re going, like all the barbarian victors of history, to put up very quickly with the civilization.

As for the caliph, he was undoubtedly happy to abandon his tent and settle in Ali’s palace, where we will find him later with his sons.

He was now going to give his full measure in the organization of his empire.

MARRAKECH, CAPITAL OF ABD-AL-MUMIN

1. – Genealogical table of mu’mini rulers of Almohad. II. – The organization of the central government. The Almohad hierarchy. The government. The training of empire executives.

III. – Marrakech, capital of an empire.

1. – The foundations of Abd-al-Mu’min in Marrakech:
2. The first Koutoubia. Plan. Materials. Openings. The east facade. The retractable maqsûra and minbar. The vaulted passage. Tanks. The booksellers’ souk. The cobbled street (Rasif). The minaret. The famous Koran of Cordoba.
3. The second and current Koutoubia. The reasons for its construction. Dating. The plan for the second and current Koutoubia. The device. The oratory. The mihrab. The maqsüra. The naves, domes, and frameworks. Epigraphy.
4. The big minaret. Dimensions and proportions. The device. The foundations. The plan of the minaret. The decor of the minaret. The lantemon. The clock.
5. General conclusion on Koutoubia.Large gardens and large pools.
6. Conclusion on the work of Abd-al-Mu’min.

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT

The occupation of Marrakech by the Almohads and, under poorly known conditions the attribution to the winner of the Califian title of prince of the believers [amïr al-muminîn), put an end, not only to the dynasty resulting from the desert and to the spiritual suzerainty of the Abbasid Caliphate of the East but to the Hispano-Umayyad administration methods of the Almoravids.

Abd-al-Mu’min settled without hesitation in the palace of Alï b. Yùsuf and immediately proceeded to a fierce sorting among his dubious supporters. According to his familiar Baydâq, 32,730 Almohads were put to death throughout the subjugated Maghreb. The country, he adds, and we believe it without difficulty, then experienced appeasement.

The recognition (Ftirâf) of Almohad power is no longer in doubt, Abd-al-Mu’min organized his empire “on the amplified and adapted basis of the political system of the Almohad community.”

The Almohad hierarchy.

With conviction, but also with prudence and skill, the sovereign knew how to remain faithful to the political and social institutions of the Unitarians who gave in the State the pre-eminence to the founding tribes, of which the first was that of the Mahdi, the Harga. They formed a closed military aristocracy within which Abd-al-Mu’min rigorously respected the hierarchy established by Ibn Tümart. Very few tribes were able to integrate; that of Kümya, the cradle of the caliph himself, received this honor only fifteen years after the capture of Marrakech, and again it was following an assassination attempt on the person of the caliph. He took the opportunity to bring his contributions to his personal guard, where there were already Kurdish elements.

The Government

To organize his central government, the classic makhzen of the Western Muslim dynasties, Abd-al-Mu’min set up a system of administration, taking into account both the Berber sensitivities and the necessities of the policy he wanted to lead. In territories already subject to its authority. It was only later, to strengthen his power and the future of his dynasty, that he associated his sons with the early Almohads that he provided governments in the principal provinces of the Empire.

The caliph was assisted by a vizier. The first to occupy this office, highest in favor of the sovereign, was the famous Abu Hafs Umar Intï. After him, Ibn Atïya, already in charge of the kitâba (chancellery), obtained this title granted to the privileged few.

The sovereign had two councils: the Council of Ten, the Council of Fifty. The first formed the immediate entourage of the caliph, and its members were often part of the Makhzen. The Council of Fifty was made up of representatives of the main Almohad tribes. It seems that the Ten were automatically part of it, which suggests that the Council of Fifty was rather that of the Forty, a figure that recalls the old Berber institution of the Arbain Ayt.

But, as has often happened in the land of Islam, the various departments of the administration did not have the autonomy of modern institutions and overlapped each other. The circumstances, the value of men, the will of the caliph determined the assignments, the appointments, the transfers, since it was the sovereign himself who ensured the liaison between all the servants of the state and the Councils.

Marrakesh Historical Heritage

Marrakesh Historical Heritage

THE END OF TRIBALISM

What is a North African clan? Pondered Jacques BERQUE, continuing the conversation resuscitated by DOUTTE toward the start of the century, and pushing this standard somewhat further, on which any hypothesis of Maghreb society should fundamentally still be tried. Above all, is there a solitary response to this inquiry? One may think about whether a definition that reacts to every clan does would not be boundlessly extended, or if, extending the story, it doesn’t would wind up being, for every family, behind the times. There can’t be a similar perspective, for political bodies introduced from hundreds of years in similar cantons-asylums, and for social gatherings extradited to the four corners of the realm. Ibn Khaidoun and Naçiri don’t discuss similar clans when they depict social groups’ changes conveying a similar ethnic: there is the clan country, the clan party, the clan group, the clan outcast, expelled, financial, authoritative segment. Furthermore, a terminology as exact as conceivable would make genera, species, types, and subtypes, picking up futile meticulousness, losing recorded riches, and genuine experience.

Furthermore, how to decrease the flight between the pronounced and the upheld? The clan is a section in itself “, yet also for itself, it is simply the mindfulness it has, it would just be worth by its esprit de corps.”

Be that as it may, today, the vast majority of the clans are not, at this point, political groupings, yet regional groupings of extraordinary heterogeneity, positioned under the pennant of a name considered still renowned, the more denominative. The male-centric belief system, which puts an excess of accentuation on organic filiation, is not, at this point, even genuinely referenced. Jacques BERQUE recommends that the support of the wording focuses on memorable security. ” So maybe it is silly to ponder where such a clan originates from? School and grant practice, which essentially requires just a decent document, and the act of lists, however, which leaves the specialist extremely disappointed. In this regard, they can play progressively, with the cards persistently gathered and grouped, two sorts of games: that of changelessness and shakiness. They can then, with the same number of contentions, show that the clans of today are, generally, those of previous occasions and that there are numerous new ones, and some of them vanished, fled, covered, or decreased to portions or parts of old. In actuality, they will have gathered “tokens,” valued the general fixity of these assigning bunches in the equivalent orographic spaces.

In any case, fundamentally, would they say they are simply tokens? Obviously, behind these, there are likewise sorts of life, which have developed, so gradually, that the impression of lastingness beats that of progress. In any case, mainly, the name of the gathering covers history, the mindfulness that they have of it, and the way of life that they connect to it. That this story is, as well, treatment of signs, they will effortlessly concur. However, the reality remains that the aggregate distinction is found there, remembers it, and absorbs any more peculiar on the spot. All newcomers gave that they show up in little numbers. “Hereditary qualities with geographic intersections” composes J. BERQUE, which opens up an entire point of view of inquiries on one another’s part and then some, on the components that overwhelm the economy.

It is anything but difficult to concede that the sign is considerably more reliable than the items it covers. How frequently in the Maghreb are they shocked to hear assigning opposite social realities by a similar term? The best model is most likely that of rouiza, utilized conversely, to discuss the ancestral shared guide, seigneurial errand (rather than koulfa), or the purported National Promotion yard. Some organizations make words for every advancement to the point of losing their parentage. There are others, as in Morocco, where it is a remarkable inverse that it is about; the inclination is towards the signifier’s traditionalism. Henceforth the obvious fixity, seen during a shallow assessment, from which speculations of convention draw, as indeed those of certain ethnology, convinced to watch a general public without history or nearly without an account.

In any case, if the name of the clan is more enduring than the fanciful virtue ethic, if the financial record of “digestions and dissimilations” at last kept up a similar banner, on a similar domain, it didn’t occur anything, a specific history was coherent, a filiation. The best verification is that the gathering attests its name. Its language, its semantic varieties, its fundamental brain science, its ensemble, its traditions, and the mindfulness it has of its history also.

For the clan, the primary inquiry when it declares its name is to legitimize the particular case to challenge and guarantee such a bit of an area, water, benefits, or be. The most radiant crossroads in history are called to the salvage, for an exceptionally current deal. The debate of has been that these conversations of cutoff points and seguia, where each gathering pardons from an alternate period for evidence of its privileges: however, the total of the cases accordingly contended by the prime, to the detriment of the other, surpasses a lot of the topic of the question. Is it not the equivalent of countries during the war?

They don’t have the foggiest idea what – however, not all simultaneously; they know them when they have emanated; they are safeguarded as they are embalmed. They comprehend that the peers’ geographers, antiquarians, sociologists of such a clan’s magnificence can furnish them with unequivocal data to see how it moved to start with one spot then onto the next. Yet, what has shifted? The entire clan, a gathering, in particular, a couple of radicals, a couple of hopeless, a banner, a people, or another sap?

Regardless of whether they could affirm that everything has relocated, what promises them the straightforward significance of this all transient, and the importance of a sentence this way: “The Rehamna are from Mauritania? These Rehamna, incredible itinerant camel drivers from Mauritania in the thirteenth century, would say they are the Rehamna guich du Sous in the sixteenth century? Is it true that they are similar to the heterogeneous confederation called Rehamna under the authority of an extraordinary political pioneer, affirmed the control of focal Haouz in 1875? Are the sheep ministers, constrained into oat cultivating, who currently involve the Ben Guerrier level? Also, He’s not catching it means to “slip from” for a provincial Maghrebian? Suppose it is just an issue of organic filiation. In that case, they won’t overlook that they are here under the male-controlled society’s tyranny to state that of life brought into the gathering by the ladies is deliberately eradicated. Pass again when it is about generally endogamous meetings, where the Arab marriage with the uncle’s little girl is regularly rehearsed.

However, among the Masmouda, exogamous, and then fundamentally, who says, “The Rehamna are .” while the Rehamna Did not have a very long period of time if at any point they have had political bodies illustrative of the social space which is theirs perceived by the managerial division? On the off chance, it is the Caïd designated by the Makhzen, such gathering of residents, or such individuals who talk. They are not the Rehamna; the ancient clan’s manes can’t be called here, in the social field of another age, to leave a mark on the world serve anger something, however whose story?

At long last, just history, indeed, permits them to comprehend the clan. What’s more, the entire of this history is crossed, in Haouz, by four significant marvels: demography, the ascent towards the north, the advancement towards sedentarization, the accommodation to the focal force; these four elements are neither autonomous nor consistently indirect reliance.

Before the foundation of focal force idrissitc in Fez, and before the Almoravides in Marrakech, suppose most importantly, before the Almohads – “clan” pressure confounded sort of society and phase of evolution9. From that point forward, the clan has been sentenced to be just a customer development. The focal force endures because it doesn’t briefly have a way to decrease it. However, it forces on it, without its information, and institutional picture and its more severe creation method. Knowledge, even a thousand kilometers away or in a mountain canton, of the presence of a focal state, is sufficient for the clan to help develop a seigneur. In other words, she can generally sustain the hallucination of enduring in her being, by taking asylum or revolting pretty much triumphantly; it can just keep its name by changing its tendency. To put it, in Morocco, no humanist has seen a genuine clan, not even Ibn Khaldoun: only segmental social developments, remnants of the family, delegated by a focal or caïdai power and subverted by the opposition of ancestries.

Must they go further to state that the Maghreb clan has never been more than a mostly acknowledged ideal-type? As communism can be, for instance, in an enormous number of nations, an ideal-sort of change, or even Europe, an organization needing to be made? There is no proof of this, even though “asabiya to assign” ancestral nationalism “alludes to the thought of agnation or family relationship on the dad’s side and appears to be weighty with importance. Was the agnatic North African clan, only a confederation of heredities, never arrived at the network, as the tribal family could do south of the Sahara? This is likely not the situation with the stationary individuals of the southwest and the Rif, who have arrived at the right combination, to give themselves network establishments as coordinating as the Agadir and the top seeds of the ancestral open depository.

GELLNER’s segmentary is the concealed essence of Arabiya, which shows up when there is not. At this point, a clan, where the standard of unanimity isn’t the cloak that covers the subject minorities decently, however, banishes. Then again, the word clan is close to an idea. Which assigns any social arrangement, from the crowd to the chieftainship, and alludes to a path to the political, managerial section.

Wording traps! Will it be smart for everyone to now put cites all over the place? Things being what they are, is it heuristic to stamp out the clan’s advancement in the rustic network by directly adjusted descriptive word benchmarks, and in this direction, find either bunch examined? Much of the time, this is preposterous, the materials accessible (results of different clan plans) are not genuinely usable; in other cases, despite what might be expected. So how about they temporarily leave the speculations, analyze the realities, and afterward return to those somewhat better furnished.

THE TRIBES OF HAOUZ

The populaces which involve the plain of Haouz are not all the relatives of an indigenous settlement. By short endogenous segment intensification, they are not all migrants either or all showed up simultaneously. Every ethnic gathering, every accommodation, came at its own time, not in every case, with its workforce, yet its lifestyle and history.

The practically unfilled plain during protohistory was gradually filled, nearly by migration, until setting up somewhat more than a century prior, the more significant part of the enormous ethnic gatherings that they know today. After this, populace development clarifies settlement densification, particularly in the last 50 years. Everything occurs as though it had been essential that a specific thickness of the populace was reached in this zone, so the shock conceived of the powers in nearness balances the fascination that the desires on a plain progressively better cleared, couldn’t neglect to make.

A first characterization of the diverse social gatherings, known as tribals, which possess the Haouz, can be produced using a couple of target attributes that are undeniable and straightforward to characterize. They can hold among these qualities: the prevailing creation framework (peaceful, agro-peaceful, grain, arboreal), territory (mountain, of inundated plain of dir, plain bour), the time of the foundation of the name of the clan in the Haouz (before the XL century, in the XVI century, in the XIX century), the language (Berber, Arabic) and so on … Such a table uncovers enormous gatherings, homogeneous and subject to their virtual environment, and some trademark “oddities”:

This includes a settlement that has revoked all ancestral fiction, even to the very name, it is the “soukkanes” or occupants; however, is it worse to decipher as insignificant individuals? Who possess the parts of Agafaï, Tamesguelft, Askejjour, Saâda, Tassoultant, and Arhouatim. It was framing a bow west of Marrakech, the populace of blended starting point, travelers and outlaws, housed on Crown terrains, Makhzcn and the notables, customers, inhabitants, tenant farmers without ancestral ties perceived in the Haouz sensus stricto.

Around Marrakech concentrically, there would be the nurseries and cultivators “housed by the focal force, the guich genuine warriors, available for later for the Harka the old guich introduced fallen in naïba, at extended last the mountain clans.

The paradox of the circumstance in Marrakech implies that all the clans, pretty much, have, eventually ever, upheld a state in the forefront and that at last, they are generally messed up if they need to grow – inappropriately – this idea, to that of direct cooperation in power: the “Masmoudiennes” are the “Almohad forerunners,” the Saharans the Ahl Under Saadian, the new guich, the Alaouite guich. So the qualification among guich and non-guich n is just a practically authoritative and momentary schematization. The gatherings which upheld the focal force in Marrakech progressively involved the plain and subdued the others. These have mostly flourished, somewhat absorbed, incompletely got away, d “where the concentricity and the opposition of the remnants to the sides of the plain; however one can convey the highlight too on the coherencies on the discontinuities. According to the occasion that the breaks are made at the end of the day, there are no Guich clans, in essence. Haouz, consistently, since the Almoravides, is the stake! With each new force, similar terrains see new experts showing up, repulsing the others, which doesn’t imply that the individuals who develop them are not regularly the equivalent. This cycle was not suspended by the provincial scene, a long way from it, and without a doubt, it has not yet been halted, yet it is not, at this point, an issue of clans!

THE “MASMOUDIENNES”

This is a space on which most creators concur. The vast “Masmoudian antecedents” clans – the political repository of the Almohads were there before. They are still there!

Jacques BERQUE is more sagacious as to this lastingness. He even suspects so much the substance of the term masmouda, that he causes it to show up in the “Social Structures of the High Atlas,” just by the economy of language, by mention, or by quote. A lengthy investigation permits him to illustrate, all the more unequivocally for the Seksaoua, that “if the name, as far as concerns its, stayed unchanging and confined, this permanence was just formal.”  The proposal, which was taken up unequivocally later, as of now shows up today, and which would be enlisted today in the structuralist hypothesis. Even in auxiliary etymology, as per which ancestral space is mostly an onomastic space.

Henri TERRASSE doubted the Masmoudian character of the Ourika. Hazarga and Haskoura, who appeared to him in certainty to be Sanhaja (Znaga). As of now, Yaqûbî flagged the development of the Sanhaja to Aghmat. Which infiltrated the Masmoudian obstruct from the south-east and the Atlantic Sahara. Be that as it may, the term Masmouda is a pennant, recognizing the arboriculturists from the chartbook, the little ministers Regraga de la Meseta, the Berghouata de la Tamesna. Lamta travelers from the Sahara and Sanhaja from the Southeast. The gatherings penetrated through the Atlas Passes acclimatized into the populaces set up and likely received their states of presence and lifestyle.

Of the seven famous “forerunner” clans, today, one has vanished, the Hintata; three different gatherings have acquired the renowned name of an “organizer”: Ourika, Guedmioua, Skoura; three various conferences considered to consume similar spaces bear new names: Seksaoua, part of the old Guenfisa which would have incorporated their compartment, the Glaoua and the Uzguita, watchmen of the vast passes. Rober MONTAGNE10 talks about the contention of “points of interest given by Jacques BEROUE is more vigilant about this perpetual quality. He is dubious of the substance of the term masmouda, which he does exclude from the “Social Structures of the High Atlas” ‘aside from by monetary language by mention or by citation. An all-encompassing examination permits him to illustrate, all the more correctly, for Its Seksaoua than if it is unchanging and confined to him. Bette permanence was the main torture. The proposal, which was taken up again a lot later, is now appearing on the other side. Today, it would be essential for the structuralist hypothesis. Even auxiliary etymology, for which the ancestral space is generally onomastic.

Henri TERRASSE questioned the Masmoudian character of the Ourika. Hazarga and Haskoura, who appeared to him to be Sanhaja (Znaga). Deja Yaqubi detailed the desolates of Sanhaja to Aghmat, which was infiltrating the Masmoudi coalition from the southeast side of the Atlantic Sahara. However, Masmouda’s tenne is a standard distinctive tree producer from the Atlas. Little Regraga pastoralists from the Meseta, Berghouata from Tamesna, Lamta wanderers from the Sahara, and Sanhaja from the South-East. Its forests penetrated through its Atlas passes, absorbed to the populaces set up, and most likely embraced their day to day environments and lifestyles.

Out of its well known “ancestor” clans, today, one has vanished, the Hintata; three aunties bunches have the esteemed name dime “originator”: Ourika, Guedmioua. Skoura; three different gatherings considered as consuming similar spaces, bear new names: Seksaoua, the frenzy of the antiquated Guenfisa who might have incorporated their holder, the Glaoua, and Its Ouzguita, gatekeepers of the extraordinary passes. Rober MONTAGNE examines the contention of the “favorable circumstances given by dominance of the Atlas’ entries, to clarify the historical destiny of the populaces of the Nfis, and the fortune of the extraordinary caïd of Glaoua, Goundafa, and Mtougga. Simultaneously, conceding that normal conditions are by all accounts, not the only ones that could have acted. They won’t neglect to watch, in any case, that the heads of these clans are altogether outsiders from the South and that these spaces are the individuals who have the most ethnic changed ever.

They can place in equal the relations made by different topographies and voyagers:

Likewise, there are valid justifications to imagine that these gatherings are not the essential relatives of indigenous populaces outcasts and sticking to the Atlas’ mountain cantons. Maybe, during explicit scenes of ancient occasions, the High Atlas’ climatic conditions could have established it as an impossible hindrance and finisher-shelter. However, since the “influx of steers herders,” the Atlas shows up additional: Floor a safe house for those of the North, and away, a transfer sifting, for the populaces of the South. The attacks preparing huge numbers don’t cross the Atlas through the high passes; they all go through Argana. However, little gatherings of families disengaged people, and outlaws have presumably, without a doubt, continuously passed over the edges and to settle, by naturalizing, on the more watered and more extravagant northern slant. That between these entries, individual cantons remained moderately less stirred up like the Ounain, the Azzaden, the Ourika of upstream, the Aït N’Zat, the Ait Bou Guemez, one can advance great mechanical, social, and institutional confirmations of this. (ancientness of the consecrated, of legends “, of an ensemble, nonattendance of seigneuries), yet the dissemination and transhumance. In a carefully exogamous populace that disregards the extraordinary marriage with the uncle’s girl. They make them question the idleness of this organization itself, in any event, put it into viewpoint.

Accordingly, slow south-north streams, by the high passes, relative separation of the high cantons shut by edges, clarify the general diligence of ethnic gatherings in the Grand Atlas. Let them add to this an inclination to set up stations on the Dir, with a perspective on the cone of the Ourika. Suppose the city of Nafis could have had, for a period, some quality. In that case, it couldn’t guarantee the fate of Aghmât, in the region with the best water and the most positive for the advancement of arboriculture. The fascination of Aghmât is old and gone before that of Marrakech, because, dissimilar to the last found a lot in the center of the plain to the mountain individuals’ flavor, it is the standard augmentation of the Dir.

Consequently, a slight move of ethnic gatherings toward the East or preferably toward the North-East. The changeless conflicts of the Nfis Rhirhaïa clans with those of Ourika from one perspective. And the Mesfioua and Glaoua then again which framed the premise of the political history of these gatherings.

The relic of the lifestyle of mountain populaces isn’t in question. Early ever, farming was drilled there with cows rearing. The Ait Ouaouzguit, Aït N’Zat presently involve the Yagour level, and Ait Oucheg (Mesfioua), that one finds multitudinous stone inscriptions identifying with the training of the bull and its rearing, yet besides the first araire towed by a bovid. “Here it is, right around 4,000 years of ongoing cultivating innovation!

Yet, before contemplating the method of creation of this mountain society gnarred, it is prudent to introduce the heroes.

The Ourika ‘(ar. urika, warika, berb. yuriken)

“For the Ourika, no wavering: they lived in the valleys where they, despite everything, discover them today and further downstream. To the extent they can rise, Aghmät, which remained on present-day Oued Ourika, a short separation downstream from its outlet in the plain, was called Aghmät Ourika.”

The certification of control of Aghmat by the Ourika at the first light of history is continually repeated since the differentiation made by al Bakri of two Aghmat, one called Ailan and the other Ourika.

However, on the off chance that they follow the content intently, nothing permits them to conclude that the Ourika was in Aghmat, an incredible opposite: Aghmat seems a city of the Dir, an asylum, a market, a territory, a between the ancestral fringe city, similar to all the business and holy places, yet not a city of the Ourika.

The typical habitat and the daily international affairs of the ancestral condition instead offer them to imagine that the marshes and the maquis which involved the center zone of the cone of Ourika, were to comprise a dead zone, much the same as the site that Marrakech will possess later. ; it is in the middle spaces that the principal post-ancestral urban areas are set up. Aghmat was at that point a bringing together focus and ought not to be contrasted with Nafis or Aïlän, which were ancestral fortresses (Agadir) of Kik and Tasghimout.

They have a few motivations to accept that the Ourika didn’t need to withdraw their northern fringes into the plain altogether. The current furthest reaches of the Mesfioua and the Ourika passes precisely to the downstream furthest reaches of the segments of Séguia, which have their gets upstream of the outlet, similar to different clans (Rhirhaïa and Imi n’Zat). The Mesfioua push, which was applied from East to West, couldn’t be successful, just on lands, generally without an ace, to revive and water from waterways got from the Ourika watercourse the fringe of the Ourika. Aghmat is directly on edge, and the seguia which crosses it – Taouelt – has its hold precisely at the fringe of the Ourika. The most established Arabic writings demonstrate both the significance of this channel and the presence in the quick region, and downstream of Aghmat, of enormous bogs,

Then again, the connection between the Mesfioua and the Ourika, on their southern and eastern mountain outskirts, is challenging to comprehend. They know pretty much that the foundation of a reliable focal force in Marrakech and the improvement of the water system in the focal Haouz have consistently required a massive withdrawal of water from the Ourika aqueduct. Inspecting is impossible during low water periods without perfect mastery of the populaces built upon this stream’s banks. The Ourika intermittently closes all their seguias, around multi-week by month, from April to September so that they can flood olives, sugar sticks, and cotton. The obscurations of this mastery of the Makhzen prompted the surrender of the “clan” of the Ourika to its guard, partitioned, done having the inside association and esprit de corps permitting it to oppose rivalry from neighboring gatherings, still unequivocally independent. It was during these periods that the Mesfioua went about as winners and attached the mountain cantons. Following a couple of long periods of misfortunes and occupation, the benefits of the topographical condition and the resumption of the best possible association of tribalism could make the overwhelmed clan more serious. The result of the contentions was clearly of the request for the level of influence, in other words, of the unexpected circumstance. They verifiably existed at such or such second, at the carefulness of collusions (arrangement of associations amqôn) Ourika, Rhirhaïa, Sektana, to adjust the Mesfioua instance. In any case, the ancestral establishments of the Ourika effectively decimated under the Saadians (particularly under Moulay Ahmed El Mansour 1578-1603), experienced issues in restoring themselves during the significant stretch of the irritation or debilitating of the focal force in Marrakech ( from 1603 to 1746 basically).

It is Mohammed ben Abdallah (1757-1770), and particularly seventy years after Moulay Abderrahmane, previously during his caliphate, who entered took to resurrect the extraordinary séguias in the focal Haouz, and unequivocally restore the authority of Marrakech in the valley, by helping the Ourika to re-attach the upstream municipalities. Thus, all through the firm Makhzenian mastery, the disintegration of ancestral foundations was continued. Detailing legitimately to the caïd of the Qasba Ibrahim al Grawi (the legislative head of the Ahl Sous), the sheikhat was organized among the Ourika a short while after 1850, under the rule of Moulay Abderrahmane. They have over this time of Cherifian Letters, obviously indicating the cycle this time of Cherifian Letters®, unmistakably demonstrating the process of management and entrance of the political and financial association of the Makhzen. At a similar proper level, until 1852. The location of the Cherifian letters to the Ourika was made for the sake of “our companion the dedicated X and to the entire get together (jmaa) of the Hurika.” After this date, the beneficiary is “the worker of Our Lord, the reliable X” without noticing a political gathering next to him. The tone and the requests communicated are advancing a similar way.

Comprised in Khoms by Moulay el Hassan, they are separated into Eleven monetary segments (ifassen = hands) for dispersing charges and collects. VOINOT had the option to take note of these hands’ names and appropriate them in the two classes (left), of which his sources at that point had the Remembrance. However, he previously revealed, in 1927, these leffs were vanishing. They realize that the establishment and reinforcing of the caïdat didn’t abandon challenges during the rule of Moulay El Hassan, dope put of Moulay Abdelaziz. To the guide that the last sovereign toward bless the caïd Qorchi with a light field gun, to put down the revolt of the Lakhmas (uñ des ifassen): they ventured to such an extreme as to devastate and consume the Qasba of Aourir, while the caid was in Harka in the Sous. Following five months of restraint, the Ourika at long last came back to arrange.

The previous contemplations might not have any broad criticalness in Haouz either, the Oued Ourika having a specific circumstance, and taking an interest with a particular goal in mind in the water system of the suburbia Marrakech. However, they cannot abstain from seeing virtually here. The advancement of the immediate improvement, the progress all short so, over a bigger space, couldn’t abandon going past particularizes, disassembling clans’ cultural association. These institutional offenses can be depicted under their ideal viewpoints (augmenting the monetary, social field, development of the beneficial powers, freedom from the thin limitations of the little nearby chiefdoms). Or on the opposite under their negative angles (dictatorship of the focal force, harsh duties of the overproduction, social pulverization, and so forth.). Yet, for the Ourika, bit by bit diminished to the function of water watches, it is the change within sight of the focal force that was the most difficult; it is the progression of stuns back to back to a few arrangements of substitution of an order. Exogenous, and of an endogenous order, which destroyed the association of the gathering.

Additionally, around 1862, under Mohammed ben Abderrahmane, the Mesfioua involved – or added – the mountain canton of Aït Bisguemmi, the field of Aït Rheddo, and the Aït Oucheg until the left bank of the channel Ourika, including the Zaouia de Setti Fadma. Aided by Moulay El Hassan around 1875, the Ourika reoccupied the initial two parts and the Zaouia through which the most grounded feeders of the Ourika stream. However, the Aït Oucheg, who, despite everything relied upon the Ait “office” Ourir (Mesfioua), were not joined to the Ourika until 1960, by a merely regulatory choice planned for reestablishing unadulterated accommodation of movement (nearness to the workplace). Here is, indeed, dated, a straightforward as can be absorption.

Today, the Ourika dubiously possesses the watershed of the channel of a similar name. They see that the correspondence between as far as possible and the gathering outskirts aren’t so exacting as one would suspect from a careless assessment. Without a doubt, the type of harmony towards which the gatherings rely on ideal utilization of overflow water tends to comprise themselves into political units viable with the control of a watershed. However, during verifiable changes, given nature (ascent of populaces from the south, the difference in power in the plain). The ideal financial advancement of the land is maybe not the fundamental objective of the gathering. Open rivalries can make more beneficial the occupations of neighboring domains, the quest for covetousness, etc. Ancestral political life in the mountain municipalities is a long way from redundant and ahistorical.

On the off chance that the Ourika went under ancestral organizations in the Middle Ages, it quite a while back that they advanced towards the “clan managerial,” in any event as respects the downstream portions. It is difficult to date or to determine the very types of this development, from ancestral division to public organization using Caidal division, because, here as well, verbal transformations have fallen well behind changes. Socio-political; they are in this way compelled to see them through chronologically erroneous and deficient wording: These schematics and reconstructive correspondences make vanish by authoritative will, all the wealth of the lived and the game, as much political as phonetic. The interlocking character of the proper classifications of the last two sections should neither misdirect nor be shipped into the principal segment.

They will return to this on an overall level when they concentrate further on the ancestral framework on Haouz’s edge. They can see in any way in the appended table that the financial classification of 1956 had not eliminated the buildups of old partnerships, which the Ourika remembered during the VOINOT examination (1927). Then again, the statistics of 1960 disregards the old solidarities. A quick overview appeared, in 1968, that the organization framework, despite everything, conveys the Chioukh, from the old divisions that had scarcely been changed into Ourika and Mesfioua. As it were, the official division of censuses hides a political division which, as far as concerns its, is compelled to consider the opposition of real factors of understanding.

They can sum up the development of the gatherings that involved the watershed of the Ourika aqueduct as follows: In the period going before the foundation of focal force in the plain, in other words, before the making of Marrakech, an economy of pastoralism beat flooded horticulture and Arboriculture, caused the altitudinal complementarities and the mood to win occasional – summer in the mountains, winter in the fields. Space in inclining groups arranged north-south as they, despite everything, show up today in the portions’ memory. A low populace thickness, a meager past collection of work, a moderately thick and troublesome backwoods to misuse, a simple innovation, provided for vitality, to social work, the dominance over the allocation of room: this one opened onto the plain. However, there were no men to possess it. “Two enormous gatherings, presumably less distinguished than later, they’re moving!” one along with the extended profile of the Ourika, the other of the Angour to the Dir. Despite everything, they discover today concrete remnants of these equalizations also in the Nfis, as on the Oukaimeden or the Yagour: Azaghar, past the Dir, Tichka where Agdal on the edges and levels. “The zone over the high course of the Tassoultant-Ourika Seguia is still called Azaghar-Sbiti: today is involved by the “division” of Ait Slimane.

Development of the watershed of the Ourika, Marrakesh

This fraction of Aft Slimane has on the northern slope of the jbel Igountal, which culminates in Taourirt n’Ikkis (3.212 m), an alp reserved. Likewise, the Ait Rheddou, another “fraction” of the Ourika, their pastures on the northern slope of Jbel Rjoute (3,757 m) and their habitat around 1,200 m in the Amassine sector. On these heights and these plateaus meadows (agdal), the occupants are not alone. They welcome the neighbors, laterally, with whom they form Relatively durable political alliances (amqon = equivalent to a super-Leff) and even populations of the northern slope, subject to revenge (pastoral pacts).

The establishment of central power in the direct, particularly the construction of the great Seguia (from the Saddians) removed from the Ourika (but the phenomenon is comparable for the Rhirhaïa) the spaces in Azaghar. Transhumance could no longer be carried out as before, the plains lands in winter and spring being occupied by crops. In fits and starts, according to the rigor of the Makhzenian occupation, but gradually and irreversibly, this area’s populations have limited and redirected their displacements cement.

Hence, the groups’ fragmentation into associated fractions perpendicular to the valley’s longitudinal profile and the establishment of villages on the edge of extensive forests. From now on, the complementarities are, for the downstream cantons, transverse by going up the banks of the wadi and pushing back the forest. But above all, the different groups have specialized: downstream eyes tend to become farmers; those upstream tend to be pastoralists, those in the middle zone who are more or less recognized foresters and arborists (especially walnut trees). This did not happen wholly or suddenly; individual agreements, breeding associations, come to soften these too strong specializations. Also, the groups located downstream or near the bottom increase their fodder production by creating continuous water-spreading fields, all of them increasing their cultivated areas by raising their terraces to above 2,000 m. In fifteen years, in the canton of Timichi, the cultivated area has been doubled. In Azib Tamsonlt (Haut Azzaden), all the cultivable area, a third cultivated around 1950, is now wholly sown at 2,400 m altitude. A noticeable development is also mentioned, but challenging to measure, so much the dilatants fear the tax authorities: livestock. The breeders are witnessing a decrease in their goat and sheep herds in favor of housed cattle. They point out the importance of manure for their crops, the growing need for milk, the existence of substitutes for wool and hair. This does not mean that the number of livestock has diminished at all.

On the contrary, but that, per capita, or household, the share of agricultural production is increasing. The rise of the cultivated terraced area, on increasingly steep slopes, is there to testify to the extraordinary accumulation of work. In the Ait Bezguemmi in 1967, they were able to establish that the construction of a terrace and the filling of a plot with a total area of ​​30 m ° (10 MX 3 m) had required 65 working days of adult men, not to mention the mobilization of bat animals to hoist the earth from the sandpit to the plot. However, in this area, the human density is four people cultivated hectare. In other words, it would take a little over a year of labor to cover the needs of an average consumer unit. The 30 m ° mentioned above only allows the needs of a young child to be satisfied, Thus the mountain economy today only aims to survive, to take charge of the consequences of its birth rate partially.

Evolution towards specialization according to altitudinal location instead of moving between areas of complementarily is not over. Undoubtedly, tourist and forestry developments and more daring economic orientations towards rich specialized productions (butter, cheese, nuts, etc.) would make it possible to exploit the space better. But these populations still struggle with the fiction of a lost paradise, seek refuge in their transhumance, emigrate very moderately, in the absence of a credible development model, and participate in broader economic progress which would help them out of their ghettos.

The Mesfioua (ar. Masfiwa, massiwa, ber. Imasfiwen)

Most authors report that the current Mesfioua can be compared to those Ibn KHALDOUN classifies among the “Assaden” tribes “? Identified with the Azzaden, which today occupy the wadi of the same name on the northern slope of the Tazaghart. Ibn khaldoun divides the Mesfiwa into two branches: the Doghagha and the Youtanan “; they are still divided into two broad groups today: the Qejji and the Imi n’Zat, but it is not liable to find, among the fractions and Mesfioua sub-fractions, the old names of the two groups. They can doubt both the assimilation of the Assaden to the Azzaden and especially the crossing of the Mesfioua over the Rhirhaïa and the Ourika, to establish themselves in the Zat basin in the space very long ago occupied by the Hazraga and the Aïlana. The fact remains that the mighty massif of Zat backs this group (3,912 m) and Meltsen (3,597 m), occupies the entire northern slope, and emerges in the plain to the gates of Marrakech. It is the only mountain tribe that has established and maintained itself in the Haouz of Marrakech until our days. All the others have been contained or driven back into the mountains by the central power and the plain’s successive occupants.

Three strongly marked characters of this group invite them to reflect on the devolution of tribalism. Here is a tribe that is made up of populations from elsewhere and everywhere, who kept a solid esprit de corps until the dawn of the twentieth century, to the point that the central power was used to installing the Makhzé-Nien caïdat there. He had to wait for the firm authority of Glaoui to achieve this, which. However, it increased its territory in the plain to the gates of Marrakech.

A mixed group, totally Berber-speaking certainly, but within which were assimilated Filala, populations of Dades, northeastern Morocco (Rhiata) and which overwhelmed Dir’s small towns like Aghmat, Sidi Abdallah Rhiat, Chouiter, Taferiat, etc.

Undoubtedly, the reception of foreigners and their systematic assimilation is a constant feature of the tribes of the great Atlas’ northern slope. Who has never ceased to receive isolated individuals, families, lineages, who, having crossed the crests and passes of the Atlas for all kinds of reasons, demanded hospitality, became first customers, then allies, and finally contributors. But in a group like the Ourika, you have to go back through the genealogies, question the lineages for a long time so that you suddenly come to evoke the distant origin. In Mesfioua, the memory of migration is not buried, it is often affirmed at the outset, but at the same time, assimilation is emphasized. Because the Mesfioua forms a very integrating group, the mläqit, this collection of people from all walks of life, enters the articulated space’s organizational grounds. Immigrants are very quickly assimilated from a political perspective, mainly using marriage, the Mesfioua being strictly exogamous.

Further east, the Sraghna of Tessaout systematically calls on foreigners to develop their land (particularly in complaints). Still, marriage does not entail the right to citizenship. The son-in-law-planter cannot hope to be able to acquire a right to water or a piece of land”, the regular exhortation of women, to strictly reserve the means of production for the agnatic lineage.

Among the Mesfioua in the plain, these practices do not occur: certainly, girls and women see themselves having very great difficulties accessing the free disposal of their shares, but the sale of goods is free between elders’ contributors and newcomers, Mesfioua “citizenship” is easily acquired.

Mixed, but having a strong esprit de corps, until 1912, the Mesfioua showed unrestrained aggressiveness towards their enemies and the central power. Not because of the emergence of a great caid as among the Mtougga, the Goundafa, or the Glaoua. That is to say, by undertaking to eat the neighbors” under the banner of a dynast or a pretending. Rather like the Rehamna or the Oulad Bou Sbaa, of course, chiefs emerged to coordinate actions, but all lineages participated. In the stages of tribal devolution, it seems necessary to distinguish between the age. When the group looks for leaders to realize its views and imposes on his group the objective of his interests, they must consider that the Mesfioua were a little behind the other tribes of the great Atlas from this point of view.

They know four major Mesfioua revolts over the past two centuries. They have always been described as powerful phenomena, very strongly repressed, but ultimately without lasting results. The first dates from the Al-Mostadi competition (1151-1158 / 1738-1745) during the reign of Moulay Abdallah.

The Mesfioua had embraced the party of Moulay al-Mostadi, who fled (in front of Moulay Abdallah) and took refuge in the mountains, where they had been fortified. The Sultan advanced (from Demnat) to Wadi Zat, where he established his camp. The Arabs Rehamna, Zemrane, and all the people of Haouz who obeyed him came to camp near him. They ravaged the country of the Mesfioua, where they spread looting and destruction. The struggle continued so fiercely that (the region of) Wadi Zat became more skinned than the belly of a donkey. The soldiers began to remove the grain from the silos, to destroy the villages, and to cut down the trees, leaving the plain as bare as the palm, where a bird could not find food, or a lost one take shelter. From there, the Sultan moved to Wadi Kigui (Qejji): the soldiers recommenced their work of destruction; the locals could not get their trees cut down. Wadi Kigui became more devastated than Zat.

Even taking the part of the literary imagination, the phenomenon has must have struck contemporaries. But twenty years later, they find them equal to themselves if they are to believe Naciri’s relationship: “The submission (of the Mesfioua) to the Sultan was only apparent. Their resentments they’re still simmering in their chests, and the obedience they displayed was only a truce concluded in a spirit of revenge. So, when the reign of Sidi Mohammed (b.Abdallah) began, they resumed their revolt”, “When the sovereign received a delegation of 150 notables from the Mesfioua who arrived on horseback, he had them executed and sent his troops to bring the country to sac, This tribe had been the most turbulent of all since his father had appointed the khalifa in Marrakech “,

The third revolt is 1859: the Moroccan historians do not mention it, but they have been able to know it and update its mechanisms thanks to an heir’s family archives to Caïd Ouriki. It is essentially a refusal of the Mesfioua to see the waters of the Ourika be diverted upstream for the benefit of the central Haouz, that is to say, on the sovereign (especially Tassoultant). Every year around April, since 1852 & suddenly on the Makhzen required the periodic closure of all the upstream seguia on the Ourika wadi to derive the maximum in the Tassoultant Seguia and tried to obtain the same closure by the Mesfioua to irrigate the Tabouhanit lower sector.

On this subject, Naciri writes:

“When the Sultan (Moulay Abu Rahman) undertook the planting of this orchard (the agdal). He brought there (the waters) from the source called Tâsultänt coming from Mesfioua, whose water is one of the most pleasant, etc. This source had been diverted since the reign of Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Abdallah (1171/1757 – 1204/1790) by the Mesfioua, who, during the night, appropriated the water that they divided into several channels to water their gardens and their fields. Until the reign of Sultan Moulay Slîman (1206/1792 – 1238/1822), who was tired of their ways of making their at-tribua the prerogative (iqt ‘a) with the payment of one thousand mitqâl each year. When Moulay Abd Rahman achieved sovereignty (1238/1822), he took it away from them despite themselves and brought the holds from the source. Through valleys and hills, to the fortunate Agdal,” The movement does not take place wait: the Mesfioua carry out systematic thefts of water that the Makhzen is forced to suppress by sending small detachments of Mokhaznis. One of them is ambushed, and it is revolt. The tribe appoints a certain Bou Khobza at its head and takes the mountain. They do not know much until September 18, 1859% date on which the governor of Marrakech. Ibrahim Grawi announces to Ouriki the arrest of Bou Khobza and a revolt in prison: “The Khalifa of Our Master made bring a message to his son who is in Mesfioua to bring the population to calm. Otherwise, Our Lord will do what is necessary. The most significant responsibility for the troubles in Masfiwa is their caid Bou Khobza who betrayed our Master and strengthened the movement. Now he is arrested and has been thrown in prison. Until further order from Our Master on his account, he had been unjust and had crossed the line. You can send the Mokhaznis back to you. Send the Hediya to our Master and do not interfere with matters that are not yours.

It is up to them to improve and manage your land, markets, and Seguia. They advise you to continue these tasks in peace. Nothing beats the ease, and those who seek the disorder will see misfortune fall upon them alone. He also inform you that the prisoners of Mesbah prison attempted to escape last Friday. The guard shot them back. There is had twenty-three dead and forty-five injured. The heads (of them killed) were exhibited at Place Jmaä (el Fna) to give an example to others (possible troublemakers).

Little is known about the personality of the Bou Khobza, the one who is accused of being primarily responsible for the unrest, of having overstepped the bounds, carried out unjust actions, and perhaps, of being “their” boss. However, they will remember the name they give it; “‘Boukhobza’” surprisingly resembles those of Bou Hmara, Roghi, Raissouli, Bou Na’ilat, who choose humble and miserable names that embrace widespread emotion. The exegesis makes it possible to understand without forcing the text that the Bou Khobza broke an agreement, a tacit alliance, or explicit since they speak of treason, literally the editor accuses him of having fled behind (the sovereign) and to have strengthened (grown) the “movement.”

The name of the rebel – Bou Khobza – is not that of a caïd, of an agent of the Makhzen or a person recognized by him; he is famous. Suppose Bou Khobza had been an agent of the Makhzen who would have betrayed him. He would be called by another name, even if the protocol was refused because of his revolt. The editor calls him “their” boss means that the Makhzen considers that he came from the revolt movement itself. But suppose he is accused of having betrayed. In that case, it is because a negotiation or an agreement was engaged. Insight in a certain way and that this one was broken, probably connected with the waters’ distribution.

This is not the last time the Mesfioua, in history, has been made known by their violent opposition to Makhzen. They still know the great revolt of 1894 and the sack of Marrakech, with Rehamna as allies. They will come back to this when they deal with this last tribe.

SEGONZAC wrote in 1899: “The campaign against the Mesfioua was not over when He left Morocco. To subdue them, Grand Vizier Ba Hamed imposes seven caids on them to disperse authority. The Mesfioua protest, refuse to receive the caïds and resume the revolt”. The cycle begins again: repression, ravaged fields, cut trees, gutted silos, and burnt douars. With almost the same words as Akansous, Segonzac evokes one hundred and sixty years later, the terrible repression of 1899. The Mesfioua forced into the mountains surrender, ask for forgiveness with a Hediya, and, on this occasion, the delegation is thrown into prison. The tribe takes back arms and the mountain. The Makhzen is forced to seek the Giaoui and Demnati forces’ support in the east as they attack in the plains. “On October 25 and 26, 1899,” says Segonzac, “they saw the Mesfioua douars from Marrakech blazing in the mountains; on the 27th, the defeat of the Mesfioua was complete, two hundred and fifty prisoners were put in irons, and forty-four heads cut off. Their women settle at the gates of the city in reed huts to beg there and go so far as to engage in prostitution to earn the daily bread of their prisoners; these are not fed”.

Should they attribute to the Mesfioua a particular character, a specific “basic psychology,” to explain that, unlike the Ourika, for example, they have always shown strong opposition to the Makhzen? These summary explanations are indeed those which are current in hagiography and classical history. The slightest geopolitical analysis shows why the Mesfioua is necessarily in competition with Marrakech on the waters and lands of the downstream, Ourika. As the lands which adjoin Marrakech are those of the sovereigns in the 19th century, the game is permanently open on their waters.

This also explains why, of the tribes of the plain, the Mesfioua are the only ones not to have produced a great caïd recognized by the central power. They know a Glaoui, a Touggani, an Ouriki, a Goundafi, a Sektani, a Mtougui, by making an inventory of the great caïds from east to west. But the Mesfioui installed in Bou’inän could be recognized only as long as he opposed Marrakech. It’s not for lack of trying; the same policy was applied by the Makhzen on Doubt for the Mesfioua as for the others: in 1905, DOUBT reported a common adage in the region “significant of the refusal of the” Mesfioua to see the Makhzénien candidate settle in them. They do not seek to defend a simplistic thesis involving a single factor to explain a whole series of events. There are other causes for the entire series of Mesfioua rebellions. Indeed, there were further rebellions in Marrakech Goundafa of 1876, Rehamna, which can be explained partly in the same way and somewhat otherwise. Still, the fact remains that the Mesfioua pose an enigma, or more simply a question, difficult in social history: they are the only ones in this region who have not produced a grand-caïd! Why? The classic answer is to assimilate them to Sanhaje tribes, too late nomads who would have kept their esprit de corps (Asabiya), they have seen that this is not acceptable.

They believe that they are here at the border between a water company and a tribal company, the former not having gone all the way. It is questionable whether this phenomenon is unique in the history of the country. The destruction of the Saadian cane sugar factories by the tribes located upstream indicates that between the strong hydraulic power and the tolerance of tribal independence, there were in the south of Morocco, short periods of waltz-hesitation. Almohad hydraulic history would indeed teach them beautiful things. However, they will see that Caidalism prevailed in this region, but in a troubled period, then with colonial power support.

Like the Rehamna, but unlike the other tribes of Atlas, the Mesfioua have never given up occupying the plain. The strength of a group is in its possession of a mostly complimentary space. In the sahej, you have to hold the sea and the mountain; here, the mountain retreat can only be a base camp for holding the wealthy areas below. When a group cannot resist the altitudinal split, it collapses, it disappears: thus Rhirhaïa, Sektana, Ouzguita who nevertheless had their chances. To own only the upstream is to force oneself to beg for the winter routes, to pledge allegiance, to submit. To have only the bottom is to have no refuge and to be accessible to physical liquidation.

The distribution of Mesfioua in space

The Mesfioua have divided their territory into: The single branch in the south goes up to the high peaks of Zat. The bifurcation is in the basin (perched syncline) of Tidili, protected by the natural enclosure of the naturally fortified Tasghimout. The two branches are those which cover the spreads of Qejji in the west, and Zat in the east. The Tidili basin is a kind of relay, the first line of occupation, very watered, affluent, and very populated.

The fractionation of the Mesfioua covers this arrangement in space. The direct groups all have corresponding groups in the mountains and specific establishments in the basin and the foothills. These correspondents are either recognized strictly as parents (they say “cousins”) or allies. It is readily agreed that the parental names are legendary. Still, pastoral pacts do not govern the movement of herds from the mountain pastures to the lowlands. It is a matter of simple tradition and a state of affairs punctuated by collective celebrations.

Therefore, the large groups that divide the Masfiwa have their territory lengthened in bands going up along the slopes until close to the Yagour, dominated by Ke Meltsen, a vast sanctuary and mystical space around which they radiate. Those behind the Meltsen, the Ait Zat, and the Ouagoustite do not come to the Haouz. They move south and worship Lalla Tach’ut.

Among these large groups, only the Ait Faska, the Ait Ouanga, and the Ait Ouaddouz, whose territories are aligned side by side, they’re able to preserve, more or less, the continuity of their boundaries. The others were generally divided into two parts, one in the plain, and the other in the mountains.

When one of the inhabitants is asked for isolated segments for what their space has been severed, he responds by drawing a parallel with an inheritance sharing: “when the parcel of the deceased father is too narrow, it is divided in the other direction, each heir receiving a part in every quality of the earth.” Likewise, when the group becomes too large of subgroups, transverse splits occur. The same question asked for nationals of groups installed on endings in continuous strips receives another answer: “they were not strong enough, they were eaten.”

There may be other possible explanations and, in particular, that of political assimilation into larger groups. Indeed, the settlement is not a continuous phenomenon today, let alone in the past. The establishments were temporary and precarious, and the occupation centrifugal, radio centric around these establishments. Therefore, the space division was seasonally made of tasks; the beaches’ gradual appropriation gradually reduced to nothing in the intermediate ares. If there are territories of continuous groups and other discontinuous ones today, it is partly because some establishments have united while others have remained individualized. This hypothesis is correctly verified for the Aït Ouaddouz, a strongly integrating group, which has managed to annex Aghmat and Sidi Abdallah Riats. This, in no way, means that they made the Aït Bou Saïd of the plain disappear, for example. Still, now, they have assimilated to the Aït Ouaddouz and share with them the waters of the Seguia dominating their fields like other lineages. Aït Ouaddouz, and gradually becoming less and less distinguished from it.

According to the zones and terrors took in the arm by the territories groups, space is divided into two or three sectors: jbel and azaghar, or jbel, dir, and Azzhane. In the first case, the fixed habitat is at the border between the two industries. In the second case, it is established in the media sector. Thus, the Aït Ouaddouz, the Aït Ouanga, and the Ait Faska have the three most populated sectors, the most intensively cultivated and irrigated, covering the only zone formerly produced in the basins of Tidili and Tasghimout; the mountain being used for alpine pastures, and the azban sector for winter routes. As they have seen above, this space was a little too exposed to disputes at the end of the 19th century. Very little cultivated and was occupied only by herds and their shepherds living in nouala. In March 1936, the census revealed a vital distinction between the groups that entered the plain and the others, based on the count of dwellings.

They see three types of “fractions”:

– Four mountain women who are also called “rbaa du Jbel” having practically no access to the plain: Ait Zat, Ait Ouagoustite, Ait Oucheg, and Aït Tirhedouine;

– A purely in the plain, the Aït Timelli, established only on the Zat cone on the right bank;

– The others straddling two or three zones, jbel, dir, and azaghar, sometimes with a territory exceeding 50 km in length and 2,000 m in height difference.

Until recent years each fraction was administered in its relations with the State by a single Sheikh. Since 1960 it has chioukh than individualized sectors (example: three Chioukh for Aït Ouaddouz).

The same evolution observed for the Ourika occurred for the Mesfioua with a little delay. Until now, altitudinal was complementarily in full play due to extreme mobility and inter-group solidarity. As a result, each sector was exploited extensively but taking the best possible account of each’s productivity. For about thirty years, the segments being less interdependent, less united, each has tried to produce everything he needs in very different terrors and up to the limit of acceptable yields, endangering the general balance. Thus, the spring cereals – late barley and corn – are cultivated on the Yagour, reducing the pastures that the Netherlands’ people would significantly need in summer. Grains are also grown in the Dir, occupying rare irrigated areas to the detriment of fruit trees and fodder. Finally, the sheep kept in the Azaghar, now fully cultivated, only find low pastures by the roadsides throughout the winter. To grasp the dynamics of this development, it is necessary to put into perspective the extraordinary extension of cultivated areas, resulting from population growth: there has been no substitution, for example, of cereals for arboriculture, but very significant growth unequal of the two speculations to the detriment of wasteland and fallow land with a preponderance of grains. They will describe the different cropping systems in another chapter and their effects; here, they only want to evoke one of the socio-political reasons for cropping systems’ evolution. The collapse of the tribal framework, segmentation, sedentarization, the substitution of a territorial framework for lineage solidarities. While the opening to the market economy was far from being achieved, it resulted, during the last half-century, to devote to questionable and unprofitable speculations in this place, but necessary for the self-consumption of groups, of lands which could have given much more. Perhaps this period, which is not very far from ending, allowed the fixation on the ground of a population that would have been uprooted otherwise. Maybe it will also result in a relatively irreversible deviation towards agriculture, the cultivation of spaces that would have been better developed by extensive breeding.

No doubt, the old solidarities, the cousins, the neighborhoods, have not failed to continue and endure under the mantle of new divisions. Still, with an increasingly evident trend towards the appearance of remuneration, income from the situation, association, contracts, as and as reciprocity played less and less. In particular, the massive occupation of the Azaghar with the end of the tribal revolts, the seizure of the great caïds of which they speak later. The cultivation of almost all of the space, Subtracted from the mountain cantons the winter route: they could only turn their backs on the Haouz, go to the southern slope, or go into exile and demand compensation summer pastures.

BY HAND FOREIGN EXCHANGE ON EXCHANGE CIRCUITS.

The opening up of Morocco to international trade in the middle of the nineteenth century did not prevail until after long hesitation and difficult negotiations. The first and fundamental position of Makhzen, at the beginning of the XIX century, was that “the exports impoverish the State strengthens the purchaser so that the exit of goods must be limited to the strict minimum essential, during the years of famine or to acquire weapons and powder.”

Faced with speculative and impatient traders Europeans, the Makhzen, which controls all exchanges and concentrates any significant economic initiative, opposes a heaviness, a rigidity, extreme caution, a very suspicious swingers attitude Neuse and harassment. Until 1860, i.e., before the double defeat of sky and Tetouan, the Makhzen shows its will to stay away from the competition of foreign powers and despite some shy overtures like that of Sidi Mohammed, isolationism, the status quo, and the tension, in commercial matters with foreign countries, are the rule.

Undoubtedly, the time politicians demonstrated an excellent and remarkable intuition and a reasoned fear before the dangers of necessarily unequal trade during which the country will come to lose its independence. Isolationism per se, or the restricted and controlled exchange, could undoubtedly have been a healthy political when the people and their needs were still minimal, if, at the same time, a development effort could have found the appropriate political and ideological context. But few people probably could then dominate the civil war situation, join forces towards economic competition.

The consequence of this manifest lack of social structures in the country, faced with foreign penetration, has been the dominance of the circumstances goods supplied by European commercial houses.

Around 1840, most foreign trades were a monopoly State, rented by auction to the highest bidder, or awarded as a reward think of charges or services rendered. In particular, the export of wool, oil, skins, wax, saltpeter, sulfur, lead, and zinc is entirely in the hands of Makhzen. The external marketing of grains, cattle, and henna, is subject to authorization and subject to unpredictable customs tariffs, different according to the ports, or graciously granted to privileged provisional. On import, tea, sugar, coffee, tobacco, and cochineal are state monopolies. Don’t get him wrong on this trade’s fictionalization and compare it with the current state administration. Commercial operations correctly say – that is to say: the purchase, the grouping, the carting to the ports and boarding – are provided by private persons, who have acquired by provisional and revocable auctions the monopoly of traffic.

J.L. MIEGE explains that this monopolization of trade by the Makhzen quickly fills the state coffers, but does not delay drying up the business activity itself, mostly urban dwellers, belonging to families of notable servants of the Makhzen who are temporarily discharged from office Politics. In Marrakech, this is the case of Ghanjaoui, Touggani, of Mansouri, of some Israelites also, like the Corcos, Aferiat, etc.

Mode counters in ports, particularly in Essaouira, Safi, and El-Jadids, gradually acquire knowledge of men, products, and places. The needs of foreign trade quickly exceeded quantities that can group the main buyers, Moroccans. Who has the Makhzen patent, the troubles political, ethnic, or somewhat naive partitions, the mask cash, tax levies, bring foreign merchants to escalate their purchasing networks through associations in sponsorship? They entrust touts with low from 50 to 400 Eouros to make purchases of cereals, wool, olive oil, skins, chickpeas, etc. Then they select their intermediaries and gradually double at the Makhzen market of a private network firmly attached to companies of foreign geniuses. In twenty years, from 1880 to 1900, most of the trade passed into foreign agents’ hands.

The urban merchants, who belong to Marrakech’s bourgeoisie health, cannot compete with these sponsorship companies and have no other interest than to get in touch with them by transforming as pure intermediaries and factors. Only the caid manage to resist somewhat and to drench their territories by authoritarian decisions, threats, and deportations to the merchants who pass through them,

They have seen how the Glaoui and the Goundafi take over the total monopoly trade in their fiefs (almonds, oil, etc.).

At the beginning of the XX century, during the full power of the great kingpin, the competition is intense between the trading companies and the lords:

“Two years ago, in the Hegiran year 1318 (1900-1901), agent El-Baz el-Mokhtar b, Abid de Marrakech, their semsar (broker) certified, bought for them the almond market here. It means that he “entitled to the tenth part of the profits of each quintal of almonds sold; he complains of a certain caid Tayeb el-Goundaffi du Nafis. Who refused to pay him the tenth that is of the period covered by this complaint is eight months from the year 1318, and the quantity sold is 700 quintals, the tenth share claimed makes a total of 4,200.

To allow the action of their brokers, commercial ages have to ask their legation to register the Moroccan partners’ aids on the protection lists and defend them with the Makhzen against the impediments created by the Makhzen officials themselves:

“The consular agent LENNOX, sending him the list of people proposed for protection, reported that, many of those for which J.H. FERNAU and C asked for certificates, on previously employed by FERNAU and ANDREWS of Safi and Marrakech, and that FERNAU and C claimed that these men offer all guarantees and that they can entrust money to them for buying products in the country,”

No doubt, the progressive confiscation, in favor of the houses of European trade, regional trade, then local trade, which born the caids, “successively pushed them to support the cause of sovereigns and pretenders who said they wanted to make the country more independent.

Consequently, it seems to him to be incorrect to consider that the penetration capitalist has initially been a purely economic phenomenon and strictly commercial. On the contrary, each progress of the colonial economy could not be made without a legal adjustment and social, an extension of the capitalist politico-administrative space rooted in Moroccan society.

To be successful, foreign traders had to obtain guarantees of immunity, first for their persons. For premises, they occupied, for the goods they bought, finally for the people they negotiated. The foundation of power and fortune then belonged to a lineage group strong within tribalism, or the prince’s service in the caidal system, foreign merchants could only request these guarantees from their governments. Sociologically, it is the antinomy between the caïdal enrichment system and the enrichment system capitalist who called for protection and establishing an enclave institution.

The merchants, in fact, only preceded the agents consular, or they have become consular themselves. By putting an end to the information reported by Pierre GUILLEN on the establishment of German firms in Marrakech”, they can follow the Europeanization commercial networks, followed very closely by the establishment consular post.

The WEISS und MAUR firm was founded on November 1, 1881, in Mogador. On import, it markets German fabrics (cloth from Silesia, soil cries, Elberfeld felts. On export, it groups skins, wax, dates, almonds, olive oil. She even bought grapes from Haouz and thought for a while to make wine. MAUR moved to Marrakech in 1882 to create a branch there. Until the departure of WEISS in 1887, the director the date on which he resumed the whole thing. In 1889 he joined Moroccans on land, in the Haouz, to exploit them. In 1892 he was appointed vice-consul from Germany to Mogador. It remained so until 1914. In 1912, the consortium MANNESMANN made him his principal agent in the south of Morocco.

Since 1906, WEISS and MAUR being separated, the firm has been dissolved. The buildings and the customer network in Marrakech had already been taken over by the firm MARX in 189. The MARX depend on Gebruder MARX & C from Frankfurt, which quickly became one of the largest German companies in Morocco and the most sizeable foreign firm in Marrakech.

The installation of MARX in Marrakech (obliges) Germany (to) be officially represented in a city where its nationals reside and that his business travelers frequently visit, “They think to ask Isidor MARX himself to create the consulate formally. To rule out his candidacy, competitors to Mogador say that the MARX is of the Israelite faith. Moulay al Hassan charges one of his parents, the Sharif Moulay Abdallah, to defend Germans’ interests (May 1894, until the latter’s death in January 1896). 

After which, “German traders get from Ba Hmed that Moulay Brahim, son of Moulay Abdallah, be invested with his father’s same functions. It is to Spanish, Francisco REYNA that German interests were entrusted from 1897 until 1905, and the date at which the number of Germanic firms established in Marrakech is large enough to warrant the creation of a real career consulate. It is ultimate to avoid the accumulation of consular benefits. Commercial by MARX, or by any German firm, that the representation of Germanic interests is ensured by they are German because two big German firms are keenly interested in lying in southern Morocco. KRUPP and the MANNESMANN group: typical behavior of competitive liberalism, quite contrary to uses that prevail in Marrakech’s Makhzen circles. They would like to hear the commercial bourgeoisie’s comments on this new aspect for her distance between the political and the commercial.

The English colony progresses differently; first from works philanthropic and missionary: opening an orphanage and boarding school for young girls. To feed this colony, Moroccan and English, the ministers are good forced to ensure stable and protected agricultural production against political insecurity, hence the need to have a guarantor and introduce. The British legation chooses Boubker Rhanjaoui, an extraordinary character with a whole district of Marrakech. Its direct debit taxpayers, an actual state within a state with its police, and its grit allowed all eccentricities. The foreign guarantee was also an arrangement beneficial for both parties; in these times of political situation, the protection allowed the large Moroccan owners to escape the sequestrants, which inevitably followed the disgraces.

But in the end, English interests never took much of great importance due to the sharing of influence that took place, between France and England, about Egypt and Morocco.

As far as France is concerned, they know that it bet very early on the strictly political aspect, at the highest level and, in the region of Marrakech, of course, on the Glaoui family. They know less; these are the utilities that the Moroccan Company could have played, notably Lassallas, in exploring the attitude of the Glaoui to concerning French protection.

The caid Madani el-Glaoui, one of the wealthiest owners of Morocco, and which has immense wealth, passing in Fez during their stay in this city, asked them to advance him a sum of 35,000 F. (120,000 F. 1974). Due to the importance of business transactions as they could be called upon to do with this character if they gave a favor at his request, they advanced him the sum above, bearing interest at the rate of 8% per year. They did not consent to this loan only against the signature of a contract under which this guy undertakes to send the goods before the year’s end sufficient to reimburse them. These goods will be sold through the Company, and the product net obtained, after deduction of the sales commission which they will be due, will be credited to his account, when the payment of their claim will have been completely effected. By this same contract, the guy is forbidden to sell or buy goods other than through them, and for three years.

The contract also stipulates that the Company will receive a commission of 10% on transactions and pay 2% to Haj Brahim Soussi, who is the intermediary designated between it and the Glaoui, and who is responsible for transportation of goods. To read the preserved documentation per company head, they can see the measured risks that France’s legation, in this case, Maigret in Marrakech, let’s take to different business people.

The Tangier Agency of the Moroccan Company extract, from a note of Lassallas in Marrakech, the next passage to communicate it to General Management in Paris: “They are learning, without the news having been confirmed so far officially, that the Caïd Madani El Glaoui would have recently become French protégé. They believe that the steps taken by M. Vaffier in this sense would have succeeded. They regret that they have not seen fit to pursue those they asked to be the boss during their first interview. Mr. Lassallas informed them last April, Glaoui’s desire to obtain French protection. Still, the king wanted at no cost that the legation was put in the awareness of his intentions. It was impossible for them, under these conditions, to reconcile Glaoui’s requirements with official rules in this matter. It is for this reason that the case was not pursued seed by them. But as the guy is still a debtor for are essential and has made commitments to them commercial elements that have remained a dead letter so far. They would wish to know whether or not he is French protected; in the affirmative, it would be justifiable French. They would get a confident grip on him if necessary.

To this, the General Management responds with a letter dated 15.2.1907 (same references).His grade tells them that the Glaoui is not protected, French. The information does not allow them not to find out if negotiations had already started to get him protection and if their agency in Marrakech was well or poorly founded to suspect Mr. Vaflier of acting in this meaning. If circumstances permit, they may anticipate the reception’s legation, which would be made at a request for an official visit of Glaoui. If they were runaway hope for a favorable reception at this request, they would wait, before pushing further, so that Mr. Lassallas could confirm the desire previously expressed by the guy. It should be noted that all procedures and investigations to which the legation or the consul of Mogador could engage on this subject would have to be conducted in the greatest secrecy: it is the desire formal expressed by Caid El Glaoui; because it would be in very unfortunate posture the Makhzen, if the negotiations get noisy were before the thing was done; moreover, he would like some much to the Cie. Moroccan looking for contract and keep his good graces. They do not insist on the importance that they would take in his eyes, as in those of the natives of Marrakech and its surroundings, if they saw the French protection granted, through them, to a personality of the caliber of the boss Glaoui,

Exchanges before 1912 and during the first years of the Protectorate.

With a vast mass of documents, consisting of reports, consulates and military missions, it is possible to get a rough idea, often only qualitative, even subjective, the exchanges’ nature and importance. It would be necessary to strip the archives, where they exist, of Commercial companies themselves to go further on. This is not the main object of this work, which, if it cannot avoid being informed on the origin and the destination of agricultural products, does not, however, aim to establish financial accounts for themselves. However, they can give, from 1911 to 1917, the trade balance ciale de Mogador (Essaouira), the port through which most of the Haouz exchanges.

The clues that can be drawn from this are very significant of the trend this general and from crazy to question, about the delay given to “the exchange unequal”:

Value of a tome

They can see quite clearly, with this table, that at a relatively balanced before the war, success, during the first year, a strong trend reversal, in favor of export. Due to the French supply effort, then opened a third period characterized by a sharp deterioration in terms of the exchange, probably due to the start of mechanical equipment Haouz’s picnic.

Products exchanged. In 1913, the first year for which a coasted presentation roughly satisfactory can be drawn here was the nature of the products traded, sorted in descending order of value: for export Hemp is cultivated in Mesfioua, Ourika, Rhirhaïa, in the gorges of Nfis and Ouidane, on the banks of the Tensift. The retting is practiced in small earthen basins, near the edge of streams, and scotching done by hand with a very defective yield wood. The cord is brought to Marrakech to be braided. During the First World War, the demand was strong; exports increased from 100 tons in 1913 to 500 tons in 1920, despite the resumption of hemp cultivation in Sevres and Charente maritime.

The exported dry skins are mainly those of goats and sheep and secondarily from cattle. From the establishment of regular connections between Marrakech and Mogador, this last city’s hinterland has been supplanted in the export of skins. The skins, salty and light-arsenic, were shipped mainly to Germany, then England and France, which re-exported them to the U.S.A. Demand fell sharply after the development of consumption of the box-calf by the American public.

Whereas in the past, the Haouz received dried ox skins from Argentina, used in plates for shoes, saddler, and headgear. After 1914, the trend was reversed, due to stopping intertribal and caidal conflicts and increasing European demand during the war. The Haouz even experienced a strong export of camel skins and horses.

Cumin was widely used at the beginning of the century in drugstores for distilling ion in kummel and as aromatic. Very requested by Europe Middle and Northern Europe, when deliveries from Asia Minor decreased, France served as a relay to Tunisia, Egypt via England, Spain and the U, S.A, The cultivation of cumin has a lot increased between 1906 and 1918, in Haouz, and on the slopes of Jhilet.

Almonds, for export, have long been a monopoly of the business. German res, until the arrival of Braunschvig, then of the Company Moroccan. Hamburg sold Central Europe to Scandinavia and U.S.A., large sweet almonds for sugared almonds; The English mainly bought small almonds from the Atlas valleys high proportion bitters (around 20%), for baking, fine soap series, and perfumes. Lagnel also bought bitter almonds for Marseille and Aix-en-Provence. After 1914, the whole wall of amandes passed into the hands of the Moroccan Companies, the others’ powers having been removed from the market.

The export of wool was originally a Manchester monopoly. Considerable quantities of fleeces, of the so-called berdin quality, drawn as regular, rarely jarous but mowed with rudimentary processes, were sold gross, oozing, often dirty of mud and dust. Merchants at Mogador’s port are pleased with the little care taken in shearing and protecting the wool.

Among the various goods for export, they can cite sparteine, eggs, henna, madder, Krakow, very popular wax in Russia via Hamburg, the ostrich feathers for the set for Paris and London, Ouarzazate roses for perfumes on import.

First and foremost, sugar, widely consumed in Marrakech, in infusions of mint, verbena, absinthe, and lemongrass, La consummation of tea did not supersede these infusions the popular layers that much later (around 1925, it seems). Before the war, Alkmagne supplied half the sugar, the other countries (France, Great Britain). Between 1908 and 1912, the Marx house even took over the entire sugar market in Marrakech practice as for massive dumping. The Germans wanted to establish their monopoly in the south strongly enough to impose later nutriment on a division of Morocco. All the parts located at the South of Oumer-Rbia would have returned to them. But as early as 1912, with the military patron’s occupation, France became the leading supplier from Marseille (Saint-Louis). 1912 economic and financial directory – 1919 claims that “during the war, France deprived itself of its sugar to feed Morocco for reasons of “indigenous policy,” Cotton has always been an English monopoly. 70% of sales in Marrakech were in the form of ordinary white Cotton called “Amburgo”; 20% fancy pieces: muslin, satins and so-called dyed cotton “Toubit”; 10% indigo cotton fabrics, Pondicherry type, dyed southern flavor supplanted indigo-dyed Haouz cotton Dra (nil).

The thick felt quality sheet was in great demand for the saddler and burnouts. Germany supplied and, between 1910 and 1913, German houses had such stocks that Marrakech lived on these during the whole war, the day after this. The competition between Italy, England, and France was brisk for the sale of the sheet.

Silks, scarves, brocade fabrics came from Lyon and Milan. The very high price reached by the silk makes resume the breeding of silkworm in Aghmat and Demat and Bzou. But the results are mediocre, expensive, and quality is less than ordinary. From the end of the war, these recovery attempts were abandoned.

Green tea from China, which became in the first quarter of the century, the national drink of Morocco, transited through Great Britain, except during the war. Compagnie Paquet imported it directly.

The candles were made of paraffin of English origin “The Prices Candles,” Until 1917, the Fournier house in Marseille, to the English brand serious competition with its candles in stearin.

The cost of transporting construction materials is prohibitive; until around 1920, they hardly built “hard” in Marrakech; it will be necessary to wait to establish routes and especially of the railway. There is valid, in Haouz, brick clay, La plaster stone, limestone with lime, but there are no wood or co sufficient bastilles. The first engines are Poor gas and burn charcoal or even wood (gasifier), including the engine that provides the energy needed to light the city. In the briquette, ovens are boiled with dried palm leaves.

On export, they observe the dominance of consumer products—agricultural and pastoral origin. The qualities collected at Marrakech correspond less and less to the needs and the exigencies of the European public. If business agents of adventure colonies had needed pretexts to justify the need to go up the export sector to the level of production, they would have found some very good there.

But it seems to be preferably given regularity in the contributions, that to guarantee the quality of their products, they knew the need for land colonization.

ATTEMPTS AT AGRICULTURAL ESTABLISHMENT

In 1880, foreigners living in Marrakech were not interested in any way to the exploitation of the land”. In 1914, Europeans’ area was probably more than four thousand hectares, and they then cultivated, directly or indirectly, almost ten thousand hectares in the Haouz. When they know that the maximum area cooked – seen by foreigners, in Marrakech’s plain, will never exceed 23,000 hectares. The pre-colonial episode of land occupation in Haouz appears to be particularly important. Foreigners have owned up to 31,582 ha, including 11,414 ha under the status known as “colonization- official statement.” Of these 11,414 ha, 3,572 were already suitable for 1910, more than 35%; and if they add that the Cie Fermière in 1922 acquired 2,530 ha from the receiver of Moulay Kabir on Tassoultant and 2,140 ha acquired in 1923 by the Cie Agricole et Industrielle of Marrakech, in association with Thami El Glaoui on land guich illegally seized – two operations ultimately carried out in a very administrative context – they can admit, that 53% of the area of ​​private colonization were acquired before 1912 and one more large proportion still occupied with flight,

So no matter how such ideas can be received in 1974, it is historical truth to say that it is long before French political power was established in Marrakech that the mainland establishment guidelines had been taken. When Colonel Mangin’s armies enter the capital of the South, the census of colonizable lands is already done, a considerable part of these already occupied; only one piece of legislation is missing and capitalist security to be ensured.

However, these land acquisitions were carried out by foreigners, as will be shown later, against the de facto will of the Makhzen, to most of its authority officials and the general population. Therefore, European business agents were able to find intermediaries sufficiently robust locally and adequately provided, on the arguments of famous memory, consular reports, and private correspondence. They can say that these are the zaoula and the kingpin, deposed and dismissed during the frequent reshuffles of power in the Moroccan state, which were the most active colonization foreign associates.

And it is, as shown for commercial enterprises, to escape the precariousness of fortune and the vengeance of powers equally precarious and successive. As the predominant precedents discarded, they found no other route than mediating with the mar-foreign hands and entrepreneurs to benefit from protecting their natural persons and their property. In other words, they are here to evoke the too fragile capacity of the capitalist entrepreneur’s ‘Moroccans of the time to prevail against the caidal institutions and Makhzenian women.

It’s hard to get objective information firsthand, a quantification, even approximate, of the successive, and offset processes in time agricultural associations with Moroccans, then the occupation of land, and finally, their acquisition. The sources give indications often anecdotal, punctual, and sometimes very subjective.

To provoke a response from higher hierarchical levels in the diplomatic apparatus, vice-consuls or charge affairs, do not fail to amplify the reality of land acquisitions make by such or such competing power.

Legally, the authorization for foreigners to possess real estate in Morocco has only been obtained outside cities challenging, in 1880, article 11 of the Acts of the Conference of Madrid specifies that foreigners can acquire buildings in the “myriametric” perimeter of certain coastal cities, under reserve authorization from Makhzen. This clause did not interest Marrakech. In practice, authorization requests remained without an answer; buyers still settled at their own risk and perils. That is to say, made the political, social, and definitive costs, finances, and conflicts could subsequently arise. If they were unable to resolve these difficulties, they became unwanted variables, and it was then open to the Makhzen to expel them for default authorization. In port cities, especially in the North, since 1767 for France, 1856 for Great Britain, and 1861 for Spain, authorized acquisitions were notable but limited. Before these dates, it seems that no building has belonged to foreigners.

From the Algeciras Act (April 7, 1906), foreigners would be able to legally acquire land for agricultural use, apart from “myriametric perimeters” and, in law, over the entire extent of the territory. But this legislation only came to legalize a considerable number of conflicts arising from factual situations.

If following the Algeciras Conference, foreigners’ land acquisition urbanization has mainly been liberalized regarding rural buildings. The Makhzen has shown the same reluctance as previously to issue written authorizations.

In general, the caids and the local agents of authority judicial (adoul and cadi) opposed by all means by their power to establish foreigners on agricultural land school. Because of the treaties he was led to sign, that is to say, because of his indebtedness and the extreme pressures exerted on him. When the central Makhzen is forced to give in on the question of principle, it also gives its citizens, and its agents all leisure to prevent foreigners from settling, even takes measures against those of its officials who may have acted as intermediaries’ lack vigilance.

Then clearly, when it appears that a large proportion is so indebted to representatives of the Powers that it cannot fail to provide them with intermediaries active. Moulay Hafid will read a letter banning the mockers adoul from passing property deeds between Muslims and not Muslims, without express permission from the Pasha; this defense is extended to all acts, including association contracts, concluded between Europeans and their agricultural censual.

The publication of this letter opens a new diplomatic crisis between the new sovereign and the European powers. Makhzen’s proper attitude aims to discourage the application of article 60 of the Algeciras Convention. Also, the different representations sentient foreign governments put on the Island.

Makhzen effectively recognized the right of Europeans to acquire land. They are talking about a request!

Moulay Hafid recognizes the legitimacy of diplomatic conversations requests from the signatory powers of the Algeciras Act. Still, he clarifies that he really can’t follow up on it immediately, fearing a popular uprising and opposition to Ulama. But, if more and more Europeans are making themselves possess de facto sisters of farms in Haouz, colonization to wait, take the scale of his appetites, collapse of Makhzen power in Marrakech (October 1911) and the dominance of military and foreign policy.

But the land occupations being fragile, contested, and hardly any so individual acquisitions remained modest, especially in an interior region like that of Haouz. These are the companies cited by the big banks or by strongly supported individuals by their legation, which could constitute operating farms directly.

Expropriation procedures used by foreign nationals varied: cultural associations, diverse societies with Moroccan protected acquisitions through Algerian Muslims. Breeding associations preceded associations on crops Annual. Generally speaking, in these associations, foreigners provide treasury, marketing, protection, and insurance legal; Moroccans bring the right on the courses, the ground, and physical work; profits, once all costs are subtracted, are shared in half, but very often. Moroccan associates depend on foreigners because of their prior indebtedness and the impossibility they find themselves in freeing themselves of it. Some examples of association, through consular inquiries, were conducted to reduce conflicts between foreign nationals and partners Moroccans having broken up without leaving an address.

The case of Jean B., a relatively unsupported French entrepreneur by its legation, can give a reasonably precise idea of ​​the context in who could settle foreigners, in a private capacity, in the Haouz of

Marrakech.

On January 7 and 8, 1908, B. sent a series of letters and documents in Safi – where the Saint-Aulaire consul is located – and in Tangier. All correspondence and responses to it have been the final meeting in Tangier, B. ‘s statements are consistent. The judgments made by agents of the recognized legation of their merits are born enough. After investigation, for them to be able to accept it as it is, it seems more alive to give the pen to it:

“My installation in Marrakech could only be done with a lot of time, difficulty, and expense. The assassination of Dr, Mauchamp for which the Makhzen is fully responsible, obliged him to suspend his business. He had devoted the first capital of approximately 80,000 F. (nearly 400,000 DH 1974); since his house was looted. Apart from the loss of objects having a commercial, it finished destroying what he had organized so difficulty and deprived him of all documents, information, samples, etc. that he had been able to gather for almost two years or brought with him. The Makhzen is all the more responsible for these flights that after his departure, he did nothing to guarantee his goods in Marrakech despite the precautions he had taken.

The Makhzen took no action, nothing of which can reduce liability: his house has been robbed. His agricultural associates no longer give a sign of life. The native employee that he sent twice to Marrakech (B. took refuge in Safi) could not obtain anything from his creditors and did not find any assistance with the city authorities. It follows that since March 19, 1907 (date of the assassination of Dr. Mauchamp}, he has not been able to take advantage of the capital that he has invested in Marrakech and that he can’t recover it to take advantage of it elsewhere. Saint-Aulaire asks Jean B. to make him such an accurate list as possible the sums committed, and they note in the response from the following data.

To all this, the consul in Mogador to whom B. asked for help replied on November 4, 1908, in these terms:

“You are aware that the political situation in this region and the anarchy that reigns there is an almost insurmountable obstacle to similar approaches. The epistolary relations of this consulate with the pasha of Marrakech are therefore completely interrupted for six months, and he don’t know if it will be possible to deal effectively with this matter.”

a – The Moroccan Company in Haouz

On the contrary, individual adventures doomed almost necessarily routed, like that of Jean B. described above, the large companies, where agents of foreign powers primarily supported by their legation, arrive with difficulty, but irreversible ability to settle down. The Moroccan Company offers from this point seen a remarkable example.

This public limited company is a creation of the SCHNEIDER group and them, which at the turn of the century became a foreign economic power managed in Morocco, almost on a par with Paribas and the Immobile Society. From 1899, Nicolas PAQUET and SCHNEIDER entrusted to

Gaston de CAQUERA Y, a lieutenant on leave, a mission study in Morocco, to examine the country’s commercial prospects and port possibilities, based on its “Report” was created, on 3). May 1902, the first French public limited company established in Morocco. She acquired the premises of Establishments Gautsch in Tangier, settled in Fez at the end of 1902. It’s Jean DENAUT – LASSALLAS who was in charge of the agencies in the South.

The rapid expansion of the company in the agricultural field and towards the South is the result of an agreement between it and Paribas. Li seems that on May 16, 1904, President ROUVIER (III Republic)

arbitrated the open dispute between the two cases at Marc”, the two parties agreed that Paribas would only deal with the bank and the Moroccan Company from all other sectors, including commercial and industrial, including the minting of currency. To light up the beginnings of its action, it should be remembered that behind the Moroccan Company, there is Schneider and an exaggeration of competitiveness and peril German. This entire episode is revealed by a letter sent on May 17 from Paris to the Tangier agency. This letter specifies that don’t spread the word about the convention.

Before 1900, unlike Paribas, the Moroccan Company pretty well says of a status that was not the protectorate because it was no longer delighted with his relationship with France’s legation and that it had its small and large entrances to the palace of Sultan. The company claims that it does not play to indebted the country to hold it in hand and then involve the squadron. She declares more virtuous and takes action to establish an exploit rational and beneficial for the country.

However, Paribas is the outsider who has everything to gain from spill tendencies and who would not shy away from a gunboat’s diplomacy at the company. Moroccan they instead take a little high of these newcomers who do not know the Makhzen and are not able to find with him a modus Vivendi, the company. Moroccan has then the pride of having had to fight victoriously against the problematic cultures inherent in introducing capitalism in the Moroccan environment and against German competition in the mining sector, public works, civil engineering, and minting money, without being supported by Paris. The 194 agreement with Paribus is a sort of defeat in honor. But the year will make her disillusioned and also hope for the wing and the protectorate. “The Lassalle affair” is not a decisive moment in this awareness of the inevitability of political domination to protect the business. Still, it’s a significant episode for the Moroccan Company.

In the summer of 1906, Lassallus made contact to set up farms in the Haouz of Marrakech.

Four months earlier, he had had some success in the South and nearby of Essaouira. In the Haouz, promises had been made by Moulay Lhaÿ Meslohi, and he had obtained from Tamesloht’s figurine recommendation for the representative of zaouia bel Lahouel. This Zaoula, which is in Tekna territory, is a very distant subsidiary of an Algerian zaoula established on the banks of the Chélif. Lassallus was in talks with the naïb of the Zaouba, Si el Mahjoub Ould Mekki, to rent land, and perhaps even buy land. On September 19, the case seems to be concluded. He is attacked on the way back by an armed group, which turned out to be made up of the king’s mokhazni of Tekna. Wounded and detained for three days in an azib at the eastern limit of Tekna. The arrival of the boy himself releases him, reportedly declaring to Lassallus that there was a mistake and that the ambush did not target him but was organized against Mr. NIER. A trader and agent German consular office in Marrakech, which they knew was keen to buy

land at ln Zouïa. The Caid traits Lassallas with all respect now, but only let Him go after making him sign a declaration relieving his people of responsibility for the incident.

Things are probably much less precise than the scenario on which the parties agreed. Indeed, at the same, Lassallas, El Mahjoub Ould Mekki, is arrested. After lively interventions by the French legation with Mounly Hafñd, so khalifa of the sovereign in Marrakech, Mahjoub is released, and the boss of Tekna detained for a few days. But Lassallas had to give up protecting Sidi El Mahjoub. Says Dourtté, a humiliation for znouïa, which their political interest invited them to support. It is concerted action, led by the entourage from Moulay Hañid otherwise driven by him, to subtract as much as possible the zaouïa and the notables with the growing influence of abroad. “Lassallas” response is skillful: he alone had an interest to blow to the caid that the ambush was targeting Nier, his only real competitor in the Haouz, and thus suggest that the Moroccan Company had the support of the Makhzen, unlike the German agents.

But back in Essaouira, Lassallas will write a very disillusioned letter at its headquarters. He explains that he almost got killed, that he risks his life, that European agents can no longer stay in Marrakech. All this results in significant losses for the company because it is obliged to go through agricultural associates to no more extended control. The company says life is more important to him than business and admits that it is necessary temporarily, to follow his point of view, to put the business on hold; after which, they advise.

The turn is taken then he seems; the Moroccan Company will strongly advocate with the French government, using dinners, discreet interventions in the Chamber’s corridors, and the Committee of Morocco, to accelerate the French intervention. They know that the assassination of Doctor Mauchamp and the events of Casablanca were the occasions justifying the military.

The Moroccan Company and Lassallas will not return to the Haouz only after the military landing in Casablanca. It is at this period, honestly, that the Co. Moroccan constitutes its heritage. The most beautiful case was undoubtedly that of Argoub, land of appanage Rehamna caid, at the eastern limit of Haouz, that is to say on the right bank of Tirhizrite: vast land – more than 2,000 hectares pro ground, rich in humus, but then, almost wholly returned to the jujube bush.

The Company Mannesmann and the Moroccan Companion and others (people) are buying land right now in the most fertile part of the Rehamns in El Argoob, near Sidi Rabal. They believe the land belongs to the tribe: recently, the people of the tribe were forced to cultivate these lands for their bosses’ benefit. But today, they are taking advantage of the rebellion to sell land, get money, and get rid of work strength.

The competition is acute: the company Moroccan was negotiating for land for 25,000 and was about to send an officer to examine it. But a man from Mannesmann bought the ground for the same advertised price without having visited the places. They say that the people of the tribe are happy to have money to buy horses and guns “, But while Nier negotiated with the people, Lassallas concluded with the Rehamna boss. The arrival of French troops in September 1912 in Marrakech gave more weight to the titles acquired with a cad who had done so much for France’s service.

The safest method to buy land was ultimately indebted cads likely to occupy by the violence of the territories integers. The family archives of the caïd des Harbil reveal, for example, that El-Haj Abbas al Harbili returned from Fez with a Dahir naming him caïd des Menabha. In a place of caïd Najem dismissed on January 29, and he in 1912 paid 4.00 douros his charge at Makhzen utilizing a letter of credit from the company Moroccan”. In 1913, the company found exploits, as a route, a little over a thousand hectares – it is true very rocky and infertile – among the Menabha, on the slopes of Jbilet.

In 1914, in Haouz, its company Moroccan owned 2,430 hectares. Still, in Oulad Yagoub, in Freita, in Oulad Slama, Oulad Toug, Tekna, Harbil, Menabha, a total of almost twelve thousand hectares was born.

b – Land acquisitions by other European nationals.

However numerous and very active in the commercial area, the agents of the English legation did not own any of the notables in the Haouz of Marrakech. They aimed mainly on acquiring suitable plots in the immediate suburbs of the city to build second homes.

On the other hand, C. NAIRN, and his protestant missionaries, has a land of four or five associates. to produce the supply there- internship of orphaned Moroccan girls, whom they have collected planning to convert them.

However, a special mention must be made concerning the purchase, by the English branch of Rothschild, extensive grounds to the northwest of Marrakech, dominated by the Targa and Souihla. These lands, whose Rehamna had been formerly driven out, had been taken over by caid al Ayvadi in 1902, after the disappearance of Abdelhamid. The even al Ayyadi had also reoccupied, without being able to appropriate it, all of Ouidane and Argoub, Two thousand hectares of Targa were ceded in 1904 to an agent of the Rothschild bank at the price of 5 F. per hectare (17 DH. 1974). The bank did not follow up on the intentions of the agricultural establishment. It seems that Rothschild, having lent a large sum of money to the caid, has pledged the Targa lands, but that later. With Great Britain withdrawing from Morocco, these pledges have been returned to the French Protectorate here, according to a procedure that could not be updated. Indeed, the land. Acquired for a time by Rothschild, formed the State Private Domain’s central fund, in the Targa, which has been subdued within 1921 – 1923 for the benefit of official colonization. There is no more trace today of the passage in these places of the great English bank, if not a well, which is still reported to his name on the Rural Engineering cards in 19%.

In front of the company Moroccan, there are mainly interested Germans represented by Marx, who succeeded and took over the interests and the censals of Weiss & Maur from 1904.

Brandt and Toel from the Emile Nier firm; last but not least, the multiple Mannesmann factors.

In a decade, despite the enormous difficulties encountered by the hostility of the Makhzen and the population, despite the absence of adequate support of their Kégation – unlike French agents – Germanic firms’ representatives. Their activity and their acute sense of the company managed not only to bring together more than 5,000-hectare land, regularly supported by them but still initiate new cultural trials, such as cotton. That is to say that they were not satisfied, like most of the other representatives, so many European purses to connect their commercial circuital on more stable arrangements of traditional production. Still, they are committed to what they continue to call a pre-colonization.

Some numbers extracts from monthly consular reports allow the progression of German interests in agriculture culture and breeding, in the Haouz to purge highly supervised staff agricultural associates and protégés,

The Bulletin of French Africa argued in 1906 that the Germans mands would have acquired land “for fifteen years”; that is to say from 1891: entirely excessive position, the first purchases which probably had to start only in 1897 and in the Haouz, after 1902, But to be late – relative- lie to the other powers – the German land occupations are experiencing spectacular growth: “All German houses have also been taking care of the time of the agricultural business, they look for the protected a lot and thirsty natives, They give protection cards without count, and seem very supported by their representatives. The Germans have very many protégés in the Zemrane tribes, Sgharna, Rehamns, Mjat. The Zaouis of Mjat, near Souk, whose censor is head of the Marx house, has almost all its protected German members, despite the opposition of the Makhzen. They buy properties through their censals in Sgharna, Mesfious, and strive to acquire and mortgage properties, land, gardens, and plantations at Marrakech’s gates.

RESISTANCE TO FOREIGN INTERVENTIONS

It will be noted that even more than for the Moroccan company, the German acquisitions are located on the outskirts, or even completely outside the Haouz, and for the most part in intermediate spaces. The competition between Lassallas and Nier is more substantial, as they have seen. On the Argoub, that is to say, at the cheese point between the Rehamna. The Mesfioua and the Zemrane, on the banks of the wadi Tighirite.

Although outside the Haouz, it seems interesting to study the methods used by the representative of the Mannesmann brothers to buy lands in the Ouled Said and the Oulad Gaïd on the left bank of the Tessaout, in Zemrane country,

Between if Omar b. become central of the firm Mannesmann and his father, cald in the title of Zemrane, an intense hostility because of favors given to an older half-brother. If Omar was intrigued so that he could acquire from Moulay Abdel Aziz in Fès, the father’s charge, by redeeming the debts, this one could not settle and raise a higher tax from the Zemrane tribe. As if Omar was known not to renounce owning, he appeared clear enough to all that the ties to Nier were the sole source of wealth. Become a king, if Omar forced the Oulad fractions Saïd and Oulad Gakd from the left bank of the Tessaout (sectors of La Jdida and Lakhzania) to sell part of their communal land, at the end of the industry, to the representative of Mannesmann, over an area of almost two thousand hectares.

The irony of history meant that during the Austro-German sequestration in 1914, an agreement between the Glaoui and Omar led to Mannesmann’s sharing in the Zemrane before administering the Protectorate cannot take it. These lands were divided into three lots: one went to Omar, the other to Glaoui, and The third to one French agent, intermingled to speed up land tribulation operations. The latter then sold the lands to Glaoui, which constituted the so-called Buidda domain.

Similar situation twenty kilometers away, the Moroccan company had acquired, thanks to the complacency of if El Haj Omar Tai, Minister of Private Domain Makhzen, property rights on the

collective of Oulad Yaqgoub and Freits. She sold them around 196, and it was not until 1963 that this community came back on its land.

Still a big deal, that of the acquisition by CGious., In the Seggara of Ouidane and through al-Ayyadi, a super in one piece, over a thousand hectares all irrigable. The agreement between al-Ayyadi and Gous initially planned for development full of a thousand hectares (approximately) and sharing half of the property. Very indebted, Gous could not keep its promises. A society anonymous Belgian company, Société Africana, succeeded and appropriated 545 hectares. It was not until 1969 that these lands were able to return to their former owners.

The method used by Gous was not his invention but that of Egret, an enigmatic and influential character, very close to Glaoui. Who linked his fate to the Pasha of Marrakech from the Protectorate’s origins and remained so strictly faithful to its policy that it had from 1956 hastily left Marrakech and Moroccan territory. The health of very abandoned farms is the only known case of actual “Vacancy” of the expression’s Algerian sense.

The Egret system could be schematized as follows: during the disgrace of a cad, his land of appendage, more or less well defined, was preoccupied with the tribe, and competition opened between them and the new boss who could only acquire his office in return the payment of large sums. The debt of the caïd was guaranteed with the praetors by pledges given to characters like Egret they sponsored. As soon as the procedure was organized for land registration, individuals and Egret passed an act bilingual under private seal worded as follows:

Between the undersigned, Mr. Egret Albert, owner, rant in Marrakech, and Sidi N. he was arrested the following:

The first, Mr. Egret, undertakes to request, after close the registration procedure and the establishment on its behalf of land title concerning the so-called property. The parceling out of the latter and the distribution for the benefit of Sidi N., supra, of the parceling those whose details follow.

Ultimately, this was pure, simple compensation for M, Egret’s influence, and his knowledge of ‘thousand and an office door.

All these land acquisitions were only milestones planted in the uncertain future of a politically extreme situation moving. They later called “the pioneering spirit” from colonization as an extension of attitudes and risks taken by real adventurers who bought and sold the slightest effect. They thus took pledges on unforeseeable contingencies that each of the European legations suggested that they would be in their colors and for their flag. They understand that they could not ask these characters from the Wild West to pay costly dubious rights with such hazards. Nothing less immovable than these titles!

Because European penetration is ultimately very poorly tolerated if foreign agents are easily persuaded that the insecurity of business and the difficulty of establishing capitalism are due to the laughs at Makhzen and at the intrinsic incapacity of Moroccan society to promote “progress” by itself. If adventurers are often wooed and get spectacular but often fleeting personal successes unimaginable in their own country from a lot that Moroccan society and Haouz understand, and still less willingly call it foreign protection.

Read consular reports and expensive correspondence, both private and private. They are seized by the ambiguity of all the protagonists’ successive attitudes, opposite the foreign powers managed.

It would be easy to find a key to explain these behaviors indecisive, by posing that they reflect, in short, only the ideas deify annuities of social classes with opposing interests. In this perspective simplistic, the “collaborators” would be the representatives of the layers rising from an emerging bourgeoisie at the “comprador” stage, the resistance would be at the level of the people and preponderant, threatened by the reversal of the world, the religious and xenophobic attitude being the ideological mantle obscuring the whole. These theses which permanently underpin political discourse daily, on this unsuccessful phase of resistance to colonization, actually reveal very little and are, it seems, only ideological projections drawn from sources other than those for both very rich provided by the medium, both famos and intellectual, of ALOCS.

In-flight, the refusal to establish a foreigner manifests itself at all levels, both ideological on religious grounds, and Europeans dictate the institutional point of view with tax reforms which they know to be, that in terms of the behavior of the young sovereign Moulay Abdelaziz, that finally in the competitive economic,

The tax reform, in particular that of 193, inspired by Sir A. Nicholson and served on November 23, provokes a start of a generation because not only does it exert more significant pressure on taxable persons, but still it favors foreigners and their

Doubtless, the caidal exactions had been going on for a long time shatters the tax laws of chraa, at less, was the official character of these levies never recognized: the form was saved, the beneficiaries could know savages fortune returns and heaven witnessed their iniquity, but a piece of law news, proclaimed by the Prince of Believers, became something else: a new illegitimate tax system, a weight of money that was no longer canonical, foreign advisers who behaved in a manner imperial, resources and lands that became almost extraterritorial, subjects that fell under other laws, all this led to a global, widespread rejection, all classes mixed and final “nabonal,” first of all representatives of foreign powers and then the monarch who tolerated them. It is not the first time, in the history of Morocco, that contenders have risen against the reigning sovereign for very personal rivalries and appetites; it is not the first time either that competitors called on Jihad and the defense of the territory against invaders: but never before had the country been so bloodless, held by such a robust financial dominance, with such a military disadvantage, penetrated as widely and as deeply; and the resistance could never have been as little believable because it was not only about to fight against the simple domination of a foreign nation, but to delay the rout and submergence of caidalism before capitalism triumphant.

The examination of some moments of this resistance in Marrakech can allow them to measure this one’s limits.

The revolt of “shoemakers”

On January 20, 1904, Marrakech experienced a popular insurrection in a proper economical foundation, which turned into a riot. One of the profound reasons, and an additional reason to feed the popular discontent, was put into circulation, just before the feast of Eid al-Adha, new copper coins, modifying the copper/silver exchange rate in a disadvantaged proportion small parts maple.

They know that before establishing the French monetary system in Morocco, they circulated a bimetallic currency (silver – copper) with classification separate divisional. The copper menace was held in great abundance by popular strata, money by merchants, the more affluent, and the ruling classes. Dahir regulated the monetary matter by fixing the silver coins’ weight and the rate of changes copper into silver; taxes were denominated in dirhams silver. The penetration of foreign currencies, especially Spanish gnoles and French, added to the confusion, and the exchanges between private individuals were practiced. By direct agreement, without any rule statement, depending on the fluctuations in the importance of cash on the place and the different currencies’ price.

The Makhzen financial crisis is such that all the expedients are used on the eve of the demonstration of allegiance of caid, pashas, and governors on the feast of eid al-Adha to obtain the best return on tax and hediva. In the last days of choual, a Dahir is promulgated, fixing the rial at 560 mouzouns instead of 500, taxes to be paid in cash.

The new currency is not accepted nor, for that matter, the taxes. Artisans and merchants decide to establish a market out of the city ​​, which completely escapes the administration. Guards are sent to close the wild market; they are booed and repelled by the population—an absolute ‘Allal b. Ahsan, a shoemaker by trade, the crowd, and the whole city, from district to district, rises. All the people are in the street; traders hurriedly close their shops, and those that are not completed are robbed; Mohtasseb itself is looted. Fires are lit all around the city, the destroyed Catholic chapel, the corpse of an exhumed missionary, and his head walked through The town, the Jews. At the end of the afternoon, a crowd of young people marches with a black flag, bringing together the whole population. During the night, Allal ben Ahsan is received by Moulay Hafid during that the crowd is barely contained in the courtyard of the Méchouar, Allal bet on food that has become too expensive. The new currency that neither the peasants who come to get their supplies in Marrakech, neither the government that raises taxes wants to take, corruption of the Mobhtasseb, foreign agents’ audacity, and the Jews who lookup.

Appeasements are given to Allal, who is returned to his supporters. Moulay Hafid announces by public criers the measures agreed. On January 22, the city returns to calm: the new currency is withdrawn, the Mobhtasseb and the Pasha are revoked, the Jews do not go out more of their neighborhood than barefoot, the granting taxes are removed apologies are made to foreign consuls, but they are requested to invite their nationals at their discretion. As soon as Eid passed, the district leaders are summoned and strongly rebelled, a large number of young people are arrested, and ‘Allal is imprisoned a few days in

Marrakech then shipped at Fez: they will never speak more.

In Marrakech’s annals, and probably all of Morocco, it seems that this is the first popular insurrection specifically urban.

The Mauchamp case

They know the facts March 19, 1907, at noon, Doctor Emile Mauchamp, as he hurried from the dispensary to his home to respond to widespread concern over an erect mast on his house’s terrace stoned by the crowd. When on March 25, precise information reaches Paris, warships are sent to Tangier. The house meets hastily, and a lively debate opens, sufficiently captivating minds that the final decision: the French military intervention in the Oriental and the taking “in pledge” of Oujda until satisfaction is given to the French government to a list of demands and sanctions.

In Tangier, three newspapers, however, refuse to endorse action by the French government. Still, their reservations, it seems, argue for purely economic domination of Morocco: that is, they follow the English position.

This is the background of the debate which agitates the colonial circles, all aim at economic domination: but if they compete between them, they are even more divided on the question of to know if this domination is possible only on the commercial level, where okay if on the contrary, it demands the political protectorate. Without a doubt, the flees that certain powers – in France and Spain – are geopolitically better placed to reap economic benefits of political responsibility partly explains the cleavage, but remains that the institutional aims are significantly different between the protagonists. The French representatives plead that the “progress” – that is to say capitalism here – can no longer go without a total and profound reform of Moroccan society, in other terms, without taking charge of this transformation by a European country. And in the background, the Mauchamp case provides strong arguments to the French thesis. One point, to which all commentators return – repeatedly about the murder of the doctor. Concerns the claim that neither he nor Louis Gentil was installing wireless telegraphy on the terrace of their house, maybe correct; mass they are sure it was an objective of the first emergency, for European agents in Marrakech.

Eleven years previously, a first attempt had been made: on May 27, 1890, a State Telegraph engineer, on leave, came to Marrakech, sent by a syndicate of French financiers. In 1902 in liaison with the same financial group, an agreement was donated by the Makhzen to install telegraph relays without thread between Mogador and Marrakech. Faced with hostility from traders and some notable people from Marrakech, they postpone the device’s start, and the antennas are removed. New attempt in 1905; mañs, said Louis Gentil: “on all sides, they pointed out the extraordinary importance attached by the Moroccan authorities to the question of the TSF, the craftsmen had even received the order to refuse to Lou travail installation”.

When Louis Gentil arrives in Marrakech on March 12, along with Mauchamp, returning from France and monitoring all his equipment geodesic, he writes: “he had the impression from the first day that there had changed. People say as they pass:

“Here is the French who come to take Morocco. Gentil supposes that these attitudes are aroused by the men of Ma el’ Aïnin, but he also recognizes that people are watching everything they do as soon as they carry bulky and enigmatic objects”.

Finally, he reports that the crowd started to move against the Mauchamp house when Pacha Abu Salam al Warzazi encouraged tearing down the French flag he was told was raised on the terrace. Gentil denies having placed geodesic sights. The minarets are remarkable landmarks, and he only speaks of the existence of “reeds,” objects, it seems, too familiar on the roofs of Marrakech to boost and excite the population.

It follows from all of this that if the establishment of telegraphic link anger was not in progress. Its eventuality aroused some people’s excitement when the two French arrived in Marrakech and finally provoked popular action. All balance kept, and in a completely different context, such repugnance manifests itself today in Morocco every time the firm gets to install communication networks in a very regular contract. It’s the same reaction to technological domination, which confiscates for the benefit of foreign powers in a way more or less revealed, a means of communication and economic action politics and politics. The traders, the artisans, and people affected by the drainage of goods were to be informed the latest about the price of food in Mogador, the quantities ordered, and arrivals. Already, thanks to more extensive, European networks are taking over the goods on the market. Still, at least their “phone” worked as severely as that of Moroccan traders, and perhaps worse, because the porters of papers for the Europeans’ account were also carriers’ precise and detailed news for those who needed it again. Without refusing to take into account type reactions, national, or even magical religious attitudes which could, in part, also play concerning a mysterious transmission of speech from a distance, it seems that they can say that this is a practical economic resistance and competition. This resistance, moreover, will assert itself in the days to come to follow Mauchamp’s murder. Four German traders are attacked, Lassallas insulted and threatened. The Pasha, whose dismissal is requested by the French authorities, is supported by the population. After numerous streaks, the central Makhzen is cormorant to follow up on French requirements, the Rehamna dissent and attacks the European convoys of goods peen.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM UNDER THE PROTECTORATE

The primary justification for the country’s political domination was based on an axiom: Moroccan institutions and mores were incapable, by themselves, of initiating economic progress, that is, say, to establish in Morocco a capitalist development. The necessities of economic and social growth, in Europe and free countries swingers, demanded the overseas enlargement of the consumption and mass production. European governments gave themselves the mission, the duty, and the interest, to take in the countries of the southern shore of the Mediterranean from Syria to Morocco. While retaining the appearance of memories of traditional grooves, this supervision was aimed to carry out profound reforms of societies colonized. The principle of subsequent access to the international majority of the countries under control was not discussed for Algeria. The case was different from the so-called Lyautey policy, continually reaffirming that Morocco should be benefited from the progress and reforms that in France would drive there, and then take its own business in charge.

These healthy ideas are debated around the conference tables and in official speeches. What happened to them on the ground, in the Haouz from Marrakech?

By simplifying a little, they can say that, in Haouz, colonial real estate and industrialization have concerned the vast majority of French European interests only. At the production stage, Capitalism, a, during the Protectorate – with some exceptions near built up an enclave, relegating Moroccan agriculture worn, sometimes even causing regressions chemistry, know-how, and traditional production.

They will not fail in this talk to temper a few of these very affirmative conclusions by evoking this or that case, which sometimes contradicts the general observation. Still, these nuances – such as the association of some Moroccans in constructing this capital society colonial list – were too often tolerated only for reasons immediately and politically useful.

There is no question of making a moral judgment here, political damping. The business community Europeans and their governments have led the sick hand in hand with Makhzen’s bliss until he accepts, endures, calls the Protectorate, and gives it its surety and legitimacy so that the protector could reduce the civil war. The very one that had been induced by the weakening of the Makhzen and the European powers’ actions and occupied the country.

The big companies ultimately paid the price policies, social and the financial investments of the operation: they could claim their wages, and in short, divided them of this enormous speculation.

Sociologically, the question that may be of concern is another: the protectorate episode, this forty-year-old enterprise, did she allow Capitalism to establish itself, for example, in Haouz, she said, liquidated the “old man,” tribalism, caidalism?

Has it left lasting structures, self-developing, suspected to extend and associate with major external affairs and thus weave the international division of production and trade which was targeted at the start and formed the basis of the justification for the colonial adventure?

Admitting, all philanthropy aside, the great companies consider that the technological and institutional advance taken by European and Western societies is too decisive to be reduced and that, at best, countries like Morocco can never have lower technologies and lower productivity physical terms. However, these same banking interests, these consortia, want to be located where the climatic conditions, the labor cost, capital security, vocation, and prices are the most favorable for the production requested worldwide. In the end, what happened? The institutions’ social structures, the entire social formation.

What is today a satisfactory framework for capitalist development? In these terms, the relative success and failure can be measured in the attempt to establish capitalism in the Haouz. It’s the thread which, seeming the most objective appears to be followed.

Actors who may have shorter eyesight and continue their self-interest, partially subject, partially subject to further broad strategy, they should also, along the way, study them to themselves and therefore deviate a little from the general movement indicated above.

Given the importance of agricultural and Para-agricultural production in Haouz and the weakness of industrial and mining production in the plain itself and Marrakech, the presentation will focus on the farming space’s structuring.

After occupying and populating the land, the foreign settlers are advised of the importance of water in the Haouz of Marrakech and especially of its regularization. These first two moments are hardly franchise. The global crisis and the problems posed by fluctuating agricultural commodity prices have guided investment towards agro-industry.

Three overlapping periods to explore; therefore, in the conclusion of what one might wonder what spinoffs and what effects the colonization may have had in the Haouz

LAND OCCUPANCY

The entry of French troops into Marrakech did not immediately open the race for land in the Haouz. First, it took that known and cleared the legal situation of rural buildings in a region that had known so many usurpations and political upheavals.

Furthermore, the European war still made the future uncertain economically, and therefore the commitments of stakeholders, both public and private, remained.

Also, during the first period, which goes from 1912 to 1920, the foreign colony did not acquire more than 5,000 hectares in total and mainly about consolidation – notably by the Moroccan Company and other societies – appropriations or occupations before 1921. The administration actively explored, duram these first six years, the problems posed by the future land colonization, and the allotment policy is provided for to implement it in seven years all and for everything from 1921 to 1927 that the Haouz lands were subdivided or appropriated. Nearly 33,400 hectares, coloration in no time occupied all to which the population produced the fewest rights and prelacies to other regions of Morocco Beni Mtir, Gharb, with less immediate political and social difficulties. Little near, read supertonic occupied by colonization, in Haouz, remained remarkably stable, without new guin on the surface and without decreasing changeable (SU hectares. or 1.4%) throughout the protectorate. And even until 1961, when the reflux started, movement of colonization land transfers.

The diagram opposite summarizes and schematizes the rhythm of land occupations. The curve is typically 5-shaped, demonstrating the willful delay given to the appropriation process and then capped at the end of the penalty due to the exhaustion of the lands distributable without too much difficulty.

One observes, in the cartouche to the diagram, curves showing the non-cumulative annual areas occupied by colonization: they better illustrate the order of succession of the different protagonists (private individuals, companies, settlers) over time: the relay and the ulterior nance, which appear curiously, are probably particular meaningless action.

The search for colonizable land

Nothing would be more wrong to believe that colonization has taken hold in Haouz on the best lands and the only means of the violence. It would also be wrong to think that the colonized lands were empty land, land with no master but the State, uncultivated spaces whose occupation did not bother anyone. These two extreme studies, which naturally had their champions when the occupier sought to justify himself and the occupied to defend himself, can be sent back today. Distinguishing between cases of effectively violent occupations, cases of acquisitions amicably, and peaceful cultures.

The Haouz indeed constitutes, from this point of view, a case a little particular in Morocco. The difficulties and intertribal struggles between the warlords, at the end of the XIX century, and the waves of wars civilians who have continued to beat the walls of Marrakech in the disputed of the Mesfious and the Rehamna, have swept away the users and owners, so many times sacked crops and orchards, succeeded so many usurpers and masters, that from 1908, they can say that the Haouz was who had the strength to settle there by arms. The protectorate did not have to establish the violence directly to grab the land: others had already practiced violent grabbing; it was enough to negotiate with these holders considerable space. In other words, the colonial administration didn’t have anywhere to confront the cultivators occupying the earth: a large number had evacuated, the rest were subjected to lords who could bear the brunt of the violence themselves.

The first objective of the men of the protectorate in Marrakech was to constitute a land of state lands. That is to say, of doom lands full disposal would be up to the State. The succession of receivers discredited, districted characters, struck because of their revolts or their loyalty to a lucky claimant or a sovereign fallen, had allowed, since the death of Ba Hmed, to reunite between the hands of the ruler, under the local name of “bled Makhzen,” spaces very broad, more or less well defined around Marrakech and managed by an “aminal Amilsk,” They were able to show how the rotation of caid allowed to increase the heritage of the crown, by confiscating, at each dismissal of a servant, the goods which he had added to the be clean during his mandate,

If the French administrators arriving in Marrakech had found a complete and relatively precise register of these acquisitions successive, the sommier des lands domaniales would have been easy to establish

But immediate difficulties stood before them: imprecision geometric of the buildings, the relative confusion between the State and those of the sovereign, the abundance of anarchic concessions made from 1908.

They would lack a lot of understanding of the problem, if the meaning of the above judgments were not deepened, about the lack of transparency of the land system discovered by the colonial administration. This lack of clarity was because the foreign get looked with his eyes and measured his mother. Conversely, fifteen years later, Haouz’s inhabitants did not find more transparency to the new land statutes, which had been created by the colonizer and understood him from the amphitheatre lease, from the lease renewed land habous to Christians. State land distributed preferentially to settlers, communal land given in perpetual enjoyment, etc. The pure and straightforward transfer of land abroad, dressed in very formal legal formulas.

The geometric imprecision of buildings is discussed as soon as they are local strangers. Each plot has its last name; it is known with its limits and the terms of the neighboring properties.

The boundaries of each plot result from a consensus of the group, and it is only very rarely questioned. It follows a very notable transformation of the balance of power within the group, which gives rise to lasting discussions and negotiations. As soon as the group is dissolved, dispersed, wherever it is a stranger, boundaries arise. As soon as they put this one, they appear the whole land and the balance of power in the group because land ownership and skin distribution are closely linked to the management and social relationships.

The old regime experienced intense social mobility, active modification of the balance of power, and land occupations successive in the Haouz of Marrakech, especially in the spaces at the end of the hydraulic sectors, in the middle of the plain, far from the hilltop. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish areas of sustainable occupations and relatively peaceful, which does not exclude usurpation but without thinning out zones that have known active successions of lords having practiced than the deportation and installation of entire villages. European powers had already attacked the confusion between the domain of the State and that of the sovereign, when, wanting pledge the loan and find the customs revenue insufficient, the countries participating in the Madrid Conference had demanded from Makhzen the establishment of a register of urban and rural land assets. Makhzen officials established this box spring, but with indications of capacity deemed very insufficient or vague, the agems responsible for debt control.

But the succession of the three sovereigns – Moulay’ Abd-el-‘Aziz, Moulay Hfid, and Moulay Youssef – in five years, and the rotation of authority staff that resulted, both to change teams to constitute the state treasury. He had so profoundly modified the Makhzen land map in Haouz that no document was no longer enforceable. Very often, concessions are made by Dahir for the benefit of newly appointed caid,  without canceling the other submissions and the other Dahir, so that everyone can claim to hold a title.

French agents, stationed in Marrakech, have continued to report at their legation the melting of Makhzen goods:

“The squandering of Makhzen goods in the city of Marrakech and the surrounding area has grown in recent months. The Sultan gives freehold a certain number of buildings to persons of his family or friends. The name number of beneficiaries they note:

Moulay Boubker, khalifs of the Sultan in Marrakech, Haj Hmed El Krissi bajib, Taïeb el Mokn, the adults were also responsible for selling the land (Makhzen) in the tribes of dir; Demnat’s state olive groves are said to have been sold to the Germans. Moulay Hfid incorporates part of the goods makhzen to his particular domain, sells the rest or gives it to his familiar, and note continues:

“The sovereign and his courtiers are gorged with private wealth where the public to that naked no longer open his plot state property on the day they need it. For the cooper court to face such abuses, they must take charge without delay, the entire administration of makhzen as the whole village. It is very urgent, especially in Fez and Marrakech.

Moulay Hafid has just given orders to make disappear habous properties of registers to incorporate them into his property clean. This extraordinary dilapidation of state property in Fez, as in Marrakech, shows that the administration du bled Makhzen must be entrusted with ensuring the conservation of what is still available. At the need, to claim alienated buildings in defiance of everything, The sacraments to which the Sultan and the people of 50m at the disposal of the protective power on the day that it will want to exercise the rights it derives from the latest agreements.

Also, upon the arrival of French troops in Marrakech, the General Resident about real estate transactions, reminds them of the regulations in force in the entire occupied area prescribes close monitoring measures to protect goods for public use (future public domain), habous buildings, forests, mines, lands of collective enjoyment of the tribes, private environment of the State, to prevent any fraudulent alienation foreigners can acquire land according to the procedure following article 60 of the Algeciras act.

The land question was indeed one of the very first Protectorate authorities – immediately after operations armies.

From the dismissal of Moulay Hafid, an investigation was launched entrusted to the Vizir el Mokri to draw up a statement of personal property whose ex-sovereign had acquired the property by inheritance, by donation, or by purchase.

When in 1922, the properties of ex-Sultan Moulay Hfid were struck with receivership, they can, by comparing the list of these goods sequestered and established ten years earlier, measure the importance of funds returned to Makhzen.

This “clearance” for the benefit of the State’s domain, therefore in appearance for the public’s satisfaction, was not without a lively competition with the private land acquisitions of the settlers themselves the same. Here is what “Southern Morocco” reports in these terms shortcuts: “The Domains organized their services by applying the formula dear to Robert Macaire: This land is nobody’s, therefore it is mine. The statistics strongly confirm the point of view of settlers: from 1914 to 1920. Foreign private persons could not acquire that 427 ha. At the same time, the Domain Service identified and laid down 85,214 hectares on its registers.

The search for land likely to be classified in the State’s private domain is even experiencing an active recovery from 1919-1921, As proof. These letters are written in Arabic and addressed to the caïd by the head of the Intelligence Service at Marrakech:

“There is a great need to expand the search for land to the French because the surroundings of Marrakech are no longer enough.

The war is over; they must work and rebuild France. There is no more trouble to fear from foreigners.

More imperial, this letter:

“You are ordered to seek federal and habous lands part of which is likely to be made available to Euro- people, so that they can undertake works and cultures there must delimit the tribes’ between. Let each tribe come with acts and documents indicating the nature of the land in its possession of which it currently benefits,”

The strange procedure, because in the region of Marrakech, except for the displaced tribes (Aït Immour and Oudaya), it is difficult to see what kinds of documents can be produced by the tribes to establish their borders.

Just as leonine this announcement:

“It is brought to their attention the new type of rental of Makhzen lands. On federal lands, the Makhzen wise to forget Rental to strangers to the tribe and to those who do not give up to date with their payments, it will now be an advance upon request (rental); half the rent at the signing of the deed; half of the rest six months from the date of the act; the balance three months after,”

This “new type of rental” amounted to excluding the lease of land from Makhzen to city dwellers – since foreigners to the tribe – and to dismiss in the tribe those of the candidates for the hiring who were deprived of cash. This reserved access to the state lips of a formally and officially, without saying so, only to foreigners in the Country.

The pursuit of the coloaisable lands was still done in three directions: foreclosures, liquidation of debts of large caid in landform, clearance of guich status.

Seizure of property, Makhzen personnel, demonstrating overly overtly anti-French positions – in particular, in the case the sequestration of the consulate’s agents in Marrakech. During the city’s occupation by El Hiba was done in the most direct a physical: ex-Pacha Driss Ouki Mennou having been detained in the remains of Haÿj Tahmi the time it took for him to return the titles of property he owned. Maybe it was to make him give back what he had acquired for the sole strength of his Makhzenian charge,” but the process was deemed to be irregular enough to justify an approach of the English consulate.

Were also seized the goods of Haj Omar Tazi, a little more of 3,000 hectares in irrigable sectors of the left bank and Nafis’s bank right. These lands, property of Makhzen under Moulay al- Hassan, came from Homad al. Abdi’s sequestration, who had revolted against the central government. Managed by parents of the sovereign, in particular, Sidi Mohammed b, Rachid) they were conceded by Moulay “Abd el” Aziz to Haj Omar Tazi,” his minister, by Dahir from November 16, 1907. Moulay’ Abd el Hafid seized them and conceded them to Taïeb and Mokri, by Dahir of June 26, 1911, The Administration of domains disputed the undivided property of Haj Omar Tazi and Taïeb et-Mokri, confirmed by the Cherifian letter of November 21, 1911, and proposed an amicable agreement: renunciation of the property located on the left bank and sale of the property, on the right bank of Saada, to the Industrial Company and Agrxole de Marrakech (SLAM) at the price of 500 F. per hectare, Send feedback, History and Saved Community.

The property of the leaders of the rebellion of the Mesfioua and in particular those of Caïd Hommad al-Mesfioui and his heirs, in Tabouhanit, Trab el-Maaden, Jdida, which became the Domaine Fondère, Arga, Maïtena, Moulay “Ali, etc. all lands in short, on the border between the Rehamna and the Mesfoux. They cannot, without being sure precisely, avoid thinking that the administration was there, in part, at the service of the Pasha of Marrakech, continuing with his vengeance the already very tried tribe of the Mesfioua. A large part of his land soon became the property of Thami el-Glaoui. One understands that the administration’s zeal could only multiply that of the Pasha to discover state lands if the latter could hope to be paid later.

Finally, the Franco-Germanic conflict was timely in 1914 to authorize the seizure of all Austro-German property in Marrakech and increase the private domain of ten thousand hectares in the State.

Another primary land resource constituted by lands held by caïd, too heavily indebted to the State. The most typical phenomenon was that of the caid al-Ayyadi who, there, in agreement in principle with Thami el-Glaoui, competitor, but ally at the time of the arrival of French troops, occupied the former territory roof of the Rehamna, that is to say: Saada, Souclah, Taguenza, Targa and Ouidane in the East to the Argoub (nearly 50,000 hectares). In counterpart, al-Ayyadi recognized the border of the Mesfioua east of Marrakech and, in particular, the Tabouhanit sector, as being glaouie movement.

Al-Ayyadi’s debt was legendary. At the beginning of Protectorate, he lived on a great lord’s foot, aiming to equal Thami el-Glaoui. But with lower incomes, his empire being less extended, less populous, offering a less sparse tax base and incredibly more easily controlled by the administration. This must-have tolerated ignoring for a long time what was going on in the Atlas valleys and on the southern slope. But was led to restricting as much as to caidales practices on Casablanca’s road to Marrakech. The permanent deficit of the cash of the Rehamna summer mostly filled with mortgaged loans, followed by sales of property pledged, for the benefit of the State’s private domain. Negotiations amicable and discreet have thus enabled the Department of Acquired Domains to laugh at Saada. Souelah (via the Rothschild bank, it seems), the Targa, Seggara, and a large part of the Argoub. Until his death, this occurred on January 12 1% 64 in Marrakech. Al-Ayyadi continued to sell his land to maintain his house’s train. The last sale was that of Mhamdia, an area of ​​almost 80 hectares irrigated in the guidance.

Sale subject to evaluation

Finally, the last category was coveted by the Service the Domains: so-called “guich” lands. Jeun Le Coz widely exposed the phenomenon of “guichisation” of land in the western suburbs of Marrakech and the subtle legal equivalences of domain prominent next to usufruct, used to allow appropriation state profit from part of this land. The process used with success elsewhere – especially among the Aït Robo’a du Tadla and among Cherarda by Sidi Qacem – initially consisted of recognizing the two legal categories of land and enjoyment on guich lands, and then assign the first to the State and the second to the tribe considered. Finally, by declaring the equal value, decide to give the tribe full ownership of half the area and write the other half on the state base.

In concrete practice, the tribe concerned confiscated the use of half of the surface and won the other half of the rights that nobody could argue with him, and that was pure formalism. However, it did not lose the supervision of the State, since pretty much, these lands were controlled as a land collective.

Colonel Voinot, who had been charged with examining the rights of tribes on these lands, dissolved the administration to consider them as guichement, in the sense that the administration of domains manipulated this category and in practice. The process of land acquisition says that guich in Marrakech’s region was relatively limited, Particularly, nor the Aït Immtheir. Neither did the Oudaya give an inch of the field. Otherwise, in the former, the caïd mya’s plots taken over by Thami el-Glaoui as Pasha of the Qasbah in place and title of this caid. These two tribes argued that they were “displaced” and not on more military service than others. Besides, it was terrible came when they were taxed like everyone else

Haouz populations, on the pretext that the Guich regime had disappeared, really take for guich from the point of view of their plate land.

Thus, a census of public lands gathered during the ten early years of the Protectorate estimated around 85,214 hectares the area likely to be made available to the colonization. Compared to Haouz’s site, this space represented if the makhzen land acquisitions and registrations were formally and legally indisputable and thus permitted subsequently guarantee the security of the investments that would be made their facts were these lands, however, empty of men? Stripped the files of the Land Conservation, the Service of the Domains and the Colonization Committee minutes, there is a high risk of losing sight of an older, more discreet occupation, but also more tenacious: that of the growers themselves, who saw the lords, then the settlers on the same land and who have always been themselves, generation after generation, to ensure the development of areas.

A personal inquiry, made on August 23, 1962, at Domaine Ha Omar Tazi, sums up quite well the vision of the tenants, real serfs attached to the earth, relating the succession of masters that for three generations they had endured.

My father was Rehamni, and he was installed on the spot by Moulay el-Hassan. Moreover, the Haj Omar Taxi domain lands are lands that once belonged to the Rehamna, to prove of place names like Sellamna, Oulad Zbir, which are names of plots from here and terms of rehamna fractions.

The whole succession of Sultans transported them from one place to another. Towards the end of his reign, Moulay al-Hassan told them to send Tassoultant to work, Abda and Hmar had invaded their lands. When he died, they stayed in Marrakech throughout the siba. At that time, nobody wanted to get out of Marrakech to go and cultivate. During periods of calm, some of them were taking land in the association.

It is possible that Hmad ben Aïssa l’Abdi first owned the domain. If one can call property occupation of that time, he doesn’t know who Hmad Ben Aïssa, my father gave me his name, which remains that of an orchard on the estate. Over there subsequently, all of the lands were seized by the Makhzen, who claimed they were rebels against the Crown. It was the Palace that managed the land.

Under Moulay’ Abd el-” Aziz, the land was managed by the cousin of the Sultan, Sidi Mohamed b. Rachid. He myself took leasehold land in Sidi Mohamed b. Rachid at the rate of 2.3 the harvest for the lessee. The earth was not what it was has become today. Formerly, it was a forest of jujube trees.

They cultivated huge tufts. They made so much money to hatch and sell the branches in Marrakech than to produce. There Ben Dhima, then Ben Dhan, is it in the form of a sale or rent. They don’t know, and only the family royal disappeared in her relations with them.

A little before the Protectorate, the Sultan sold or gave, and he does not know, the real estate has two of his viziers Haÿ Omar Tazi and Si Taïeb el-Mokri.

For them, it didn’t change much. It cultivated as before but on a more regular basis, except during the Sultan of Sahara, Ma cl-Aïnin, the whole Haouz was raised, the barrel thundered at Marrakech. Then Ma el Aïnin withdrew in the South via the mountain.

They have returned to their cultures.

Shortly after the Protectorate, Tazi and el-Mokri sold to a Company. SLAM, which first set out to clear the land removing the jujube. They were employed to the task for clear with a pickaxe. Then the Company set up a machine with two motors and a cable carrying braces which knocked out more than a meter deep, they used all the methods.

They gave land in khobza claiming only one deposit equal to the seed for the ground to be worked. They are also used as khammès, on a good part of the field, for these cereals. For three years, they made cotton that came very well – with employees, but the sale was terrible, they had to give up.

Then they dug six wells and equipped some with engines. With the water of the Saada seguia and that of the wells, they could plant a lot of trees: almond, apricot, orange, plum, Cypress.

But after spending a lot of money, the Society doesn’t not prosperous: no commercialization!

The land was sold to Glaoui a little before the construction of the dam. As soon as it was built, the Glaoui made a basin and planted olive trees with employees. He organized his domain as follows:

– Olive trees: cared for and irrigated by the khammès for free. Harvest by chore:

– Direct crops: on granary quarry (plots) with khammès (35 khammès) one piece of durum wheat – one soft wheat plot – a barley plot – that of corn – a chief khammès for six khammès;

Indirect crops: to khnebhaz, On these lands, who cultivates there see what they want,

At first, the khobza was a third, then there were so many khobza each with its threshing floor, that from 1930-1935, the Glaoui set up the hars royalty system estimated on the field, by one of the six inspectors (nagqäl) who came a little before harvest. The hars was slightly weaker than Le tiers (du gross product}. Usually, to be khobzataire, you had to be from the family of a khammes or pay a gift to Gluoui before the plow.

The khebbaz were free from shore on the olive harvest.

Around 1953, the Glaoui rented the estate for six years to a neighbor, a certain Homad Rahhal. Desiring to make kif, this one agrees to pay rent of eight million, but the crop kif is prohibited during the year: the rent is reduced to five million francs per year. The tenant hunts the khammès du Glaoui – which are

gone looking to live somewhere else – puts kahmmes to him and cultivates a significant part of the property to the tractor. The rest of the domain is given in khobza to parents of the khammès of Rahhal.

But many ex-khammès du Glaoui sneak among Islands khobzataires. Khobza, at that time, was 40%.

The khammes have always had a khoms only more mouna but not straw at Independence, the lands were seized by the Makhzen, but the tenant continues his lease by paying the rent to the Domains 1959, date of distribution.

Almost all the old khammes have been taken over and ancients khobzataire—even people who had never cultivated the land.

Finally, they are still here; it is their land”.

The subdivision of land for the benefit of colonization.

Although having enormously slowed down spontaneous acquisitions of land by private individuals during the first ten years of occupation in Marrakech, the Protectorate administration, however, tolerated some minor or personal purchases. Also, many private seal transactions had to be leaked before 1921 and were not revealed until after the release obtained under the pressure of French opinion in Marrakech.

Relations between the French colony and the administration of Protectorates were far from being in perfect harmony. Through the press, endlessly deaf and sometimes violent protests by settlers come to Morocco as to the Far-West. They are indignant at the temperaments that public services put on their aggressive companies. The French press from the years 1918 to 1930 looks moreover surprisingly to these sheets published in the United States, in small towns hastily mounted on the “border,” during the tremendous expanding west. They find denunciations of corruption of civil servants® *, “heroic” crossing reports of the Atlas by a few “bold colonists, advice for setting up value and business deals, protests over the benefits given to one region over another, satisfaction over the replacement of private militias by a state police force.” But the most substantial challenges relate to the gene caused by the administration, which is reserve most of the available land in Haouz:

“French settlers divided into old and new Marrakchis (are) both undesirable for the military authorities and civil. Little by little, by all possible means, they prevented the colonists from visiting their properties of Mesfioua, of Goundafa and Glaoua. Until then, the native chiefs had found buyers and lenders in them, for fear of reprisals, no longer dared to receive them. They remember a friend of the General Brulard, come to create a farm agricultural, who, being unable to acquire something else that pebbles, left taking its capital towards other skies. The French were vegetating; they had to be compensated. It was the brilliant idea of ​​the Guéliz subdivision.

The Protectorate officials followed a line policy firmly traced by Lyautey, determined to serve the state, the French public power, and large companies rather than opening the country of land speculation and anarchic competition for the future turners. Without falling into reverse imagery, which describes the settlers of the first their like brigands and defendants having found in African colonies, spaces were to develop their talents. It is indisputable that people circulating on the lands of Haouz lively and colorful swims, rather brave and expeditious, which could only be very marginalized from the high design of the civilizing work of France of the General of the Empire. “They do not know an empire with reeds,” he said when he was told of the escapades of some of his compatriots, but he dared to tighten this passion and these appetites in the tight corset of the mission French. Inland matters, the French mission aimed to establish the development of capitalist holdings with advanced technology, sold to large companies with sufficient capital and proven technical skills and ‘serious good French farmers morality ”, closely supervised by the administration utilizing development.

It is also necessary to decrease the figures attributed here to the colonization of the 1,540 hectares acquired by Fondere, from the escrow by Moulay Hfid, in close association with Thami el-Glaoui on Mesfioua lands and which were then incorporated. Nearly 600 hectares were already appropriated by private individuals before 1912. Ultimately, the administration of the Protectorate enabled the colonization of private individual types of accommodation on only 5% of the area of ​​land colonized after 1912.

In other areas, the Protectorate had a suitable May operating system by controlling the credit of large banks concerning corporations and large companies. For elsewhere, all willing to establish advanced capitalist formulas, thanks to the specifications developed in 1920 by the agricultural departments about the official settlement lots.

It must be believed that the officials of the Protectorate did not have perfect confidence in the capacity of capitalist competition liberal to obtain rapid development of the distributed lands to the settlers because the essential objective of the contracts and specifications precisely aims to ensure a speedy recovery. Study of the notebook of loads allows identifying the precise characteristics of the ideal operating conditions and the economic concerns of the public session; it also informs, in detail, of the prohibitions and the severity of the sanctions, on the “spontaneous” behavior of farmers French considered incompatible with the orientation given by the State. Among the most assertive clauses, they must first quote the obligation made to the beneficiary of a lot to reside on it and to build his primary home. This requirement is less aimed at an objective of French settlement covering the Haouz campaign, which is an assurance of direct, modern land uses, that is to say, of permanent work control.

Correspondingly, this clause is reinforced by the ban absolute to lease or associate its land to anyone and especially not to Moroccans. The old and necessary procedure of associations with mokhalar could indeed have given ideas to bold speculators. These practices are condemned. Those who are devoted to it are summoned to the office of the commander. The place to be sharply launched and threatened with being declared undesirable in the name of the flag’s prestige. Development of the field is programmed over a small number of years – there to five – specifying precisely the nature of the land amendments to be brought to the lots (land clearing, stone removal, hedge planting) and the culture system to practice. Finally, the obligation to use a salaried workforce further reinforces the requirement of culture directly. The lots are put back into the hire-purchase subject to compliance with the specifications. Commissions come periodically to draw up valuation reports: these are validated in joint meetings of the settlers’ administration and representatives (colonization committees).

So this model of capitalist agriculture is strictly defined, guaranteeing the land base, scheduling investments, speculation towards market production, providing opportunities for the social framework for the central permanent employees, and seasonal workers for peak periods of work (harvests). Breaking with the mode of production which prevailed in Haouz until then is clear and decisive. In seven years, on 30,000 hectares, so almost a third of the area cultivated in 1912 an intense activity of clearing, construction, and implementation culture, which cannot fail to have captured the spirits. The question is whether it also struck the spectators with stupor and disc their agement, faced with so much aid, funding, advice, and public support given to a foreign population, which suddenly had all the space available in supermarkets. It does not take long to win the Moroccan community in front of so many arrogance and indifference on the Protectorate authorities’ part, the same respect of the allies for their cause. In many places, deaf reluctance is expressed by city dwellers, former tenants of property Makhzen, and even opposition arises among the notables rural. The Protectorate administration never gave the colonization lots of theoretical and practical justification of the format of the batches of colonization. The expressions used “viable lots,” “sufficient areas,” means to live decently are very subjective and very motives. The notion of “populating” colonization was also more a slogan than a real intention: the Cie Fermière will show that the agro-industry is more “populous” than the large family farm.

The orientation, taken in Marrakech from the start, went towards the great relatively extensive farm, aiming at dry arboriculture (Aman-dier), sheep farming, cereals, reserving a small area irrigated around the house for an orchard and a vegetable patch. Therefore, it was a straightforward option for the market production of wool, meat, almonds, and cereals, even legumes. When the areas to be allocated have been better known, the dimension has been differentiated to consider the quality of distributing a surface product to each colonist quality, about equal. The multiplier has not been estimated from an in-depth study of soil productivity, intrinsic elements. If these elements have been taken into account globally, the effort of investment and land amendment that the settlers would have to undertake the technical administration has sought to appreciate. Soils are described only by their pro-founder, color, and a vague term like “good earth, low, heavy light.” On the other hand, the density of jujube, the importance of stoniness, the topography are more abundantly described, like they are also the means to implement to overcome to follow. 

The settler-settler period belongs to classic colonial imagery if that. In the large meeting room of the Chamber of Agriculture of Marrakech, there are two large paintings responsible for building the profession’s members on the merits of European colonization. The notable Moroccan owners, who come to sit down today on the same benches, look amused and peaceful the image of the past: a plowman, armed with a plow of wood pulled by a team, which they call here ladle (hawl) composed of a camel and a donkey, and which respects the tufts of jujube. Opposite, a settler stands on his boots, martial air, horse pants, straw hat on the head, and a kid in hand, ordering Moroccan workers who lead a team of healthy horses with collars, pulling a Brabant.

A woman carrying a jug of water walks away between two rows of orange trees in the background. The alpha and omega of the doctrine of colonization are in these two paintings. They must greet the presidents who have succeeded each other since 1956 in the Chamber of Agriculture of Marrakech, to have had enough humor to keep walls like this historical document.

The memory of the clearing of central Haouz is not kept only by these photographs or by the archives of colonization. All person over the age of sixty remembers this all the better episode that at the same time the few rare Moroccan owners who could lift chores (especially Thami el-Glaoui, Sektani, Al-Ayyadi) also undertook to clear their land. “It was back then, say potters from Oued Issil, where you only heated with jujube, and they recall that had preceded the period of the heating with olive wood, during the sacking of the Mesfioua by the Glaoui. They are heating up with palm, Open competition in the workforce – the general phenomenon in Morocco during the first phases of land colonization – raises wages and consolidates tenants’ position: these were the first workers hired, stabilized, and have become recruiting agents.

Local newspapers protest against hiring workers Moroccans in the Haouz of Marrakech, for the benefit of other regions or from abroad: “Fears have been expressed (to the Government Council} to see these recruitments deprive the region and Morocco of part significant of its agricultural or industrial workforce. To downplay the general labor crisis that threatens construction sites and corporate groups, it would be desirable for groups interested companies agree to send on-site to the South. Recruiting agents to hire workers in their having a work contract signed, “The systematic campaign of impoverishment in the region of Marrakech continues. They miss this workforce! She misses more than in Chaous, where the reaper is paid while he is paid per day and fed in the Haouz, the Abds, and the Rehamna. The head of the Public Works district reports in June 1928 that ‘the labor recruiting skills hinder the development work of the séguias. A fast calculation, carried out with the standards provided in the reports of agricultural services, shows that the clearing of the thirty thousand hectares in five years, using fifty days per hectare, required three hundred thousand annual days, or a fictitious presence continues to a thousand workers. The population residing in the Haouz was around thirty thousand people, of which only their thousand can be mobilized for hard work such as land clearing. They can see from these figures the enormous labor drain, at relatively high wages, which land development has brought about”.

Unquestionably, the impact of such massive recruitment of workers and its suddenness could augur well to install capitalist social relations in the region. Employers did not have an unemployment reserve, capable of maintaining the low wages, arguing personal relationships, The drainage of labor confiscated it from seigniorial networks and caïd gnait to make their ferrule heavier, therefore more unpopular their diet. If all these changes had not been the work of foreigners who came to camp with their customs, they could have talked about a revolution, no doubt capitalist. But process all the same, after so many decades of insecurity of goods and people, the most vulnerable underprivileged of the peasantry could not fail to receive new masters paid better and more regularly than the ancients.

They owe it to historical honesty – whatever the judgments that they can then focus on colonization as a system in as an end – and they will see it as a failure to induce general progress ral – to say, to keep all lucidity about this past and its future. During surveys in Marrakech, among workers and peasants, they heard the regrets of the period before the Protectorate on the contrary. And if the land confiscations of it still have been vehemently denounced as well as hydraulic usurpations, it was then recalled the release from chores and access to disposal money that the quasi-serving peasantry had been deprived of for so long.

It does not mean that the peasantry did not have to suffer directly from the settlers’ installation in many places and that she did willingly to spread. Far from there! The Haouz has known as the other regions of Morocco and the Maghreb, the eviction, the cantonment, brutal seizure of land, under cover of legislation tailored to the request, and a completely obscure formal legality and inadmissibility by the occupants of the earth. The Compagnie Fermière in Tassoultant, the story deserves to be told through the menu, as it is significant in the interweaving of large companies’ interests, colonization, and administration. A fine example of both competition and alliance between three families of socio-political actors, agreement on the movement, competitors on terms, separated in interests, facing the peasantry which can only develop passive resistance.

On June 22, 1920, a rather strange convention was passed, between Eugène REGNAULT and Moulay’ Abd er-Rahman b. al-Hasan al-ALAOUI, known as Moulay al-KHBIR, by which the first, representative a company to be created, leased for forty years, to put them in value and exploit them, “all the land that would turn out to be of (the) property “(of the second).

The personality of the contractors is worth reporting to understand the scope of this contract. The lesser was Moulay Abd el-Azi and Moulay Hafid, who resided in Marrakech and had considerable tracts of land, both in the Rharb, in the Loukkos, in the region of Fez, than in Haouz. In still conditions ill-defined, apparently due to its Azizist positions of an Edge, then an attempt to land by pretending to Taza in December 1909 after the failure of Bou Hmars, Moulay Hafid pronounced the sequestrated his brother’s property in 1910. Moulay al-KHBIR appealed to the French legation in Tangier, claiming loyalty and legality of his behavior. Eugène REGNAULT, then Minister of France in the strait city, managed to get signed to Moulay Hafid two Dahir putting his brother back in the right. Moulay al-KBIR’s sequestration has extended to what REGNAULT, no longer having an official office, has done strongly to reconstruct the Prince’s heritage. The 1920 convention being the first act of an extended enterprise, by which the lessee could only benefit from the land of the lesser after having obtained the property for this one. Eugène REGNAULT is a well-known diplomat of the period preceding the Protectorate. Debt Controller in July 194 and Makhzen’s chief financial adviser before 1906, he appears to have had relations with Paribas. With the information collected on the field and at the Palace, he finds himself on the other side of the table, like “Technical delegate” at the Algeciras Conference, which opens on February 16, 1906. From January 31, 1909, to May 25, 1912, Eugène REGNAULT was Minister of France in Tangier: it is as such that he intervened with Moulay Hafid to restore his brother to his rights. In 1925 he created Saint-René TAILLANDIER, also returned to La privacy, the Compagnie Fermière Moroccan Exploitation Agriculture School, to exploit the lands of Moulay al-KBIR.

The first question to settle for Eugène REGNAULT was to know the extent and consistency of the rights covered by rehabilitation Dahir and then to consolidate and titrate, REGNAULT has the administration contradictorily of Domains and representatives of its lesser, three states of pro-properties claimed by the Sheriff in 1920:

A – Those occupied by third parties, and which the State undertakes age to be released: 4,730 ha;

B – (Those that the State intends to keep, to subdivide them for the benefit colonization under already pre-trimmed: 1,488 ha;

C – Those he immediately returns to Moulay al-KBIR;

Requested by REGNAULT, Marshal LYAUTEY accepts the principle of compensation for Moulay al-KBIR, for the demonized state-preserved properties. This compensation will consist of the allotment to the Sharif of the land of colonization to be taken from the state properties available in the region of Marrakech. The evaluation of the amount of compensation must be determined, not only from the valuation of goods lost funds but also from loss of use ‘since these goods should have been returned to him but against recognition by the sheriff that he will not subsequently exercise any claim. The diligence shown by the administration from the start of the meeting severely obstacles on the spot. The land that must be given as compensation, those of the Tassoultant sector, are rented by the Pasha, in full, until October 1, 1922, and he wishes to keep the rental. The administration’s most notable personalities are sent to Marrakech to examine how the problem could be solved. There seems to be an intention bound, but clear, to take back these lands for the benefit of colonization, in short, by intermediaries. Thanks to the name of a Prince who has ceded all of its management rights for the next forty years. They feel the muted pressure exerted on the Glaoui. The operations marking time, Crédit Foncier of Algeria and Tunisia, sends Edmond DOUTTE on site, apparently to gather agricultural to negotiate with old friends.