Morocco Diplomacy and Destiny from the Sixteenth Century in Conflictual Geo-Political Space

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by Said El Mansour Cherkaoui
Sciences Po, Grenoble
Université Grenoble Alpes – IREP, Grenoble
Institut des Hautes Etudes de l’Amérique Latine, Paris
Université de la Sorbonne, Paris III

Europe – France – Contact – Search

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Compilation Said El Mansour Cherkaoui 

 October 24, 2021 – March 28, 2022

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Diplomatie du Maroc au Sixième Siècle: Équilibre du Pouvoir dans un Espace Géostratégique et Politique Conflictuel

Kingdom of Morocco and the United Kingdom in Time of Change

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Said El Mansour Cherkaoui – Said Cherkaoui

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Great Land of Great Britain, United Kingdom had one of the oldest diplomatic relationships, the Land of the Moors.   

The aftermath of the discovery of the New World was a precipice and deep ravine within the Inter-European relationship and facilitated a rise of new forms of crusades against the Southern Islamic regions and countries

Here is a glimpse of my own adventure in such Northern lands followed by my writings on the precedent first Moroccan holders of Diplomatic correspondence between Kingdom of Morocco and King-Queendom of Great Britain and European powers. The rivalry of the European Powers is considered as the seeds for all the external interventions and the colonial expansion that was implemented in North and South America as Prohibitions within the Mercantilistic System.

The corresponding disputes and wars that resulted from such deep division of the spheres of influence and trade continued in the form of alliances and conflicts. The social changes resulting from such changes at the level of the States have also enabled the emergence of new social classes that were seeking direct participation in the decision-making process. This intrusion in the sphere of the State also to the transformation of the institutions that became in service to the reinforcement of the nascent capitalism and its organizational drive toward conquests of new external markets and supply of raw materials.

Diplomacy and confrontation became the vector for the internationalization of the capital in all its forms of exploitation usurpation and conquests of new lands, regions, and countries. In parallel, capitalism had to modernize the coast, and the cities existing if not were newly built on the shores that serve as ports for the export of natural resources and the import of manufactured goods and machinery as well as food products.

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Pioneer Diplomats, Builders of Linkages of New Destiny for International Affairs

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This was the time when Ambassadors were considered as the ways and the means to plant the roots of new diplomatic recognition and the gardeners of acceptance between cultures and countries of different thoughts and faiths. They were the builders of bridges of communication and paths of mutual understanding when they succeeded in their labor and approaches.

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Moroccan Pioneer Diplomats: The Masters of Dignity in Hostile Environment

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Centuries of Diplomatic Relations between Morocco and Europe did not save Morocco from becoming the target and the prey of the European Predators and Imperialists that have always considered Morocco as the Shield of Africa to be put down and to be used as the Main Entrance and Invasion of Africa starting with the domination of North Africa. Such an approach led to the starting of a containment policy pursued gradually through the use of the pretext of piracy and filibusterism, while it was another reaction by Moroccans that have not accepted the weakness of the dynasties could lead to the penetration and the direct control of Morocco by the rising Europeans powers that were divided among themselves. The only unifying common denominator in their combined or coordinated wars carried on the Southern Shores of the Mediterranean was given the Vatican who saw an opportunity to reduce the impact of Protestantism on the West and the rise of Islam in the East through the consolidation of the Ottoman Empire. Morocco stayed out of this fray given that it was the only country that had not been ruled directly by any foreign power, including the Ottoman.

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Emissaries of Moroccan Kings to Europe

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International Day of Diplomats 24 October

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Anglo – Moroccan Alliance – 1588 – Present

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The Anglo-Moroccan alliance ^[1][2] was established at the end of the 16th century and the early 17th century between the kingdoms of England and Morocco. Commercial agreements had been reached by Queen Elizabeth I of England and the Moroccan Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur on the basis of a common enmity to Philip II of Spain. The arms trade dominated the exchange, and numerous attempts at direct military collaboration were also made.^[1]

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The alliance was maintained for some time by their successors.

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Queen Elizabeth I of England

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Background

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After 1578, Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur developed relations between England and Morocco into a political alliance.

The alliance between the two states developed during the 16th century on the back of regular commercial exchanges, largely thanks to the work of the Amphlett family of merchants.^[3]  European trade with Morocco had been at the command of Spain, Portugal, and Genoa,^[4] but in 1541 the Portuguese suffered the loss of Safi and Agadir, loosening their grip on the area.

Following the sailing of The Lion of Thomas Wyndham in 1551,^[5] and the 1585 establishment of the English Barbary Company, trade developed between England and the Barbary states, and especially Morocco.^[6] [7]

Sugar, ostrich feathers, and saltpeter from Morocco were typically exchanged for English fabrics and firearms, in spite of the protests of Spain and Portugal.^[3]

Elizabeth I had numerous exchanges with Sultan Abd al-Malik to facilitate trade and obtain advantages for English traders.^[3] The sultan could speak Spanish and Italian as well as Arabic. In 1577 he wrote to the queen in Spanish, signing himself AbdelMeleck in Latin script.^[8] That same year, the queen sent Edmund Hogan as ambassador to the Moroccan court.^[9]

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Sour and Sweet Relation and Sugar Transaction with Morocco

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Alliance

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Elizabeth was initially reluctant to develop an arms trade with Morocco, for fear of criticism by other Christian powers, as was communicated by Hogan to the Sultan in 1577.^[9] Contacts however soon developed into a political alliance as a result of further diplomatic exchanges between Elizabeth I and Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur, after the defeat of Portugal at the Battle of Alcácer Quibir in 1578.^[3]

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Queen Elizabeth I of England

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The reason for the Muslim presence in England stemmed from Queen Elizabeth’s isolation from Catholic Europe. Her official excommunication by Pope Pius V in 1570 allowed her to act outside the papal edicts forbidding Christian trade with Muslims and create commercial and political alliances with various Islamic states, including the Moroccan Sa’adian dynasty, the Ottoman Empire, and the Shi’a Persian Empire.

She sent her diplomats and merchants into the Muslim world to exploit this theological loophole, and in return, Muslims began arriving in London, variously described as “Moors”, “Indians”, “Negroes” and “Turks”.

No Christian even knew the words “Islam” or “Muslim”, which only entered the English language in the 17th Century. Instead, they spoke of “Saracens”, a name considered in medieval times to have been taken from one of Abraham’s offspring (with the servant Hagar) who was believed to have founded the original twelve Arab tribes.

Christians simply could not accept that Islam was a coherent religious belief. Instead, they dismissed it as a pagan polytheism or a heretical deformation of Christianity. Much Muslim theology discouraged travel into Christian lands, or the “House of War”, which was regarded as a perpetual adversary of the “House of Islam”.

But with Elizabeth’s accession, this situation began to change. In 1562 Elizabeth’s merchants reached the Persian Shah Tahmasp’s court where they learned about the theological distinctions between Sunni and Shi’a beliefs, and returned to London to present the queen with a young Muslim Tatar slave girl they named Aura Soltana.

She became the queen’s “dear and well-beloved” servant who wore dresses made of Granada silk and introduced Elizabeth to the fashion of wearing Spanish leather shoes.

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Ahmad al-Mansur was an important figure in both Europe and Africa in the sixteenth century, his powerful army and strategic location made him an important power player in the late Renaissance period. He was also the Muslim hero of one of the most memorable battles in the centuries-long struggle between Christians and Muslims.

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After 1578, Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur Developed Relations between England and Morocco into a Political Alliance

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The famous Battle was a hard-fought affair won finally by the Moroccans due in large part to the military exploits of Ahmad al-Mansur. Three Kings were killed; Portugal’s Dom Sebastian, Morocco’s current ruler Abd al-Malik (al-Mansur’s brother), and deposed former ruler al-Mutawakkil (al-Mansur’s nephew who fought alongside Dom Sebastian). Ahmad al-Mansur was suddenly a national hero, the living representation of Morocco’s strength and pride. The door for his reign opened and he charged through. He began by leveraging his dominant position with the vanquished Portuguese during prisoner ransom talks, the collection of which filled the Moroccan royal coffers. Shortly after, he began construction on the great architectural symbol of this new birth of Moroccan power and relevance; the grand palace in Marrakesh called al-Badi, or “the marvelous.”

Eventually, the coffers began to run dry due to the great expense of supporting the military, extensive spy services, the palace and other urban building projects, a royal lifestyle, and a propaganda campaign aimed at building support for his controversial claim to the Caliphate. In reality, Morocco’s standing with the Christian states was still in flux. The Spaniards and the Portuguese were still popularly seen as the infidels, but al-Mansur knew that the only way his regime would survive was to continue to benefit from alliances with the Christian economic powers. To do that Morocco had to control sizable gold resources of its own. Accordingly, al-Mansur was drawn irresistibly to the trans-Saharan gold trade of the Songhay in hopes of solving Morocco’s economic deficit with Europe.

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The Songhay Campaign

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The Songhay was a pre-colonial African state centered in eastern Mali. From the early 15th to the late 16th century, it was one of the largest African empires in history. Its base of power was on the bend of the Niger River in present-day Niger and Burkina Faso. At its greatest extent (c. 1498), the Songhay sphere of power reached far down the Niger River into modern-day Nigeria, all the way to the Northeast of modern-day Mali, and even to a small part of the Atlantic coast in the West. Songhay’s trans-Saharan trade consisted primarily of gold, salt, and slaves.

It is pretty clear that al-Mansur’s designs in the Songhay campaign were economic, but he had other considerations as well. At home, al-Mansur sought support from powerful religious leaders by accusing the Songhay of being lax in their practice of Islam and thus a target for proper moral purification. He also sold the action domestically as being a vital step in establishing an African Caliphate.

Geo-politically al-Mansur claimed his interests within the region were strictly part of a defensive jihad to halt further Ottoman expansion. The Sa’di ruler could point to the increasingly provocative Ottomans operating next door in Algeria to make his case for taking Songhay to create a buffer zone on Morocco’s southern flank.

By the time of his death al-Mansur, who was a contemporary of Galileo and Shakespeare*, had lost not only most of the Songhay but his reputation and legacy were also reduced. The memory of the great General who was victorious at Alcazar and who built the greatest palace in Morocco has faded largely from view.

* Ironically al-Mansur is believed to have been the model for Shakespeare’s prince of Morocco character in The Merchant of Venice – the work that gave us the famous line: “All that glitters is not gold.”

Source: Essay: Ahmad al-Mansur (1549-1603) Renaissance Diplomacy Moroccan Style

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First Moroccan Envoy to the Elizabethian England: Ahmed Bilqassim

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In 1589 the Moroccan Ambassador Ahmed Bilqasim entered London in state, surrounded by Barbary Company merchants, proposing an Anglo-Moroccan military initiative against “the common enemy the King of Spain”.

Although the anti-Spanish proposal came to nothing, the Moroccan ambassador sailed in an English fleet later that year that attacked Lisbon with the support of the Moroccan ruler, Mulay Ahmed al-Mansur.

Just over 10 years later another Moroccan ambassador called Muhammad al-Annuri arrived in London, with a large retinue of merchants, translators, holy men, and servants who stayed for six months living in a house on the Strand where Londoners watched them practicing their religious faith.

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Anglo–Spanish War

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Elizabeth I tried to obtain Sultan al-Mansur’s help in backing Dom António‘s claim to the Portuguese throne against Philip of Spain.

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Antonio of Portugal

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Elizabeth I tried to obtain Sultan al-Mansour’s help in backing Dom António’s claim to the Portuguese throne against Philip of Spain

After 1578, Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur developed relations between England and Morocco into a political alliance. Relations intensified with the acclamation of Philip II of Spain as King of Portugal in 1580, and the advent of the Anglo–Spanish War in 1585.^[9] In 1581, Elizabeth authorized the exportation of naval-grade timber to Morocco in exchange for saltpeter,^[9] a necessary ingredient in gunpowder. The establishment of the Barbary Company in 1585 further gave England a monopoly on Morocco trade for 12 years.^[3] In 1585–1588, through the embassy of Henry Roberts, Elizabeth tried to obtain the Sultan’s help in backing Dom António.^[9] In 1588, Al-Mansur granted special privileges to English traders.^[3]

In her letters to Al-Mansur, Elizabeth, for 25 years, continually described the relationship between the two countries as « La buena amistad y confederación que hay entre nuestras coronas » (« The great friendship and cooperation that exists between our Crowns »), and presented herself as « Vuestra hermana y pariente según ley de corona y ceptro » (« Your sister and relative according to the law of the Crown and the Scepter »).^[10]

In January 1589, Al-Mansur through his ambassador to the Queen,^[11] Marzuq Rais (Mushac Reyz),^[12] requested the supply of oars, carpenters, and shipwrights, as well as transportation on English ships, in exchange for his contribution of 150,000 ducats and his military help for an Anglo-Moroccan expedition against Spain in favor of the Portuguese claimant.^[9] He also requested English military assistance in case of a conflict with neighboring non-Christian countries. Elizabeth could not meet these demands completely, especially the transportation of Moroccan forces, and negotiation drew on until the death of Dom António in 1595. ^[9] [13]

The 1589 English expedition to Portugal moved ahead nonetheless and failed with the English fleet hoping in vain for reinforcements from England or Morocco.[14]  Only the Moroccan ambassador Marzuq Rais was accompanying the expedition, on board the flagship of Dom António, disguised as a Portuguese nobleman, and stayed until the summer of 1589. ^[12]

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1600 Embassy

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Diplomatic relations continued to intensify between Elizabeth and the Barbary states.^[15] England entered into a trading relationship with Morocco detrimental to Spain, selling armor, ammunition, timber, and metal in exchange for Moroccan sugar, despite a Papal ban,^[16] prompting the Papal Nuncio in Spain to say of Elizabeth: «There is no evil that is not devised by that woman, who, it is perfectly plain, succored Mulocco (Abd-el-Malek) with arms, and especially with artillery ».^[17]

In 1600, Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud, the principal secretary to the Moroccan ruler Mulai Ahmad al-Mansur, visited England as an ambassador to the court of Queen Elizabeth I.^[18] [19] 

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Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud spent 6 months at the court of Elizabeth, to negotiate an alliance against Spain.^[20] [21] The Moroccan ruler wanted the help of an English fleet to invade Spain, Elizabeth refused but welcomed the embassy as a sign of insurance, and instead accepted to establish commercial agreements.^[15] [20] 

Queen Elizabeth and King Ahmad continued to discuss various plans for combined military operations, with Elizabeth requesting a payment of 100,000 pounds in advance to King Ahmad for the supply of a fleet, and Ahmad asking for a tall ship to be sent to get the money. Elizabeth « agreed to sell munitions supplies to Morocco, and she and Mulai Ahmad al-Mansur talked on and off about mounting a joint operation against the Spanish ».^[22]  Discussions however remained inconclusive, and both rulers died within two years of the embassy. ^[23]

Moorish Ambassador to Elizabeth I, Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud, born 1558 Known as Morocco ambassador to the Court of Queen Elizabeth I in 1600.

Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun (Arabic: عبد الواحد بن مسعود بن محمد عنون‎ « Servant of The One, Son of Messaoud, Son of Mohammed Anoun ») was principal secretary to the Moroccan ruler Mulay Ahmad al-Mansur and ambassador to the court of Queen Elizabeth I of England in 1600,^[1] whose primary task was to promote the establishment of an Anglo-Moroccan alliance.

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Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun

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The visit of Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud followed the sailing of The Lion in 1551, and the 1585 establishment of the English Barbary Company, which had the objective of developing trade between England and Morocco.^[2][3] Diplomatic relations and an alliance were established between Elizabeth and the Barbary states.^[3]

The last years of the 16th century saw major English successes against Spain, with the English victory against the Spanish Armada in 1588, and the Capture of Cadiz by the Earl of Essex in 1597. As a result, King Ahmad al-Mansur decided to send an embassy to propose a joint invasion of Spain.^[3] [4] Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud was accompanied by al Haji Messa and al Haji Bahanet, as well as an interpreter named Abd el-Dodar, an Andalusian by birth, under cover of a trade mission to Aleppo with a stopover in London.^[5] Altogether, the embassy numbered 16 (including some prisoners being returned to England), and sailed on board The Eagle under Robert Kitchen.^[6] Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud reached Dover on 8 August 1600.^[6]

Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud spent 6 months at the court of Queen Elizabeth I in 1600 intending to negotiate an alliance against Spain. ^[2] [7]  Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud spoke some Spanish, but he communicated to the Queen through his interpreter who spoke in Italian.^[5] They met with the Queen on 19 August^[6] and again on 10 September.^[6]

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This imposing oil painting shows the Moroccan Ambassador who visited London in late 1600. Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun (seen here aged 42) was part of a delegation of 17 men sent by the King of Barbary, a huge expanse of North Africa which includes modern-day Morocco. The group came to negotiate with Queen Elizabeth I about the possibility of a military alliance, combining English and African forces to conquer Spain.

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One reported that they “killed all their meat within their house, as sheep, lambs, poultry” and “turned their faces eastward when they kill anything; they use beads, and pray to Saints”.

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Al-Annuri had his portrait painted, met Elizabeth and her advisers twice, and even proposed a joint Protestant-Islamic invasion of Spain and a naval attack on her American colonies. The plan only seems to have foundered because Elizabeth feared upsetting the Ottomans, who were at the time al-Mansur’s adversaries.

The alliance came to an abrupt end with Elizabeth’s death and her successor James I’s decision to make peace with Catholic Spain, but the presence of Muslims like al-Annuri, Ahmed Bilqasim, and more modest individuals like Chinano and Mary Fillis remained significant but neglected aspect of Elizabethan history.

It shows that Muslims have been a part of Britain and its history much longer than many people have ever imagined.

As a conspicuous party of high-profile Muslims (viewed at the time as ‘infidels’), they prompted some suspicion. At the same time, however, they allowed people to see the spectacle of respected noble Moors, who were well-treated by the English when it served their political ends.

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The Prince of Morocco in The Merchant of Venice

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The Africans stayed in England for six months, allowing them to attend the festivities that marked the anniversary of the Queen’s coronation in November 1600. They were even honored with a specially built viewing enclosure.

The group probably remained in England over Christmas, which has led some critics to speculate that they may have witnessed a performance by Shakespeare’s company of players – the Lord Chamberlain’s Men – as part of the season’s celebrations. If so, Shakespeare would have had the chance to see the impressive North African party. The Moroccan Ambassador might have influenced the playwright’s complex portrayal of Othello the noble Moor – who encounters deep prejudice as an outsider in Venice but is highly valued for his military expertise when it serves Venetian interests.

The Interest of the British Crown in the Help from the Moroccan Crown and how Al Mansour Defeated the invading Don Sebastian Portuguese Army can be also the sources for Shakespeare to write Othello from the inspiration of Ahmed Al Mansour and make the acceptance of Othello Moor within Venice based just for his military prowess and bravery.

Interestingly, some years before the ambassadorial visit, Shakespeare had already depicted a noble Prince of Morocco as a suitor to Portia in The Merchant of Venice (c. 1596–97). The Prince, described as ‘a tawny [or light-skinned] Moor’, enters with great dignity but fears the prejudice of the Venetians. He asks them not to dislike him ‘for [his] complexion (2.1.1)’. But when he fails the casket test, Portia expresses her relief in terms of his skin color, ‘Let all of his complexions choose me so’ (2.7.79).

The Moroccan ruler wanted the help of an English fleet to invade Spain. While Elizabeth refused, she welcomed the embassy and accepted the establishment of commercial agreements involving the two countries. ^[2] [3]  Queen Elizabeth and King Ahmad continued to discuss various plans for combined military operations, with Elizabeth requesting a payment of 100,000 pounds in advance from King Ahmad for the supply of a fleet, with Ahmad asking for an English ship to be sent to get the money. Discussions however remained inconclusive, and both rulers died within two years of the embassy.^[8]

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Impact on Literature: Did the Moroccan Ambassador influence Shakespeare’s Othello?

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It has been suggested that Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud inspired the character of William Shakespeare‘s Moorish hero Othello, but others have argued that there is no connection. ^[9][10] In 2016, David Serero played Othello in a Moroccan adaptation inspired by Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud. ^[11][12]

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In Popular Culture

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Shakespeare’s Othello and Desdemona in Venice, by Théodore Chassériau.

These intense relations between England and Morocco are thought to have had a direct impact on the literary productions of the age in England, especially the works of Shakespeare, or The Battle of Alcazar by George Peele.^[29]

These contacts possibly influenced the creation of the characters of Shylock, or the Prince of Morocco in The Merchant of Venice.^[30] It has even been suggested that the figure of Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud may have inspired the character of Shakespeare‘s Moorish hero Othello.^[31]

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Shakespeare’s Othello

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The painting of Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud is held by the Shakespeare Institute at Stratford-upon-Avon.^[2]

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Othello : Orson Welles et Mohamed Said Afifi

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Dans la culture populaire Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud Le tableau d’Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud est détenu par le Shakespeare Institute à Stratford-upon-Avon. Il a été suggéré qu’Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud a inspiré le personnage de  Héros maure de William Shakespeare Othello , mais d’autres ont soutenu qu’il n’y avait aucun lien.  En 2016, David Serero  jouait Othello dans une adaptation … Lire la suite

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James I of England from the period 1603–1613

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James I and Charles I

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Morocco had been falling into a state of anarchy following the death of Ahmed al-Mansur in 1603, and local warlords had been on the rise, allying with the Sultanate less and less meaningful.^[2]  James I also made peace with Spain upon his accession in 1603, with the Treaty of London.

Relations continued under James I however, who sent his ambassador John Harrisson to Muley Zaydan in 1610 and again in 1613 and 1615 in order to obtain the release of English captives in Morocco.^[24] English privateers such as Jack Ward continued to prosper in collaboration with the Barbary states, including Morocco.

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Mulay Ismail – Moroccan Alaouite Dynasty

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During the Thirty Years’ War under the rule of Charles I, England sought Moroccan military help against Spain in Tetouan and Salé.^[24] England had hoped to obtain Moroccan cooperation after the 1625 English attack on Cadíz, but the campaign proved disastrous and ruined the prestige of England.^[2]

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On 10 May 1627, England passed an agreement with one of these local warlords, the Mujahidin leader Sidi Al-Ayyashi to obtain his help in releasing English captives, in exchange for the supply of provisions and arms.[2][24]  England and Al-Ayyashi collaborated for about 10 years, as in the attempted coordinated liberation of Al Ma’mura.^[24]

In 1632, the city of Salé, a major harbor to piracy, was jointly taken by an English squadron and Moroccan forces, permitting the pacification of the city and the release of Christian prisoners.^[25] [26]

On May 13, 1637, a Convention was signed between Charles I and Sidi Mohammed el-Ayachi, master of Salé, allowing for the supply of military armament to the Sultan.

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Mohammed spent six months in England, in a highly commented visit. During his six-month embassy (1681-82), to promote peace and an anti-Spanish alliance between Morocco and England, Mohammed bin al-Attar was treated with great pomp and pleasantry. Indeed, in January 1682, he presented himself at the Banqueting House to the King and his queen consort. Gifts were exchanged and excited crowds followed him everywhere he went, particularly as he displayed his horse-riding prowess in Hyde Park. The ambassador and his party were invited to banquets and private estates, they toured famous sites in London, including the Royal Society, Westminster Abbey, plus Oxford, Newmarket, Windsor, and Cambridge.

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Mohammed bin Hadou, Moroccan ambassador to Great Britain in 1682^[1], riding in Hyde Park, in 1682.

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Mohammed bin Hadou visited Oxford and Cambridge among many other places and became a Fellow of the Royal Society in April. ^[2] [6]

John Evelyn recorded that he was « the fashion of the season »,^[2] and commented on him that he was « a handsome person, well featured and of a wise look, subtle and extremely civile ». [7] At the theater, the ambassador behaved « with extreme modesty and gravity ».^[7] He struck a magnificent figure riding in Hyde Park.^[5]

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Mohammed returned to Morocco with a draft Peace and Trade Treaty which was finally not ratified by his king because of outstanding issues regarding the English military presence in Tangiers and English captives in Morocco.^[8] The exchanges started 40 years of a shifting Anglo-Moroccan alliance related to European conflicts, trade issues, Barbary Coast pirates, and the exchange of captives.^[2]

England Socinians wrote letters for Mohammed bin Hadou to remit to Mulay Ismail, in which they praised God for having « preserved your Emperor and his people in the excellent knowledge of that truth touching your belief in an only sovereign God, who has no distinct […] or a plurality of persons », and praising « Mahomet » for being « a scourge on those idolizing Christians ». ^[9] However, they also complained that the Qur’an contained contradictions that must have been a consequence of its editing after Mohammed’s death. ^[10]

During his stay, Mohammed bin Hadou married an English servant.^[11]

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Forty years of shifting alliances between Morocco and England would follow Mohammed’s embassy.^[2]

The Anglo-Moroccan alliance was decisive in certain periods, ensuring the presence of the British fleet in the defense of the ports of Morocco and also in the resolution of conflicts between the Moorish corsairs themselves.

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Abdallah Ben Aisha – Ambassador to France and England

Ambassador Admiral Abdallah Ben Aisha during his visit to France

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Abdallah ben Aisha, also Abdellah bin Aicha, was a Moroccan Admiral and ambassador to France and England in the 17th century. Abdallah departed for France on 11 November 1698 to negotiate a treaty.^[1]  He spoke Spanish and English fluently, but not French.^[1]  His embassy followed the visit of François Pidou de Saint Olon to Morocco in 1689.

Abdallah met with Louis XIV on 16 February 1699.^[1] He was welcomed warmly in Paris and visited many landmarks.^[1] He also met with the deposed English king James II, exiled in France at that time, whom he had apparently known in his youth when he had been a captive in England. ^[1] The Ambassador of Morocco Abdallah ben Aisha in Paris in 1699.

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One of Abdallah’s main missions had been to obtain an agreement to prevent the capture of Muslims by French ships, and to obtain the return of captured Moroccan pirates employed on French galleys.^[1]  Louis XIV however denied a treaty, and on the contrary boasted about his power to the Moroccan king. ^[1]

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After Abdallah’s return to Morocco, numerous letters continued to be exchanged with France, and the Moroccan ruler Mulay Ismail even offered James II military support to reinstal him on the English throne if he wished to convert to Islam, and if not, at least to Protestantism.^[1]

One of the high points of these contacts occurred in 1720–21, when English ambassadors John Windus and Commodore Hon. Charles Stewart visited Morocco.

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Charles Stewart (Royal Navy officer)

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They succeeded in signing a diplomatic treaty with Morocco for the first time and returned home with 296 released British slaves.^[28] Moroccan ambassadors were again sent to England in 1726 (« Mahomet » and « Bo-ally »), and in 1727 a new treaty was signed by John Russel with Mulay Ismail’s successor.^[28] A further treaty was signed by John Drummond-Hay in 1865.

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Another prominent ambassador was the Moroccan Admiral Abdelkader Perez, who carried out diplomatic duties in London between 1723 and 1737.

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Ambassador Admiral Abdelkader Perez

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As the name Perez implies, he came from a family of Andalusian origin. Ambassador Admiral Abdelkader Perez, 1723–1737, as it is impossible to speak of the existence of a Moroccan navy, the title of admiral was associated with his origins as a privateer.

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Haj Abdelkader Pérez was a Moroccan Admiral and an ambassador to England in 1723 and again in 1737.^[1] On 29 August 1724, he met with King George I and the Prince of Wales. ^[2] These communications and visits had forty years of shifting alliances between England and Morocco, related to European conflicts, trade issues, Barbary Coast pirates, and the exchange of captives.^[28]

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Moroccan Ambassador Mohamed Abghali to King George August 14, 1725 – February 1727

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Mohammed Ben Ali Abgali is Sultan Ismail’s last ambassador to England. In the 1720s, he was appointed by the Alaouite emperor and sent to London to meet King George I. Few sources recall, the mission of the Moroccan diplomat but London still has a significant piece of Abgali’s diplomatic voyage.

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Mohamed Ben Othman Al Meknassi

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In 1779, Alaouite Sultan Moulay Mohammed Ben Abdallah, aka Mohammed III, sent Mohamed Ben Othman Al Meknassi to Spain. The diplomat had to negotiate the release of Muslim captives, held by King Carlos III.

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Mohamed Zebdi, Sultan Hassan I’s Ambassador to the European Powers

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According to the «Journal officiel de la République francaise» (June 1876), Haj Mohamed Zebdi arrived in Versailles on June the 10th, 1876. At 4 pm «the president received Sid El Hadj Mohamed el Zebdi, Ambassador of His Majesty the Emperor of Morocco», recalled the official document.

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Back in the Future of Morocco-Marruecos-Maroc

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Maroc Morocco المغرب Marruecos марокко 摩洛哥

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Synopsis & Introductory Notes :

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It was in such an environment that colonial adventures and conquests were encouraged to stem the scourges and social changes that had become dangerous and threatening to the new power inherited from the fall of Napoleon the First, and which Prussia subsequently threatened to destroy.   These changes were also accompanied by the rise of Great Britain as the new imperialist power set to eradicate all the Empires that had built their progress on integrating large territories with diverse ethnics and nationalities, such as the Napoleonic, the Hapsburg, the Ottoman, the Chinese, and the African empires.  Therefore, in France, a regime that was half-Napoleonic, half-royalist and half-republican took the aristocratic power that was still shaken by the institutional past of bourgeois revolutions and peasant revolts such as the Paris Commune and other popular uprisings in France and the rest of Europe.   

All these contradictions of European Capitalism became and spread in the form of colonization of other traditional countries. It was thus a curse for Morocco after 1830 with Louis-Phillips and his punitive expeditions for the Conquest of Algeria and also the Adventure in Mexico with the Austrian Maximilian and Charlotte and especially in 1844 which sounded the knell also to our Makhzenian regime, by the defeat at the Battle of Isly.

The defeat of Isly was the last confrontation of the expedition of France against Morocco which took place on 14 August 1844 on the Algerian-Moroccan border and the beginning of the end for the sovereignty of Morocco as a commercial trade partner of the European countries.  This subcapitalistic development of Morocco was carried out gradually following the total disintegration of the central power.  Such power was eroding already given the “Siba” imposed on the King to continuously organize raids and punitive military manoeuvers to impose the levy of taxes to rebellious regional tribes and contestants of the legitimacy of the central power.

Since then, our Moroccan territory has been divided according to the needs of consolidation or alliances between the political parties and the reversals of political compromises between the ruling classes, the rising industrial bourgeoisie including the arms industry, the social fringes of finance, military (including fallen princes) and bureaucrats, and finally the imperialists of mining and the exploitation of natural resources.

In such an internal tumult in France and inter-European disputes, Morocco was deprived of a modern State central resistance that could eliminate European pretensions or even consolidate its foundations, was attacked from all sides and robbed of its territories without moving a finger while it is the Moroccan Tribes jealous of their freedom which became with the means of edge, the source and the cradle of our resistance to its expeditions and its French and Spanish incursions on our national territory. Thus our Moroccan National Sovereignty was eroded on its regional bases of the East and the South.

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Marrakesh as the seat of Moulay Hafid and subsequently Pasha Haj Thami Glaoui was the hub in the colonialist conditioning of Morocco. 

For this reason, I offer you the reading of these texts that I compiled as an introduction to my analysis of Morocco’s evolution in the wake of European imperialist appetites and their continual harassment of Moroccan sovereignty, the consequences of which we are still experiencing on our territorial integrity.  Other consequences can be summed up in the current subcapitalist status and the consideration of Morocco as a Subcapitalist productive and consumerist entity by the world’s economic powers.

Subcapitalism was thus better able to take root in Morocco and to erect permissive structures through the modernization that was imposed during the colonial past and subsequently reinforced by the neo-colonial structural adjustments of the Moroccan economy in response to the recommendations of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and the Paris Club which culminated in the entire privatization of the key economic and financial sectors with the adoption of free trade agreements as the global expression of such complete opening to foreign interests.

In such an exogenous follow-up, subcapitalism renewed the strength of its roots and evolved in Morocco concerning and in direct relation with, first, the transnationalisation of services, the new division of international labor, the globalization of the production of consumer goods and the internationalization of the banking capital.   The combined effects and impact of such coordinated strategies were implemented in parallel to the current globalization of consumption through the import of high-speed trains, the construction of 2 ways highways called “freeways,” the installation of assembly units by French automakers, the alliances and partnership with international outlets of commodities and food distribution and the introduction of American and European franchised companies.   These realizations were presented as evidence of the Emergence status reached by Morocco while they were just a false and mal-development called Sustainable Development and good governance.  Time will make emerge another Concept to replace the term of ” Emerging Economy – Economie Emergente”

In short, this sustainable development remains a residue of Western liberalism that combines elitist, electoral, and pluralistic democratization whose social base of power is the sustainable development of the growth of consumption and the increase of the corresponding profit while the Moroccan Economy was under the continual challenges to improve all its national and external accounts.

The corresponding deficits are the two vectors resulting from the unworkability of sustainable liberalism for an economy lacking its independent productive technologies with regional integrated complementary among its various resources and diverse economic sectors.  Morocco with its particular constituents erupting in the international market with a colonial seal of approval that shaped its internal modern and light industries, adopted a liberal policy that is more a Business Proposal and Business Model than an authentic Strategy for a real take-off and social development oriented by progress and advances in the areas where Morocco could have a comparative advantage or could add value to its own existing potentials natural and human resources.

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Business Model in Morocco and International Capital Strategy

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When the IMF published its first comprehensive review of exchange rate arrangements in 1950, only five countries had established freely convertible currencies under the standard of article VIII of the IMF Articles of Agreement: the United States and four Latin American countries pegged to the dollar, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Panama. Switzerland, not then a member of the IMF, also had a convertible currency. The IMF characterized another four countries as having effectively convertible currencies, even though they had not yet formally accepted the obligations of Article VIII: Cuba, Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Venezuela. As late as 1957, only two more countries had established convertibility subject to Article VIII: Canada and Haiti. The members of the European Community established convertibility in 1958. Most other developing and socialist countries postponed the move
for decades.

In figure 1, we show the time profile of the opening of the world economy in the postwar era, using the specific criteria for openness discussed below and in the appendix. The world economy was essentially closed after World War II, and only around 20 percent of the world’s population lived in open economies by 1960. It was not until 1993 that more than 60 percent of the world’s GDP, and more than 50 percent of the world’s population, was located in open economies.23 The figure extends up to 1994, so that by our criteria, neither Russia nor China is part of the open system. If both of these countries cross the threshold to openness (and trade reforms in 1995 might well lead them to qualify), the proportion of openness by population would jump another 30 percent, to reach around 87 percent of the world’s population; and the proportion of openness by GDP would jump by another 15 percent, to reach around 83 percent of the world’s GDP (using 1975 weights in both cases).”

While market-based economic linkages were methodically restored among the leading countries during the 1950s, most of the world’s population lived in countries that chose fundamentally nonmarket economic strategies for development. Roughly one-third of the world’s population lived in socialist countries (as measured by Kornai for the year 1986); another 50 percent or so lived in countries where governments proclaimed a kind of “third way” between capitalism and socialism, state led industrialization (SLI). 2

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Morocco was responding to the new needs of the international division of labor that has no more need for imported foreign workers as immigrants, the costs for their residency and of their children compete and impose restrictions on the social services provided to the native workforce.   A redeployment and relocations of intensive-labor productions became the new immigrants in the circulation of the international capital originating from Western countries and the related productions, first toward the Maquiladoras of Mexico, the assembly lines set in Central America, and plastic-based productions in the Philippines and other South Asian countries. 

Japan has also used the same strategy to immigrate productions that have reached a level of local saturation of its novelty, technological innovation, and more importantly, were mass-produced by other international competitors.  The Japanese companies while still having the comparative advantage to improve this product while reducing its cost of manufacturing, applied the strategy called “Flying Gooses” to lands characterized by more obedient, docile, and more cost-effective labor force along the legal frame and logistic infrastructure that enable the these “Flying Goose productions” to be re-imported to Japan and exported to other countries.

The rise of the cost of labor in the newly industrialized countries and the introduction of new products using advanced technologies imposed a new immigration of international capital and the implementation of automotive and consuming products in neighboring countries to the central markets and could be integrated within the global distribution of productive units and factories that produce parts or other essential components.  

This strategic constellation of local production, regional markets, and natural and human resources are constructed around the central axis where the capital, the design, research and development, and the high demand and high purchasing power all coexist to form the hub and the target of these peripheric productions financed and distributed by the companies and conglomerates based in western societies.

 The conditionality of acceptance in the global club to access credits and loans from international financial institutions and the integration through the signing of Free Trade Agreements with developed countries are dictated by the international situation and by the needs of international capital that uses the global or regional expansion as a way to reduce the negative effects of the crisis in the western economies, to consolidate the value-added for its eroding local bases of extraction of added-value given the intensification of the international competition, the Brexit, the rise of protectionism and populist economic nationalism and the clashes on the trade between the US and China and the rest of the BRICS members.   Within such a hectic and unstable environment guided by self-serving interests, not just Morocco but the entire continent of Africa needs to innovate and create new approaches toward its external relations and inter-continental alliances to be able to reduce the impact of external fluctuant factors that erode the pricing of its export-earnings, the increase of the pricing of its imports and more importantly the isolation faced by each country in face of powerful international entities that does not recognize national borders as the limits of its considerations or operations. 

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How Morocco was Sold Before the Protectorate

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Karim Boukhari
http://www.slateafrique.com/92955/history-how-the-maroc-summer 

The protectorate did not start in 1912, but as early as 1830 Endangered, threatened, and overwhelmed, the sultans preferred to sell the kingdom rather than abandon the throne. 

It is a priori easy to date the history of the protectorate: 1912-1956. But this is only an appearance, an official showcase.  The story is longer and much more complex than one might think. When, exactly, did everything begin? The answer depends on the schools.

Politically, as we can read in Abdellah Laroui, “the Moroccan state ceased to exist from 1880” (in The History of the Maghreb), that is to say when an important appointment, the Madrid conference, placed the kingdom under international control. Militarily, the country collapsed as early as 1844, after the Battle of Isly. Economically, it suffered more and more severe recessions throughout the nineteenth century. 

So, which date to remember? Consensually, most historians agree on the symbolic importance of the year 1830.

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When the North Wind Blew

“It is here, with the arrival of France in Algeria, that Moroccan history has changed,” says the researcher Mustapha Bouaziz.

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The brutal irruption of Europe and its procession of aggressive values (its armies, its policies, its economic system) has plunged Morocco into a sort of purgatory. This is the year when the countdown to a formal protectorate is on.  We are therefore in 1830, in the heart of this century where the face of the world is changing. While the industrial revolution (railroads, road networks, underground mining, maritime development, war equipment, etc.) and economic growth are gaining speed in the Western world, Morocco lives in isolation, closed, and jealously folded on itself.

From the inside, the country is boiling, subject to the jolts of a mad political instability. The prevailing anarchy makes the old empire look like a man on the brink of a nervous breakdown. The sultans follow each other at a frantic pace. In a century, since the death of  Moulay Ismaïl, the country has known no less than 20 reigns. 

Some sultans have reigned only a few months, while others have been able to abdicate before returning to their throne several years later, thanks to coups and alliances. Sultan Abdullah II thus accumulated six kingdoms interspersed with so many interludes. 

A country cut in two countries is globally cut in two: the Makhzen wheat (plains, ports, big cities) subjected to the authority of the Sultan, and the bled siba (mountains) dissident. The borders between the two Morocco fluctuate according to the frequency and the range of the harkas, the punitive expeditions led by the Sultan in person. 

The organization of social life is based on rules inherited from the Middle Ages. Agriculture, livestock, and crafts constitute the bulk of economic activity. The volume of internal trade is low because of the difficulty of transport: the roads are non-existent and the insecurity is such that the country looks like a set of enclaves.

Displacements are slow, expensive, and extremely dangerous. The cities function practically under a diet of food autonomy and the countryside is controlled by the local tribes. Social life is also punctuated by cycles of famine and epidemics. The teaching is reduced to its simplest expression (the religious) and remains confined to the madrassas-mosques. And there is no medicine other than the traditional one, based on herbs and miracle products. 

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The State is the Sultan – Where is the state in all this? 

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It exists, of course, but in a configuration far removed from the patterns then in vogue on the other side of the Mediterranean. From hajib-chamberlain to vizier of the sea (the equivalent of a foreign minister), passing by the amine of the oumana (finance minister) and wazir chikayate (minister of justice), all have their bniqas-offices inside the palace.

This leaves little room for doubt as to the nature of the political system. The state is the sultan. It is he who summons ministers and advisers in turn, rarely together, it is also who appoints and controls its representatives in the deep country, the bosses and pashas. Of course, the state-Sultan amalgam has a terrible consequence: when the king is fighting a battle away from his palace, that is to say, half of his time, it is practically the whole state is at half mast and the whole country is then left to its own devices. 

We come to another important point, which alone explains the extreme vulnerability of the Sherifian kingdom:  the army. Apart from traditionally loyal factions (Bukhara, Udaya, etc.), most of the troops are supplied by what may be called “intermittents of war”: casual fighters who can take part in a harka before to return, at the end of the expedition, to their respective tribes. 

It is understandable then that this army, in a state of random form, uncertain motivation and fluctuating numbers, lost virtually all the battles in which it engaged in the nineteenth century. 

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The Poor Pays for the Rich

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Let us now examine the sinews of war: money. We will also see how the organization of the “financial system” of the kingdom was at the origin of its asphyxiation and led straight to the setting protectorate.

With a rich but largely unexploited subsoil (rock salt, copper), the main resources are reduced to taxes and customs duties at the ports. Between the Maks, the Ma’ouna, the Naïba, the N’foula and the Jiziya, the rights and taxes are so numerous that they constitute the first source of popular uprising. 

Apart from some corporations (the tanners in Fez), there is no union and no way of countering arbitrariness. Dissent becomes the rule. An angry citizen or tribe, it is a small Morocco, one more, that rocks in the siba bled and constitutes a new pocket of resistance to the authority of the central “government”.

The phenomenon is all the more frequent as taxes are neither generalized nor equitably distributed. The Chorfa, allied and faithful tribes of the sultan, in short a part of the local bourgeoisie, are exempt from it. The schema is cliché, or almost: the poor pay for the rich. But, as the researcher Mustapha Bouaziz reminds us, 

“even the rich are in danger of losing their property at any moment if they come to provoke a bloodshed from the Sultan”. 

The practice of taxation works best as a compensation fund, at worst as a gigantic legal racket. When the cities, once flourishing thanks to the caravan trade, are asphyxiated by the wave of European waves,  the Makhzen turns to the countryside, already poor, to ransom the tribes through new taxes. One can easily imagine the social climate of the time, with ports hung at the foot of Europe and a campaign on the edge of the general insurrection. 

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One Goal: Save Time

The Sultanian Monopoly

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In Morocco, which looks like a ticking time bomb, foreign trade and import-export activities remain an interesting window. Probably the only one. But it is threatened by two recurrent phenomena: the monopoly of the Sultan and the protection granted to European interests. 

(The merchants must free themselves from a dahir of approval-delegation signed by the Sultan and can not bequeath any of the accumulated goods) is a way to control the enrichment of Moroccan subjects. 

“The Sultan grants his favors more easily to  Jews  at the expense of Muslims. In his eyes, the Jews do not pose any political threat and can consequently accumulate more wealth, “analyzes Mustapha Bouaziz.

The protection granted to Europeans, firstly to British and French merchants, then to all Western countries, creates an endless series of disorders: the exemption from taxes and duties considerably reduces the revenues of the State, the arrival mass of European products kills the embryo of local industry and devalues the national currency. Not to mention that the protection extended to the employees and to the Moroccan relations of these same Europeans is ultimately a safe conduct that offers thousands of subjects the opportunity to escape financially, and even legally, to the authority of the Sultan.

The kings who succeeded each other throughout the nineteenth century tried, each in their own way and with various fortunes, to circumscribe the evil. Threatened by both local dissent and foreign incursions, forced to cope with an economic system in the process of death, they especially sought to play the watch. 

The international context helped them. Because Europe has long hesitated between two possible attitudes: the English method made of a policy called comptoirs, privileging exclusively commercial interests, and the French method more “voluntarist” (occupation gently, with military fortifications, institutional penetration and economic control) without forgetting  the Spanish method , warlike or even brutal.

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Colonization

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This Moroccan bloodless, in shambles, completely disarticulated, unable to get back in order, has tremendously sharpened the appetite of its European neighbors, or even of the whole Western world. It is not for nothing that, when debating the “Moroccan problem” in Madrid, twelve Western countries, an impressive total, are represented. 

Next to the immediate neighbors of France and Spain are countries like Austria, Norway, Italy and even the distant United States. All rushed to Madrid to share at best the Moroccan cake. Morocco, first concerned, is for the anecdote, under-represented and arrives, the D-day, without any concrete proposal, ready to ratify what the foreign powers will have proposed to him.

The historian Henry Terrace writes about this: “The Belgians were based in Morocco economic enterprises, the United States believed to be yielding  the islet of Perejil  (the same that caused the violent crisis between Morocco and Spain more A century later, in 2002, Ndlr), Germany began by financing the explorations of Rohlfs and Lenz and, under the color of a peaceful establishment, planned to increase its place in Morocco (in History of Morocco). Traditionally, European penetration has involved three instruments. The sociological exploration through exploratory missions (Eugène Delacroix, Pierre Loti, etc.), first in the north and along the coast, then in the deep country, allowed to establish a fluoroscopy as faithful as possible of Moroccan society.

The economic supremacy allowed to create a new local order and to subjugate the kingdom to a consortium of European banks. And the military strikes destroyed the few pockets of resistance and made the sultans listen to reason. 

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The New Emerging Ideology

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The kingdom’s misfortune has been that its decadence coincided, in time, with the emergence of a new ideology:  colonialism . 

This is the heavy trend of the time. To the point that even an intellectual above all suspicion, like the poet Victor Hugo, splits a sentence remained famous: 

“God offers Africa to Europe. Take the. Solve your social issues, and change your proletarians into owners. “

Ali Benhaddou’s new book The Empire of the Sultans, which has just been published by Riveneuve, is full of colonialist pearls. In addition to Hugo, the author quotes the astonishing Dr. Mauran, a race theorist: 

“If one often finds the type of Pure Moor, dyed matte, hooked nose, black eye and bright, slightly frizzy beard, teeth large and spaced, tall, race of prey par excellence, there are, side by side, types that confuse and prove the crossing, the debasement of the primitive race, undecided types, thick and heavy, mulattoes at all levels. ” 

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Same Mauran, definitely inexhaustible, explains the malaise of “the native” in the face of modernity

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“They are still far from us, far as this past encloses them with an atavistic network. Many have traveled and know Marseille, London, Paris, and Egypt. In the astonishment into which the spectacle of our modern life plunged them, he entered a little superstitious terror and, when we invite them to enter the path of progress and civilization, they have vertigo as before an abyss unfathomable where they fear to sink body and property. ” 

The Tharaud brothers, who have long been among the advisors of  Marshal Lyautey , are not in the lace when they deliver in turn their vision of Moroccans:

“Proud, fanatical, corrupt, corrupt, jealous of each other, always quick to criticize and reluctant to recognize the services that have been rendered to them. What they do today is just like what they did yesterday. A lot of luxury, no invention, too lazy to keep, too little gifted to invent. ” 

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France-Spain: Gendarmes for the “Moroccan Cherifian Empire“

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If the wind of colonialism took away reasonable people and brilliant humanist minds, giving rise to dreadful theories about the inequality of races is that he has always draped himself in a civilizing mission. Colonizing is (to) develop. The concept is a national doctrine in all newly industrialized European countries.

To put the pill to the few recalcitrant, the idea is then to exaggerate the features of the future colony, portrayed as a rich but untapped country, dominated by barbarians without faith or law. The recipe works and public opinion espouses the views of its leaders. 

After having long stumbled on the veto of Britain and Germany, France and Spain are taking advantage of the internationalization of the Moroccan problem to permanently occupy the ground. The fruit Sherifian is ripe, it threatens to fall at any time in the late nineteenth century.

The sultans have accumulated enough debt with European banks: to pay the tribute of lost wars, compensate for the drying up of the fiscal windfall … and maintain their glitzy lifestyle (Moulay Abdelaziz, who ruled between 1894 and 1908, even set unnecessary expense records). Economic bankruptcy alone justifies the sealing of the Moroccan administration. 

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Cruel irony

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France and Spain logically share the kingdom in a kind of concession-delegation offered by all the Western powers. If Germany and Great Britain finally abdicate in favor of their two southern neighbors, it is with the guarantee that France and Spain secure commercial channels on Moroccan soil. In short, a developed Morocco, with safe roads and modern means of transport, is the surest way to offer the economic added value so much desired by Europeans. 

It is this schema that led Morocco, after several centuries of independence, to capitulate officially in 1912. Already on the ground, hands and feet bound, the double protectorate imposed on it appears even, irony of irony as the only way to “save”.

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MOROCCO ACCOMPLISHED BY EUROPEAN IMPERIALISM: THE END OF THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE HASSAN STATE

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CASE STUDY – PART: SHARING SPAIN – FRANCE AND PROTECTORATE

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The Ultimate Inter-European Conferences: Sharing Africa and Invasion of Morocco

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From 1830, under a wacky pretext, France occupied Algeria which it will use as the door of and the center of its expansionist activities in North Africa. Henceforth, the sharing of Africa was no longer the result of individual moves by European states preaching a “civilizational” duty, but from consultation within conferences.  Indeed, the invasion of Algeria by France sharpened the expansionist appetites of European countries as it accentuated their rivalry for land grabbing in Africa.

With this in mind, conferences were held to stem the craze and allow the negotiation to take the place of potential confrontations and that while organizing an agreed sharing of Africa between the various European contenders.

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The Madrid Conference and Morocco

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Thus, a conference was organized in this direction in Madrid in May 1880. This Madrid Conference of 1880 concerned the capitular privileges of Europeans in Morocco and ended with the confirmation of the privileges defined by the Béclard Convention: maintenance of the right of protection and exemption taxes for nationals and “protected” foreign powers and generalization of the most-favored-nation clause.  “The  Madrid Conference of 1880  reported on agreements signed by  Morocco during the reign of  Hassan I, and the European countries to reinforce the benefits related to the evolution of the latter on Moroccan soil, and to give a legal and regulatory character to this. As a result of these agreements, European countries have gained the freedom to own land and property in all corners of Morocco. These agreements have been the cause of the internationalization of the Moroccan case. “End quote.

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Indeed, from 1881, France had already occupied Tunisia, crushing the passage of susceptibility Italy, and laid its first steps in the territories constituting the current Republic of Congo. In 1884, it is the turn of Guinea to return to the ranks of the metropolis. At the same time, the United Kingdom seized in 1882, from Egypt, a province of the Ottoman Empire before turning towards Sudan and the present region of Somaliland (that the colonizers will designate in 1884 as Somalia British). In 1885, Italy took possession of part of Eritrea, while Germany between 1884 set its sights on Togo, Cameroon, South West Africa (Namibia), and in 1885 on Africa East Germany. After the settlement of the Canary Islands’ fishing houses in the Sahara, Spain signed agreements with local tribes overriding Moroccan sovereignty.

On December 26,  1884, Spain proclaimed a protectorate named  Río de Oro on the coast from Cape Bojador to Cape Blanc (Bahia del Oeste), ostensibly at the request of the local population. The protectorate also closed the door for Donald MacKenzie who was looking to establish new counters on this coast. The  Berlin conference  endorses the Spanish claim the following month. Villa Cisneros is the administrative capital and Bonelli builds a fort with Canarian workers.

On April 6, 1887, the Spanish protectorate was extended to Seguia el-Hamra in the north and 240 kilometers inland39 where the emirate of Adrar began. He is then placed under the authority of the Governor-General of the Canaries who appoints a deputy governor. In March 1887, Villa Cisneros was attacked and pillaged by the Oulad Delim and again in March 1892 and November 1894. On March 2, 1895, the Spaniards signed an agreement with Sheikh Ould Laroussi Oulad Delim. 40 However, in March 1898, a gang of Oulad Delim attacked Villa Cisneros again, killed several employees of the Spanish-African Commercial Company (Compañia Mercantil Hispano-Africana) and looted the stocks while the Spanish fled by boat until Canary.

On June 27, 1900, France and Spain sign the Treaty of Paris which defines the border between the Río de Oro (Spanish) and Mauritania (French). 41   On 4 October 1904, the Paris Convention established the borders of Saguia el-Hamra and Cap Juby.

January 16, 1906, opens in Algeciras, Spain, an international conference dedicated to the Moroccan question. The sovereignty of the Sharifian Empire (Morocco) has been undermined since the Madrid Conference of 1880, which lays the foundations for Morocco’s international regime. The appetites of Europeans sharpened at the beginning of the twentieth century against a backdrop of colonial expansion.

After the Algeciras Conference (1906) aimed at preserving the integrity and independence of Morocco, the attempt to modernize the Moroccan state to escape the greed of Europeans, particularly France, Spain and Spain. Germany fails. Sultan Moulay Abd el-Hafid, besieged by several tribes in his capital, Fez, demands the military intervention of France, which causes a crisis with Germany. A colonial barter agreement is concluded, on November 4, 1911, Germany accepts the French control over Morocco and receives in return part of the French Congo, which France will recover after the Great War. The treaty of Fez of March 30, 1912, establishes the French protectorate of Morocco. March 30, 1912, is a key date in the history of Morocco,

On November 27, 1912, after the establishment of the French protectorate over Morocco, the Madrid Convention confirms these borders and fixes those of the enclave of Ifni where the Spaniards have still not managed to win.

The treaty of Fez that establishes its protectorate in Morocco, a regime that promotes a particular colonial policy while allowing this country to live according to its traditions. A design until the day after the First World War.

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European Colonial Appetite and Gateau Sharing – African Continent

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Engraving showing participants at the Berlin Conference in 1885.

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By Eric Gaba (Sting – fr: Sting)

The emergence of Germany as a new colonialist pretender in the partition of Africa under the impetus of Bismarck allowed Germany to organize the Berlin Conference. The Berlin Conference marked European organization and collaboration for the division and division of Africa. This conference began on November 15, 1884 in Berlin and ended on February 26, 1885. This Berlin Conference was the sanction of the previous acquisitions of possessions in Africa by the European countries and allowed the collaboration between them to legitimize the next acquisitions. At this conference was decided therefore the systematic division and division of Africa and the permanent installation of European colonization in the African continent.   

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December 27, 1912, beginning of the Spanish protectorate on Morocco

… More:  http://www.yabiladi.com/articles/details/14703/protectorate-spanish-maroc-l-armee-spanish.html

On November 27, 1912, the French ambassador to Spain signed the Franco-Spanish agreement which founds the Spanish protectorate over Morocco. The French protectorate was established a few months earlier, on March 30th.

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During the incidents of July 31, 1907, which opposed Moroccan protesters to European workers recruited in Casablanca by a French Company (known as Cie Marocaine) to “handle” the blocks of stones, extracted from the quarry of Ain Mazi, transported to board of a train (ducauville) for the works of the port of Casablanca.  This incident (there are many versions) after shooting with firearms, resulted in the death of many victims, including Europeans to the number of nine people, 3 Italians, 3 Spaniards and 3 Portuguese (there too there is many versions). These victims were buried in the cemetery which was behind the vox. The stele (commemorative) was inaugurated in 1908 in memory of these victims. When the graves were transferred to El Hank Cemetery in … 1916-1920, this monument was replaced by a beautiful stele. It was raised in memory of an Algerian spahi (who answers to the name of (D) jelloul) fallen during the famous battle of Merchich, that delivered the chaouias on January 1, 1908 to the troops of General d’Amade.

The Commercial Museum of Casablanca was originally called The Economic Sampling Museum, it had been inaugurated after 14-18.  Located, Rue Fétouaki ex General Drude and Chaouia ex Colbert. The Rue du Marabout, “takes” its name from the Marabout who was at the corner of the Rue Léon l’Africain, his name was Sidi Bou Leffa (viper)

European Colonialism  and Morocco’s External Debt 

Since the defeat of Isly, Morocco was continually attacked from all sides by the colonialist and imperialist European powers first France on the Algerian side and by the seas through the bombing of Moroccan cities by warships and also by the incursions of Spain to the North. 

Morocco Trapped by the Interior by Sovereigns who preferred to lose Morocco’s National and Territorial Sovereignty instead of stool and tarbouche feudal palaces and vested.  They had a mended vision at their feet and their own immediate interests while the other countries in the world were consolidating their borders and extending their powers and control over the world, the successive “powers” of Morocco were seeking foreign protection against their own peoples and opened the doors of Morocco greater for direct and indirect foreign interventions and that in exchange for keeping them in power in a puppet and puppet role and sometimes gloomy dancers around the growing appetites of the European nations. The European imperialists began to argue about Morocco’s easy acquisition and internal vulnerability that could serve as a door to the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, these intra-European disputes for the partition of Africa had given a respite to the Moroccan authorities already undermined by the tribal contest, the French and Spanish military interventions and by their stubbornness to arm themselves against their own people by acquiring armaments with credits granted by these same colonialist scum.

In this perspective, “the protectorate did not begin in 1912, but from 1830. Indebted, threatened, overwhelmed, the sultans preferred to sell the kingdom rather than abandon the throne.It is a priori easy to date the history of the protectorate.. 1912-1956 But it is only an appearance, an official showcase In fact, history is longer and much more complex than we might think.

When, exactly, everything-t- The answer depends on the schools Politically, as we can read in Abdellah Laroui, “the Moroccan state ceased to exist from 1880” (in The History of the Maghreb), that is to say At a time when an important meeting, the Madrid Conference, put the kingdom under international control, the country collapsed militarily in 1844, just after the Battle of Isly.

Economically, it suffered increasingly strong recessions throughout the nineteenth century. “

Whisky, Nana and Personal Protection Equal Invasion and Modernization of Morocco

Having not yet achieved an integration of capitalist productive machinery, Morocco has become the target of lusts and clashes between European nations since 1830 and the invasion of Algeria by the troops of Louis-Philippe seeking a Napoleonic adventure to recover the coat of arms and entertain the opposition of the bourgeoisie growing Paris, having started an imperialist cycle in their capitalist development.

Moulay Hafid who signed the treaty of his Protection {French and Spanish Protectorate}, as shown in one of the sequences of this video, was greedy, attracted and loving to be surrounded by young French women with tables filled with alcoholic beverages which the colonial administration who was his appointed supplier, called him the Emir of the Whiskey Believers.

In reality, the military leaders of the invasion of Morocco, both at Rif and Chaouia, orchestrated the uprisings, the unrest and accentuated the instability of Morocco to force the hand of the two rivals – pretenders to the throne, Moulay Abdelazziz and Moulay Hafid.

Moulay Abdelazziz was bribed by purchases of junk, exotic beasts and toys as well as by European and Turkish ceremonial costumes, not to mention other voluminous pomp and circumstance which had precipitated the ruin of Dar Al Mal, the House of Financial Capital and in this case became “the House of the Great Evil” and all the Males of Morocco penetrating thus by the false door the new Twentieth Century, namely the Great Gate of the Submission which had begun in 1830 and had been ratified by the Battle of Morocco. Isly August 14, 1844. A confrontation provoked by the commanders of French troops pursuing Emir Abdelkader. The defeat in this battle definitely sounded the death knell for the State of the Sherifian Empire.

These same imperialist strategists from Paris and Madrid had also helped and conditioned the raids and attacks on Sultan Moulay Abdelazziz besieged in Fez by his own Brother Moulay Hafid sitting in Marrakech. Moulay Hafid was obliged and should show his loyalty to the French troops and his rejection of the resistance of the fighting and resistant tribes so that the French Military Chiefs could believe in him and grant him a safe conduct for the passage and the crossing by his troops of the Moroccan territory to go fight his own Brother Moulay Abdelazziz in Fez and that on a territory that should be in principle under Moroccan sovereignty and therefore did not need the authorization of an occupying and invading military presence. Instead of resisting the invaders,

It was between 1844 and these fratricidal episodes that the Moroccan sovereignty was shaken and crushed on its bases and that our territories of East and South Morocco were stoned and severed from our Motherland of which we suffer until our days.

After all these changes that we visualize in this video, in the end the Little Moroccan was sweated burnous and remained a Snake Charmer, a Dancer of the Halqa and a Consumer of Modern Breweries.

A gigantic progress of Morocco thanks to Lyautey was thus watered by the deluge of the western vices, as the destruction and the parking of the natives of the continent “American” in reserves.

NB .: We remain faithful to our history as to our memory in the same way to our friends, our loves, our comrades, our teammates and our family members of all the monotheistic confessions that Morocco sheltered.

This presentation, like any other I publish elsewhere, concerns the Official Policy of the French Colonial State and does not concern those who have lived among us, among us and with us, and for whom we carry a sincere affection and who remain as attached as we have their country and the cities of their birth.

Source:  http://www.casablanca-la-ville-aux-multiples-visages-27.webself.net/lhistoireetleco

August 1925, in Tetouan, the 1925 meeting of the President of the Spanish Directory (1) and the Moroccan Grand Vizier (2).
 

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War of “pacification” and last bursts of geopolitical assabiya

A group of soldiers, the Regulares No. 5, May 28, 1926 with the Flag of the Republic of Rif founded by Abdelkrim El Khattabi, Moroccan Nationalist Resistance.

PROTECTORATE OF CENTRAL POWER AND CONQUEST  OF MOUNTAINS IN MOROCCO

Posted by Christian Potin at 17:27 –  Mission reports Source:  http://christianpotin.canalblog.com/archives/2012/07/26/24577099.html 

Looking at the major stages of the French conquest in Morocco in general (so-called at the time by “war of pacification”), one can see that the Middle Atlas is conquered from 1912 to 1920. Saïd Guennoun [4], in “The Berber Mountain” provides a chronology of the pacification of the country of Ait Oumalou enough detailed and reproduced below: “… We came into contact with the country Ait Oumalou in 1912, following the fighting of Ouldjet Soltane (Taghzout Ou Guellid, for the Berbers), Jebel Tafoudéït, Ifrane and Sidi Abdesslam In the West, we began to find Zaïans in the enemy ranks
Oulmes and some others from the Khénifra region. In the East, we saw the entry on line, alongside Beni M’Tir (Ait Idrassen) of first contingents Béni M’Guild . The campaign of 1913 took us to Oulmes and Azrou in the heart of this confederation, thus setting us on foot for the penetration of the main operations to Oum Rebia and Moulouya. Then in 1914, we inaugurated the execution of the general plan of these operations of which we give below the principal phases:

-1914: Occupation of Moulay Bouazza, Guelmous, Khénifra (Zaïans), Ain Leuh (Beni M’Guild).
-1915: Occupation of the region of Timahdit (Beni M’Guild).
-1917: Occupation of Bekrit and Itzer (Beni M’Guild) and El Hamman (A. Sgougou).
-1919: Occupation of the country Ait Mouli (Beni M’Guild) on the Moulouya.
-1920: Occupation of the course of Oum Rebia to Zaouit Sheikh, Zaouia Ait Ishaq, El Bordj, and Oued Amassine.
-1921: Reinforcement of the occupation of this part of the river by the installation of the posts of Ouaoumana (A. Ishaq), Bouguedji and Mezgouchen (Zaïans). Occupation of the country Ait Abdi.
-1922: Pacification of Ait Ouirra, Ichkern, Ait Ihand and Beni M’Guild countries of Haute Moulouya.
-1926: Occupation of the sources of Moulouya and Aghbala (Ait Sokhman) …

“An example of the tribal movement during the war of pacification like the Beni M’guild, is given to us by Drevet [5] ].family tree dear to the Arab Offices of French Algeria. The task is delicate in this confederation whose tribes do not fit together like on a checkerboard but, often, entangled in the manner of a confused puzzle. Thus the Ait Arfa are in the Azrou region, a fraction of the Irklaouen, but a tribe strain on the Guigou and Moulouya. The Ait Meghouel are divided into two large packages, between which intervene the Ait Lias and Ait Mouli. As a result, Bertschi rains fines on the sheikhs and moqaddems who provide false information on the installation on their soil of foreign tents or “rebellious”. And it pushes to the den to forbid the reconstituted fractions to spread elsewhere: The task is delicate in this confederation whose tribes do not fit together like on a checkerboard but, often, entangled in the manner of a confused puzzle. Thus the Ait Arfa are in the Azrou region, a fraction of the Irklaouen, but a tribe strain on the Guigou and Moulouya. The Ait Meghouel are divided into two large packages, between which intervene the Ait Lias and Ait Mouli. 

As a result, Bertschi rains fines on the sheikhs and moqaddems who provide false information on the installation on their soil of foreign tents or “rebellious”. And it pushes to the den to forbid the reconstituted fractions to spread elsewhere: The task is delicate in this confederation whose tribes do not fit together like on a checkerboard but, often, entangled in the manner of a confused puzzle. Thus the Ait Arfa are in the Azrou region, a fraction of the Irklaouen, but a tribe strain on the Guigou and Moulouya. The Ait Meghouel are divided into two large packages, between which intervene the Ait Lias and Ait Mouli. As a result, Bertschi rains fines on the sheikhs and moqaddems who provide false information on the installation on their soil of foreign tents or “rebellious”. And it pushes to the den to forbid the reconstituted fractions to spread elsewhere: Thus the Ait Arfa are in the Azrou region, a fraction of the Irklaouen, but a tribe strain on the Guigou and Moulouya. 

Gradually, the gap stretches between “rallies” and “dissidents”. In 1920, Nivelle decided to classify the Beni M’Guild into two categories: the “submissive” and the “rebellious”, with no intermediate rank. But this restoration of ethnic isolates is not enough to make a clear distinction between rallyers and resistance fighters. To subjugate the tribes, the residence must resort to the coercive processes employed by all the invaders: hostage-taking, raids, collective fines (the tribute of the Romans), land sequestrators, etc.

The slowness of “pacification” and the strategy based on the blockade of the mountain by the prohibition of winter transhumance have left, when the submission of all the tribes was obtained, difficult problems to solve, the main one being that of the resumption of transhumance. However, in the socio-economic context of the populations of the region, this is an absolute necessity stemming from both the physical environment and the local social structures.

The tribes of dir and azaghar, traditionally hostile to transhumant, have become accustomed to no longer see them, the progress of sedentarization and settlement settlers on the rich lands of azarhar and Saïs have forced many tribes or fractions of tribes to modify the modalities of their movements.

With the assistance of the Jemaâ-s, the Service des Affaires Indigènes will work, in vain, to reconcile the opposing interests of the indigenous populations and colonization. Agreements will be made to modify or maintain customary practices, and transhumance will be regulated and reorganized by the colonial authorities who will establish agreements and agreements between the transhumant groups that will try to make definitive easements that were previously only provisional. At the same time, the establishment of the domain and the forest regime only added to the new constraints and constraints imposed on the Jbel routes, which were now to be seasoned. Finally everything would contribute to the destructuring of the stir and the social ecology of Sanhadjian pastors without proposing models of

Contemporary evolution of the agro-silvo-pastoral types of life: from the protectorate to the independence

In a space where the natural resources and the climates are of the most varied, the techniques used rudimentary, the control of the environment is limited. To overcome these difficulties the tribes had developed social systems through a coherent set of practices to ensure the sustainability of the group and its natural heritage lived and appropriate. The tribes were linked together by socio-economic links that were precisely the result of this milieu.

Each ethnic group or community could thus, through collective agreements, contracts or alliances compensate for the shortcomings or share the surplus of its main location by establishing a transhumance regime adapted to each of them. This resulted in movements that alternately affected tribes or tribal fractions, so that certain areas served as both a winter range for some of them and a summering spot for others. . This does not mean that conflicts and disputes did not exist, but they had their own internal and peripheral modes of resolution, in the context of fields of forces and internal tension which ensured the continuity of their own historicity and autonomy without arbitration makhzénien.

Like the other mountain areas of Morocco “not useful” in the whole of central Morocco, the economic, social and administrative changes that followed the installation of the protectorate were far less spectacular than in regions like the plains atlantic and the Gharb-Saïs corridor. The mountainous countries of the Middle Atlas and Central Plateau, with limited agricultural resources, did not generally attract large land colonization. The opening of communication routes and the development of inter-regional relations did indeed lead to the birth of agglomerations and some population migrations, but no major city was created there, capable of upsetting society and constituting a pole of development. harmonious economic development for the region.

Terran colonization nevertheless settled somewhat in Beni M’Guild country, particularly in the plains of Tigrigra around Azrou and in the Azaghar of Beni M’Guild until Adarouch, but it was not extended only about 7,000 ha. It was exclusively private and the purchase of land was made directly, without State intervention, by Europeans. Initially, until 1935 it seems, sales were made with the agreement of Jemaâ-s, then they became strictly interindividual. These settlements certainly affected the equilibrium of this agrarian system, but they were less important for the economy than the delimitation of state forests and collectives whose impact was considerable.

With the installation of colonization and agrarian capitalism in the plain of Meknes, the history of rivalries on pastures was to undergo decisive phases that determined with force and irreversibly the global situation as it still exists today. hui. The cantonment of Beni M’Tir around El Hajeb has completely changed the game of alliances that previously prevailed with Beni M’Guild. The Beni M’Guild benefiting from the winter pastures of Béni M’Tir and in exchange allowing them to come on the heights of Azrou the summer. This seems to be the first restriction of the pastures of these populations who have previously experienced larger spaces.

In a second step, the forest administration, through the delimitation of the forest domain, was going to carry out a removal of the territory of the pastoral populations. Thus at the beginning of the century, nearly 20,000 ha of forest were removed from free grazing in Beni M’Guild. This process of puncture on pasture lands continued with the installation of the Adarouch ranch [6] and the forced reforestation of some collective lands [7]

The collectives were also progressively enumerated in application of the Dahir of 1919. After a delimitation survey, the cultivated lands were excluded from the delimitation of the collective lands, as well as the wastelands directly dominating the fields, and the small collective pastures of the douars. In total, therefore, only the large non-forest pastures of the Jbel and the Azaghrar were involved. These zones of space were thus legally defined as pastures over which all private appropriation was prohibited, all prohibited culture, all construction prohibited.

At a time when population growth forced the semi-nomads to become farmers, the demarcation of public lands and communal pastures probably set a limit to indiscriminate land clearing and its consequent erosion; but this policy of conservation also had the effect of reducing the pastoral space, in the case of putting in defense, and practically prohibiting the extension of the cultivated grounds.

The historical process of settlement of the region seems to have been progressive and this area has exerted on the various individuals or groups of individuals an attraction which did not fail to create conflicts which are still revived sometimes at the option of alliances and different conjunctures. Let us recall here again that the major evolutionary tendencies in their entirety for the whole of the study area are well known and are presented as follows: sedentarization; rural exodus of small farmers; development of a class of large breeders more or less absentee and rural pauperization of small and medium breeders.

These developments are globally the consequences of the development of modernity in Morocco with first the disruptive effects of the colonial episode (which lasted only 45 years), then the socio-political evolution of independent Morocco. For these two periods, the determining factors are also well known:

• Cut pastors from their lowland routes;
• Blockage of the socio-territorial mobility and the tribal historicity of the groups;
• Establishment of the Domain and the Forest Regime;
• Land situations remaining legally and in confused social practices and at the origin of tensions and social conflicts,
• Shy opening to the market economy and “unbalanced” relations with the colonel during the protectorate; then accelerated option unbridled economic liberalism over the past two decades;

And finally, recently, the fundamental option of decentralization and democratic participation in local development, in a context of administrative deconcentration and partitioning, of state disengagement and of the responsibility of the populations and their representatives, who remain still largely to improve at all territorial levels and to synergize with this fundamental option.

Even today, this region attracts breeders from other regions that are poorer or impoverished by successive droughts (the famous Ouled Khaoua). But also of neo-capitalist urban, entitled to traditional or not having right, which reinvest their savings in random extensive sheep systems, in the socio-territorial and techno-economic impasse, to the limit of the financial profitability in certain cases ( high rates of structural complementation), and / or some drought years, off the welfare state and its backup food subsidies, which by backlash keeps pressure on forests and natural resources.

However, this kind of evolutionary “tautology”, this vicious economic-social-political circle, hides somewhat, in its perception, a diversity of more specific local historical “starting points” of the different basic socio-territorial groups at all levels. (socio-economic, cultural and political), which inevitably generates recent, current and potential developments that are even more diversified and diversifying. It is clear that despite the projects, programs, and interventionist actions of the State past and ongoing these dynamic evolution remain poorly understood, depending on the degree of knowledge distanced social spaces continuously and their taking into account more or less specific , the toolbox of the participatory approach and the type of socio-political participation actually targeted and manageable beyond intentional discourse. 

While at the same time local authorities, civil society and private self-generated professional organizations remain very shy and dysfunctional in the face of the desire to disengage and decentralize the State and its technical and administrative departments. This ultimately determines the success of any development and local development project in general, and that of forests and rangelands in particular. remain very shy and dysfunctional in the face of the desire to disengage and decentralize the State and its technical and administrative departments. This ultimately determines the success of any development and local development project in general, and that of forests and rangelands in particular. remain very shy and dysfunctional in the face of the desire to disengage and decentralize the State and its technical and administrative departments. This ultimately determines the success of any development and local development project in general, and that of forests and rangelands in particular.

NOTES

[1] Levy Provencal, “Unpublished documents of history of the Almohads, manuscript fragments of the” Legago “1919 Arab background of the Escorial, Translated by E. Levi Provençal, Librairie Orient P. Geuthner, Paris, new edition 1978
[ 2] Lieutenant of La Chapelle
[3] The story is exemplary because even today the Central Sanhadjien Middle Atlas (provinces of Khenifra, Oulmes, Ifrane and El Hajeb is attached to the region Meknes-Tafilalet.
[4] Said Guennoun, “The Berber Mountain”
[5] Drevet,
[6] Recall that the installation of the private company King ranch in the corridor of the collective summer courses of the Irklaouene Adarouch Wadi end of the sixties was a major land-grab operation that subtracted some 11 000 ha of land. collective winter courses and the displacement of agro-pastoralists who were settled in the plain of El Hajeb. This episode made a lot of ink at the time and the psycho-sociodrama contributors right is not always appaisé as we saw here and there during the field interviews of summer 2003. It seems by other than the techno-economic model presented as promising at the time in authorized circles has fizzled in the Adarouch,
[7] Case of the Itto Causse in particular, between Azrou and the belvedere of the Itto landscape.

Posted by Christian at 17:27 Potin – Mission Reports Source:  http://christianpotin.canalblog.com/archives/2012/07/26/24577099.html

Exogenous and Extrovert Economy of Morocco under the French / Spanish Protectorate

https://www.facebook.com/Kaddari.Alaa/videos/265213817158726″ /

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Christian Pineau and Si Bekkai sign in March 1956 at the Quai d’Orsay the joint declaration that gives independence to Morocco

End of Political Colonialism

Christian Pineau and Si Bekkai sign in March 1956 at the Quai d’Orsay the joint declaration that gives independence to Morocco

Joint Franco-Moroccan declaration of March 2, 1956.

The Government of the French Republic and His Majesty Mohammed V, Sultan of Morocco, affirm their willingness to give full effect to the declaration of La Celle-Saint-Cloud of 6 December 1955.

They note that following the progress made by Morocco on the road to progress, the Treaty of Fez of 30 March 1912 no longer corresponds to the needs of modern life and can no longer govern Franco-Moroccan relations.

Consequently, the Government of the French Republic solemnly confirms the recognition of the independence of Morocco, which implies in particular a diplomacy and an army, as well as its will to respect and to respect the integrity of the Moroccan territory, guaranteed by the international treaties.

The Government of the French Republic and His Majesty Mohammed V, Sultan of Morocco, declare that the negotiations which have just begun in Paris between Morocco and France, sovereign and equal States, are intended to conclude new agreements which will define the interdependence of the two countries in areas where their interests are common, thus organizing their cooperation on the basis of freedom and equality, including defense, external relations, economy and culture, and which will guarantee the rights and freedoms of the French established in Morocco and the Moroccans living in France, respecting the sovereignty of the two States.

The Government of the French Republic and His Majesty Mohammed V, Sultan of Morocco, agree that, pending the entry into force of these agreements, the new relations between France and Morocco shall be based on the provisions of the Protocol annexed to this Agreement. declaration.

Christian Pineau,

Embarek Bekkal.

Annex Protocol
1. Legislative power is exercised supreme by His Majesty the Sultan. The representative of France is aware of plans for dahirs and decrees. It submits observations when these texts concern the interests of France, the French or foreigners, during the transitional period;

2. His Majesty Mohammed V, Sultan of Morocco, has a national army. France is assisting Morocco with the constitution of this army. The current status of the French army in Morocco remains unchanged during the transitional period;

3. The management powers, hitherto reserved, will be transferred, the terms of which will be agreed upon.
The Moroccan government is represented, with deliberative vote, in the Franc Zone Committee, the central monetary policy body for the entire franc zone.

On the other hand, the guarantees enjoyed by French officials and agents serving in Morocco are maintained;

4. The representative of the French Republic in Morocco has the title of High Commissioner of France.

Done at Paris, in duplicate, this 2nd day of March, 1956.

Christian Pineau,

Embarek Bekkal.
 – with  Embarek Bekkal  and  Christian Pineau .

 Emergence of Neo-Colonialism – Consolidation of Subcapitalism

A close and read on the Moroccan Sahara 

The French Government overwhelmed Vietnam, a stinging defeat, Africa was also a battlefield with Algeria as the front. Tunisia began to have social movements advocated by the Syndicates and nationalists also overwhelmed the French presence. The successive changes of government under the Third and Fourth Republics changed nothing and made the political climate unstable, thus giving an argument for the army to intervene in politics in view of all the military debacles due to this instability. In an international climate of the Cold War with Korea as war and areas of tension around the world, the United States will abandon France and concentrated in the fight against the expansion of communism in all its forms. In such an environment, France loosed its hold in several of its colonial possessions by installing educated hired thugs who had been trained in the legal and representative French framework or who had benefited from an ethnic or institutional alliance with the public authorities. France or having served in the administration or the French colonial army. The new leaders were thus selected from this Made in France reservoir. In such a tumult will come the exile of the King and subsequently the truncated independence of Morocco since until now we have not received all our territories. This evolution also forced the creation later of the V Republic which is considered by many as a coup d’état by General de Gaulle who instituted a referendum for the continuation of the alliance of African countries with France and of which only the Guinea of Ahmed Sékou Touré refused and granted himself his independence. Even in the case of the Congo and to understand the end of the Belgian domination, “[…] it is fundamental to understand how the cold war played out in the heart of Africa in the summer of 1960, in the backstage of Congo-Brazzaville’s independence ceremonies . ”  * Here is a quick sketch of what was the environment and the forces conditioning the advent of the independence of Morocco which was sloppy on both sides of the negotiating table and which we pay the price so far as regards our first national territories still under guardianship e trang è re. * Learn more about http://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2015/03/16/jacques-foccart-les-archives-de-l-homme-de-l-ombre-1_4594637_3212.html# sRhqxl3XKK3OVDJd.99     NB: Definition of Maghzen or Maghzen: HISTORY A. – Aggregate Moroccan administration (especially in the French Protectorate). He was proud that he had fallen for the Makhzen. He says, “the Makhzen,” that is, the government of the Sultan. But we all understood that Abd El Malek had fallen for France (Tharaud, Marrakesh, 1920: 270). – Employment affixed with the value of adj. Which is relative to the administration of the Sultan. The cadi in the court of the Chraa, renders a justice “competent only for the matters governed by the religious law (…)”. For the rest it is justice Makhzen (of the bosses and pachas) who decides (Lanly1962): . Then we enter the imperial capital of Moulay Ismail, the largest Maghreb builder, and whose Meknes is the greatest achievement. The ancient Makhzen city still offers an extraordinary picture today … Morocco, Paris, Hachette, 1978, p. 235 [Blue Guides]. ♦ Makhzen tribe. Tribe who was required, in exchange for a tax exemption, to provide the sovereign with the soldiers he needed for his army. Moulay el Hassan (…) must consolidate his authority in the most easily accessible regions of the kingdom by establishing four makhzen tribes (Morocco, Paris, Hachette, 1978, p.67 [Blue Guides]). Rem. Note the absence of a plural mark. – P. Meton. Part of the Moroccan territory on which the authority of the central government was effectively exercised. The youth of the ruler Abd el Aziz (1894-1908), who reached the throne at 14 and was influenced by his minister Ba Ahmed ben Moussa, as well as the impoverishment of the Makhzen, favored several revolt movements (Morocco, Paris , Hachette, 1978, 67 (Blue Guides)). ♦ Employment affixed with the value of adj. Bled makhzen. Before the establishment of the Protectorate, the authority of the Sultans was only exercised over part of Morocco (mahzen bled) (…) the rest was in permanent dissidence (bled siba) (Lanly1962). Source:  http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/makhzen

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Morocco: Economic Internationalization and Subcapitalist Development

I conducted my research for 14 years on this subject and which ended in my creation of the Concept of Subcapitalism for the sole reason is that there was no impoverishment of all Subcapitalist countries, because they remain what follows and this list which I draw up here below is not exhaustive:

• a lever for economic growth in Western countries,
• an environment in search of modernization of the infrastructure,
• a gulf for educational programs that have exhausted their profit margins in metropolitan areas,
• a demand for capital and direct and indirect investment,
• additional markets for the disposal of surplus production,
• a place or turn temporary imports into tax gains for international producers,
• places for the dual production of low value-added manufactured goods and high value-added products for export,
• parallel and alternative financial centers,
• opportunities for armaments and an open space for the recycling of outdated weapons through the introduction of new more sophisticated and more selective and precise collateral damage and causality,
• thrifty economies of expertise and recommendations made by major brokerages, consultancy and by major banks and financial houses such as the World Bank, the IMF, and their regional institutions.  

In the same perspective, Morocco is thus led to not be the last cleavage which is that of being a partner and an associate in the conventions and the free trade agreements and the opening of the borders for the adoption and the strengthening of liberal economic, financial and operational trends that meet the needs of Western countries in their directives and their niche conditioning resulting from the International Division of Technological and Logistics Work which allows them to monopolize innovation circuits at all levels international operations necessary to control globalization.

In these terms, local and national classes scattered in marginal and peripheral countries to the drift of Western economies are thus shaped from the direct impacts of such a relationship between the dominant Central Capitalism and the follower and adjacent Subcapitalism countries. These subcapitalist social classes can compete in terms of individual wealth in themselves and internationally since their fortunes originate and perform well from the degree of strength of their relationship with the tenants of the internai tonal market that I have described above. . In the very heart of this Subcapitalist Class lies Strata which are the regional levers of this National Subcapitalist Class, and which are divided according to the administrative, operational,

Balance in the Weakness of the Subcapitalist Productive Forces

In this ambivalent relationship and the maintenance of a reciprocal weakness of the local, regional and national forces of a Subcapitalist economy such as Morocco, democratization serves as a vehicle and an ideological space for dialogue, consultation and negotiation. the distribution of attributes and functions to the members of this whole subcapitalist class in order to satisfy the scales and selection criteria imposed by foreign capital for the choice of places and sectors of its establishment. It is indeed such a subcapitalist relationship and exogenous follow-up that has amplified Morocco’s challenges and accentuated the competition between the subcapitalist countries in their seduction races with respect to foreign investments.

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LIBERALISM & DEVELOPMENT / LIBERALISM & DEVELOPMENT

Said Cherkaoui El Mansour September 14 at 6:06 pm
The New Neo-Colonialism Land by Foreign Investment Middle East Invade Odds Doukkala

The Recycling Capital Hedge has El Jadida: WHY? 

THERE ARE SOME REASONS FOR THIS MIDDLE EAST AFFLUX OF CAPITAL:

• + -> Crisis raging in Western countries,
• + -> the presence of experienced and advocacy law firms, 
• + -> the high cost of the services of the law firms and their professionalism guided by the supreme gain and to the highest bidder,
• + -> the cost of taxes, 
• + -> the cost of capital transfer and oversight of western financial institutions 
• + -> the high price of land,
• + -> the high cost of construction products, 
• + -> the high cost of labor, social protections and benefits for workers, the presence of unions in preliminary negotiations
• + -> the obligation to share the project between large, small and medium-sized construction, equipment and operation companies 
• + -> the seriousness of environmental and worker protection laws, 
• + -> the seriousness of the laws against the washing of money and for financial transparency,
• + -> the responsibility of the inspectors and the local administration, 
• + -> latent instability and conflicts in their own countries and neighboring countries in the Middle East.

and finally Morocco offering its most beautiful natures and natural sites has desert Bedouins who are amazed by Disneyland that by their own culture. 

At the level of our rulers:

The Liberalism of the One you know and not of what you know. In this perspective, Liberalism is considered as an economic strategy for the benefit of personal knowledge focused on class favoritism and not as economic doctrine giving priority to legitimate, competent and deserving private initiative. 

Add to that, the double face of politicians having the complacency of Beni Yes Yes and the Mindfulness of Beni Sidi Sidi who are easy to dazzle at the sight of any sign of enrichment.

For these Moroccan terminating governors, money first facilitates their promptness to bowing to ostentatious wealth even those who lack civility and genuine national responsibility. A habit that becomes a trend; that of opening the doors all large and put down the red carpet with gold embroidered motifs, lined with girls throwing petals of roses and offering milk and dates. To have such treatment, you just have to be the party or the entourage of those who make the gold crowns ring and stumble.

This readiness to “vulgarize” and make vulgar a Moroccan tradition of hospitality, makes Morocco such a circus and a country of the sun whose motives and motivations have only one motive which is the individual enrichment on the back of the properties, the domain and the Moroccan work force. Such orientations and behaviors are in no way empowered or formalized by a just concern for building solid and lasting foundations for a real development of the country and a genuine improvement of the living conditions of our poorest and most vulnerable citizens. 

Revenge Has Two Faces:  Doukkala Deleted on the Administrative Map of Morocco

Doukkala Highlighted on Foreign Investors Map of Gulf Countries: Two Weights Two Measures? 

These politicians of the last subcapitalist time lead a double ploy: Ignore Doukkala administratively speaking at the level of Regionalization while in their eyes or rather at the level of their stock exchanges and portfolios (non-ministerial but personal); Doukkala remains so attractive for the pleasure of the supporters of capital of the Gulf States. 

So, we can legitimately scratch our heads and wonder why this same region Doukkala was erased from the Administrative Map of Morocco?

At the same time, the Moroccan authorities approve or develop projects that give up Doukkala’s own land without restraint and has capital whose origin remains the hoarding of national wealth for their own profit. These investments have no human or civic legitimacy, they are the result of the usurpation by a ruling class of the national wealth of an entire people and nation. 

Does this relentlessness against Doukkala to isolate him, to remove him from the National Administrative Chessboard, turn out to be a well-thought-out and deliberate policy with pre-established and pre-established goals?

We can only be amazed to see such projects come to our notice when the usual sluggishness, delays and delays in administrative apparatus are the norm for any project presented by the average citizen and here in the case of these projects. investments of Middle Eastern origin, these investments pop-ups and suddenly emerge from the hat of Moroccan magician-makers and this as rabbits.

In fact, we repeat the same scenario that prevailed in the establishment of favorable conditions for the insertion of Mazagan-Resort in the Moroccan cultural fabric and its slide as a tourist project contrary to the customs and customs of an environment the opponent and the initial operator proved to be a transition to the real owners who, by chance, appropriating games of chance for their own religions, is a forbidden . In short, a series of bans that receive the go-ahead from the Moroccan authorities who call themselves and guide themselves by a Prime Minister representing a religious tendency that is against such operations in a Muslim environment,

Whatever the motivations and consequences of such contradictory and ultimately destructive actions of institutional legitimacy, Mazagan-Resorts despite all the adjustments undertaken, including the substitution of “new owners,” the Arabian and family allure given to its sports and music activities and its marketing strategy which is more objectifying the Moroccan middle class and not a foreign clientele, Mazagan-Resorts in the light of these new investments in the Middle East may have been used as the Trojan horse for to break the resistance of an environment until it remained virgin and recalcitrant to such incursions and aggressivities businessmen.

Similarly, between the eradication of Doukkala as a region of Morocco and the pursuit by the same government of a simultaneous policy of promoting Doukkala for the attraction and installation of foreign investment on the same coast of Doukkala can not effectively that push to ask questions about this structural and organizational contradiction of the Moroccan Government.

One can not help but come to the conclusion that the setting aside of Doukkala from the Administrative Map of Morocco is a deliberate act objectifying the neutralization of Doukkala and the cancellation of Doukkala from the rank of one of these Centers. of Regional Decision retained. Thus, this effacement of Doukkala in the light of these Doukkali gold rushes by investments from the black gold can only make prevail the precept that Doukkala was erased from the administrative map of Morocco has as objective the weakening local resistance and may also be evaluated as an attempt to expedite project approval processes of such dubious and suspicious origin,

Given that Morocco opens the doors to them without conditions and all to accommodate the remains of excesses and waste everywhere and without any preconditions or respect for the laws for the protection of the Moroccan citizen first as do the Western countries which do not are more fooled by investors who hide behind Corporatist companies and international brokerage firms or even Lobbyists with a local and indigenous face as a mask for hidden foreign interests and shady, finished makeup and finished staging. 

National security takes precedence over the easy and rapid gain in Western countries that respect the laws passed by their citizens and approved by their representatives as laws for everyone without regional or cultural favoritism.
No Passaram without respect for the laws in force, so does the civic dignity and the cord of trust existing between the governed and the governments. 

Nothing is perfect but at least an arsenal of laws exists that can be used by any citizen aware of his existence and able to apply it for the protection and revival of other laws more protective, restrictive, exacting and binding vis-à-vis -vis the system abusers.

Said Cherkaoui El Mansour El Mansour Said Cherkaoui 
http://www.hespress.com/economie/320581.html

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Comments by those who read the bottom part of this publication

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Morocco: Hamid Chabat’s blunder on Mauritania provokes a diplomatic outcry – JeuneAfrique.com The secretary general of Istiqlal made a mistake on Saturday by declaring that Mauritania was a Moroccan territory. Cracked on Monday by the Palace, will he apologize as the party of Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz wishes? #saharaoccidental

Commentary on the Declaration of the Secretary General of the Moroccan Party of Istiqlal: Si Hamid Chabat

By Dr.  Said El Mansour Cherkaoui Commentary on the Declaration of the Secretary General of the Moroccan Party of Istiqlal: Si Hamid Chabat By Dr. Said El Mansour Cherkaoui Although I am not a supporter of the Istiqlal Party, but I think that the Secretary General as the leader of a political party in the prestigious history of Morocco, Si Hamid Chabat is right to shake the Moroccan diplomacy that falls asleep on the laurels of the post-independence period when the Sovereign Triumphant by his return from the Exile had played leading roles in the settlement of several questions and problems of the Third World and had become a symbol of national emancipation for nations still under colonial rule. The only parenthesis that had put these questions of our national integrity and our territorial sovereignty was the initiative of Hassan II to rise up against the Spanish neo-colonialism and claiming our Sahara. Since then there has been taco-tac, Moroccan diplomacy is operating retroactively and in reaction to what is happening and does not currently have a diplomatic strategy that goes forward and goes hand in hand with the so-called economic achievements sprinkled with westernized liberalism and subcapitalism. For us the generation of Moroccans who have seen independence unfold before our eyes innocent children, children of political independence, for us the slogan is that we have not yet fully achieved our territorial independence and that’s not to mention the economic and institutional. There are territories in present-day Algeria that are historically and until the 19 th century were absolute Moroccan territories, and that was not to mention the territories that the King of the time had lent to Emir Abdelkader just to allow him to take refuge and conduct his attacks against the French colonial troops who had renounced the treaty they had signed with him. Morocco wanted to protect Algeria by allowing the Emir Abdelkader to have a hinterland to take refuge. Since then, Emir Abdelkader has surrendered to French power and France has annexed the territories in question and included them in Algeria which she considered as a national territory which she strengthened at the expense of legitimate Moroccan territories . The colonial power also wanted to punish the temerity and resistance of the Moroccan King after our defeat at the Battle of Isly on August 14, 1844, which gave the French State the free hand to carve the lion’s share in the territorial division of Morocco which was part of the strategy of the French imperialists to complete and put completely under their diktat the state of Makhzen which had completely collapsed on the banks of the river Isly. Subsequently, a coup de grace was struck at the Makhzen building by a distillation of the interior collaboration, the arming of the tribes hostile to what remains of the Makhzen, and a cutting of the territory of the East, North and southern Morocco that the Conferences of Berlin and Madrid and finally Algeciras were gradually established as a succession of defeat and the This strategy of undermining the interior, bombarding the coastal cities and scuttle any diplomatic attempt by the isolation of Morocco while accentuating the Moroccan external debt and the corresponding demands of fiscal adjustment and controls of state revenues , were all driven for the final goal that was the partition of Morocco between Spain and France. Later, Mauretania, given its importance for nuclear tests and the atomic bomb as well as iron deposits first and then fish and oil, was imposed a dictator-puppet manufactured and installed as President by the power French neo-colonial in the person of Mokhtar Ould Dada who was dismissed once his role filled and this by a military junta formed by the French war schools: White Civilian Hat – White Military Helmet
Now we have the Blue Helmets waiting to clarify our national horizons and make them colorful with our Moroccan national colors. As a result, we must put our land claims and the question of the complete acquisition and recovery of our usurped territories back on the international table and I consider this intervention by Si Hamid Chabat as appropriate and appropriate in this context to revive our diplomacy and our national goals of generalized and cohesive development by including all our historic territories. December 27, 2016 – All Rights Reserved to Dr.  Said El Mansour Cherkaoui

*********************************************
First Response from Dr. Said El Mansour Cherkaoui
*********************************************
” Morocco: Hamid Chabat’s blunder on Mauritania provokes a diplomatic outcry The secretary general of Istiqlal made a mistake on Saturday by declaring that Mauritania was a Moroccan territory.Created on Monday by the Palace, will he present his apologies as the party of Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz wishes? ” End of quote of Jeune Afrique  ******************************************** *

The military power of Mauretania, a power of military conspiracy and his political party continues to hold an anti-Moroccan language because for them, he speaks of the resolution according to them of the question of “Western Sahara” and yes it is the term , see the content of the article Jeune Afrique on the statement of Si Hamid Chabat. That said, read the content of my answer and link that I quote at the end of this text and the publication that I added as a next comment. 

********************  By Dr. Said El Mansour Cherkaoui ******************* 

Commentary on the Declaration of the Secretary General of the Moroccan Istiqlal Party: Si Hamid ChabatAlthough I am not a supporter of the Istiqlal Party, but I think that the Secretary General as the leader of a political party in the prestigious history of Morocco, Si Hamid Chabat is right to shake the Moroccan diplomacy that falls asleep on the laurels of the post-independence period when the Sovereign Triumphant by his return from the Exile had played leading roles in the settlement of several issues and problems of the Third World and had become a symbol of national emancipation for nations still under colonial rule. 

The only parenthesis that had put these questions of our national integrity and our territorial sovereignty was the initiative of Hassan II to rise up against the Spanish neo-colonialism and claiming our Sahara.

Since then there has been taco-tac, Moroccan diplomacy is operating retroactively and in reaction to what is happening and does not currently have a diplomatic strategy that goes forward and goes hand in hand with the so-called economic achievements sprinkled with westernized liberalism and subcapitalism. 

For us the generation of Moroccans who have seen independence unfold before our eyes innocent children, children of political independence, for us the slogan is that we have not yet fully achieved our territorial independence and that’s not to mention the economic and institutional.
There are territories in present-day Algeria that are historically and until the 19 th century were absolute Moroccan territories, and that is not to mention the territories that the King of the time had lent to Emir Abdelkader just to allow him to take refuge and conduct his attacks against the French colonial troops who had renounced the treaty they had signed with him. Morocco wanted to protect Algeria by allowing the Emir Abdelkader to have a hinterland to take refuge. Since then, Emir Abdelkader has surrendered to French power and France has annexed the territories in question and included them in Algeria which she considered as a national territory which she strengthened at the expense of legitimate Moroccan territories .

The colonial power also wanted to punish the temerity and resistance of the Moroccan King after our defeat at the Battle of Isly on August 14, 1844, which gave the French State the free hand to carve the lion’s share in the territorial division of Morocco which was part of the strategy of the French imperialists to complete and put completely under their diktat the state of Makhzen which had completely collapsed on the banks of the river Isly. Subsequently, a coup de grace was struck at the Makhzen building by a distillation of the interior collaboration, the arming of the tribes hostile to what remains of the Makhzen, and a cutting of the territory of the East, North and southern Morocco that the Conferences of Berlin and Madrid and finally Algeciras were gradually established as a succession of defeat and the

This strategy of undermining the interior, bombarding the coastal cities and scuttle any diplomatic attempt by the isolation of Morocco while accentuating the Moroccan external debt and the corresponding demands of fiscal adjustment and controls of state revenues were all led to the ultimate goal was the partition of Morocco between Spain and France.

Later, Mauretania, given its importance for nuclear tests and the atomic bomb as well as iron deposits first and then fish and oil, was imposed a dictator-puppet manufactured and installed as President by the power French neo-colonial in the person of Mokhtar Ould Dada who was dismissed once his role filled and this by a military junta formed by the French war schools: White Civilian Hat – White Military Helmet Now we have the Blue Helmets waiting to clarify our national horizons and make them colorful with our Moroccan national colors.

As a result, we must put our land claims and the question of the complete acquisition and recovery of our usurped territories back on the international table and I consider this intervention by Si Hamid Chabat as appropriate and appropriate in this context to revive our diplomacy and our national goals of generalized and cohesive development by including all our historic territories. 

December 27, 2016 and beyond 2018- All Rights Reserved to Dr. Said El Mansour Cherkaoui © 2020 to Today Said El Mansour Cherkaoui

Said El Mansour Cherkaoui on Africa – Afrique – África – أفريقيا – 非洲 

Click here to read more articles by Said El Mansour Cherkaoui on Africa

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Hakim Hajoui• Ambassador of His Majesty the King of Morocco to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: 3 – 24 2022

I feel so privileged and proud to represent His Majesty The King Mohammed VI to the court of St James’s.

It was such an honour to meet Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for the presentation of my letters of credence.

The history between our two Kingdoms is a friendship of more than 800 years and today there is a shared desire to deepen further our strong ties 

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#	AMBASSADOR	TITLE	DATE OF APPOINTMENT	MOROCCAN MONARCH	BRITISH MONARCH
1	Rais Merzouk Ahmed Benkacem	Ambassador	1588	Ahmad al-Mansur	Elizabeth I
2	Caid Ahmed ben Adel	Ambassador	1595	Ahmad al-Mansur	Elizabeth I
3	Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud Anoun	Ambassador	1600	Ahmad al-Mansur	Elizabeth I
4	Mohammed Bensaid (known as Lopez de Zapar)	Envoy	1627	Sidi al-Ayachi	Charles I
5	Ahmed Naravaez	Envoy	1627	Sidi al-Ayachi	Charles I
6	Pasha Ahmed Benabdellah	Envoy	1628	Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik II	Charles I
7	Mohammed Clafishou	Envoy	1629	Sidi al-Ayachi	Charles I
8	General Jawdar ben Abdellah	Ambassador	1637	Mohammed esh-Sheikh es-Seghir	Charles I
9	Caid Mohamed Benaskar	Ambassador	1638	Mohammed esh-Sheikh es-Seghir	Charles I
10	Robert Blake	Envoy	1639	Mohammed esh-Sheikh es-Seghir	Charles I
11	Abdelkrim Annaksis	Envoy	1657	Mohamed El Haj Dilai	Charles II
12	Mohammed Ben Haddu Attar	Ambassador	1681	Ismail	Charles II
13	Abdallah ben Aisha	Ambassador	1685	Ismail	Charles II
14	Haim Toladano	Ambassador	1691	Ismail	William III & Mary II
15	Mohamed Cardenas	Envoy	1700	Ismail	William III
16	Haj Ali Saban	Envoy	1700	Ismail	William III
17	Joseph Diaz	Ambassador	1700	Ismail	Anne
18	Ahmed ben Ahmed Cardenas	Ambassador	1706	Ismail	Anne
19	Bentura de Zarl	Envoy	1710	Ismail	Anne
20	Abdelkader Perez	Ambassador	1723	Ismail	George I
21	Mohammed Ben Ali Abgali	Ambassador	1725	Ismail	George I
22	Abdelkader Perez	Ambassador	1737	Mohammed II [fr]	George I
23	Abdekader Adiel	Ambassador	1762	Mohammed III	George III
24	Admiral el-Arbi ben Abdellah ben Abu Yahya al-Mestiri	Ambassador	1766	Mohammed III	George III
25	Jacob Benider	Ambassador	1772	Mohammed III	George III
26	Sidi Taher ben Abdelhaq Fennish	Ambassador	1773	Mohammed III	George III
27	Mas’ud de la Mar	Envoy	1781	Mohammed III	George III
28	Meir ben Maqnin	Ambassador	1827	Abderrahmane	George IV
29	al-Amin Said Mohammed ash-Shami	Ambassador	1860	Mohammed IV	Victoria
30	Haj Mohammed Zebdi	Ambassador	1876	Hassan I	Victoria
31	Mohammed Ben Abdellah Ben Abdelkrim as-Saffar	Ambassador	1880	Hassan I	Victoria
32	Prince Moulay Mohammed	Ambassador	1897	Abdelaziz	Victoria
33	al-Mehdi el-Mnebhi	Ambassador	1901	Abdelaziz	Edward VII
34	Pasha Abderrahmane Ben Abdessadek Errifi	Ambassador	1902	Abdelaziz	Edward VII
35	Tahar ben al-Amine	Ambassador	1909	Abdelhafid	Edward VII
36	Prince Moulay Hassan ben Mehdi Alaoui	Ambassador	1957	Mohammed V	Elizabeth II
37	Princess Lalla Aicha	Ambassador	1965	Hassan II	Elizabeth II
38	Mohammed Laghzaoui	Ambassador	1969	Hassan II	Elizabeth II
39	Thami Ouazzani	Ambassador	1971	Hassan II	Elizabeth II
40	Abdallah Chorfi	Ambassador	1973	Hassan II	Elizabeth II
41	Badreddine Senoussi	Ambassador	1976	Hassan II	Elizabeth II
42	Abdellatif Filali	Ambassador	1980	Hassan II	Elizabeth II
43	Mehdi Benabdeljalil	Ambassador	1981	Hassan II	Elizabeth II
44	Abdeslam Zenined	Ambassador	1987	Hassan II	Elizabeth II
45	Khalid Haddaoui	Ambassador	1991	Hassan II	Elizabeth II
46	Mohammed Belmahi	Ambassador	1999	Mohammed VI	Elizabeth II
47	Princess Lalla Joumala Alaoui	Ambassador	2009	Mohammed VI	Elizabeth II
48	Abdesselam Aboudrar [de][1]	Ambassador	2016	Mohammed VI	Elizabeth II
49	Hakim Hajoui	Ambassador	2020	Mohammed VI	Elizabeth II

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Morocco-UK: Relations Rooted in History, Firmly Focused on Future

07 December 2021 – Last modified: 07 December 2021

London – Morocco and the United Kingdom, two countries with a thousand years of history, have maintained a long-standing friendship for nearly eight centuries, based on mutual respect and esteem.

The celebration this year of the 300th anniversary of the first peace and trade treaty signed between the two kingdoms testifies to this millennial relationship which is now looking to the future and will be strengthened by the entry into force of their post-Brexit Association Agreement.

In addition, the new foreign policy of the United Kingdom, « Global Britain », has helped to inject a new dynamic into its relations with Morocco, strengthening the strategic dialogue that has been taking place since the visit to London in 2018 of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, African Cooperation and Moroccans Abroad, Nasser Bourita.

This has helped identify the strategic issues of Morocco-UK relations, allowing its first session to establish a strategic security dialogue, while the British Department of Transport had proposed to strengthen technical cooperation in the field of ship and port security.

In addition, Morocco was one of the first countries with which the United Kingdom concluded an Association Agreement, in October 2019, thus anticipating the legal vacuum that would cause the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union.

This partnership restores, in the context of bilateral relations, all the benefits that the two countries granted each other, mutually, under the Association Agreement Morocco-EU, allowing for a continuation of trade between the two countries and offering the necessary guarantees to economic operators on both sides.

Aware of the interest in preserving the continuity of bilateral relations as well as the mutual interests of the two Kingdoms, diplomats from both countries had a dense exchange of visits during the period preceding the entry into force of Brexit, to ensure that Morocco-UK relations emerge unscathed.

In addition to undoubtedly testifying to the depth of ties between the two countries, the Morocco-UK Association Agreement reflects the relevance and insight of the policy initiated under the leadership of HM King Mohammed VI to diversify the Kingdom’s partnerships and consolidate its position as a hub in Africa.

This is also a boon for the British government which aims to become by 2022, the 1st investor of G7 countries in Africa. In this context, the British Chamber of Commerce in Morocco has stressed the importance of Morocco in this process as a bridge and link with the African continent.

The Kingdom could also become a destination of choice for post-Brexit British investment, especially since several previous agreements are likely to facilitate this process.

One of the most recent is the Memorandum of Understanding concluded in 2020, on the sidelines of the « UK-Africa Investment Summit » in the British capital, aimed at the creation of a joint working group for the promotion of trade and investment opportunities offered by the two kingdoms.

It was also on the sidelines of this summit, which already foreshadowed the contours of the new British foreign policy, that the first session of the Morocco-UK Business Dialogue took place, bringing together more than 110 Moroccan companies and 225 British operators with a view to presenting the trade and investment opportunities that the two countries have to offer.

In addition, the two previous editions of the strategic dialogue have helped to revitalize cultural cooperation, with the signing of a memorandum of understanding for the creation of a Joint Cooperation Committee in the field of education and an agreement on the British school system in Morocco.

On the ground, this has resulted in the opening of the first British international school « British Academy School of Marrakech » at the beginning of the academic year 2019-2020, intending to continue this momentum to open other schools across Morocco.

Climate cooperation is not left out since the two kingdoms are positioned as world leaders in ecological action; a fact that is confirmed by the report accompanying the ranking of the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI), in which the New Climate Institute estimated that together with the Scandinavian countries, « the United Kingdom and Morocco, lead the race towards carbon neutrality. »

A convergence of views was evident at the last World Climate Summit (COP26) held in Glasgow during which the British presidency chose the Kingdom to be among a very short list of 20 countries that took part in the World Summit of Leaders on « accelerating innovation and deployment of clean energy. »

The COP26 Regional Ambassador for the Middle East and Africa, Janet Rogan, took the opportunity to describe Morocco as « a leader in Africa pushing for a breakthrough in new technologies in energy production. »

This set of elements augurs a bright future for relations that began in 1213 and should be further consolidated through the 3rd session of the strategic dialogue and the 1st session of the Association Council scheduled in London.

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Portraits of Moroccan Ambassadors in Early Modern England

Posted on December 10, 2018

There have been many works in recent years that have highlighted the close diplomatic relations and cultural exchange between England and Morocco during the early modern period. Although the relationship between the two monarchies varied considerably between 1570 and 1800, including both periods of friendship (as in the time of Queen Elizabeth I and Aḥmad al-Manṣūr) and tensions/hostility, there was nevertheless a maintenance of commercial links and diplomacy throughout the entire period.  As a result of this political context, Islam and Muslims were interwoven into the broader cultural history of early modern England just as European Christians were an integral part of the story of early modern Morocco. Among the treasures that have survived from this period that attest to the evolving mutual perceptions and representation of these societies are portraits of five Moroccan ambassadors who were tasked with securing trade agreements or political-military alliances between the 16^th and 18^th centuries.  They were:

‘Abd al-Wāḥid ben Mas‘ūd ben Muḥammad al-Nūrī

‘Abd al-Wāḥid ben Mas‘ūd was sent as the ambassador of Aḥmad al-Manṣūr of Morocco (r. 1578–1603) to Elizabeth I of England (r. 1558–1603) in 1600–1601. He was formally tasked with securing a trade agreement, but it appears that he was also involved in negotiating a possible military allegiance between Morocco and England against Catholic Spain. The painting was completed around 1600 by an unknown artist and is preserved at the University of Birmingham.

Al-Annuri – the Moroccan Ambassador

In 1600, there was a significant shift in England’s relationship with the Islamic world. Abd al-Wahid bin Masoud bin Muhammad al-Annuri was forty-two years old when he travelled to England as the ambassador of the Moroccan ruler, Mulay Ahmad al-Mansur. He was met at Dover on 8 August by members of the Barbary Company trading in Morocco, who took him and his retinue into London.

Al-Annuri’s mission was to establish an Anglo-Moroccan alliance that would unite Moroccan Sunni Muslims and English Protestants against their common enemy: Catholic Spain. Al-Annuri’s proposal to Elizabeth was to invade Spain and reconquer Al Andalus (the mainland of Spain that had been under Muslim rule for centuries) and also launch a joint campaign against Spanish colonies in the Americas and Asia. Morocco was willing to supply the English fleet with provisions, infantry, and money.

After being met at Dover, they traveled to London, arriving at Tower Wharf on 15 August. From there, they went to the household of Anthony Radcliffe, a merchant, on the Strand. Londoners observed, what they perceived to be, the Moroccans’ unusual dress and Islamic customs, including prayer. Then five days later, the Moroccans had their first audience with the Queen at Nonsuch Palace in Surrey. Eager to impress, the palace was prepared with ‘rich hangings and furniture sent from Hampton Court’.

The pinnacle of their visit was the celebrations of 17 November at the Whitehall tiltyards, which marked Elizabeth’s accession to the throne. Unlike the French and Russian ambassadors, who sat beside Elizabeth, al-Annuri and his entourage watched the jousting from beneath a specially constructed canopy amongst the Queen’s subjects. It was towards the end of his six-month stay that al-Annuri’s portrait was completed – the first of a Muslim in England.

Source

Jawdar bin ‘Abd Allāh

Jawdar bin ‘Abd Allāh was the ambassador of Muḥammad al-Shaykh al-Saghīr of Morocco (1636–1655) to Charles I of England (1625–1649) in 1637. His arrival was a festive event, recorded in detail and was described as follows: “the reception of the ambassador in London by a crowd of thousands, led by merchants of the Barbary Company and city officials, “all richly appareled . . . with such abundance of Torches and Links, that though it were Night, yet the streets were almost light as Day.”[1] Jawdar bin ‘Abd Allāh was praised in the strongest terms as “a Man of more respect, or higher account and estimation the [Moroccan] Emperor (his Master) could not have sent.” The ambassador was a Portuguese convert to Islam. As J.A.O.C. Brown notes, “it is significant that the whole [English] account [of Jawdar’s diplomatic mission] begins with an exhortation of the benefits of trade between nations, ‘though they are far remote from each other in Religions, Realmes, Regions and Territories; yet they are conjoyned in leagues and friendship together.’ The influence of trade and diplomacy made the Moroccans more than simply a putative ‘Other.’”[2] This portrait was engraved by George Glover.

(Source: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawdar_Ben_Abdellah)

Muḥammad bin Hadou

Muḥammad bin Hadou was the ambassador of Muley Ismā‘īl of Morocco (r. 1672–1727) to Charles II of England (r. 1660–1685) in 1682 (apparently accompanied by an English convert to Islam as interpreter).  He spent Dec. 1681-July 1682 in Britain traveling to various towns. Muḥammad bin Hadou was praised in the London press for his horsemanship in Hyde Park.  On April 26 1682, he was elected to the Royal Society, England’s most prestigious learned society.[3]

The diarist Sir John Evelyn recorded a dinner with Muḥammad bin Hadou and his retinue, who “behaved themselves with extraordinary Moderation & modesty, though placed about a long Table a Lady between each two [Moroccans].” Despite the immodest dress of the women (a mixture of the king’s mistresses and illegitimate daughters), the Moroccans “did not look about nor stare on the Ladys, or express the least surprise; but with a Courtly negligence in pace, Countenance, & whole behavior, [and] a great deale of Wit and Gallantrie . . . In a word, the Russian Ambassador still at Court behaved himself like a Clowne, compar’d to this Civil Heathen.”

While emphasizing his Islamic faith and foreignness as distinguishing markers of his identity, this account, alongside the portrait of the ambassador, reflects an image of Muḥammad bin Hadou as a well-mannered, cultured, and respectable gentleman. [4]  The portrait was painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646–1723) and is preserved in Chiswick House in London.

Source

Hājj ‘Abd al-Qādir Pérez

Hājj ‘Abd al-Qādir Pérez was the ambassador of Muley Ismā‘īl of Morocco (r. 1672–1727)to England in 1723. He was an admiral descended from Andalusi Muslim refugees. The portrait was painted in 1724 and is preserved in London.

Source

Muḥammad ben ‘Alī Abgali

Muḥammad ben ‘Alī Abgali was the ambassador of Muley Ismā‘īl of Morocco (r. 1672–1727) to George I (r. 1714–1727) of England between 1725 and 1727. Interested in the arts and sciences, he participated in numerous cultural, intellectual, and social events while in London, famously attending many plays.[5] In March 1726, he was elected and admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society.[6] He also corresponded with the renowned English numismatist and mathematician Martin Folkes (d. 1754).[7]

Source

Source of this article

The Position of the Moroccan Jewish Community within the Anglo-Moroccan Diplomatic Relations from 1480 to 1886

A presentation was made by Mohammed Belmahi, KCFO, former Moroccan Ambassador to London (1999-2009), upon the invitation of the Rotary Club of London, on Monday 11th. May 2015, at the Chesterfield Hotel, 35 Charles Street, Mayfair.

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AMBASSADORS, RHUBARB & SUGAR: THE ISLAMIC WORLD & TUDOR ENGLAND

Date May 5, 2021 By Historic Royal Palaces

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Ahmed Balafrej was a break away from such submission to the Fait Accompli. Ahmed Balafrej kept his own believes in sincerity and loyalty to the Sovereignty of Morocco which creates for him problems with the new governments of the Independent Morocco who continued a Neo-colonial relationship with France.

Ahmed Balafrej became the First Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1956 not Prime Minister.

Now independent, Morocco must urgently organize the international representation of its interests. the April 26 , 1956, Ahmed Balafrej officially becomes the First Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of independent Morocco. He is reappointed to this post in the second government of M’barek Bekkai .

Ahmed Balafrej is the true founder and initiator of Moroccan diplomacy. It was he who opened the first Moroccan embassies abroad, who set up the first consulates and who concretized Morocco’s membership in major international organizations including the UN in July 1956, The League of Arab States and the Organization of African Unity. –1956, first Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  Balafrej and his collaborators ⁸

Ahmed Balafrej 1956 first Minister of Foreign Affairs. Balafrej and his collaborators

The first mission of Ahmed Balafrej is the signing of the Franco-Moroccan convention of May 20, 1956 consecrating the foundation of a Moroccan diplomacy freed from French tutelage. Then there is the liberation of Tarfaya negotiated with Spain, then a Spanish colony, as well as the return of Tangier under Moroccan authority.

Hachem, God, Allah Bless him in the Beatitude of the Eternal Eden and all our parents together Ameen

Destiny Two Moroccan Militant Meeting in Cairo: Sidi Ahmed Balafrej and Moulay Ahmed Cherkaoui

Sidi Ahmed Balafrej was loyal and good Friend of my Father Moulay Ahmed Cherkaoui from the time before he rose to prominence to the time when he retired from all governmental duties, no change and no volte-face, the same Man and the same Personality, always courteous and hospitable with my Father and during our visits to him.

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Sidi Ahmed Belafrej used to come also to visit my Father as a Man of his word and self-esteem while in my youth I did not even know the extent of his leadership in Morocco.

I always thought that he was another trusted friend of my Father no more no less, a member of our close and familial acquaintances.

The diplomats are the holders of the golden keys of our citizenship in distant cultures, foreign lands, unfamiliar territories, and unspoken geo-political environments.

Europe where I lived and living now in the US, our diplomats legitimized us as Citizens of the Kingdom of Morocco. Diplomats are the Peace Knights of reconnaissance and respect that Morocco acquires around the world

In other words, as Citizens we are not diplomats, we are the window through which other cultures and personalities see, our origins at the individual level, family level, or tribal and regional levels. We carry the culture and the symbolism as well as the metaphor of the traditions inherent and identified in the Moors, the Moorish, and the Moroccan Lands

We are not diplomats as the leaders of diplomacy that open roads in space and oceans to reach an understanding between state institutions, representative structures, and professional communities

Diplomats are the Memory of the existing legitimacy of our Moroccan heritage, legacy, and identity at the level of beliefs and allegiances to our Sovereigns and Dynasties which the Moroccan People have demonstrated and conducted throughout the existence of Morocco.

Sahara: Inspiration, Réveil, Renouveau Nationalisme Marocain

LE SAHARA: L’INSPIRATION, LE RÉVEIL ET LE RENOUVEAU DU NATIONALISME MAROCAIN SAHARA: INSPIRATION, AWAKENING AND RENEWAL OF MOROCCAN NATIONALISM sáhara, el inspiraton el despertar y la renovación del nacionalismo marroquí SAHARA MARROQUÍ – SAHARA MAROCAIN – MOROCCAN SAHARA – الصحراء المغربية – המרוקאי סהרה MARCHE DE LIBERTÉ – LIBERTY WALK – CAMINO A LA LIBERTAD … Continue reading Sahara: Inspiration, Réveil, Renouveau Nationalisme Marocain

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• 1095-1291 – The Crusades result in crusaders bringing some Middle Eastern customs and Arabic words back to England.
• 1588 – Christopher Marlowe’s play Tamburlaine the Great contains a scene in which the Koran is burned.
• 1636 – Oxford University employs a chair of Arabic, who advocates a rational, historical approach to the study of Islam.
• 1734 – The first full translation of the Koran into English is made.
• 1869 – Lord Stanley becomes the first Muslim convert in the House of Lords.
• 1935 – Words from the Koran are broadcast on British radio for the first time, in the BBC program The Sphinx.
• 1997 – MP Muhammad Sarwar becomes the first person to swear his Oath of Allegiance on the Koran in the House of Commons.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35843991 – Read the full timeline on BBC iWonder.

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Bibliographical Sources

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Karim Boukhari

On Precolonial Morocco see this link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maroc_pr%C3%A9colonial https://en.wikipedia.org/…/ 

History_of_Sahara … 
History of Western Sahara – Wikipedia
The history of Western Sahara is that of a desert territory populated by a few nomadic tribes, which does not have …
FR.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

http://www.persee.fr/doc/remmm_0035-1474_1970_num_7_1_1061