Morocco
- works
- 52
- 25 books · 27 films
- period covered
- 1355–2000
- language of writing
- Arabic and French
In 1325, a young jurist from Tangier set out for Mecca and came home twenty-nine years later. Ibn Battuta had in the meantime crossed Egypt, Arabia, Persia, Anatolia, the Turkish steppes, India, the Maldives, Ceylon, Sumatra and China, then, once back, set out again for Spain and Mali. The sultan had him dictate the narrative of his travels. No traveller of the Middle Ages covered as much distance, and the text that came of it is one of the great books of Arabic literature.
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Morocco was long that kind of point of departure. Fez had housed since the ninth century a mosque-university founded by a woman, Fatima al-Fihri, held to be one of the oldest establishments of teaching in continuous activity in the world. The country was an independent kingdom, never Ottoman, in direct relation with Europe and with black Africa, and it speaks Arabic, Amazigh in three variants, French and Spanish according to region and generation. The question of which language one writes in is therefore fourfold there, and many authors have changed language in mid-career.
The liveliest form was born of a rupture. In 1966, a group of young poets founded in Rabat a review that refused both the imitation of France and the return to a frozen tradition, and that invented a jolting French, riddled with Arabic and with silences. The review was banned in 1972 and the man who ran it spent eight years in prison. That generation, with Khaïr-Eddine and Khatibi, left a prose that nobody else writes. Cinema took over in the nineteen seventies, with a state production and then a popular comedy that fills the cinemas.
What awaits the reader is a literature that works on the gap between languages rather than resolving it. The novel that opens this page is a son's revolt against a devout, all-powerful father, published in 1954, and Moroccan readers saw it as a betrayal of the independence struggle.
A way to begin
The Simple Past
Driss Chraïbi · 1954
A son rises up against a devout, all-powerful father, two years before the end of the protectorate: a novel Tahar Ben Jelloun compares to The Stranger.
Driss Ferdi, nineteen, a pupil at the French lycée, tells of a few days of his revolt against his father, a rich tea merchant whom the whole household calls the Lord: a devout man quick to strike, who bends a fearful wife and many sons to his will. The young man rises against him as against the colonial authorities, for whom he is nobody, without finding his place on either side.
Timeline
- 1355Ibn BattutaThe Rihla, the greatest Arabic travel account, sets out from Tangier.
- 1949–1970The independence generationSefrioui, Chraïbi, Khaïr-Eddine. Writing in French, against France.
- 1965–1990The Arabic-language novelGhallab, Berrada, Zefzaf, Choukri. Moroccan narrative changes language.
- 1958–1980First filmsOusfour, Bnani, Bouanani, Ben Barka. A cinema born without an industry.
- 1985–2000Cinema of the 1990sBenlyazid, Ferhati, Aoulad-Syad. Morocco films itself at last.
Reading keys
- The name reads as a genealogy, with ben or ould for filiation, and the article al often indicates geographical or tribal origin.
- Amazigh names, Ait, Ou-, Aït Ahmed, designate Berber lineages and are distinguishable from Arabic names.
- The kunya, "father of" followed by the name of the eldest child, is a respectful form of address in current use.
- Sharifian families, who claim descent from the Prophet, enjoy a particular status signalled by the title of moulay or of sidi.
- The "years of lead", from 1965 to 1990, with their disappearances and their secret prisons, are a subject opened since the two thousands and long forbidden.
- The monarchy, religion and territorial integrity form three subjects whose criticism remains legally risky.
- The Amazigh question, long denied by the state, has been recognised since 2011, but its literary treatment remains sensitive.
- Refusal is expressed by a pious formula rather than by a no, and the host's insistence is not a pressure.
- Maliki Sunni Islam is the state religion, with a king who bears the title of commander of the faithful.
- The Sufi brotherhoods and the cult of saints, with their shrines and their pilgrimages, are a major social fact, and a saint's moussem gathers crowds.
- The jinn belong to Quranic cosmology, and the possession rites of the Gnawa, of sub-Saharan origin, treat people inhabited by a spirit.
- A Moroccan Jewish community, very old and today much reduced, produced a literature and left shrines visited by both confessions.
- Muslim mourning is brief, with burial on the same day and three days of condolences, then a commemoration on the fortieth.
- The white of the shroud and the saffron colour of festive garments have precise uses.
- The moussem, an annual festival around a saint, mixes pilgrimage, market and competitions, and often serves as a narrative hinge.
- Ramadan reverses the rhythm of the days, and Eid al-Kabir, with the sacrifice of the sheep, commits the economy of a whole family.
- The Berber tales collected in 1887 and 1897, with their comparative apparatus linking each narrative to its European parallels, form the founding documented corpus.
- Anzar, the master of rain who marries a young girl, is a myth still performed as a rite in times of drought.
- Aicha Kandicha, a woman with goat's feet who leads men astray, and the jinn of the springs belong to the common stock.
- Ibn Battuta's narrative is a learned reference that every Moroccan knows by name.
- Morocco was never Ottoman, which distinguishes it from the whole of the rest of the Arab world and explains many institutional differences.
- Amazigh is not a dialect of Arabic but a language of another family, with an alphabet of its own, Tifinagh.
- The cult of saints is not a popular deviation from Islam: it is an old and structured component of it.
- French in Morocco is not the language of the elite alone: it is present in the street, in school and in advertising, without being an official language.
Tales and mythologies 1
- TaleContes berbères du MarocÉmile Laoust · 1949not translated into EnglishTales from central Morocco, the High Atlas and the Anti-Atlas, in which the jackal and the ogre play the leading roles.Literature
A selection to begin with 10 / 52
- NarrativeThe Travels of Ibn Battutaرحلة ابن بطوطةIbn Battuta and Ibn Juzayy · 1355The account of a jurist from Tangier on the Muslim world of the fourteenth century, dictated in Fez on his return and set down in writing by a scholar of the Marinid court.Literature
- NovelL'Œil et la NuitAbdellatif Laâbi · 1969not translated into EnglishA battered body, neither dead nor alive, speaks in the aftermath of a suppressed riot and a lost war.Literature
- NovelTattooed MemoryLa Mémoire tatouéeAbdelkébir Khatibi · 1971The first novel by a Moroccan sociologist, a coming-of-age narrative subtitled “Autobiographie d'un décolonisé”.Literature
- PoetryThe Thousand and Second NightLa Mille et Deuxième NuitMostafa Nissabouri · 1975A long poem by the Souffles generation, in which a resurrected Scheherazade confronts a city of blood and disappearances.Literature
- CinemaOh the Days!الأيام الأيامAhmed El Maânouni · 1978An eldest son dreams of leaving to work in France while his mother wants to keep him in the village, in a fiction acted by peasants.Cinema
- CinemaThe EmbersالجمرةFarida Bourquia · 1982Three orphans, whose father was lynched for a crime he had not committed, search for the real culprit.Cinema
- CinemaThe Barber of the Poor Districtحلاق درب الفقراءMohamed Reggab · 1982A craftsman of Casablanca driven out of his premises by a local notable, and the friend who urges him not to give in.Cinema
- CinemaباموDriss Mrini · 1983Two lovers caught up in the resistance to foreign occupation, in the home of a couple attached to their heritage.Cinema
- NovelThe Sacred NightLa Nuit sacréeTahar Ben Jelloun · 1987The sequel to a cruel tale about a girl raised as a boy, who takes back her woman's name and her freedom.Literature
- CinemaIn Search of My Wife's Husbandالبحث عن زوج امرأتيMohamed Abderrahmane Tazi · 1993A jeweller from Fez sends away his youngest wife, regrets it, and must find her another husband in order to take her back.Cinema