CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2022
| Author | Mamon, Morgan Jaye |
|---|---|
| Title | Concepts, Conquests, and Contexts: Portrayals of the Seventh-Century Islamic Conquests in Modern Histories of Morocco |
| Summary | This thesis analyzes instances of historical writing that have contributed to a nationalist discourse about Morocco and its history. I explore how modern historians, writing in both Arabic and French, construct and define their historical objects of analysis, and how these historical objects are rendered in chronological and narrative form. In order to compare these historiographical elements in different texts, I examine the construction of historical narratives about one particular historical event: the Islamic conquests of the Maghrib in the seventh century. Chapter One is a study of the “first national history” of Morocco, Kitāb al-Istiqṣā, written by Aḥmad ibn Khālid al-Nāṣirī (1835-97). Al-Nā e63;irī&# x2019;s primary historical object is the “Maghrib al-Aqṣā,” a spatial concept associated with the territory of the royal ʿAlawī sultanate. The seventh-century conquests of the Maghrib serve as a critical narrative juncture in al-Nā e63;irī&# x2019;s text because they connect Arabian Islamic dynastic history to the space of the Maghrib al-Aqṣā. In this way, al-Nā e63;irī&# x2019;s conquest narrative weaves together the ideas of territorial sovereignty and dynastic continuity, both of which were central to the discourse of the ʿAlawī sultanate at the end of the nineteenth century. In Chapter Two, I explore how French colonial scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries employed different historical objects to tell the history of the seventh-century conquests. The historical writings of Ernest Mercier (1840-1907) and Émile-Félix Gautier (1864-1940) are narratives about the region of “North Africa” (in French, l’Afrique septentrionale and L’Afrique du Nord) and its inhabitants, the Arab and Berber races. By examining Mercier’s and Gautier’s definition and usage of these concepts, I show that they understood the region and its inhabitants as unchanging. Due to this underlying assumption, the arguments that these authors make about the past of North Africa are directly linked to their understandings of the colonial present. Indeed, my analysis demonstrates how these authors’ historical writings about the Islamic conquest of North Africa reflected their political opinions on modalities of French colonization of the region. Chapter Three focuses on the 1948 history al-Ḥarakāt al-istiqlāliyya fī al-Maghrib al-ʿarabī (1948) penned by the Moroccan nationalist ʿAllal al-Fāsī (1910-1974). In this text, al-Fāsī asserts the historical existence of a Maghribī patriotism, carried by all Maghribians, in the region of the “Arab Maghrib.” Al-Fāsī does not treat the coming of Islam in the seventh century as a conquest. Rather, it was a moment of transformation which affirmed and strengthened the patriotic spirit of the Maghrib. I argue that, on the one hand, this conception of Maghribī history refuted the claims made by colonial scholars. Whereas scholars like Gautier argued that North Africa congenitally lacked political consciousness, al-Fāsī renders political consciousness the central focus of his history. On the other hand, al-Fāsī’s nationalist conception of an everlasting country and region, with a homogeneous and enduring people, mirrors the conceptual framing of French colonial authors. To conclude, I examine how al-Fāsī’s narrative locates Moroccan religiopolitical authority among all Maghribians, rather than in the figure of the sultan. This perspective contrasts with that of al-Nāṣirī, who bolstered the exclusive authority of the royal ʿAlawī sultanate through his historical narrative. |
| Supervisor | Al-Azmeh, Aziz; Al-Bagdadi, Nadia |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2022/mamon_morgan-jaye.pdf |
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