Reading reform beyond the state

Salwat al-Anfas, Islamic revival and Moroccan national history

Bibliographic Data

ID3979581
AuthorsSahar Bazzaz (College of the Holy Cross, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume13
Issue1
Pages1-13
Publication date2008-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of North African Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1362-9387 • E-ISSN: 1743-9345
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13629380701528853
OpenAlexW2064822624
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited14

In recent years, scholars of North Africa have shown increasing interest in the pre-Protectorate period of Moroccan history (1860–1912). Like their counterparts, who study the Ottoman lands to the east, scholars view the Moroccan nineteenth century as an era of reform and nascent nationalism. However, while historians of the Ottoman lands have increasingly attempted to step away from state-centred and ‘trickle-down’ views of the Tanzimat period, in Moroccan studies, a state-centred paradigm still dominates at the expense of cultural and intellectual histories of the era. This article turns the spotlight away from state-centred narratives of early Moroccan modernisation, anti-colonialism and nationalism by analysing Muhammad bin Ja'far al-Kattani's Salwat al-Anfas (1887). Salwat al-Anfas reveals a vision of pre-colonial Moroccan state and society in which power is multi-valent, diffuse and brokered by religio-political elites known as shurafa. By reading this text in tandem with extant narratives of the Moroccan encounter with European imperial expansion, this article seeks to stimulate discussion about the way scholars view the processes associated with the country's transition to modernity. Considered against the backdrop of the emergence of the authoritarian Moroccan monarchy after independence from France in 1956, the emancipatory implications of alternative historical narratives based on previously neglected sources come into greater focus. Keywords: NationalismNorth AfricaHistoriographyNineteenth-CenturyHagiography This work was first presented at the Morocco Forum at Harvard University's Centre for Middle Eastern Studies in November 2004. A more developed version of the research was presented at the Middle East Studies Association annual meeting in November 2006. The author would like to thank Noel Cary, Kouross Esmaeli, Leila Farsakh, Dimitris Keridis, Susan G. Miller, Susan Rodgers and Karen Turner for their invaluable comments on successive drafts of this paper. Notes 1. In an overview of three important scholarly journals – Hespéris-Tamuda, al-Qantara, Archives Marocaines – dedicated to North African history and culture, I only came across two articles, which either cite Salwat al-Anfas or discuss it as a literary text. There are some exceptions. For example, see Sebti Citation(1991). Recently, Bettina Dennerlein Citation(2006) has published an article about Salwa. 2. It is important to emphasise that scholars of Morocco have acknowledged the usefulness of hagiography and employed the genre very successfully to write histories of the late Medieval period, that is, the era before the consolidation of Sharifism under the Alawis. See, for example, Ferhat and Triki Citation(1986) and Cornell (1997). Abdelahad Sebti's scholarship is unique in that he uses hagiography to write post-Sa'di history. See Sebti Citation(1992). 3. Levi-Provençal cites Henry de Castries, author of Sources Inédits de l'Histoire du Maroc: ‘au point de vue de l'incertitude des faits et des jugements, il n'y a pas d'histoire qui soit comparable à celle du Maroc’. Referring to the availability of Moroccan sources, he adds ‘ces sources nouvelles contribueront à dissiper cette incertitude; mais y suffiront-elles?’ (Levi-Provençal Citation1922, pp. 4–5). Levi-Provençal's approach to texts such as Salwa reflects the empiricist and positivist legacies of nineteenth century European ‘scientific’ historical tradition embodied in the search for history ‘as it actually happened’ by letting the primary sources ‘speak for themselves’. On the development of the concept of scientific history see Iggers Citation(1984); on critiques of scientific history see Clark Citation(2004). 4. ‘L'un des caractères les plus saillants du Maroc moderne est, en effet, sa haine du chagement. Alors que en Europe, il faut tirer parti de tous les documents contemporains pour se représenter de manière exacte le tableau d'une société à peine disparu disparue, au Maroc, plus encore qu'en tout autre pays d'Islâm, peut-être parce que l'esprit traditionaliste du Musulman s'y est accru de l'esprit conservateur du Berbère, on resent une impression constante de stagnation absolue, on est frappe par une atonie dominante, un manqué de plans successifs, de cadres, qui mettent, comme ailleurs, tout en place dans le passé’ (Levi-Provençal Citation1922, pp. 10–11). On the problem of utilising modern and Western categories of analysis to read indigenous societies see Chakrabarty (Citation2002, pp. xxii–xxiii). 5. Prasanjit Duara draws on Michel Foucault's concept of ‘genealogy’ in order to investigate the ‘strategies of closure’ whereby positivist history wins out over other pre-existing, pre-modern and non-Western historical epistemologies (Duara Citation1995, p. 17). 6. Kattani Citation(2004). The recently published version of Salwa differs significantly from the original manuscript; the editors have introduced a number of modern elements such as paragraphs, diacritical marks, separation of biographical entries from one another, and inclusion of the dates of death of each mutarjam at the beginning of the entry. When I began my study of Salwa, it had not been published, and therefore, I worked with a copy of the text in its lithographed manuscript form. In this article, I cite pages from the printed edition. 7. Some new perspectives have emerged regarding the role of society in the transformations associated with the transition to modernity in the Middle East and North Africa. Some examples of this include McDougall Citation(2006); Powell Citation(2003); Makdisi Citation(2002). 8. Abdallah Laroui's groundbreaking Les Origines Sociales et Culturelles du Nationalisme Marocain, 1830–1912 is the best example of the state-centred history. Laroui relied on indigenous sources to show how in the nineteenth century, during the height of European expansion in North Africa, the Moroccan state had acted as the principle driving force behind efforts to reform and modernise Moroccan society. Laroui emphasises the activities of the Alawi-controlled makhzan, which was involved in a process of centralisation and modernisation of its army, bureaucracy and administration in the wake of European threats to Moroccan territorial sovereignty. The measure of modernity, according to Laroui's perspective, was related to the ability of the Moroccan state to reform itself along European lines. He argued that the reasons for the makhzan's failure to reform Moroccan society in the wake of nineteenth century European expansion had its basis in traditional Moroccan culture and society and its resistance to modern concepts. In particular, Laroui located the failure to modernise with the Moroccan religio-political elite, namely, the ulama (legal scholars versed in Islamic law), the shurafa, the heads of mystical brotherhoods, and the indigenous institutions of Muslim learning (the madrasas, mosque colleges and sufi lodges) (Laroui Citation1993). 9. Here, I refer to sultan ‘Abd al-Hafiz's capture and murder in 1909 of al-Kattani's cousin, Muhammad bin ‘Abd al-Kabir al-Kattani. Muhammad bin ‘Abd al-Kabir was the shaykh of the Kattaniyya Tariqa who spearheaded the anti-colonial ‘Hafiziyya’ uprising in 1907. During the Hafiziyya, al-Kattani and his supporters demanded the dethronement of the ruling sultan, ‘Abd al-’Aziz, because he had failed to uphold the sharia and thus to protect Morocco against foreign incursion. In his place, the Kattaniyya supported the sultan's brother, ‘Abd al-Hafiz, who promised to rule according to the principle of power-sharing put forward by the Kattaniyya in the bay of Fez. When ‘Abd al-Hafiz proved incapable of/unwilling to uphold his end of the deal al-Kattani fled Fez in protest. For details on the conflict, see Bazzaz Citation(2002). On the bay'a of Fez, see Tawfiq Citation(1987); on the Hafiziyya Uprising, see Burke Citation(1993). 10. The authority of an historiographic text (its ‘truth’) is based in the author's claim to have carefully examined the works of the ‘ancients’ from within the Islamic discursive tradition and to have ascertained to the best of his ability, the validity of chains of transmission (isnad) of individual biographies, of stories he relates or of miraculous deeds performed by those he eulogises. The criterion for evaluation of historiographical work was not authorial individuality or ‘creativity’ but rather the authoritative rigor of the collection process and the on verification of a proper chain of transmission of such information. Robinson adds that while Islamic historiography would emancipate itself from the process of hadith learning, historians ‘continued to represent (or as it happened, misrepresent) their methods in terms of hadith transmission’ (Robinson Citation2003, pp. 16, 173). 11. Prasanjit Duara's work on Chinese nationalism, modernisation and the rise of positivist Chinese historical consciousness offers a useful framework for considering the silence surrounding Salwa and the implications of its revival as a source for the study of Moroccan modernisation. Duara argues that modernisation and the rise of nationalism in China in the early twentieth century necessitated the development and adoption of a new form of historical consciousness. Duara designates the new historical ‘mode of being’ as ‘History’ with a capital ‘H’, suggesting its totalising and hegemonic power vis-à-vis alternative ‘social and epistemic forms’, which he terms simply ‘history’ with lower case ‘h’. The Hegelian unfolding of Spirit is expressed in modern history in terms of Marxism, Weber's sociology of religion and in terms of nationalism all of which are Hegelian ‘inheritances’ (Duara Citation1995, pp. 18 and 27). 12. The term, ‘model persons’ comes from William Graham's discussion of ‘traditionalism’ – a historical mode of being which is characteristic of traditional Islamic societies (among others) and in which ‘a personally guaranteed connection to a model past, and especially with model persons, offers the only sound basis ... for forming and reforming one's society in any age’ (William Graham cited in Zaman Citation2002, p. 3). Qasim Zaman nuances Graham's definition by historicising the notion of ‘traditional society’, which is unquestioned in Graham's work. Here I summarise Zaman's reading of three authors regarding the concept of an Islamic tradition: William Graham, Alasdair MacIntyre and Talal Asad. Zaman draws on Asad's reading of MacIntyre as a way of avoiding the pitfall of essentialism in his discussion of ‘tradition’. Zaman's reading is important in this regard: ‘This discursive tradition is constituted and reconstituted not only by an ongoing interaction between past and present, however, but also by the manner in which relations of power and other forms of contestation and conflict impinge on any definition of what it is to be Muslim. Such a view of Islam, Asad suggests, helps avoid essentialist constructions that strive to judge all facets of Islamic thought, ideals, and practice in terms of how they relate to (or, more often than not, fail to relate to) Islam's foundational texts, even as it seeks to steer clear of the temptation to reduce the variety of religious and cultural expressions to different, local “islams”’ (Zaman Citation2002, p. 6). 13. Moroccans venerated the shurafa as saints, whose sainthood, in turn, was expressed in terms of knowledge. Vincent Cornell has argued that to be considered a saint by others was to be endowed with authority by them. Belief in a saint's knowledge was central to this process whether it be grounded in the saint's ability to perform miracles and receive illuminations or could be juridical (sharia) or mystical (haqiqa); or it could be all of the above or any combination (Cornell Citation1998, pp. 275–276). 14. There are certainly important examples of these genres in Morocco before the sixteenth century, most notably Zayyati's, al-Tashawwuf bi Rijjal al-Tasawwuf. However, the largest extant body of historical literature comes from the period starting in the sixteenth century (Levi-Provençal Citation1922). 15. For a detailed discussion of Sharifism, its connection to Sufism and to the role of saintly authority in medieval and early modern Morocco, see Vincent Cornell's, ‘Mystical doctrine and political action in Moroccan Sufism: the role of the exemplar in the Tariqa al-Jazuliyya’ Citation(1992). 16. Vincent Cornell and Abdelahad Sebti view hagiography as the history of ‘baraka’, i.e. of power and authority (Sebti Citation1986, Cornell Citation1998). Prasanjit Duara emphasises that ‘Totalizing, self-conscious political communities have ... always been around long before nation-states made their appearance. Moreover, in present times, the nation-state has not been able to exhaust the identifications of the individual, nor, for that matter, has it been able to confine the meaning of the nation to its representations. Modern nation-states have to confront or engage with other, including historical, representations of community’ (Duara Citation1995, p. 9). 17. In the Islamic tradition, this epistemological pluralism is expressed in the binary sharia/haqiqa, ‘ilm/ma'rifa or fiqh/tasawwuf). See Bazzaz Citation(2002). 18. Salwa’s size and complexity as a text suggest that it is an extremely rich terrain for further investigation. Therefore, the analysis presented here must be considered preliminary. For example, determining hierarchy within the text will require further investigation. In addition, the question of the relationship to Sufism and law in Salwa is also fertile ground for analysis. 19. Spiegel's concept of the ‘social logic of the text’ offers a useful method for addressing the complex relationship between text and context – a relationship that historians no longer take for granted as a result of the ‘linguistic turn’, post-structuralism and deconstruction (Spiegel Citation1990, pp. 77, 83). 20. The basic narrative of the Idrisid dynasty can be found in Jamil Abun-Nasr Citation(1987). Abu-Nasr relies on Ibn Abi Zar's Citation(1932) history of Fez for his narrative. 21. On Kattaniyya relations with the Tijaniyya and Darqawiyya mystical orders see Bazzaz (Citation2002, Chapter 3). 22. Kattani (Citation1911, p. 378). Sidi Abd al-Rahman (r.1839–1856) initiated the practice of visitation of the tomb of a holy man, named Maway al-Tayyib al-Kattani, who had only recently died (d.1837/1838). Upon departing from or returning to Fez, the sultan and his entourage visited the tomb of Mawlay al-Tayyib al-Kattani in order to pray and make ritual offerings (Kattani Citation1911, p. 331). 23. On competition among the Moroccan mystical orders in the late nineteenth century see Bazzaz (Citation2002, Chapter 3). 24. Kattani (Citation2004, Vol. 3, p. 288). This du'a' is one of the few overt expressions of a political agenda in Salwa. It appears in the biographical entry of Sultan Abd al-Aziz, who was the reigning sultan at the time Salwa went to press in 1898. 25. Al-Kattani did finally compose Nasihat ahl al-Islam [Advice to Muslims] in 1908, during the Hafiziyya Uprising when Moroccans demanded better governance on the part of the Moroccan sultanate. 26. Kattani (Citation2004, Vol. 1, p. 3). Here, al-Kattani repeats a trope of the Muslim historical tradition (see Afsaruddin 1999). 27. The question of al-Kattani's authorial voice in Salwa is complicated and is beyond the scope of this article. However, he expresses a desire to create a legacy for himself and to achieve personal salvation. In the introduction to Vol. 1, al-Kattani explains that writing ensures a scholar's legacy: ‘[It] is the reason for their fame in life and the preservation of their memory after their death’. As a pious man of God and a scholar of Islamic law, al-Kattani expressed his own personal desire for salvation in the afterlife. After all is said and done, he explained, ‘narrat[ing] the deeds of the saliheen’ ensures ‘[God's] mercy ... [upon him who narrates]’ (Kattani Citation2004, Vol. 1, pp. 2, 5, 13). 28. The author writes, ‘I began by mentioning those (graves) located within the city and its walls ... organizing them according to their location and not according to chronology’. He adds, ‘this method is easier for the pilgrim who seeks with certainty (the location of graves)’ (Kattani Citation2004, Vol. 1, p. 10). 29. Kattani (Citation2004, Vol. 1, p. 83). There are numerous references to Idris' status as a saint (wali) and mystic (ahl al-ma'rifa). For example, Idris bin Idris is ‘among the axials of the age (ahl al-qutbaniyya) and [among those who function in the world of] sovereignty as is the way of the spiritually exemplary’ (Kattani Citation2004, Vol. 1, p. 82). 30. Al-Kattani cites the highly influential nineteenth century sufi revivalist, Ahmad al-Tijani (2004, Vol. 1, p. 82). 31. On literary topoi in Moroccan hagiography, see Abdelahad Sebti Citation(1988); Kilito Citation(1999). 32. Kattani (Citation2004, Vol. 3, pp. 282–287). It is significant to note that these gestures of piety and generosity on the part of the Alawis focus specifically on places/spaces associated with the acquisition of knowledge in all its forms. Saints' tombs were sources of soteriological/mystical knowledge whereas madrasas and mosques were associated with discursive forms of knowledge. 33. This is a direct reference to ziyara and the cult of the saints. 34. Kattani (Citation2004, Vol. 1, p. 391). Al-Kattani cites Abi Malik Sidi Abd al-Wahid bin Muhammad al-Fassi among others. Ghayat al-Amaniyya wa Irtiqa' al-Ratab al-'Uliya fi Dhikr al-Ansab al-Saqalliyya. There is a branch of the Saqalliyyin who are descendants of Husayn, rather than of Hasan. However, on the basis of the genealogical charts provided by George Drague, and also because the Husaynid shurafa in Salwa do not carry the title ‘al-sharif’ (as far as I have been able to discern) ascribed to other shurafa, I have concluded that the Tahiriyyin-Siqilliyyin are in fact Idrisids (Drague Citation1951, Tableau I and II). 35. Kattani (Citation2004, Vol. 1, p. 393). 36. Therefore, unlike the previous examples, the veracity of the occurrence is based not on previous genealogy of authors and authoritative texts but rather on the reliability of the author himself. 37. Kattani (Citation2004, Vol. 1, pp. 79–80). 38. During the time of troubles between 1727 and 1757, central authority in Fez was weak. Fez was virtually controlled by the rumat and their clients, who relied on coercion and violence to promote their interests. For instance, the outcome of a succession struggle between two Alawi princes, Mawlay Abd Allah and Mawlay Muhammad Ibn Ariba in the 1730s was determined by the rumat (Mansour Citation1997, p. 88). 39. Their rising status within the shurafa' hierarchy is suggested by the numerous gestures on the part of the makhzan toward the family during the century. 40. On the Kattaniyya revivalist movement see Sahar Bazzaz Citation(2002

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