Mustafa is intimate
“Pages from the History of Morocco on Foreign Eyewitnesses” is the title of my book published online in PDF format via my Mon Drive account, with a download link for reading only. And for free. A documentary book composed of selected texts by foreign authors from France, England, Germany and Spain, who visited Morocco and resided in it successively, between the middle of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. Their books are living testimonies of periods in the history of Morocco, land, people, rulers and rulers. They wrote it down, printed it, and disseminated it for their readers in their home countries. Knowing that their ears are not microphones and their eyes are not camera lenses, they are human beings who came to Morocco with their cultural and civilizational backgrounds. They had their preconceptions about Morocco, its people, its system of government and its rulers.
The holders of these certificates were neither historians nor sociologists. The contents of their testimonies are not necessarily historical facts nor scientific interpretations. Some of them are what they saw with their own eyes, and it may be distorted and distorted with good intentions or intentionally due to their backgrounds and moods. Including what they heard about other Moroccan translators, Muslims and Jews, who were often uneducated and superstitious, and from European merchants and diplomats in some Moroccan ports. These mediators also had backgrounds that could distort the facts for good or bad faith. So sorting out what is right from what is wrong remains the prerogative of academic researchers. Despite all this, the first benefit we derive from these testimonies is the outline and documented idea of the Europeans’ view of Morocco in their respective era.
They were all, in one way or another, spies serving the interests of their countries. Their testimonies were used as intelligence documents by the European powers, which, since the discovery of the American continent in October of the year 1492, have become malicious imperialist and colonial powers under the pretext of spreading European civilization. It developed its freedom and became competing with each other to occupy many countries and peoples overseas, in Africa, Asia and America. Each of them had colonial ambitions in Morocco and other parts of the southern Mediterranean near it. And since their books were intelligence material and then were printed and published for the general readership in their countries of origin, it was not in the interest of any of them to refute what was stated in them by those who preceded him or those who were to come after him. Rather, for the sake of their credibility with the readers, especially with the publishers, they undoubtedly sought the truth in their testimonies as much as they could.
However, if we pay attention to all those backgrounds and those prejudices in their testimonies, we can look through them even a glimmer of the truth about the conditions of our country’s past, especially the way of life of the simple people of our ancestors. This is in comparison with the conditions of the peoples of their developed countries. This is something that we still cannot know until today with the testimonies of the Moroccans in those ages and the testimonies of the newsmen among them and those after them.
Matters and events of the past that arouse the attention and curiosity of a foreigner compared to what is happening in his country of origin, Moroccans would not have paid attention to them, because they have very ordinary things that do not deserve reference to them in their books. Mostly mentioned by them is the translations of the flags, the conditions of the rulers, and the political conflicts that occurred between them, with exaggeration in glorifying and sometimes flattering those who write for them from the sultans and princes in their era and in the era of their predecessors, and a bit of contempt and underestimation of their opponents, rightly or wrongly. And all this in exchange for a rare bit of news about the conditions of the land and the living conditions of the simple people who make up the vast majority of the various classes of the people, and about the nature of the unique system of government that they knew nothing else about. For all this, we will continue to discover in the testimonies of those foreigners in those ages what raises a lot of wonder and astonishment in us.
And with their stay in Morocco for a purpose, they will continue to form part of its history for history scholars of the contemporary generation, and their written testimonies will remain with them among its documents. Certificates they cite in their research according to modern scientific methods, and under the supervision of the best professors in various colleges in the Kingdom. For example, what was mentioned of those testimonies in the book “Moroccan Society in the Nineteenth Century” by Professor Ahmed Al-Tawfiq, Minister of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs to this day in the year 2023, was sufficient for us. The same thing is in the book “Between the Assassin and the Bandit.” Road security in pre-colonial Morocco », by Professor Abdel-Ahad El-Sabti. Among the books of those foreigners were those that were translated into Arabic by university professors, such as the book “Exploring Morocco” by the monk Michel Foucault. In view of what the general Moroccans know today about their country’s past through the school curricula and through the various media, they will not be able to help but be amazed, astonished and amazed, and even often deplore what those foreign witnesses reported about the country and the people. News that is well known only to some private, notably academic researchers.
However, translating and publishing these testimonies has great benefits, especially for the youth of today and the youth of tomorrow, so that they are not deceived by the past of their country and under the illusion that it was better than its present simply because its rulers were Muslims. An illusion caused by the contents of the subject of history in our education and in various media, where the focus is always on the bright and bright face in it without its flaws, which were greater and with many of its virtues, according to the books of Muslim historians themselves. And from that delusion, extremism still thrives.
Whereas our ancestors and their rulers are human beings. Just because they are Muslims does not mean that they are infallible. Rather, they, like other human beings, were right and wrong. And as stated above, according to what was mentioned about them in the books of the Muslim historians themselves, they often made more mistakes than they did. One of the cute ones even said: If someone from non-Muslims today wanted to know Islam in order to embrace it and started reading the book The Beginning and the End by Ibn Katheer, he would have preferred to stay on his religion. But what we have grown up in our educational system is to love reading these books, despite their abundance and availability today on the net and for free more than ever before.
We dispense with reading it because we are under the illusion that we have known our history enough through what we have learned in the educational curricula and what we are accustomed to reading, watching and hearing constantly in various media, with the excessive praise and glorification of the past of our ancestors. An illusion that would make the recipients believe that the justice of the caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab, may God be pleased with him, the just and tolerant teachings of the true religion, the thriving civilization of the Abbasids in Baghdad, and the radiance of the Umayyad civilization in Cordoba, all remained in place and prevailed in all Muslim countries throughout the centuries that passed until the era of colonialism came, and that the reason for our backwardness is due to Only to what the country knew of modernity and imported European civilization since the beginning of the era of protection.
By examining the testimonies of those foreigners with what they have and what they owe, and with the criterion of the tolerant purposes of the Sharia, which is represented in the security of the sanctities of preserving life, religion, honour, money and reason, we will realize in general, and our youth in particular, that the present of our country is much better than its past in all aspects of life. Knowing that no human society has ever been free of corruption, and it will never be free of it. We realize that what we are still suffering from in terms of corruption and bad conditions is much less than the bad conditions of our predecessors. The correct comparison between the present and the past to assess the country’s progress or regression is to compare each class of society today with its counterpart in the past, the poor of today with the poor of yesterday, not the poor of today with the rich of today, the rich of today with the rich of yesterday, the rulers of today with the rulers of yesterday, and so forth. There is no way to do that without knowing history as it is, with its good and bad times, instead of limiting itself to mentioning the glorious pages, although they are few in it. With those convictions, we will pity our ancestors, rulers and ruled, without judging them. Rather, we appreciate their circumstances and the constraints that were burdening them. But we are well aware of their mistakes as human beings, so we do not repeat them in any way. At the same time, we thank God for the innumerable blessings of the present compared to the shortcomings of the past, so we strive for more progress for the country forward, far from every extremism that would threaten the security of the country and the people in order to reproduce delusional glories.
Thus, I benefited a lot from reading the contents of these foreign testimonies, and I translated what caught my attention in them into Arabic in my book mentioned above. I translated passages that illuminated for me aspects of our country’s past that were shrouded in thick ambiguity in my mind, and there are many of them, especially those related to the conditions of the land, the living conditions of the simple people, and the mode of government. Translated and published on the network for the generalization of interest. I hope that reading it will open up the appetite of the honorable reader so that he may familiarize himself with such works in their original languages, or those that have been translated for those who do not know how to read in those languages. With the hope that everyone who can volunteer to translate the rest of it into Arabic so that the benefit will prevail. And with the hope that academic researchers will be interested in simplifying and generalizing their valuable scientific productions in the subject of Moroccan history, which reveal its truth with its sweetness and bitterness, and not only its bright and bright face. Finally, I call upon the various media outlets to take an interest in these researches in order to arouse the curiosity of their followers, so that they may look at them and benefit from their contents, and enjoy discovering what is hidden from them from the history of their country and their ancestors.