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British Society for Middle Eastern Studies Morocco in the Reign of Mawlay Sulayman by Mohamed El Mansour Review by: Susan Gilson Miller British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2 (1992), pp. 204-206 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/195703 . Accessed: 08/05/2014 17:11 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Taylor & Francis, Ltd. and British Society for Middle Eastern Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 17:11:05 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Morocco in the Reign of Mawlay Sulaymanby Mohamed El Mansour

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Page 1: Morocco in the Reign of Mawlay Sulaymanby Mohamed El Mansour

British Society for Middle Eastern Studies

Morocco in the Reign of Mawlay Sulayman by Mohamed El MansourReview by: Susan Gilson MillerBritish Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2 (1992), pp. 204-206Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/195703 .

Accessed: 08/05/2014 17:11

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Taylor & Francis, Ltd. and British Society for Middle Eastern Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 17:11:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Morocco in the Reign of Mawlay Sulaymanby Mohamed El Mansour

although Masters does not mention this specifically, there seems to have been a deep-rooted and not altogether unfounded fear of shortages, especially of food, which meant that there was little or no encouragement of exports.

Masters ranges over a wide canvas, showing, for instance, how profits were made, how they were invested and how trade was financed. It appears that the bulk of loans (both in number and amount) were to villagers from more or less wealthy townspeople, to enable them to pay taxes, which, with the spread of iltizdm by the mid- to late-seventeenth century, had become an almost intolerable burden in the countryside. The villagers would sometimes pledge arable lands (fildha, mazra'a) as surety, with the result that, if and when they defaulted, the lands would pass to their urban creditors; as in the Balkans, and around Bursa, the transfer, in some sense, of 'ownership' of agricultural lands which was not, under Ottoman law, 'supposed to happen,' was evidently taking place in northern Syria (pp.157, 169) by the mid-seventeenth century. Unfortunately, the small number of cases cited does not enable us to understand how general such a procedure was, or, in reality, exactly what was happening.

In a particularly interesting section Masters traces the process through which long-distance trade gradually passed out of the control of Muslims and into the control of Aleppine Christians, and of Armenian Christians from Julfa, who monopolized silk imports from Iran into the Ottoman Empire. In 1690, some 1230 out of a total of 5400 jizya payers in the city were 'foreigners', mostly Armenians or Christians from other parts of the Empire, some of whom lobbied successfully to be released from payment of jizya on the grounds that they were already paying it at home. European merchants, as is well known, benefitted from a special status under the capitulations (imtiydzdt); they came to have little commercial contact with Muslim merchants on the grounds that they felt unable to get a fair hearing in court cases involving disputes over money owed to them (pp.66-67).

Increasingly, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, richer members of the Orthodox (Melkite) and Jacobite (Suriani) communities of Aleppo converted to Catholicism, generally in order to come under the protection of the European powers, especially France. They also became agents and dragomans of other European states (Venice, Tuscany) and the English Levant Company, in whose service they received a berat, giving them exemptions and privileges very similar to those which their European employers enjoyed under the capitulations. In time, this special status meant that wealthy Muslims also began to employ these same 'Uniate' Christians as agents, especially in the trade with Egypt. Again, it is difficult to conceive of this as Ottoman 'policy', more a series of almost accidental conjunctures which benefitted the Europeans and their proteges.

This is a rich and suggestive collection, one of a number of recent publications which shows the wealth of social, economic and political analysis which can be derived from the Islamic court records and the Ottoman archives. In his dedication Masters acknowledges the debt that those working in this field owe to the pioneering work of Professor Rafeq; it is difficult to imagine how these studies would have advanced to their present level without Rafeq's early industry and his wise, generous and constant assistance. More recently Masters has taken the story of European economic penetration in Aleppo a stage further with 'The 1850 events in Aleppo; an aftershock of Syria's incorporation into the world capitalist system' (International Journal of Middle East Studies, 22 (1990), pp.3-20). Further contributions on his part are eagerly awaited.

HISTORY DEPARTMENT, PETER SLUGLETT UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

MOROCCO IN THE REIGN OF MAWLAY SULAYMAN. By MOHAMED EL MANSOUR. Cambridgeshire, MENAS Press, 1990. 248 pp. + bibliography.

E. Levi-Proven;al, the eminent French orientalist who spent years in Morocco collecting and copying Arabic manuscripts, wrote in the opening pages of his Les Historians des Chorfa (Paris, 1922) that 'for the bibliophile, Morocco is a soil fertile and rich in promises, but terribly stony'. Ushered into a private library, he would seat himself 'in an unfamiliar posture' close to the floor, open the pages of a worn and faded manuscript, and feel the leap of excitement at having found a work whose existence he had suspected but dared not hope to find. Then the moment of truth,

although Masters does not mention this specifically, there seems to have been a deep-rooted and not altogether unfounded fear of shortages, especially of food, which meant that there was little or no encouragement of exports.

Masters ranges over a wide canvas, showing, for instance, how profits were made, how they were invested and how trade was financed. It appears that the bulk of loans (both in number and amount) were to villagers from more or less wealthy townspeople, to enable them to pay taxes, which, with the spread of iltizdm by the mid- to late-seventeenth century, had become an almost intolerable burden in the countryside. The villagers would sometimes pledge arable lands (fildha, mazra'a) as surety, with the result that, if and when they defaulted, the lands would pass to their urban creditors; as in the Balkans, and around Bursa, the transfer, in some sense, of 'ownership' of agricultural lands which was not, under Ottoman law, 'supposed to happen,' was evidently taking place in northern Syria (pp.157, 169) by the mid-seventeenth century. Unfortunately, the small number of cases cited does not enable us to understand how general such a procedure was, or, in reality, exactly what was happening.

In a particularly interesting section Masters traces the process through which long-distance trade gradually passed out of the control of Muslims and into the control of Aleppine Christians, and of Armenian Christians from Julfa, who monopolized silk imports from Iran into the Ottoman Empire. In 1690, some 1230 out of a total of 5400 jizya payers in the city were 'foreigners', mostly Armenians or Christians from other parts of the Empire, some of whom lobbied successfully to be released from payment of jizya on the grounds that they were already paying it at home. European merchants, as is well known, benefitted from a special status under the capitulations (imtiydzdt); they came to have little commercial contact with Muslim merchants on the grounds that they felt unable to get a fair hearing in court cases involving disputes over money owed to them (pp.66-67).

Increasingly, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, richer members of the Orthodox (Melkite) and Jacobite (Suriani) communities of Aleppo converted to Catholicism, generally in order to come under the protection of the European powers, especially France. They also became agents and dragomans of other European states (Venice, Tuscany) and the English Levant Company, in whose service they received a berat, giving them exemptions and privileges very similar to those which their European employers enjoyed under the capitulations. In time, this special status meant that wealthy Muslims also began to employ these same 'Uniate' Christians as agents, especially in the trade with Egypt. Again, it is difficult to conceive of this as Ottoman 'policy', more a series of almost accidental conjunctures which benefitted the Europeans and their proteges.

This is a rich and suggestive collection, one of a number of recent publications which shows the wealth of social, economic and political analysis which can be derived from the Islamic court records and the Ottoman archives. In his dedication Masters acknowledges the debt that those working in this field owe to the pioneering work of Professor Rafeq; it is difficult to imagine how these studies would have advanced to their present level without Rafeq's early industry and his wise, generous and constant assistance. More recently Masters has taken the story of European economic penetration in Aleppo a stage further with 'The 1850 events in Aleppo; an aftershock of Syria's incorporation into the world capitalist system' (International Journal of Middle East Studies, 22 (1990), pp.3-20). Further contributions on his part are eagerly awaited.

HISTORY DEPARTMENT, PETER SLUGLETT UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

MOROCCO IN THE REIGN OF MAWLAY SULAYMAN. By MOHAMED EL MANSOUR. Cambridgeshire, MENAS Press, 1990. 248 pp. + bibliography.

E. Levi-Proven;al, the eminent French orientalist who spent years in Morocco collecting and copying Arabic manuscripts, wrote in the opening pages of his Les Historians des Chorfa (Paris, 1922) that 'for the bibliophile, Morocco is a soil fertile and rich in promises, but terribly stony'. Ushered into a private library, he would seat himself 'in an unfamiliar posture' close to the floor, open the pages of a worn and faded manuscript, and feel the leap of excitement at having found a work whose existence he had suspected but dared not hope to find. Then the moment of truth,

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Page 3: Morocco in the Reign of Mawlay Sulaymanby Mohamed El Mansour

when the eager request to make a copy was met ... more often than not ... with a polite yet firm refusal. In the colonial period, the private library was one of the few domains that Moroccans were able to preserve on their own terms.

Today the doors to these hidden collections, while not exactly thrown open, certainly stand ajar. The researches of Moroccan bibliographers have greatly enlarged our knowledge of the available materials, and a younger generation of scholars trained in classical Arabic and conversant with current methodologies are beginning to make use of them. In the past dozen or so years, Moroccan historians have begun producing studies firmly based on local sources that are setting high standards for excellence. This is certainly true of Morocco in the Reign of Mawlay Sulayman, the first full-length study of the misunderstood sultan who ruled from 1792 to 1822 and was a pivotal figure in Morocco's entry into the modern era.

Why 'misunderstood'? Professor El Mansour says that colonialist historians transformed Mawlay Sulayman into a dark and brooding figure who presided over Morocco's withdrawal into 'premeditated isolationism' because of his religious fanaticism and deep-seated hatred of the West, while Moroccan historians saw him as a weak and indecisive figure. Both images need revision, he maintains. Hence his dual purpose: to 'fill a gap' in Moroccan historiography while 'rectify[ing] a number of misconceptions' about this much maligned monarch. One strength of this study lies in the stunning array of material the author has amassed to reconstruct the events of the period. Not content with rereading the well-known official chronicles such as al-Nasiri's al-Istiqsi' or al- Zayafin's al-Turjumaina al-Kubrd, El Mansour delves into the archives to find correspondence, travel accounts, risalas, fatwds, fahrasas (lists of teachers), jawdbs (religious discourses), kunnishas (notebooks), khutbas (sermons) and taqylds (notes) having a bearing on his subject. The narrative is also enriched by pertinent material from the French and British diplomatic archives. In other words, what we have here is a broad synthetic account founded largely on unpublished sources which have never before seen the light of modern scholarship. Anyone familiar with the difficult literary style and the deplorable physical state of much of this material has to be truly impressed with El Mansour's accomplishment.

Mawlay Sulayman rose to power in 1792 in the aftermath of one of those convulsions of internecine violence that so often provided the coda to one sultan's reign and the overture to another's. His father was the much-admired Muhammad III who had opened Morocco's doors to European trade. But this eighteenth-century Moroccan infitd.h produced the inevitable pendulum swing, and it was over a mood of rejectionism that Sulayman rose to preside. By training he was a scholar rather than a military man, and he probably would have preferred to spend his life quietly among his books rather than in the turbulent seat of power. He was 'ill-prepared' to govern, it was noted, and knew nothing of the rigours of the Sultanate. A profound elitist, he showed character flaws early on that impaired his ability to rule: he was obstinate and a poor judge of people, said al-Zayani, and the anonymous author of al-Ibtisalm reported that he not only prevented his ministers from shaping policy, but even forbade his secretaries from correcting the grammar of his letters (p.22).

This authoritarian, unbending personality was thrust into power during a period of fluidity in Morocco's relationship with both West and East. Morocco occupied a front seat overlooking the panorama of European conflict that followed the French revolution, and Moroccans both high and low viewed battle-hungry Europeans, and France in particular, as a dangerous threat. 'During Mawlay Sulayman's reign', says El Mansour, 'Moroccans on both the official and popular levels were constantly obsessed with the specter of invasion by a European power' (p. 1 1). Events further east reinforced the perception of a Europe bent on a new conquest of Islam. News of the French invasion of Egypt in 1798 soon reached Morocco and was seen as 'a great calamity'. The Ibtisim told how French soldiers were 'desecrating the al-Azhar' and the author Sulayman al-Hawwat drew a parallel between the loss of Muslim Spain and the invasion of Egypt. A sense of vulnerability and even impending doom took hold. Professor El Mansour convincingly argues that what appeared to European observers to be xenophobic behaviour was in fact a reflex response to a sense of impotence.

Fear and excitement about European intentions did not abate until the later years of Sulayman's reign, but by then profound changes had been set in motion that would have a lasting effect. In 1820, the Sultan dismantled the last two ships of his navy and gave them away to the Dey of Algiers, thus stripping his regime of its defense by sea. Furthermore, responding to his own distaste for foreigners and armed with fatwds from the Fasi 'ulama', he forbade his countrymen from travelling to Europe on the grounds that it was contrary to the Holy Law; after 1816 Moroccans could not venture abroad without his express permission. Commerce with Europe also

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Page 4: Morocco in the Reign of Mawlay Sulaymanby Mohamed El Mansour

dried up, both because of a decline in internal production, and because of the gradual attrition of the Saharan transit trade. Foreign consuls and agents were encouraged to leave, and their places were filled by local Jews: 'All are welcome to leave the country', Sulaymfn reportedly said, 'as one of my Jews can import whatever commission I order' (p.67, my italics). Unlike his father, Mawlay Sulayman decided that foreign trade would not be the bedrock of state fiscal policy, but rather a 'necessary evil' that would remain on the margins of the economy.

Instead, he turned to the Moroccan heartland to supply the resources needed to sustain the state, milking the tribes through the traditional Qur'anic taxes of zakat and 'ushr. The essence of his internal policy was to bind the periphery closer to the centre through a new and more stringent web of military and fiscal obligations, incorporating tribes and territories that traditionally had been beyond the Sultan's reach. The middle years of his rule were years of abundance, and the rural populations had little difficulty satisfying the government's needs; but after 1818, a series of natural disasters struck that threatened the core-periphery equilibrium and compromised the authority of a Makhzan not significantly more powerful than those constituent groups over which it sought to rule. Despite the impending crisis, the Sultan stubbornly continued his policy of taxing the countryside heavily. As one would imagine, the rural response was explosive, making the last phase of Sulayman's reign one of rebelliousness which he was unable to diffuse either by negotiation or by force. Hence, the image of his whole era as one of violence and discontent is an image which holds good only for his declining years.

Mawlay Sulayman's inflexibility was a fatal defect that ultimately alienated him from society at large. In no area did his rigidity show itself more blatantly than in religion. He was deeply pious, but his rigourism in matters of faith arose from an unyielding intellectualism and contempt for popular Islam. Personally, he was repelled by the saint worship and reverence for the Prophet's descendants that characterized local belief, and he used his authority to try to uproot long- standing practices dear to his people. He deplored the use of music, dance and trance to induce a mystical communion with God, and banned the visitations and the annual fairs (mawsims) that were the economic mainstay of the religious orders. This battle against popular belief nearly caused his downfall, for it placed him in direct confrontation with two primary social groups-the religious nobility (shurafd') and the brotherhoods (tarlqdt). By the end of his reign, he was faced with a massive uprising that started in the capital city of Fes and soon spread to the countryside. The French consul wrote in the summer of 1817 that 'the saints ... who have a great influence on the people of towns and countryside, invoke in their prayers to give them another king' (p. 187).

Despite the uproar, Mawlay Sulayman grimly held on to power to the bitter end, and died on the throne. His onslaught on the body politic darkened his last days, and contributed to his negative aura in the popular imagination. El Mansour's work does not wholly disperse that image, but rather gives it nuance by sketching in the lights and shadows. Sulayman's push toward centralization, his reining in of the tribes, his attack on rival social groups like the brotherhoods, and his salafiyya-like puritanism were phenomena that fully engaged his successors as they contended with the thrust toward modernity brought on by contact with the West. To say that he introduced these elements into the state-societal equation is not at all true, nor does Professor El Mansour argue that; but by drawing on an amplitude of sources, he shows us clearly how these trends accelerated and evolved under his rule. He has performed a great service by liberating a crucial period in Moroccan history from obscurity and by demonstrating with vigour and conviction the extent to which Mawlay Sulayman placed his imprint on his times.

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, SUSAN GILSON MILLER HARVARD UNIVERSITY

THE BALKAN CITY 1400-1900. By NIKOLAI TODOROV. Seattle and London, University of Washington Press, 1983. xxvii, 641pp.

Balkanskiiat grad was first published in Sofia in 1972, translated into Russian and French in 1976 and 1980, and finally translated (adequately, but for some reason anonymously) into English in 1983. The original was not revised, with the result that the bibliography, and some of the text, is rather dated: there are no references to the work of Abdel Nour, Faroqhi, Fawaz, Jennings, Quataert, Rafeq, or Raymond on cities in other parts of the Empire, nor to the world-systems

dried up, both because of a decline in internal production, and because of the gradual attrition of the Saharan transit trade. Foreign consuls and agents were encouraged to leave, and their places were filled by local Jews: 'All are welcome to leave the country', Sulaymfn reportedly said, 'as one of my Jews can import whatever commission I order' (p.67, my italics). Unlike his father, Mawlay Sulayman decided that foreign trade would not be the bedrock of state fiscal policy, but rather a 'necessary evil' that would remain on the margins of the economy.

Instead, he turned to the Moroccan heartland to supply the resources needed to sustain the state, milking the tribes through the traditional Qur'anic taxes of zakat and 'ushr. The essence of his internal policy was to bind the periphery closer to the centre through a new and more stringent web of military and fiscal obligations, incorporating tribes and territories that traditionally had been beyond the Sultan's reach. The middle years of his rule were years of abundance, and the rural populations had little difficulty satisfying the government's needs; but after 1818, a series of natural disasters struck that threatened the core-periphery equilibrium and compromised the authority of a Makhzan not significantly more powerful than those constituent groups over which it sought to rule. Despite the impending crisis, the Sultan stubbornly continued his policy of taxing the countryside heavily. As one would imagine, the rural response was explosive, making the last phase of Sulayman's reign one of rebelliousness which he was unable to diffuse either by negotiation or by force. Hence, the image of his whole era as one of violence and discontent is an image which holds good only for his declining years.

Mawlay Sulayman's inflexibility was a fatal defect that ultimately alienated him from society at large. In no area did his rigidity show itself more blatantly than in religion. He was deeply pious, but his rigourism in matters of faith arose from an unyielding intellectualism and contempt for popular Islam. Personally, he was repelled by the saint worship and reverence for the Prophet's descendants that characterized local belief, and he used his authority to try to uproot long- standing practices dear to his people. He deplored the use of music, dance and trance to induce a mystical communion with God, and banned the visitations and the annual fairs (mawsims) that were the economic mainstay of the religious orders. This battle against popular belief nearly caused his downfall, for it placed him in direct confrontation with two primary social groups-the religious nobility (shurafd') and the brotherhoods (tarlqdt). By the end of his reign, he was faced with a massive uprising that started in the capital city of Fes and soon spread to the countryside. The French consul wrote in the summer of 1817 that 'the saints ... who have a great influence on the people of towns and countryside, invoke in their prayers to give them another king' (p. 187).

Despite the uproar, Mawlay Sulayman grimly held on to power to the bitter end, and died on the throne. His onslaught on the body politic darkened his last days, and contributed to his negative aura in the popular imagination. El Mansour's work does not wholly disperse that image, but rather gives it nuance by sketching in the lights and shadows. Sulayman's push toward centralization, his reining in of the tribes, his attack on rival social groups like the brotherhoods, and his salafiyya-like puritanism were phenomena that fully engaged his successors as they contended with the thrust toward modernity brought on by contact with the West. To say that he introduced these elements into the state-societal equation is not at all true, nor does Professor El Mansour argue that; but by drawing on an amplitude of sources, he shows us clearly how these trends accelerated and evolved under his rule. He has performed a great service by liberating a crucial period in Moroccan history from obscurity and by demonstrating with vigour and conviction the extent to which Mawlay Sulayman placed his imprint on his times.

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, SUSAN GILSON MILLER HARVARD UNIVERSITY

THE BALKAN CITY 1400-1900. By NIKOLAI TODOROV. Seattle and London, University of Washington Press, 1983. xxvii, 641pp.

Balkanskiiat grad was first published in Sofia in 1972, translated into Russian and French in 1976 and 1980, and finally translated (adequately, but for some reason anonymously) into English in 1983. The original was not revised, with the result that the bibliography, and some of the text, is rather dated: there are no references to the work of Abdel Nour, Faroqhi, Fawaz, Jennings, Quataert, Rafeq, or Raymond on cities in other parts of the Empire, nor to the world-systems

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This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 17:11:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions