Kingdom Of Morocco

Moroccan and proud of it - Marocain et fier de l'être

This book provides a comprehensive introduction, which focuses on Morocco's history, provides a helpful synopsis of the kingdom, and is supplemented with a useful chronology of major events. Hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on former rulers, current leaders, ancient capitals, significant locations, influential institutions, and crucial aspects of the economy, society, culture and religion form the core of the book. A bibliography of sources is included to promote further more specialized study.

This survey of North African history challenges both conventional attitudes toward North Africa and previously published histories written from the point of view of Western scholarship. The book aims, in Professor Laroui's words, "to give from within a decolonized vision of North African history just as the present leaders of the Maghrib are trying to modernize the economic and social structure of the country." The text is divided into four parts: the origins of the Islamic conquest; the stages of Islamization; the breakdown of central authority from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries; and the advent of colonial rule. Drawing on the methods of sociology and political science as well as traditional and modern historical approaches, the author stresses the evolution marked by these four stages and the internal forces that affected it. Until now, the author contends, North African history has been written either by colonial administrators and politicians concerned to defend foreign rule, or by nationalist ideologues. Both used an old-fashioned historiography, he asserts, focusing on political events, dynastic conflicts, and theological controversies. Here, Abdallah Laroui seeks to present the viewpoint of a Maghribi concerning the history of his own country, and to relate this history to the present structure of the region. Originally published in 1977. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This book recounts the sixteenth century struggle of a nascent Moroccan kingdom for survival between its powerful neighbors, peaking with a defining moment in world history, the Battle of the Three Kings on the plain of Ksar el-Kebir."

"The shallow scratches made in the still almost virgin soil of Morocco by historians and travelers have increased the thirst for any really useful and scientific information regarding that country; for since the time of Leo Africanus a long blank occurs, filled up, indeed, by such writers as Windhus and Leared in the last century, and, in our own time, by the more practical researches of Rohlfs, Tissot and Sir Joseph Hooker; but while these works have all their separate interests, the volume now to hand will occupy in its turn a special page in the history of the northern division of Morocco. It is with reluctance I have acceded to M. de la Martiniere's request to write a few lines of Preface to his book, but my former connections with the country, and the fact of my being able, as far as my own knowledge goes, to testify to the accuracy of his statements, have induced me to make the attempt"--Preface.