ABSTRACT Title of Thesis: OF SAINTS AND SHARIFIAN KINGS IN MOROCCO: THREE EXAMPLES OF THE POLITICS OF REIMAGINING HISTORY THROUGH REINVENTING KING/SAINT RELATIONSHIP Fatima Ghoulaichi, Master of Arts, 2005 Thesis directed by: Dr. Orrin Wang The Comparative Literature Program The relationship between sainthood and the sharifian monarchy in Morocco has attracted much attention from researchers within the area of Moroccan studies. The analysis of this relationship can offer invaluable insights into the dynamics of Moroccan history because the king and the saint are widely regarded as the two most salient actors in this history. Yet, the study of the relationship between these two figures has suffered a tendency towards downplaying its historically dynamic nature, and essentializing the cultural constructs upon which it is predicated. In this thesis, I offer a revisionary reading of king/saint relationship through analyzing three examples from the ‘Alawite dynasty. I argue that this relationship has been highly dynamic, and has capitalized on baraka and sharifism as versatile cultural constructs. More significantly, the dynamics of king/saint relationship in Moroccan culture allows the strategic reinvention of history in order to meet the demands of changing historical contexts.OF SAINTS AND SHARIFIAN KINGS IN MOROCCO: THREE EXAMPLES OF THE POLITICS OF REIMAGINING HISTORY THROUGH REINVENTING KING/SAINT RELATIONSHIP By Fatima Ghoulaichi Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts 2005 Advisory Committee: Prof. Orrin Wang, Director Prof. Ahmed Karimi Hakkak Prof. William Taft Stuartii To the memory of a great father and a constant source of baraka and inspirationiii Acknowledgements My sincere thanks go to my supervisor, Dr. Orrin Wang, for his academic assistance and insightful comments which helped me redefine the current project. His support during hard times was invaluable. I owe a debt of gratitude also to Dr. Regina Harrison who supervised me during the early stages of this project, and to Dr. Ahmed Karimi and Dr. William Stuart for their very helpful comments and suggestions. Finally, I would like to express my immense gratitude, love, and respect for my mother who, together with my late father, has always been willing to take on my responsibilities so that I can go on with my academic work.iv Table of Contents Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………… 1 I- Introducing baraka and sharifism ……………………………………………….……. 8 II- Moulay Ismail and Lyusi: The politics of baraka and sharifism …………………… 18 III- Sultan Moulay Slimane against the Saintly Institution …………………………… 29 IV- King Mohamed VI and Sufism after 9/11 …………………………………………. 39 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………... 47 Appendix ……………………………………………………………………………….. 52 1- Moulay Slimane’s letter against zawaya and mawassim…………………… 52 2- King Mohamed the Sixth’s letter to the International Sufi Conference …… 57 Glossary ………………………………………………………………………………... 60 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………… 621Introduction: The relationship between the sharifian sultanate and the saintly institution in Morocco has attracted much attention from historians, anthropologists, and political scientists. Researchers have traditionally sought an explanation for the longevity of the world’s oldest potent monarchy1in its relationship to a peculiarly Moroccan form of sainthood. Clifford Geertz, for example, has long read Moroccan history in terms of a static pattern of “strong man politics” and “holy man piety” whose heroes are the saint and the king. He writes: that it was self-made warrior saints—hommes fetiches—as Bel again so aptly calls them—who forged the uncreated conscience of Morocco, indeed forged Morocco itself, is beyond much doubt.2Geertz is referring here to the French colonial historian Alfred Bel whose La Religion Musulmane en Berberie (The Islamic Religion in Barbary) (1938) he regards as “the best book on the development of North-African Islam, and … one of the finest books ever written on the area.”3Geertz includes in the category “hommes fetiches” the Moroccan king as well. He argues that “traditionally the Moroccan king has been in fact himself a homme fetiche, a man alive with charisma of both the hereditary and personal sort.”4According to him then, both saint and king share in charisma, a term he uses in this context as equivalent to the Moroccan concept of baraka. Moreover, as hommes fetiches,both possess, or at least work hard to possess, holy-man piety along with strong-man 1See M. E. Combs-Schilling, Sacred Performances: Islam, Sexuality, and Sacrifice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989). 2Clifford Geertz, Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 26. 3Islam Observed, note p. 120. 4Islam Observed, 53.2politics. Thus conceived, these two figures serve to illustrate Geertz’s larger point about Moroccan Islam as scriptural in theory but anthropolatrous in fact.6The image we get from reading Geertz on Morocco is that of a uniform Moroccan history with baraka as the monolith. Despite the rise and fall of different dynasties, the succession of various kings and distinct historical eras, saint and king, both hommes fetiches, continued their uniform struggle for the making of Moroccan history. A static baraka that meant essentially the same thing for everyone kept The dynamics of the process in motion. Geertz recounts a coherent story of a static culture.7In this thesis, I argue that king/saint relationship in Morocco has been highly dynamic, and has followed different patterns in different historical contexts. The historical dynamism of this relationship and the creative ways in which both saint and king deployed the symbolic capital of a highly malleable baraka were the main factors behind the longevity of the Moroccan