Rabat: Urban Apartheid in Morocco [Course Book ed.] 9781400853038

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PRINCETON

STUDIES

ON

THE

NEAR

EAST

•RABAT URBAN APARTHEID IN MOROCCO by Janet L.

Abu-Lughod

P R I N C E T O N UNIVERSITY PRESS P R I N C E T O N , N E W JERSEY

Copyright© 1980 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Guildford, Surrey All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data will be found on the last printed page of this book This book has been composed in V-I-P Bembo Clothbound editions of Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and binding materials are chosen for strength and durability Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey

To Lila, Mariam, Deena, andjawad WHO BUILT ME A WALLED CITY

Contents

List of Tables List of Figures List of Illustrations Note on Orthography and Translation Preface Prologue PARTI I. Patterns: The Maghrib in Context II. Urbanization in North Africa III. The Origins of Sale and Rabat: False and True Beginnings IV. A City among Cities V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI.

PART II Creeping Colonialism Rabat circa 1900: The Pearl of Morocco The Origins of Urban Apartheid Building the Colonial Edifice All Done According to the Law The Failure of Planning Concretizing the Caste City

PART III XII. The Crisis of Decolonization XIII. Rabat from Caste to Class XIV. The Factorial Ecology of Rabat-Sale: Methods and Statistical Results XV. The Spatial Organization of Rabat-Sale in 1971 XVI. Planning the Future Bibliography Index

ix xi xiii xv xvii 3 9 30 52 75 95 111 131 150 174 196 216 239 258 275 305 332 341 357

List of Tables 1 Comparative Chronology of Tunis, Cairo, Rabat, and Algiers 2 Cities of Morocco, 1830s to 1921, by Size 3 Number of Tides, Value, and Area of Lands in Rural and Urban Morocco Registered between 1915 and 1937, by Nationality of Owner 4 Budgets of Moroccan Cities in 1921, Per Capita Expenditures and Percent Muslim 5 Labor Force in Rabat and Sale in 1951-1952, by Sex, Nationality, and Occupation 6 Population of Residents of Morocco by Nationality and Religion, 1935-1971 7 Major Urban Centers of Morocco, Populations, 1936-1971 8 Distribution among Sectors of Workers Employed in Private Firms, by Economic Level of Quarter 9 Distribution of Active Labor Force by Occupation for Residents of the Medinas of Rabat and Sale 10 Distribution of the Population of Rabat and Sale in Housing Areas of Different Types, Sample Study 1970 11 Percentage of Households in Residential Areas of Various Quality by Monthly Income Level of Household, 1970 12 Percentage of Households in Rabat-Sale Living in Quarters at Different Levels of Housing Quality, by Monthly Income of Household, 1970 13 The Variables Employed in the Factorial Ecology 14 Zero-Order Correlation Coefficients between Each and Every Variable, Census Tracts of Rabat-Sale, 1971 15 Matrix of Socio-Economic Status and Ethnicity Variables Showing Zero-Order Correlation Coefficients, Rabat-Sale Census Tracts, 1971 16 Correlation Coefficients between Migrant Status Variables and Selected Highly Related Socio-Economic Variables, Rabat-Sale, 1971 17 Eigenvalues and Variance Accounted for by the Six Factors

35 153

171 194 217 239 248 261 261 267 270

271 280 291

293

294 2%

χ

L I S T OF TABLES

18. Factor Structure (and Pattern) Matrix Showing Factor Weights Grouped by Logical Categories, Principal Factor Solution before Rotation, Rabat-Sale, 1971 19. Factor Loadings after Varimax Rotation, Rabat-Sale, 1971

298 300

List of Figures I 2a 2b

3 4 5 6 7 8a 8b 9 10 II 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Topographic Map of Morocco Showing Location of Rabat in the Context of the Coastal Plains The Circulation System in Morocco in the Sixteenth Century The Circulation System in Morocco in the Twentieth Century, Based on Montagne et al., Naissance duproletariat marocain Metropolitan Region of Rabat circa 1905, Based on Mercier The City of Rabat circa 1905, Based on Mercier The Stages of French "Pacification," Based on Map V of Renaissance du Maroc Map of Rabat circa 1920, Showing Colonial Expansions, Prost Plan for Fez, Based on Prost in Royer (1932) Rabat before 1913 Rabat's New Circulation System Relative Growth in the Two Urban Systems, 1921-1951 (Selected Cities, French Zone only) Gradual Replanning of Douar Dabbagh Location of the Major Bidonvilles of Rabat and Sale The Urban System in Morocco, Based on Escallier Rabat, Morocco. Factor I, "Caste" Sale, Morocco. Factor I, "Caste" Sale Medina. Factor I, "Caste" Rabat, Morocco. Factor II, Problem Housing Sale, Morocco. Factor II, Problem Housing Sale Medina. Factor II, Problem Housing Rabat, Morocco. Factor VI, Migration Status Sale, Morocco. Factor VI, Migration Status Sale Medina. Factor VI, Migration Status Rabat, Morocco. Factor III, Male Dominance Sale, Morocco. Factor III, Male Dominance Sale Medina. Factor III, Male Dominance Rabat, Morocco. Factor IV, Atypical Household Composition

22 33

34 112 113 134 148 149 158 159 207 230 234 250 307 311 312 314 315 315 318 319 319 322 323 323 324

Xll

LIST OF FIGURES

26 Sale, Morocco. Factor IV, Atypical Household Composition 27 Sale Medina. Factor IV, Atypical Household Composition 28 Rabat, Morocco. Factor V, Female Dependence 29 Sale, Morocco. Factor V, Female Dependence 30 Sale Medina. Factor V, Female Dependence

325 325 326 327 327

List of Illustrations (FOLLOWING PAGE 2()0)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Ocean Front with Rabat's Walled Cemetery The Western Almohad Wall of Rabat The Qasbah of the Udaya The Only Bridge between Rabat and Sale Tourist Shop The Suq of Sale Medina The Qaysariya of Sale Courtyard of Rue de Suwayqa Cafe on Boulevard Mohammed V The Ville Nouvelle: Rue de Toulouse Going toward the Cathedral Souissi Villa, Upper-Class Suburban Bidonville of Rabat Public Housing under Construction L'Ocean Quarter, Rue de Leningrad Going toward the Church

Photos 1-3, 5-9, 14 by Kathy Valyi. Photos 4, 10-13 by J. AbuLughod.

A Note on Orthography and Translation THE usual problem of transliterating from Arabic to English is compounded in the present case by the existence of conventional sets of spellings, particularly for place names, in both English and French. The latter spellings have been incorporated into Moroccan usage, since it was a francophone colony. While I have not succeeded entirely in resolving the conflicts among Arabic, French, and English renderings, I have tried to follow certain logical if not always consistent principles. First, if a term or place name has a conventional and widely known English spelling I have used it. Thus I refer to Fez, even though the French transliteration, Fes, comes closer to the Arabic Fas. However, for less familiar place names, where a reader might wish to consult a map, I have used the French transliteration that appears on official Moroccan maps, for example, Oujda rather than Wajda, Tetouan rather than Titwan. Second, if a term is used in its technical sense and the Arabic original is important, I have transliterated it (at least the first time it appears), using the system on the next page. Internal inconsistencies persist, however, since the same term may be used in a quotation and the spelling of the source retained. Thus, the royal decree, %ahlr, is given accurately the first time it is mentioned, but since it is always rendered as dahir in French and sometimes in English sources based upon the French, I then follow this usage. Third, place names that occupy a particularly important position in the historical analysis, and that are therefore discussed at different points in the narrative, have been rendered primarily in the form in use at the time. Thus, the town pronounced Sla by contemporary Moroccans is first spelled Sala Colonia for the pre-Islamic period, Sala for the Islamic period before the French Protectorate, and Sale when referring to post-protectorate times. Rabat is usually referred to as Ribat al-Fath during pre-protectorate times and as Rabat after 1900. Fourth, the names of Moroccan rulers and of authors writing in Arabic have been transliterated directly from the Arabic. On the other hand, if a Moroccan author writes in French and uses his own

XVI

O R T H O G R A P H Y AND

TRANSLATION

G o NSONANTS

o -a (in construct state: -at) VOWELS

version of western script spelling, I have retained this. Some anomalies inevitably result. Two individuals with the same name appear in very different form. The nineteenth-century historian Ahmad al-Na$iri, who wrote in Arabic, is transliterated directly. His namesake, a contemporary Moroccan geographer publishing in French, appears as Mohamed Nafiri, since this is the name under which he publishes. Finally, all translations from the French, unless specifically cited from an English source, have been made especially for this volume, either by myself or by research assistants who helped from time to time. I am grateful to Michel Bolsey for his particularly sensitive translation of Lyautey's words.

Preface THE following book is deeply critical of French policies of urban apartheid,* established during the Protectorate period, for creating fundamental cleavages in the structure of Moroccan cities that during the contemporary period have been transformed into cleavages according to class. The pieces of the city have not yet been reassembled into an integrated whole. My criticism, however, is always tempered by the recognition that, given the fact of colonization, alternative policies could have led to even more disastrous results. The Moroccan urban heritage could have been utterly destroyed. I find in the urban planning ideology of the early French administrators—of Lyautey, who governed Morocco in the name of France from 1912 to 1925, and of Prost, who planned its cities between 1913 and 1923—a nineteenth-century racism imbedded in noblesse oblige; but I also find a sensitivity to the aesthetic values intrinsic to the older Moroccan towns. This sensitivity is their redeeming grace. For had they not * I use the term "apartheid" with full appreciation of how offensive it sounds, indeed, I use the term intentionally as an aid to rethinking and reconceptualizing French policies in Morocco. I am aware that the term has a specific etymology and referent. It is a South African Dutch word (apart-hood) and is usually applied exclusively to that country's laws preventing intermixture and fraternization between "whites" and "blacks " However, I believe that the South African laws are merely an extreme version of more general colonial policies, and that the French in Morocco, while lacking "national" laws of apartheid, were equally blatant in their intent and effective in their results. As I shall demonstrate in later chapters, the racist ideology of apartheid was given explicit expression in the writings of the early colonial administrators and policy makers, and the amount of de facto separation of the European population from the "natives," particularly in cities of the colonial hierarchy such as Rabat, was so complete that it could not have been achieved solely through the "market" or voluntary action I attempt to show by what mechanisms this segregation between the "races" was achieved, in the absence of the type of legislation found in South Africa, indicating that the laws and regulations governing municipal planning and building, as well as administrative policies at the local level, were effective substitutes. A parallel from American urban history may be instructive. In the early days of zoning, many local communities, particularly in the South, actually passed ordinances that "zoned" districts for white or black residence This I consider "apartheid." In the North, the racial restrictive covenant was used to similar ends. Insofar as it was enforced in the courts (and it was not declared illegal until 1948), it too was an instrument of racial apartheid in American cities It is in this sense that I use the term

xvm

PREFACE

instituted their program of isolating the extant settlements from the new colonial cities they built for their own use, there is no doubt that, as elsewhere, only fragments of these towns would have survived. Instead, Moroccan medinas still permit us access to one of the world's great and historic traditions of city building. I tried to express some of my ambivalence in the title of an article written many years ago, in which I referred to conservation as the serendipitous outcome of apartheid (in I. Abu-Lughod, ed., 1975). On the other hand, cities are not wax museums, nor do they exist for the aesthetic satisfaction of outsiders. Hence my objection to their further preservation "under glass." Unless the city-building tradition of Arabo-Moonsh Islam, which Morocco's older centers exemplify so well, contains principles of enduring value, as relevant today as they were when the cities were first built, one cannot argue responsibly for their perpetuation It is only because I believe with great conviction that many of these principles are still valid, and perhaps even more essential today, that I can resolve my own ambivalence. This book, however, is not an antiquarian exercise in reconstructing the past. It is an attempt both to explain the present and to pose a moral problem for the future. One of the attractive features of "old" Rabat-Sale was its lack of rigid segregation by economic class and, despite conflict, its unity. This I would consider to be one of the basic principles of the tradition referred to above With the imposition of colonial control, this holistic unit—the pearl, if you will, which had grown by accretion around a solid core of unified values—was shattered. In its place the French substituted a system of ethnic segregation that was the physical reflection of a system of social caste. The end of French occupation did not automatically terminate that system. Instead, as we show in this volume, these caste cleavages were transmuted into class lines that have left the contemporary city still fragmented This seems to be an indefensible development, and one that policies should seek to undo as quickly as possible The book therefore ends with a statement of the present dilemma—whether independent Morocco will merely "indigenize" the social gap and its fragmented city, or whether it can now reestablish a moral unity that will be reflected in a reunification of the physical city I focus on Rabat, since whatever solution is reached there will predict the whole. My first exposure to the cities of the Maghrib came in 1969, when a small travel grant from the Program of African Studies at

PREFACE

XIX

Northwestern University allowed my family to spend a summer traveling throughout Andalusian Spain and North Africa. Because I had previously studied Cairo and spent some years in the Arab East, I was struck by many of the differences between cities in the two regions. It was then that I outlined an ambitious (too ambitious, as it turned out) project to compare, in systematic fashion, a few exemplary cities in Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. A Ford Foundation Faculty Fellowship during the 1971-1972 academic year gave me time to train myself in North African history, to begin preliminary research on the cities of that region, and to make a second field trip to Tunisia and Morocco to revisit certain cities of particular importance. Fortuitously, by the time this second trip was undertaken in the spring of 1972, processing had already begun on the Moroccan decennial census of housing and population conducted in 1971. (The Tunisian census was not scheduled until 1975.) It was then that I first approached responsible officials in the Moroccan government, proposing to do a factorial ecology analysis of Rabat, the Moroccan city I had by then selected for more detailed study. A number of Moroccan and international scholars encouraged me in this endeavor and facilitated introductions to the proper officials. It was their subsequent cooperation that made possible the statistical analysis in the final section of this book. It is not possible to express adequately my indebtedness to these scholars and officials. I only hope that they find merit in this book and that the fuller results of my analysis, deposited with the Moroccan Direction des Statistiques as soon as they were completed in 1975, will be of use to planners and policy makers in their efforts to solve the city's problems. Dr. Mohammed Guessous of the Faculte des Lettres of Mohammed V University is literally the person without whose aid and encouragement this book could not have been written. The graciousness of this fine sociologist and of his wonderful family made my many return visits to Morocco always a personal pleasure as well as a "learning experience." Dr. Guessous' ungrudging willingness, in the face of heavy demands from his own research, his students, and later his responsibilities as elected municipal representative from the Ya'qub al-Mansur district, to spend time educating me from his vast store of knowledge about the city and Morocco, will always be remembered with gratitude. From the very beginning, the staff of the Centre de Recherches et

XX

PREFACE

d'Etudes Demographiques (CERED) was of enormous help in facilitating my research. Dr. Karol Krotki, then Population Council advisor to the Centre, welcomed me, taught me much about Moroccan demographic materials, and introduced me to Dr. Abdessetar Alamram-Jamal, whose sympathetic interest in my proposed study made possible the full cooperation and collaboration of the Direction des Statistiques which at the time he headed. Dr. Abdel-Malek Cherkaoui, his successor, extended every kindness and aid, and it was due to his supportive efforts that I later worked intensively with Messrs. Tadih (later chief), Abouchouker, Mubenk, and Ben Azzou, among others, on the actual processing of data from the census tapes. Their high level of expertise and their dedication to accuracy and precision make me confident that the data are thoroughly reliable. This acknowledgment would not be complete without a special thanks to Mile Ghita, secretary to the Direction des Statistiques, who greeted my interminable requests with a special smile and took it upon herself to translate my Egyptian dialect to Maghnbi, each time teaching me a few more phrases in the latter Abderrahim Filali of the Rabat Delegation de l'Urbamsme et de l'Habitat was kind enough to see me at several points during the study and to discuss details of both the preliminary studies and the proposals of the Schema Directeur (Master Plan). The librarians at Mohammed V University and at the Documentation Center on Rue Figuig were particularly accommodating, and several other individuals at CERED, among them Prof George Thomhnson and Mr. Hosm Alarbi, aided me at particular points. Not only in Morocco, but in the United States as well, generous and knowledgeable people added their contributions. Anthony Sullivan, who had once begun a dissertation on French architects in Morocco, not only assisted me at the Archives d'Outre-Mer at Aix-en-Provence, where we met by accident, but even bequeathed me his bibliography and some substantive notes left over from the aborted dissertation. Dr. Kenneth Brown, whose doctoral dissertation on Sale was completed in 1969 when my interest was first being kindled, gave me a copy of his study so that from the beginning I was able to benefit from his careful research. The staff of the Afncana Collection of Northwestern University's Library, and in particular Dr. Hans Panofsky and Daniel Bntz, was always more than conscientious in obtaining obscure research materials for me and, well beyond the call of duty, kept a sharp eye peeled for books and sources they thought I might need.

PREFACE

XXI

The computer analysis was a major operation, financed in part by a grant (ROI-MH21511) from the Center for Studies of Metropolitan Problems of the NIMH between 1973 and 1975, and in part by the donation of machine time by the Vogelback Computer Center at Northwestern. Ms. Mitzi White was responsible for the programing and computer work for the factor analysis, and Mr. Richard Hay, Jr. took able charge of the computer mapping programs that eventually transcribed the statistical results onto census base maps of the city. Neither of these operations was simple, and I am very grateful to both of these colleagues, not only for their innovative competence but even more for their involvement in the project, which made them as enthusiastic about the excellent results obtained as I was. The NIMH grant also permitted me to take another trip to the field to further the research in Morocco and to continue my negotiations with the staff of the Tunisian Census office for access to Tunis data. I was also assisted during this period by a summer fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, during which I began to write the manuscript. By 1976 I had completed most of the historical research on Rabat-Sale, Tunis, and Algiers and was awaiting the completion of the processing of the 1975 Census of Housing and Population of Tunisia, in order to begin work on that city's factorial ecology. In June I returned to Tunis only to learn, to my great disappointment, that the data would not be available for some time, if ever. (The Algerian case had already been dropped for lack of such data.) I had been awarded a Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in order to complete the comparative study of Cairo, Tunis, and Rabat—a task that clearly could not be done in the absence of data. I therefore decided to write this separate volume on Rabat, following a format similar to my earlier study of Cairo, and to defer to the future the fuller comparative study. I am indebted to the Simon Guggenheim Foundation for their support, and to Northwestern University for granting me a leave and fellowship supplement during 1976-1977, during which time the research was completed and the present text substantially written. The Guggenheim made possible a final field trip to update developments and to check items that remained in question. Because the project was so long in process, some of the findings have already appeared in print. In the present manuscript I have drawn freely, sometimes unconsciously, on these materials. Part of Chapter II appeared, in quite different form, in "The Legitimacy of Comparisons in Comparative Urban Studies," first delivered at

XX11

PREFACE

U.C.L.A., then published in Urban Affairs Quarterly (1975), and later reprinted in book form in a volume edited by Walton and Masotti. Sections of Chapters VII and VIII are adapted from "Moroccan Cities: Apartheid and the Serendipity of Conservation," first delivered at the International Congress of Afncamsts in Addis Ababa in 1973 and subsequently published m African Themes: Northwestern University Studies in Honor of Gwendolen Carter edited by Ibrahim Abu-Lughod (1975). Portions of Chapter X and XII were incorporated into "Moroccan Urbanization: Some New Equations, " Development of Urban Systems in Africa edited by Obudhu and El-Shakhs (1979), and Chapter XII appeared in Arab Studies Quarterly 1 (Winter 1979). A preliminary version of the factorial ecology of Rabat was reported at the Social Science Research Council conference on North African Urbanism held in Tunisia in 1976; that report will appear in French translation in a volume, Le systeme urbain au maghreb, edited by Rassam and Zghal, to be published in 1980. I am grateful to the following publishers for allowing me to retain rights over these materials: Northwestern University Program of African Studies, Praeger Publishers, Social Science Research Council, and Association of Arab-American University Graduates. In the production of this book several persons played particularly important roles. The difficult manuscript was typed with great accuracy by Mrs. Ellen Pool, whose knowledge of French aided immeasurably, and whose calm disposition and enthusiastic interest in "what was coming next" kept me eager to write, even when fatigued or discouraged. Among those who read the manuscript and offered corrections and suggestions were Ibrahim AbuLughod, L. Carl Brown, and Edmund Burke, III. The maps specially prepared for this volume were drawn by Paul Hazelngg and Victoria Moon. The photographs were taken by myself or by Kathy Valyi. Margaret Case rendered valuable editorial assistance, and the index was prepared by Sharon and Steven Hutchinson. To all of these individuals I express my gratitude. Evanston, 111. June 1980

PROLOGUE

is the correct name of the present capital of Morocco, even though all maps, following the French transliteration of an incorrect pronunciation, show it as Rabat. The most literal translation of the name is "Monastery of Conquest," a title that was obviously appropriate for its initial functions—first as a religious retreat cum fortification against a heretical tribe to its south, and later as a staging area for 'Abd al-Mu'min's planned campaign against the advancing Christian forces in Spain. But whether intended or not, the name also symbolizes the contradictory nature of the city. It is a double entendre, an unconscious pun. RBT, the root radicals from which ribaf is derived, connote the act of knotting, tying up, bandaging, and hence protecting, fortifying, or remaining controlled. All of these elements are suggestive of enclosure, of defensiveness. Certainly, Rabat partakes of such qualities of secrecy. Its medina is protected by thick walls; its traditional houses turn inward upon themselves, showing a blind face to the streets; its men and women alike have traditionally been enveloped in hooded burnous or jalaba; society itself seems to interact below the surface, behind closed doors. In Rabat, no less than in other Moroccan cities, there is a certain hushed tenseness that projects pent-up feelings, introversion. But it is modulated, in Rabat more than in, for example, Fez or even Sale across the river, by a certain expansiveness, an openness not often associated with Morocco. This quality is hinted at by the adjectival part of the name, al-Fath, for the root radicals FTH imply opening, beginning, disclosure, unfolding, as well as entry, penetration, and hence conquest. The white city, open to the blue sea, is far less dense than one expects a Middle Eastern city to be. Fresh breezes cool it in summer. Wide esplanades course through the newer parts of town, and pine and orange groves preempt large swaths of inlying land. In function, too, Rabat traditionally reaches out, the external orientation of piracy having long since been superseded by trade and now foreign affairs. The full name, then, conveys an essential ambivalence not unlike the city itself. It suggests the continuous tension in Rabat's history RIBAT AL-FATH

4

PROLOGUE

between the impulses of concealment and disclosure, of defense and offense, of conservation and innovation, of enclosure and openness. This ambivalence is compounded by a second contrast, the obvious one between the twin cities that are now somewhat uncomfortably yoked into a common administrative prefecture: between Sala (Arabic, spelled Sale by the French, but always pronounced Sla by its residents), the venerated religious and totally indigenous city on the north or right bank of the Bou Regreg River, and Rabat, the upstart, the more secular, the heavily colonized city on the opposite bank. The contrast between the sites and structures of these two cities, long antagonistic rivals, is a similar one of closed and open. In comparison with Sale, Rabat is the open, aggressive, now dominant partner. Shaped like a ship, her prow, formed by the Qas.bah of the Udaya, rides high against the waves, trailing the rest of the city behind her. Sharp embankments rise from the salt flats of the riverbed starboard, the boat lists portside toward the Atlantic, where the slope is gentler, almost flat. From the beginning, the orientation of Rabat was outward toward the sea and toward the rest of the world. In the twelfth century, when the town was founded, its initial function had been aggressive, namely, preparation for a campaign in Spain. And when the city then expanded, much of its impetus to growth was imported, brought back from Spain. Later, after almost four hundred years of virtual abandonment, the city was infused with fresh energy and fresh settlers—again from the outside. In 1609, when the last of the Monscos were expelled from Spain, a large contingent from the Spanish town of Hornachos came to settle in the Qa§bah. They were later joined by other refugees from al-Andalus (Muslim-held southern Spain). These angry exiles continued their "war" with Christian Spain on the high seas For over two hundred years the corsairs of Rabat were feared by European shippers in the Atlantic. Their mobile crafts darted swiftly from the river port and, when a foray was finished, were skillfully withdrawn into the harbor beyond the treacherous bore, where they could not be followed In the eighteenth century, when commercial operations began to replace piracy as Rabat's economic base, it was on the Street of the Consuls in Rabat that English, Dutch, German, and French merchants joined the earlier Italian traders, setting up their counting houses and running their "consular" businesses on the side. And it was the port of Rabat, with its customs house, that received the manufactured textiles and other imported goods, that shipped out

PROLOGUE

5

the leather, wools, and linen of Sale, and that employed some of the more adventurous Slawis who cautiously commuted to engage in a business otherwise disdained by that saintly town. It was therefore not totally without reason that Marechal Lyautey (the resident general of the French Protectorate between 1912 and 1925), seeking a more defensible and less threatened capital for the French occupation than Fez and a more indigenous one than Casablanca, selected Rabat as his capital. New European settlers began to pour in until they constituted a large percentage of the city's inhabitants (25 percent by 1956). Their presence clearly compounded the external connections of Rabat. This situation still remains, even after the departure of the French. For as capital of independent Morocco, Rabat continues to mediate the external relations of the country and to host international consulates, agencies, and conferences. While external trade is monopolized by Casablanca sixty miles down the coast, diplomatic relations center in Rabat, home of the king and all government ministries. In contrast, Sale lies softly cradled in the low sand bars of the river flats Her back is decisively turned against the sea, from which she is insulated by a vast and uncrowded cemetery. The city occupies a site that is essentially flat, sloping up gently only m the vicinity of the Great Mosque inside the walls and on the modulated hills of Bittana just outside them. Enclosure and discontinuity are her two chief characteristics. Whereas the modern quarters of Rabat flow without interruption beyond her original walls—some of which now serve only as monumental gateways from one busy section of the city to the next—the extramural portions of Sale are separated, more rural, and less relevant to the old city itself, which is rigidly demarcated by the heavy walls that describe an almost perfect rectangle within which everything of significance is presumed to take place Enclosed and protected, known for her culture and refinement, Sale was, for the first nine hundred years of its existence, one of the venerated Islamic cities of Morocco, home of important saints and host to admired religious teachers. It was renowned for its fine linens and woven rush mats, for its success in valiantly defending itself against all comers (it was the only Atlantic port in Morocco never really occupied by Europeans), and for being one of the truly civilized (hadara) settlements in the country, an honor she shared with the other "Andalusian" towns of Fez, Tetouan, and, finally in the nineteenth century, with Rabat Foreigners had little place in Sale. Even when she was the chief

6

PROLOGUE

Atlantic port of Morocco, before the revival of Rabat and the founding of Mogador, the personnel of the few foreign commercial firms operating there felt uncomfortably out of place. And when the Andalusian Muslims sought refuge there at the beginning of the seventeenth century, they were treated as backsliding pariahs and exiled to the left bank, where they refounded the town of Ribaf Later, when the French Protectorate was imposed, Sale continued its old policy of inhospitality to foreigners and, with the exception of the military personnel based outside the walls and the small number of administrators and maintenance men for the railroad, quartered next to the train station, the city housed none of the French and Spanish immigrants who flooded the coastal cities. To this day, Sale remains effectively closed to outsiders and a foreign visitor is viewed with curiosity, even surprise. These two cities, now bound together into a single metropolitan area within a unified governmental structure, were habitually in competition with one another and, even when peacefully coexisting, tended to follow cycles of growth that were mirror images of one another. Three-way conflict raged in the seventeenth century among the separate jurisdictions of the Qasbah, Riba(, and Sala. And even today this animosity survives in a colloquial proverb that warns, "Slawis can never have affection for Rbatis, even if the [Bou Regreg] river were to become milk and the sand raisins."* (Mercier, 1906-384 note reproduces the original Arabic; Brunot, 1921:170-171; K. L. Brown, 1971:51). Such endemic suspicion is not ameliorated by the fact that Rabat is now so overwhelmingly dominant that exploited Sale fears her as much as she needs her. Old "native" Slawis chafe under this domination even more because at one time Sale was so clearly the important member of the pair. It often appears that rather than one history of a common conurbation, there were, until recently, two separate histories for the cities. When one grew dominant, the other faded into insignificance. The vicissitudes of the two cities depended not so much upon factors and events taking place in the immediate vicinity, but rather in the much larger arena of the Arab world and its relations with Europe. In order to understand the development of the dual city on the banks of the Bou Regreg River, and in order to account for the present pattern of urbanization there, it is necessary to place the capital of Morocco into a larger context of space and time. * 'umr al-Slawi ma yakiin ma' al-Rbatti habib, wa lukan yajn al-wad bil-ljalib wal-ramla zablb

•9MI-

PATTERNS: THE MAGHRIB IN C O N T E X T

weaves its patterns on the warp of space and the woof of time. On these dimensions the Arab Middle East is both long and deep, encompassing a vast zone overlaid by successive temporal layers. Spatially, the region straddles in uneven fashion (mostly to the north) the Tropic of Cancer, stretching some 4,500 miles from the easternmost tip of Oman on the Arabian Sea, where it faces Pakistan, to the westernmost coast of Mauritania and Morocco, where it looks out across the Atlantic toward Florida And in time there is the most recent layer of over thirteen hundred years of Islam (dating from when the western expansion of the Arabs finally reached Morocco), washing over sequential deposits, some of which reach back to the very beginnings of human life and civilization Although space and time are both seamless webs, they are far from even and featureless There are points where the weave grows loose, there are even discontinuities in the design, where the frayed edges reveal breaks with neighbors and the past. To read the patterns of history, one must learn to identify and perhaps even reify such edges. In this chapter we identify those quasi-arbitrary "edges" in time and space in order to delimit the context within which Morocco and her capital city, Rabat-Sale, can be placed. Socrates advised his students to "carve at the joints" when classifying things or ideas. We shall try to find such joints. The clearest edge of space for the Arab world is its western boundary, the forbidding Atlantic, populated in human imagination until a scant five hundred years ago by mythological monsters. While this edge may have been breached in early times by the Phoenicians, intrepid seafarers who apparently left their traces in Brazil, for much of human history the Atlantic was a true border. It was entered cautiously along the coastline, but was avoided at its depths. Not until the fifteenth century did the western edge enter the arena of the ongoing conflict between Christian Europe and HISTORY

10

THE MAGHRIB IN C O N T E X T

Muslim West Africa. The succeeding centuries witnessed a fierce struggle for control over that coast, a struggle that the Arab world, in one place after another, lost to the imperial designs first of Spain and Portugal, and then of France and England. Significantly, the contest continued until the twentieth century, when Morocco was invaded for the last time, ironically from the Atlantic side. French troops disembarked at Anfa (Casablanca) in 1907, and by 1912 France and Spain had imposed Protectorate status on that country which had avoided, longer than any other part of North Africa, the long hand of colonialism. In contrast, the eastern edge of the Arab world has always been an open and continuous one. While Arabic as a first language stops at the eastern border between Iraq and Iran, Islam continues eastward as far as China, and many of the intervening non-Semitic languages have heavy infusions from Arabic. The eastern edge, whether overland or by sea, constituted a major gateway for human migrations, for cultural exchanges, and for trade. The coastal zones of the Arabian Peninsula were home to seafarers— among them the notorious Sindbad—whose orientation was India and China, and whose small wooden sailing ships plied the "spice route" long before Islam and long before Europe's interest in pepper. There are archaeological remnants linking the Peninsula to the ancient civilization of Mohenjo Daro in the Punjab and Baluchistan. Evidence also points to linkages between Mohenjo Daro and the ancient civilizations of the Mesopotamian river valley and of southeastern Anatolia beyond. These, like the later alternative spice-trade routes, were overland paths along which obsidian and other scarce products moved even in neolithic times. Islam expanded along these well-traveled land and sea pathways, while newcomers from the east—Ghengis Khan, Timur the Lame, the Ottomans—continually entered through them, and eventually were absorbed. The southern edge is also an open, or at least indistinct, boundary, rather than the sharp limit conjured up by images of open, trackless desert. The Sahara, now thought of as an impenetrable barrier, lies south of much of North Africa and, indeed, occupies large portions of southern Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and historic Morocco (which included Mauritania). But in the past the desert was merely another "sea," the locus for channels of trade, communication, and migration. Parallel to the major highway along the coast was a secondary path far inland. This path carried the

THE MAGHRIB IN C O N T E X T

11

Hamitic-speaking Berbers and the Semitic-speaking Arabs across the Sahel, Sudanic, and Saharan belts. In particular, successive waves of nomadic peoples entered Morocco via this route, some of them, like the ruling dynasty of the Almoravids, having more than passing significance. Crisscrossing this lateral route were the north-south caravan trails that, throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, joined "Black Africa" with the Mediterranean world. Bovill (1970) has carefully traced their complex patterns. Most traveled were the tracks connecting Timbuctu with the main urban axis of Morocco (between Marrakech and Fez), the diagonal link between Timbuctu and, after branching, Algiers and Tunis, and the two straight north-south lines connecting Kano with Tunis and Lake Chad with Tripoli. Gold, ivory, ostrich feathers, and, occasionally, slaves moved northward along these stable trails, while Islam and salt moved southward in a continuous exchange. The nomads who guarded these territories of transit were a living link in the chain of cultural and commodity exchanges, and often rose to play an even wider role On the eastern side of the African continent the links were, if anything, even closer. The "Horn" of Somalia and Ethiopia was always in intimate contact with the Arabian Peninsula, with the Fertile Crescent, and, via the Sudan, with the civilization of the Nile Valley. Through these established channels, Islam spread southward in East Africa as it did in West Africa. The most crucial edge of the Arab world, however, is the northern one, not because the Mediterranean is a natural boundary (quite the reverse is true), but because the "Middle of the Earth" became the confrontation line between two remarkable, divergent civilizations whose origins lay in common roots, whose histories were inevitably intertwined, but who, perhaps because of their close ties, were usually in conflict. It is important to recognize that the sea itself, like the Sahara, did not pose the barrier. A scant eight to thirty-two miles separates Africa from Europe at the Straits of Gibraltar—-Jabal Tanq, or the Mountain of Tanq, named after the Arab-Berber general who in A.D. 711 crossed from Morocco into Spain, bearing the message of Islam. On the east, the Bosphorus, which separates Asia from Europe, is less than two miles in width. And midway, the coast of Tunisia rises to within less than one hundred miles of the tip of Sicily, forming a "bridge" that paradoxically served from time to time to divide the sea into its eastern and western basins

12

THE MAGHRIB IN C O N T E X T

From the point of view of nature, then, unity of the Mediterranean world was as likely as division, since the relatively calm waters, coupled with sailing patterns that hugged coasts sprinkled generously with ports of call, had facilitated exploration, trade, and settlement over wide reaches at least as early as Minoan times. The shifting barriers in the Mediterranean were, to a remarkable extent, not made by nature but by man. If the natural barrier of the Atlantic made history until it was finally crashed, the reverse was true of the boundary between the southern and northern shores of the Mediterranean. There, history made and unmade boundaries in a continual flux that only recently came to rest at the hard line that now divides the Christian north from the Muslim south. We shall see this more clearly later, when we intersect time with space. In space, then, this is the Arab world as it exists today. It is a vast area whose present identity derives from twin and inextricably linked cultural characteristics Islam, more than a religion; and Arabic, more than a language. These two cardinal characteristics were carried together in the remarkable expansion of the seventh century A D. and were consolidated during the next century. The two give definition to a geographic region of symbolic if not actual unity. Densely woven by interactions, sympathies, and rivalries within, it is bounded by more loosely knit portions of the "cloth"—at the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Arabian Sea, and the Sahara. While this warp of space expanded and contracted over time, the basic unit of what now constitutes the Arab world remained an identifiable and spatially defined place. It is a "large pattern" in history Changes over time are crucial in understanding this pattern. But the woof of time, even less than the warp of space, has no natural boundaries or breaking points It has structure only because it is inhabited, time takes on periodicity only through human use of it. Therefore, time's edges must be sought in the fluctuating rhythms of activity When filled with intense interactions and change, time is dense The edges between periods are found when societies decline, when interactions subside, when "events" thin out At those moments, time is loosely woven and partial breaks in continuity occur. It must be stated at the outset that what eventually became the Arab world was, in times past, a good part of the entire world known to Western culture. The eastern half of that world, in particular, is rich with the remnants of human settlement dating back to paleolithic and neolithic times. Scattered remains and even whole

THE MAGHRIB IN C O N T E X T

13

villages from these periods have been found over wide areas. Because the evidence is still incomplete, it is impossible to determine which settlements were the very first. However, among the earliest were surely the round villages constructed near Jencho by the "Natufians" some nine to ten thousand years before Christ, the somewhat later settlements in southern Anatolia, such as Catal Huyuk (a rock painting showing the town plan has come down to us), and the less well-preserved sites in southern Iraq (see, inter aha, Mellaart, 1965). By the fourth millennium B.C., such permanent settlements had become common and, although specific sites themselves might appear and then vanish, continuity begins to outweigh impermanence. By that time, towns of modest size make their appearance. Well-documented evidence of urbanization in both the Mesopotamian and Nile valleys makes the fact incontrovertible; and, most recently, new excavations near the Syrian city of Aleppo suggest that they were not alone. At least one other commercial, literate, and urban kingdom, that of Ebla, had followed their lead. Above these neolithic and proto-urban layers one finds the successive deposits of Minoan, Phoenician, Greek, Hellenic, Roman, and Byzantine cultures. While periods of conflict between Asia and Europe were not unknown—the Trojan and Persian wars of Greece belie too benign a view of history—the periods of unification were impressive. By the twelfth century B.C., for example, the Phoenicians were sending out small groups of settlers to points along the coast of the Mediterranean that were only thirty or thirty-five miles apart (Cooley, 1965). The most famous of their colonies was Carthage, founded in the early ninth century (see Warmington, 1964; Picard, 1961, 1964, for example, for early history). But equally significant for our purposes is the fact that these colonies were on both littorals of the Mediterranean and extended even beyond the Straits of Gibraltar—to Cadiz in Spain, and Lixus (Larache) and perhaps even Sala in Morocco (see below, Chapter II, but also Caille, 1, 1949, K. L. Brown, 1971) Literature also attests to the unity of the Mediterranean. Ninthcentury Homer, describing the return voyage of Ulysses from the Trojan Wars, presumed to have occurred four hundred years earlier, shows his protagonist wandering throughout the Mediterranean, touching at points on both the northern and southern shores (Scylla and Charybdis clearly flank the Strait of Messina, the Land of the Lotus Eaters is similarly identifiable as the Island of Djerba, just off the Tunisian coast) Braudel's description of the Mediterra-

14

THE MAGHRIB IN CONTEXT

nean in the sixteenth century A D. as a vital connecting body filled with travel and commerce could have applied just as accurately to the situation considerably earlier (see his two-volume work now in English translation, 1972) The Mediterranean functioned not only as a connecting node, however, but also and predominantly as a fulcrum of power Over the centuries, the power balance teetered back and forth, mostly favoring the east but sometimes tipping toward the west, mostly favoring the north but occasionally tilting toward the south Each of these shifts was connected with a time "edge." The eastern half was historically dominant Almost every one of the successive powers that controlled the eastern basin of the sea eventually extended its hegemony into the western, with the exception of Hellenism. The major deviant in this usual pattern was, of course, Rome, which, because of its central position, commanded with equal strength (for the first time) both the eastern and western halves. Significantly, it was during the Roman period that one finds the strongest conflict between the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean. The periodic Punic wars between Rome and Carthage, indicative of this confrontation, finally ended in the second century B.C , initiating a period when, for the first and last time, the entire Mediterranean world was temporarily united. Indeed, up through the fourth century A D , Rome controlled not only all sides of the Mediterranean, but also the entire "Arab world" to be (with the exception of eastern Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula), as well as Turkey, the Balkans, France, Spain, and even England. Fragmentation at the crucial east-west fulcrum was soon to follow. By the fifth century, internal conflicts, compounded by the westward migrations of the barbarian tribes—the Huns, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals—culminated in the rift between a much undermined Western Roman Empire and a still vital Eastern Roman Empire. The Vandals, and later the Visigoths, swept down through the indefensible flank of Spain, then crossed the Strait and continued into Morocco, Algeria, and even Tunisia. (North Afncan-born St. Augustine, as clear an exemplar as can be found of the unity of northern and southern shores, died in Hippo [Algeria] when that town was being besieged by the Vandals in 430.) ' It is important to note, however, that even after this bifurcation, each of the separate empires continued to control both the northern and southern shores within its domain. This recurring split be-

THE MAGHRIB IN CONTEXT

15

tween east and west, maintained for more than a century before a final, brief, and only partial reunification in the late sixth century under Byzantium, is highly significant The fact that periodically and for long stretches of time the eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean were subject to separate development and to sepa­ rate influences intensified the contrast between two realms of later Arab Islam the Maghrib, literally "the west," including western Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, and the more easterly prov­ inces, theMiJi/ίη^. (The various shifts in the Mediterranean empires can be clearly visualized from the maps in McEvedy, 1961.) The sixth and seventh centuries A.D. constitute a clear edge in time because they alter forever the structure of the Mediterranean world. The crucial east-west barrier on the fulcrum of the sea is re­ placed by an incipient north-south barrier that subsequently defines the terms of interaction and the zones of confrontation. The sixth and seventh centuries are a clear edge in time because fading Byzan­ tium finally gives way, and Easterners (Persians and then Arabs) enter the mainstream of the Mediterranean world and for almost a thousand years determine its destiny. The sixth and seventh cen­ turies are a clear edge also because, after a period of decline and stagnation, time is once again crowded with activity and change. The break is, of course, never complete. Contrary to Hammond's view (1972, esp. ch. 22), most of Byzantium and its preceding layers were inherited, built upon, and transformed, particularly in the Mashnq but, as we shall see, from a strange twist of fate, also in the Maghrib via Spain. Despite such continuity, it is an edge, nonetheless. This edge, of prime concern to us here, delimits a time when the final mature stage of classical civilization had already played itself out in the western Mediterranean and was declining precipitously in the East. Persia was again testing its limits, and she and Byzan­ tium were locked in a struggle for Egypt. It was at this critical time that a new wave of emigration from the Arabian Peninsula, which on many previous occasions had sent forth similar migrations of Semitic tribes, displaced Persia in the zones she had just wrested from the Eastern Roman Empire, and then made increasing inroads on shrinking Byzantium, which was to withdraw more and more to within the confines of its core— Turkey and Greece. (Not until the fall of Constantinople in 1453 did it cede its last Asian remnant.) Islam attempted from the south­ ern shore what the traditional powers originating on the northern

16

THE MAGHRIB IN CONTEXT

shore had always been able to do, namely, to establish an empire on both coasts of the Mediterranean. This she succeeded in doing, albeit only partially and temporarily. The theories advanced to account for the emergence and lightning successes of the Arabian tribes, newly unified under a powerful religious system, are legion and, in the final analysis, unvenfiable. Reasons have been sought in the decadence of the crumbling civilizations that gave way so readily (Toynbee), in the 'asabiya (social solidarity) and austerity of the desert tribesmen (Ibn Khaldun), in divine assistance to the True Believers, and even in the invention of a new type of camel saddle that facilitated warfare (Bulhet, 1975). We do not need to answer this question. For our purposes, we need only establish that a temporal boundary of significance occurred somewhere between the middle of the sixth and the middle of the seventh centuries. This was not a boundary between human habitation or even population groups—for these, indeed, were continuous and cumulative, but a boundary between historical epochs, which made an understanding of the previous one an entirely inadequate guide to what was to come. By the beginning of the eighth century, Islam had spread to encompass virtually all of the geographic region we now call the Arab world, as well as quite a bit beyond This was accomplished in the remarkably compressed period of less than a lifetime of the traditional three score years and ten And while it is true that cultural and linguistic assimilation and the social integration of the disparate groups making up the empire were certainly not completed in that time (nor, indeed, ever completed), the Middle East and North Africa were set upon a different path that continues to govern direction in the present. From this time on, the north-south confrontation line dominated interaction in the Mediterranean. It is important, however, to remember how recent was Islam's retreat to the southern and eastern shores. Early in the eighth century Islam extended to Spain, which was destined for intellectual and artistic leadership during its Umayyad and later periods; its advance was not halted until the Battle of Tours. By the ninth century, the Aghlabids of Tunisia had conquered Sicily and were threatening Italian areas as far north as Rome. In the fifteenth century, the Ottomans succeeded in taking Constantinople and continued their northern advance until their defeat at Vienna in 1683. Retreat began first where expansion had occurred earliest—in the

THE M A G H R I B IN C O N T E X T

17

west But despite successive crusades, and later the aggressive behavior of the Portuguese fleet beyond the Mediterranean fringes (on the west coast of Africa and on the Red Sea-Indian Ocean coast at the opposite end), Islam was not forced into retreat from the edges of the northern shore until the seventeenth century; even after that, war continued on the high seas in the form of so-called piracy. On the west, the Muslims were driven southward out of Spain, making a series of staged retreats until the Reconquista was finally completed with the fall of the Kingdom of Granada in 1492. In 1609 the last remaining hidden Muslims and Jews were expelled This group followed the path of earlier emigres who had found refuge in the cities of North Africa, thereby infusing such places as Algiers, Tunis, Fez, Tetouan, Ribaf, and Sala with touches of Andalusia Expelled Moors, indeed, refounded the city of Ribaf in 1609, filling in the abandoned areas that remained from an abortive settlement in the twelfth century By the sixteenth century, Spain had also managed to establish footholds on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coastlines of the Maghrib, thus transferring the conflict to the seas. The piracy of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries along the Barbary Coast (Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria) and on the Atlantic, out of such Moroccan ports as al-Mamora (now Mahdiya) and Ribat (then called "New Sala"), was a continuation of this confrontation between north and south, a confrontation which, albeit, was fought against growing odds On the eastern edge of the Mediterranean, the Muslim advance northward began later and survived longer. Strengthened by their role as at least figurative head of all the Arab lands up to but not including Morocco, the Ottomans pressed northward toward Vienna. Although repelled at that point, they survived in strength in the Slavic, Greek, and Rumanian parts of the Balkans, even after the western Mediterranean was increasingly lost to Spain and Portugal. The nineteenth century, like the seventh, is a major edge in time, although one that similarly retained much continuity with the past. The stand-off across the Mediterranean crumbled completely during this time, and the southern shore again fell decisively under the dominating shadow of the north. Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, although it ended in disaster for him, was a clear signal of what lay in store. By the 1820s Greece had declared her independence from the Turkish Empire, and by 1830, on the opposite shore of the Mediterranean, France invaded Algeria. At the eastern fringe,

18

THE MAGHRIB IN C O N T E X T

on the Arabian Peninsula, Britain occupied the port of Aden to guard the approach to the Red Sea—this in 1839. By 1881 Tunisia was taken by France, in a fiasco of trumped-up provocations. This was not unrelated to Egypt's invasion by British troops one year later, on similarly manufactured grounds. In all cases, international indebtedness and growing economic dependence preceded political subordination. Of North Africa, only Ottoman-ruled Libya and autonomous Morocco remained beyond Europe's control. Just before World War I, the entente among European powers permitted France and Spain to settle their differences and divide Morocco between them, while Italy helped itself to Libya, then the poorest of the prizes. The eastern provinces held out only a little longer After Turkey's defeat in the war, her eastern empire was dismantled, arbitrarily amputated into multiple "states," each under the protection of either France or Britain. Of the Arab Mashnq, only portions of the original peninsula remained unincorporated into the European colonial empires, while of the non-Arab but Islamic Middle East, only Persia and Turkey retained nominal independence, although behind sadly shrunken frontiers. The will toward independence, however, did not die; efforts to remove the yoke of the northern powers began even before it had been firmly fastened. By the twentieth century the struggle began to achieve results, although painfully delayed and always less than what was demanded. In the wake of World War I, even as other parts of the Ottoman Empire were being parceled out, Egypt began the long process of regaining her autonomy. The monarchy was established in 1924, and British troops were partially withdrawn in 1936, as they were from Iraq. But Britain remained in the Canal Zone until 1956. World War II had an even more dramatic impact Italy's defeat had, of course, deprived her of her colonial possessions, which meant independence for Libya Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan gained independence as a result of the war, leaving only Palestine still under European control In 1956 France reluctantly granted independence to Tunisia and Morocco, while still holding on to Algeria. Finally, in 1962, Algeria, the first country to have been colonized, was virtually the last to be freed Decolonization, however, is still incomplete A number of North African countries are still economically tied to the "Metropole", others have their trade patterns so closely tied to the West that their

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19

political independence of action is compromised. And, of course, there remain the incongruous Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, and the (just released) Spanish Sahara toeholds in the Moroccan flank to remind her of the past. Still unsettled is the fate of Palestine, occupied by Europeans and supported by the excolonial powers, which has had a disproportionate effect on the region's autonomy. Despite these exceptions, one can now speak of the second half of the twentieth century as an edge in time, marking a transition from domination to increased autonomy. Out of this warp and woof, patterns begin to emerge. Time and culture are overlaid on spatial differentiation to create subregions that share patterns at a smaller scale. Terrain, resources, even location per se, are some of the natural factors that help subdivide the Arab world into subareas with their own internally eddying patterns. These interact with language groupings, with invasion paths, with trade routes, and with the underpinnings contributed by earlier inhabitants and/or conquerors to differentiate subunits within the basically unified culture area of the Middle East. Within this variety one identifies zones which were somehow central to the key events that determined not only their own fate but that of other parts of the area as well. By these same criteria, there were other subareas that must be ranked as having received and generated less The former zones might be thought of as the "core" regions, while the latter are best conceptualized as the "periphery" (although they are certainly not peripheral in their own eyes) The core of the Arab world is, without any question, the Mashnq, including Egypt and the Fertile Crescent which arches to include Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq Here, settlement density is great, especially along the coast and in the river valleys Density of events is similarly intense, a situation not unconnected with the fact that, historically, the eastern basin of the Mediterranean was traditionally the dominant half, the half with the most continuous and interconnected set of cultural accretions. When Islam entered this region in the seventh century, it found this heritage weighing heavily. Islam learned from it, built upon it, transformed it, contributed much to it—but could never ignore it In contrast, the "thinner" zones of the Arab world clearly he in the Maghrib - western Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and, most of all, Morocco. This is the periphery Not only was this region relatively autonomous during much of early history but, even during the pe-

20

THE MAGHRIB IN CONTEXT

nods of ancient colonization, the effects were always more superficial True, the Punic civilization ruled much of the western basin but, even after it had broken away from its Phoenician roots, its penetration was restricted to the coastal enclaves, the forbidding mountains and desert were left to the original inhabitants Surprisingly few remains from the era of Carthaginian supremacy can be found True, Rome ruled the zone and, indeed, during later phases of the empire, soldier-rulers from the African shore ruled Rome herself The North African coast is dotted with the ruins of impressive Roman cities The Roman town of Sala Colonia, for example, is believed to lie under the Marinid cemetery just outside the Za'ir gate to Rabat But despite these archaeological remnants and their more biological residuals—descendants of the retired Roman legionnaires who were rewarded with agricultural lands even in the far interior of North Africa—the effects of hundreds of years of Roman occupation are remarkably few They are strongest in Tunisia, as one might expect, given her close proximity to the Italian "boot," and are not insubstantial in Algeria, the heartland of Roman Christianity, or in western Libya, the only country in which the Roman toga is still worn But in Morocco, which served chiefly as a defensive outpost of the empire rather than as a core participant in it, few influences can be traced Even Arab rule was to affect the Maghrib less intensely than elsewhere, finding in the resistance of the non-Arabic speaking Berber (ironically the Greek term for barbarian or non-Greek speaker1) inhabitants a source for rebellion and heresy, as well as a receptive soil for cults and schisms It is to the special subregional characteristics of this area that we now turn, to trace the unique patterns found there Maghnb is the Arabic term for west, which is not exactly coterminous with the region we generally call (francophone) North Africa The latter concept is best conveyed by the Arabic phrase, "Jazirat al-Maghnb" (literally, the Island of the West), a particularly apt term despite the fact that the sea bounds it on only two of its sides The other two sides have desert, but island is a quite appropriate name, since sea and desert protect the approaches to this somewhat sheltered and isolated region, inhibiting or at least channeling the flow of influences to it The Arabic terminology hints that while there is no real interruption in the seamless web of space, there is a natural "thinning out" of the pattern somewhere between the Egyptian Delta and Tunisia

THE MAGHRIB IN CONTEXT

21

To understand this "island-like" quality of Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco it is necessary to examine a topographic map. From Cap Draa, on the Atlantic coast just opposite the Canary Islands, almost to Sfax, a port on Tunisia's eastern coast, a chain of at times high, at times almost buried mountains rises out of the desert proper, cutting off the great Ergs of the Sahara from the more settled zones along the coasts. This edge delimits thejazirah, within which there have always been two quite distinct foci: one at the eastern end, centered on Tunisia and almost always containing western Libya and eastern Algeria within its orbit; and the second at the western end, centered on Morocco but frequently encompassing western Algeria and even Spain. If the Maghrib as a whole may be considered the periphery of the Arab world, there can be no doubt that the western focus of Jazlrat al-Maghnb has often been the "periphery of the periphery," that is, the most ex-centric off-center subpart of a region that frequently developed in directions that were quite independent of the core. The heartland of Morocco is well protected by desert and by three forbidding mountain chains (see Figure 1). First, there are the Rif mountains that parallel the Mediterranean coastline, dividing the northern littoral from central and southern Morocco. Their existence channels entrance to the country from the east into the narrows of the Taza Gap (from Tlemcen in western Algeria to Fez via Oujda and Taza), a route that was routinely used. The second chain, consisting of the Middle Atlas and its southwest extension, the High Atlas, divides Morocco diagonally, from Agadir on the Atlantic to the Taza region, cutting off the Sous valley to its south from the heartland of the Atlantic provinces to its north. This heartland contains almost all the cities of Morocco and virtually all the flat and/or fertile land Even farther south, and on a line that parallels the High and Middle Atlas chains, is the Anti-Atlas, that final mountain range that marks the beginning of the infinite deserts that still belong to nomads There are only a limited number of passes through these mountain barriers, many of them associated with the infrequent wadis (dry riverbeds in the desert that may, on occasion, flash-flood), and these wadis and passes demarcate the desert pistes and highland roads that similarly channel entry into the country The most important of these southern gateways is the territory called the Tafilalat, which contained the crucial caravan town of Sijilmasa So well guarded by topographic intricacy and so distantly located

FIGURE 1

COASTAL PLAINS

IN THE CONTEXT OF THE

LOCATION OF RABAT

OF MOROCCO SHOWING

TOPOGRAPHIC M A P

500 to 1500 meters

1500 meters or higher

DESERT - DRAA

Tangiers

THE M A G H R I B IN C O N T E X T

23

from the Mashnq, Morocco was insulated from many of the currents eddying in the east Many movements lost their momentum by the time they approached Morocco, and many of the movements that did reach her lived on in isolation long after they had been spent elsewhere. Certainly, the flash-fire expansion of Islam across the North African coast reached Morocco last, and conversions there proceeded more slowly than elsewhere. It was at least a century before the country was firmly in Islamdom's orbit, a long time in comparison to other provinces. And the invasions of the nomadic "destroyers," the Banu Hilal and associated tribes, which presumably devastated much of Tunisia and Algeria, never penetrated Morocco in strength. Still later, when the Ottomans were rapidly unifying the Arab lands under their own imperial system in the sixteenth century, they managed to reach up to but never to include Morocco, although Tunisia and Algeria were both integrated as important beyhks Peripheral status, however, is not necessarily a state of deprivation. It can grant important advantages as well For a peripheral area has immunity, and immunity gives the freedom to devise an authentic role and to fashion a pattern for oneself, weaving together the external influences with large organic components from one's past and one's position in the world. This Morocco certainly did. And in that pattern, both African and Spanish elements figured more prominently than in any of the other parts of the Arab world. We have already mentioned the importance, within North Africa, of connections to the north and south, a point that warrants reemphasis here. Spain and Morocco were linked functionally at least since the days of the Phoenicians, when there were twin Atlantic trading posts that symbolized a certain symmetry. The one on the Spanish side (Cadiz) "protected" the sources of silver in Spam; the one on the Moroccan side "protected" the sources of gold to the south (Laroui, 1977, has questioned this). There was a symmetry also to the expansion of Islam, since it crossed the narrow strait to Spain at the same time that it was moving southward in Morocco—with the collusion of the Byzantine governor of Morocco, who was seeking revenge against his Christian rival in Spam. The glories of Umayyad Spain recrossed to Morocco, borne back by the Spanish-raised sons of Berber conquerors. (It is no accident that the Giralda tower of Seville is reproduced as the Kutublya minaret in Marrakech, the aborted Hasan tower in Rabat, and the now destroyed Man$uriya tower just outside Tlemcen.)

24

T H E M A G H R I B IN C O N T E X T

And, as we shall see, the city of Rabat itself was founded twice: the first time in the twelfth century for use as a staging point for the Almohad campaign in Spain, the second time in the seventeenth century, this time by Moorish Spaniards driven out by the last of the inquisitions. Christian Spain always held a number of points along the Moroccan coast and, when the French finally established their protectorate over Morocco in the twentieth century, they had to share the prize with Spain, which was granted the northernmost and southernmost extremities. In contrast, there was virtually no important contact between Spain and eastern North Africa, that is, Egypt and Libya—and even less between Spain and the Fertile Crescent or the Arabian Peninsula. And, while Andalusian influence was certainly strong in Algeria and Tunisia, it was more likely to have been transmitted indirectly through Morocco or brought via Spanish Moors in exile than to have resulted from direct, intimate, and continuous contact. Far more important for Tunisia and Libya were their linkages with Italy. Italians always constituted the major trading partners for Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, and Italians always constituted a sizable proportion of the "foreigners" resident in their cities. The Jews from Livorno, Italy, for example, played as important a role in Tunis' medieval history as did the Andalusian Jews in Fez's commercial life. These tendencies persisted down to modern times. In colonial Egypt, it was Greeks and, to a lesser extent, Italians and Maltese who constituted an haut-proletanat, serving as a buffer between the northern European ruling classes and the "natives." Significantly, in Tunisia it was chiefly the Italians (especially Sicilians) who occupied that same position. But in French-colonized southern Morocco, as well as, of course, the Spanish-occupied zone, the Spanish working class occupied the uneasy middle rank in an otherwise bifurcated structure of rulers and ruled. Morocco's southern links were equally important and particularistic. In two areas of North Africa one can see a widely ranging and intimately integrated set of racial stocks, varying from darker Caucasian to modified Negroid. These are Egypt and Morocco. In both these areas the linkages to the south have been particularly long and intense. Not surprisingly, these interactions are reflected in the physiognomy of the population. Topography and history are both essential to an understanding of this situation. We have already spoken of the importance of the trans-Saharan

THE M A G H R I B IN C O N T E X T

25

trade routes that made Morocco an integral part of the life of the great kingdoms of Mali and Ghana Both commerce and, eventually, a common commitment to Islam drew these regions into each other's orbits, and while the relationship was not always a peaceful one (viz. Moroccan "adventures" in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries), it remained important for both parties. There was an even more direct infusion of west African traits into Morocco at the end of the seventeenth century, when Mawlay Isma'il established, near his capital at Meknes, a praetorian guard of Negroes, some of whom were descendants of earlier slaves, since freed, others of whom he brought from the south. And what should not be forgotten is that at least one of the dynasties in Moroccan history, the Almoravids, originated in the deep southern desert among a nomadic group that partook of characteristics from both culture areas Black African traits did not need to be "imported" to Morocco; they were a natural part of the southernmost portion of the country from time immemorial Morocco was thus distinguished among the provinces of the Arabo-Islamic world by its greater isolation and by its stronger links both to Andalusia and to Africa south of the Sahara It was also distinctive because the three basic "ways of life" found throughout the Middle East remained more discrete from one another for a much longer time in Morocco than elsewhere The three "ways of life," described so sensitively by Carleton Coon (1951), are, of course, the settled agrarian village, the city, and the nomadic or transhumant tribal organization. The unique "mix" of these ways of life gave to each subregion of the Arab World its own special pattern of coexistence, symbiosis, and tension. In Coon's words (1951.171), the Middle East's "greatest accomplishment" was its "success at working out a rather complicated way of living" based upon an elaborate division of labor, . . into three mutually dependent kinds of communities, the village, the nomadic camp, and the city, which distinctively offer each other, in the same order, vegetable foodstuffs, animals suited for transport, and processed goods, including tools. Both village and camp supply the city with meat, milk products, skins, and wool. Not only is each of these three types of community dependent on the others for the maintenance of its way of life, but each is equally specialized. Of the three, however, the village is the most conservative, most

26

THE MAGHRIB IN C O N T E X T

permanent, and least variable in population, because it is least subject to the whims of kings, trade, and weather, and because it can feed itself almost indefinitely if cut off from its trade and sources of supply. In the great river valleys of the Mashriq, the villages mired in the alluvial soil of renewing fertility were the base for societies that occasionally threw up important urban centers, supported out of the surplus generated in the agrarian sector and thus dependent upon farmers, and which, because of the wealth concentrated in the settled zones, were an attractive target for marauding nomads and hill warriors. This pattern or mix made them essentially stable and conservative, despite the procession of military conquests that washed over them and the accretion of "high cultures" that concentrated in their sophisticated cities. Along the coasts, particularly of the Fertile Crescent, the mix was different. There, commercial cities coexisted uneasily with people from the mountains, some of whom practiced marginal agriculture and arbicultivation (as contrasted with the granaries of the alluvial plains), others of whom led a life of modified transhumance, moving with their flocks of sheep and goats in a fixed circuit of pastures. The hills were often the refuge for dissident groups who resisted the imposition of "changes in command" in the cities, and who maintained an independent stance from urban taxation whenever possible, a luxury no peasant ever enjoyed. At the margins were the true nomads who policed long-distance trade, exacting tribute in return, and who provided the transit animals for this trade, notably camels. It is hard to say which of the three ways of life was dominant in this region, but one is inclined to attribute to the cities the key role in the area. In Morocco the mix was very different. There, the dominant force was neither the peasant nor the city man; it was the nomad— if that latter term is defined broadly enough to include the dominant pattern of transhumance or modified and systematic migrations of tribally organized groups of people.* Most agriculture in the valley lands was practiced only on a seasonal, extensive basis. Unlike the multiple cropping possible in the irrigated river basins, or the off-season maintenance requirements of terrace farming and 1 Abdallah Laroui has suggested, m his brilliant L'Htstotre du Maghreb, un essat de synthese, that nomadism actually became more prevalent as colonial incursions increasingly forced Moroccan peasants onto marginal lands, but there can be no doubt that nomadism played a crucial role in Moroccan history long before those events.

THE MAGHRIB IN CONTEXT

27

arbiculture, the usual method of agriculture in the Moroccan plains was to sow a diversified crop, including grains, for the wetter season, and then move the flocks to higher areas for grazing, leaving only a small maintenance labor force until harvest time. During the fallow time, even longer migrations were possible. Vinogradov's (1974:46-47) description of the transhumant pattern of a group near Meknes, while contemporary, captures some of the complexity of such an environmental adaptation. Beginning in September, and throughout October, animals were sent down from the high pastures and were put out to eat the stubble from the harvest. In November, the rest of the animals and the people followed and the general descent to the low ground was completed. By January, the douars [group of tents, i.e., a camp unit] had regrouped in their proper areas on the plain and the tribe became several agglomerations of tents scattered over the territory. . . Young men and the shepherds took the sheep and goats out to pasture, leaving the cows near the douars. In March, preparations began for the ascent into the high areas, the larger tents were dismantled and packed away. If the tribe was not at war during that time, the women and children started the march, accompanied by only a few of the men. The majority of the adult males stayed behind to prepare the ground for spring cultivation . They planted legumes . occasionally adding a few . vegetables. . . By June the people and animals would have reached the highest pastures and the tribe would be dispersed. . . Men went down to the plain to harvest the wheat and barley; part of the crop was taken back for immediate consumption but the bulk was stored in underground bins. . . During this time, men irrigated the sorghum and maize that constituted their summer crops . . . which were not harvested till August or early September. Toward the end of September the animals started to descend and were put out to eat the stubble from the harvest In October and before the rains started, men began to prepare the ground for the following year's fields By November, everyone was down on the lowlands and the tents had regrouped in their original camp units. Her group is somewhat atypical since their transhumant circuit is only some thirty kilometers. Many other tribes with less favored niches travel one hundred kilometers or more. In the past, when warfare and "turf contests" were more com-

28

THE MAGHRIB IN CONTEXT

mon, the pattern would often be disrupted and the circuit less regular Furthermore, climatic changes anywhere along the complexly divided territory could set in motion widening circles of redistribution Often, a major drought in the south forced the tribes at the desert's edge to migrate farther north, these in turn displaced their neighbors who, in sequence, forced the next unit to move The process, of course, was neither as automatic nor as peaceful as this description implies Instead, threatened groups might make deep forays into the valleys and the Atlantic plains, often resettling more permanently and sometimes vying for hegemony over a wider empire Some of these migrations still take place, but today the threatened groups are more likely to come as migrant laborers to the city than to seek more fertile fields to continue their transhumant pattern (Montagne, 1952) This was the way of life many Berbers had traditionally followed It was conducive neither to the development of a peasantry whose allegiance was chiefly to the soil, to a place, nor to the development of a universal urban culture with its allegiance to a "life style" or an abstract "government " The implications were important First, society was organized on "blood" lines, with descent and consanguineal affinity the basic element A complex system of confederation and alliance based upon fictive kinship bound these blood groups into larger but shifting patterns And second, the institution of "the" property line, which underlies every agrarian society (and which, indeed, was typical in peasant regions of Morocco [see Hart, 1976]), was transmuted into communal "proprietary turf," land whose use was customarily in the hands of a given group and held in common—but only so long as the group could defend it against others The vulnerability of this predominant form of land tenure was skillfully exploited during the colonial era, when the French wished to expropriate land While nomadism—pure in the desert, mixed with agriculture in the mountains and fertile valleys—was the dominant way of life in Morocco, it was certainly not the only one It was supplemented by settled agrarian villages and by a few towns that lived by trade or fishing Ironically, the Arab conquest strengthened both the rural and the urban sectors of Moroccan life, even though the newcomers were themselves organized along similar nomadic-tribal lines There is an old controversy over whether Islam is an "urban" religion or at least favors urban life, or whether it was a religion geared to tribal life and designed to superimpose a higher level of

THE MAGHRIB IN CONTEXT

29

unity than could be achieved by tribal confederations. This question is irrelevant here. Whether "suited" or "conducive" to urban life or not, Islam in its expansion made its first and most sweeping inroads on soil that Rome and Byzantium had already prepared for urban life. It was in the plains and the partially urbanized portions of Morocco that the Arabs gained their most decisive and firm base. These were the areas in which the Arabic language was adopted, first for religious but eventually for more mundane purposes as well. And it was in the mountains that both the state system and the linguistic changes introduced by the Arabs were most fiercely resisted. In the mountains and deserts, the conversion to Islam proceeded more smoothly than did conversion either to Arabic or to urban life. And surprisingly enough, as we shall see, it was from the true nomads of the Sahara and the High Atlas, not the transhumants, that some of the most important dynasties—and city builders—were to come. Despite Morocco's tradition of nomadic dominance, then, the country was to produce, during the Islamic middle ages, some of the most important urban centers in the Arab world, some of the most hauntingly beautiful Islamic cities ever built, and was to evolve a sophisticated pattern of urban life that was looked up to as exemplary of the true hadara, or civilized life. With the growth of these cities, the mix between peasants, nomads, and urbanites changed, as did the symbiotic relations among them. And even though the Maghrib lacked the long urban tradition that was so striking a feature of Mashriq life, many of these earlier time-tested methods of urban governance and civic spirit were transplanted to Moroccan soil, where they flourished and took on an evolution of their own.

URBANIZATION IN NORTH AFRICA THE PATTERN of urbanization in North Africa has favored either coastal or interior locations, alternating between the two in system­ atic fashion (see Issawi, 1969). Whether the impulse to go inland prevailed, or whether there was a movement toward the littoral was largely a function of the larger international context. Whenever southern Europe or western Asia dominated the Mediterranean, and whenever peace made sea transport safe and therefore attrac­ tively competitive, the coastal cities have grown. At such times, the Maghrib has been linked by sea with whatever core dominated h e r the Mashnq during Islamic times, the French Metropole during the colonial era On the other hand, insecure seas, little domination, and major innovations in land transport (such as the camel during the early period, the jeep or truck today) have served to intensify the formation and growth of the network of interior setdements While the Arabs were not unskilled in sea navigation and, indeed, had been the inventors and early masters of the astrolabe, during the first period of their expansion they preferred land to water con­ nections within the burgeoning empire. Legend has it that the Caliph 'Umar cautioned 'Amr ibn al-'As, the general in charge of the successful campaign against the Byzantines in Egypt, not to "place water between himself and the Caliph's forces." 1 If we con­ sider that the first Muslim armies were composed largely of nomads skilled in camel transport, we can well understand that in­ junction. Among the major cities founded or favored by the early Arabs, a significant proportion were located inland, even in regions with ιη1

One cannot believe that the Arabs were so little acquainted with the sea as the following anecdote suggests, but whether true or apocryphal, the story does illus­ trate why this early injunction against the sea might have been issued Coindreau (1948) cites Slane's translation of the Muqqadimah (II39), for this interchange be­ tween 'Amr ibn al-'As. and the Caliph 'Umar The latter had asked 'Amr what the sea looked like, the reply he received was that the sea "is an immense being that carries on its back a number of weak creatures moths [worms] piled one upon the other, all on sticks of wood." This is clearly a description of sailing vessels as seen from a distance, and suggests that it is made in total ignorance of the matter1

URBANIZATION IN NORTH AFRICA

31

dented sea coasts and fertile maritime plains Both Mecca and Medina were, of course, inland centers for the caravan trade. But, later Arab capitals were also away from the coasts. One thinks of Baghdad or Samarra, both well up-river from the port of Basra; of Aleppo, inland from the ports of Tripoli and Lataqiya, of Fustat (later called Cairo), up-river from the ancient but dying port at Alexandria, of Damascus, over the mountains from Beirut and Haifa, of Fez and Marrakech, the historic capitals of Morocco, both on the inland axis of the country rather than near the Atlantic or the Mediterranean, of Qayrawan, the first Arab capital of Tunisia, set in the desert far from the Roman settlement of Tunis on the coast or even its own port at Sousse Indeed, during the first centuries of Islamic expansion, the existing port cities declined—at least until the sea routes were as firmly under Arab control as the land routes Once the latter occurred, much changed. Particularly from the time of the tenth-century Fatimids, who specialized in ship building and were able to launch a significant fleet, port cities became increasingly prominent. Their development accompanied the growth of an extensive sea trade in which the Italian city states gradually became equal and then, by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, dominant partners. The heated conflict of the crusades nurtured a vital trade in spices in which merchants from Spain and Portugal, but especially the Italian states of Florence, Venice, and Livorno, interacted intensely with merchants and governors in Egypt and North Africa. Accompanying this tempting cargo went, quite naturally, piracy, in which greed and nationalism were melded in an uneasy blend. From ports on the northern as well as the southern shore of the Mediterranean darted the maneuverable ships of the corsairs—an extension to the sea of the endemic conflict between Christian Europe and Muslim North Africa Chastening the corsairs of the Barbary coast became the pretext on which ascendant Europe based its mounting invasions of the North African coast. As the balance of power tipped in Europe's favor, small enclaves along the North African coast were occupied militarily; in others, the trade was increasingly "taken over" by foreign merchants. Wherever possible, the Arabs pulled inland away from the coasts in response to these incursions, trying to regroup or even to ignore them. The population of the port cities became more "cosmopolitan," drawing adventurers and deviant groups into the mix. Although Alexandria was not occupied militarily until the landing of British troops in 1881, she was always somewhat tangential to

32

URBANIZATION IN NORTH AFRICA

Egyptian Muslim culture and housed a large minority of Levantines and other foreigners. In this she contrasted sharply with Cairo, which, even in the heyday of colonial rule, remained basically an indigenous city. Algiers and Tunis experienced temporary occupations and, even when autonomous, contained large numbers of "strangers"; this was in contrast to the more conservative inland cities of Tlemcen, Qayrawan, and Constantine. In Morocco, Fez and Marrakech remained closed and conservative, while Tangiers and the other ports either were occupied, became increasingly "cosmopolitan," or began to stagnate. By the nineteenth century, economic if not yet political domination of the south by the north was a fait accompli. And it was from that time on that the cities along the coasts again began to assume prominence. As in the days of Imperial Rome, the North African economies became increasingly dependent upon a core region on the outside, a dependence that stimulated the ports into which manufactured goods were dumped and from which local resources were shipped out. But this time the core lay not in Rome but in London and, even more, in Pans. The process is seen clearly in Morocco. Tangiers had been the leading city in ancient times, for Tingis (as it was then called) was capital first for the Phoenician and then for the Roman province of Mauritania. The decline of Tangiers parallels Arab expansion, which proceeded via land routes through the Taza Gap, well to the south of Tangiers. The port experienced a significant revival under the glorious renaissance of the Umayyad Caliphate of Cordoba, but gradually declined at the Reconquista. Eventually it fell into Portuguese, English, Spanish, and then international "extraterritorial" hands, serving during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a key center for the mercantile conquest of North Africa. Its rise, fall, and then revival is paralleled in other Moroccan ports. The interior cities have a history that is a mirror image of the cities on the coast, since they assume central importance from the eighth through the sixteenth centuries. From Tlemcen (in western Algeria today) through Oujda and Fez—the so-called Taza Gap— ran the major land route along which armies, tradesmen, and religious movements traveled. At Fez, the road turns southward toward Marrakech and the Tafilalat "gateway" to Mali and Ghana. That most of Morocco's transit followed this axis is seen clearly in the map Montagne prepared (1952: text 9-10; map in appendix, unpaginated) on the basis of Leo Africanus' description of

URBANIZATION IN NORTH AFRICA

FIGURE 2a

33

T H E CIRCULATION SYSTEM IN MOROCCO IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

sixteenth-century Morocco. This map would fit the facts of earlier periods just as well. But by the seventeenth century, reflecting the general decline in the Arab world and Morocco's isolated position as the only remnant of the old Arab empire not under Ottoman rule, the pattern was already beginning to change. A new port city at Ribaf, across the river from Sala, was functioning; its position was particularly favorable because it was one of the only ports on Morocco's Atlantic coast that had not been occupied by the Spanish or the Portuguese. Although it was to lose some of its eminence in the next century to the new port at Mogador (Essaouira), which the Moroccan Sultan established in part to discipline the rebellious Rbatis, and was to suffer badly from an earthquake, its decline did not signal a general reduction in the importance of the coast, but merely a displacement of some of its functions to other port towns. By the nineteenth century, European traders had penetrated Morocco. The four-volume work of Miege documents conclusively the gradual reduction of Morocco to a state of economic dependence. And it is during this century that the lines of a typical colonial urban network began to appear. Activities and transactions moved more and more toward the coasts. Even before the French protectorate over most of Morocco was officially recognized, the new port at Casablanca was being set up on the site of a hitherto unimportant fishing village. And by the twentieth century the

34

FIGURE 2b

U R B A N I Z A T I O N IN NORTH AFRICA

THE CIRCULATION SYSTEM IN MOROCCO IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

urbanization pattern of Morocco had altered to favor the numerous towns along the Atlantic coast. Fez and Marrakech, the two largest cities in the country, began to stagnate; their stasis was especially noticeable when contrasted with the very rapid growth and revitalization of hitherto less important cities that now took on significance in connection with the extractive economy being imposed upon the country. While Casablanca became the commercial and industrial giant of the new system, its near neighbor, Ribaf, shared in the growth. The latter's selection as the official capital of the French Protectorate catapulted it into a position of importance that eventually led it to surpass both Fez and Marrakech in size and significance. In many ways, Rabat is atypical as a North African or Middle Eastern city. In order to appreciate the special history and role of Rabat, it is necessary to contrast it with the other major capitals of North Africa. Its relative unimportance until fairly recently, a condition it shares to some extent with Algiers, is painfully clear when one draws these comparisons. Table 1 presents a simplified comparative chronology of the histories of Tunis, Cairo, Algiers, and Rabat-Sale. In contrast with the first pair, the latter two lack historical depth and continuity. Whereas Tunis and Cairo are located on or near sites of continuing strategic importance that had always hosted historically significant settlements (Carthage and Memphis, respectively), there appear to

U R B A N I Z A T I O N IN N O R T H A F R I C A TABLE

1

COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGY

O F T U N I S , C A I R O , R A B A T , A N D ALGIERS

Rabat-Sale

Cairo

Tunis

Pre-Roman Tenes was a Berber town as early as 2000 Β C Carthage founded by the Phoenicians in 814 Β C as a suburb of Tenes. It was located on the Hill of Bursa on high land near the then-navigable lake

Memphis was important capital by 3000 Β c , lo­ cated on western bank of the Nile Babylon, the precursor to Cairo, was located across the river

ONLY NECROPOLIS LEFT

ONLY NECROPOLIS LEFT

By 146 Β c Carthage was destroyed in the last of the Punic Wars One cen­ tury later, Roman Car­ thage established on a site at the sandy shore (circa 45 Β c ) Tenes mentioned by Diodorus and by Polybius, who describe it as a fortified town Roman Carthage ruins are being excavated and restored

Romans conquered Baby­ lon and Trajan con­ structed his stil 1-st an ding fortress in Babylon, 45 Β c Babylon mentioned by Diodorus and Polyb­ ius Few remains to be found.

from iL

35

Algiers

Period Neolithic remains, but undated. Rumor that Phoenicians had a comptoir there but evidence is slight Some Punic goods, but could have come from trade Earliest Phoenician items from

Neolithic remains, but no evidence of a settlement in pre-Roman times. Lo­ cation is such that it may have been a small port for Phoenician vessels

300BC NOT EVEN NECROPOLIS

NOT EVEN NECROPOLIS

Roman Period Romans constructed town of Sala Colonia on the Rabat (left) bank of the Bou Regreg, on the site of the Marinid ceme­ tery of the Chella Men­ tioned by Pliny Few sur­ viving ruins, a few in­ scriptions Roman road and perhaps a wall went past present-day Sale

VERY IMPORTANT

VERY IMPORTANT

UNIMPORTANT

SETTLEMENT

SETTLEMENT

FRONTIER POST

Site of the Roman town oflcosium, of which a few ruins have been exca­ vated beneath the present qasbah of the city

UNIMPORTANT PORT

Post-Roman to Islamtc Period Occupied by the Vandals, then the Byzantines, and finally by the Arabs, whose conquest began A D 670 and ended circa 698

Held by Byzantium, then captured by the Persians, and then finally by the Arabs in A D 641

Ifnqiya "subdued" by 698 Qayrawan estab­ lished by 'Uqba lbn NafT as the new capital Tenes resisted and was destroyed, Carthage abandoned Eventually there was a recovery in Tunis and a naval facility established City became functional capital under the Aghlabids in the 9th century

Misr "subdued" m 640641 'Amr lbn al-'As then returned to establish new city of Fustit, near the Trajan tower in Babylon. Memphis abandoned Under the quasiindependent rule of lbn Tulun, the extension of Fustit, called al-QataY, constructed in 870 and after

Whatever remained of the Roman town destroyed by the Vandals or just disappeared. Only tiny settlement there when Arabs arrived circa A D 690

Possibly destroyed by the Vandals or had declined even earlier No settle­ ment of note located on the site when Arabs ar­ rived

Early Islamic Period Sala existed as a Berber, Christian town, but was essentially in ruins when the Arabs arrived Re­ sisted conquest and de­ clined In 683 'Uqba lbn Nan" defeated the Byzan­ tine ruler, Count Julian, in the vicinity of Sala Ribat did not exist, and Sala was of no impor­ tance, Fez was capital of the Moroccan province in the 9th century

Virtually no information available Probably de­ stroyed or only a small and unimportant settle­ ment during the early centuries of Islam

36

URBANIZATION

IN N O R T H

AFRICA

TABLE 1 (cont.) Tunis

Cairo

Rabat-Sale

Algiers

lOth-Century Period of City Founding 'Abbasids punished the

A l - Q a f a ' i ' destroyed by

" O l d S a l a " on the site o f

Aghlabids o f Tunis for

the 'Abbasids to punish

the Chella still in ruins.

T h e city o f Algiers was refounded o n the site o f

their attempt to be inde-

Ibn T u l u n for his abortive

Neither Sala n o r Ribat

the R o m a n t o w n o f

pendent. Rise o f the

attempt at independence.

appear to have existed, al-

Icosium. T h e founder

Fatimids, w h o ignored

Fatimids arrived at site in

though there may have

was Bulujian, the general

T u n i s in favor o f their

9 6 9 and laid out royal

been a m i n o r (periodic?)

left in charge o f the west-

n e w city o f Mahdiya

suburb o f al-Qahira, the

market there.

e m provinces b y the

farther d o w n the coast.

capital for their caliphate.

Fatimids when they in-

End o f century witnessed

Eventually expanded to

vaded Egypt,

great period o f revival in

j o i n Fus?a(.

T u n i s ' return to o r t h o d o x Malikism.

llth-Century Time of Troubles T h e B a n u Hilal and B a n u

T r o u b l e d time for Cairo

S o m e time around 1030

Evidently the t o w n was

Sulaym driven out o f

under Mustan$ir. T h e

the t o w n o f Sala on the

badly damaged b y the

E g y p t by Mustansir.

zones between Fustaf and

T h e y invaded Tunisia and

al-Qafeira gradually

right

R e g r e g founded b y the

bank o f the B o u

Algeria, destroying m u c h

abandoned, the ruins hid-

B a n u 'Ashara. E n d o f the

in their path. Tunis even-

den b y walls.

U m a y y a d dynasty; A l -

tually recovered and was

moravids controlled Sala

refortified. Qayrawan,

and added to her con-

however, never recovered

structions, even though

as a rival. T u n i s expanded

their capital was at M a r -

b e y o n d its walls to the

rakech.

B a n u Hilal, but continued to serve as a p o r t

t w o suburbs o f B a b Jazayri and B a b Suwayqa. Controlled by the N o r m a n s o f Sicily.

I2th-Century Divergence of Traditions T h e Almohads, under

Fatimids deposed by O r -

A l m o h a d s control Sala

Algiers a thriving port

'Abd al-Mu'min, con-

thodox Sunni forces

and, in 1150 ' A b d al-

t o w n under A l m o h a d

quered Ifriqiya. T u n i s be-

under Saladin. T h e s e had

M u ' m i n built the Ribat

rule, but neither a capital

came the A l m o h a d capital

rescued C a i r o from the

al-Fath on the site o f the

nor a m a j o r city,

o f the province.

Crusaders. Fusfat burned

present-day Qa$bah o f

to the ground at this time

the Udaya. H e planned to

(1168). A l - Q a b i r a be-

use it as a staging point

came real capital and e x -

for an invasion o f Spain,

pandcd considerably.

D i e d and t o w n aban-

S e l j u k - T u r k i s h traditions

doned until the end o f the

introduced.

century, when Y a ' q u b al-Man$ur built the city o f Ribat to include a vast area o f 4 0 0 hectares within its walls. Traditions AndalusianMaghribi.

U R B A N I Z A T I O N IN N O R T H AFRICA

37

T A B L E 1 (cont.) Tunis

Cairo

Rabat-Sale

"The Golden Age,' I3th-15th Golden Age in thirteenth and fourteenth centuries under the Hafjids City stopped growing by about 1400

Golden Age in fourteenth century under the Mamluks. City stopped growing about 1500

Ottoman rule. Combined infusion from Andalusia (brought by Monsco refugees) and Turkey

Ottoman rule Heavy infusion from Turkey. Trade routes shifted away from Egypt

Under French control by 1881

Under English control by 1882

Missed the Golden Age of the Marauds, which caused Fez to flourish Ribat virtually disappeared but Sala survived

Ottoman Empire, t6th-18th

Colonialism,

No information.

Centuries

Ribat refounded in beginning of 17th century Morocco experienced heavy infusions from Andalusia. Period of the "pirate" republics

I9th-20th

Algiers

Centuries

"Piracy" absorbed into Ottoman rule. Combined infusions from Andalusia (brought by Monsco refugees) and Turkey.

Centuries

Not a French-Spanish "colony" officially until 1912.

Under French control by 1830

have been no important ancient cities near Rabat or Algiers. It is possible that during the period of Phoenician domination tiny comptoirs existed at both points but, at least with respect to Rabat, there is no clear evidence nor agreement among scholars concerning Punic settlement before the third century B.C.2 And even if such evidence should eventually be uncovered, it is extremely unlikely that a settlement comparable in importance and size to Memphis or Carthage could have gone undetected so long. In Roman times the sites of Algiers or Rabat did not play the important roles attributed to Cairo (called Babylon at that time) or to Tenes-Carthage. In both the latter cases, the Romans attempted to ignore previous settlements and established new ones nearby. This was sjmple in the case of Tunis, since Carthage had already been destroyed in 146 B.C., in the last of the seemingly endless Punic Wars. When the Romans finally rebuilt a city there in 45 B.C., they shunned the old site on the elevation of the Hill of Bursa (where the Cathedral now stands) in favor of a new location at the water's edge. In similar fashion, the Romans abandoned the ancient area of 2

Sala's nineteenth-century historian, Ibn ' A h , alludes to a Phoenician settlement called Koudis, b u t places it s o m e distance from Sala. T h e source most frequendy cited concerning w h e t h e r Carthage maintained a trading post at Sala is t h e w o r k by the French scholars in Villes et tubus au Maroc. Rabat et sa region. In this w o r k , the

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Memphis-Giza on the western bank of the Nile, instead occupying and refortifying Babylon across the river and to the north; Trajan's fortress was built there about 45 B.C. It was out of the nucleus at Babylon that Arab Fustat and eventually Fatimid Cairo developed. Both Algiers and Rabat were the sites of small Roman walled towns. The ruins of the relatively unimportant castrum of Icosium have been found beneath Algiers' qasbah, and remnants of the town called Sala Colonia have been unearthed in the Marinid cemetery of the Chella, just outside the southeastern wall of Rabat. But whereas Carthage and Babylon were both important centers for Roman provincial rule, Icosium was insignificant, and the town of Sala Colonia was, at best, a frontier outpost. Caille (1949,1:12) calls it the "last outpost" of Rome's North African empire, described by Pliny in A.D. 39 as adjacent to the desert and infested with elephants. Indeed, the Roman limes were a scant five miles to the south of Rabat. The function of the settlement was clearly one of defense; the most notable aspect of its plan was the fortress, the Oppidum Sala. Excavations have revealed that the settlement was more ex­ tensive than the fort alone, however. The forum has been located, major roads have been traced, remains have been found of the senauthors take pains to refute other European scholars who claimed, on the basis of linguistic conjecture only, that Sala must originally have been founded and named by the Carthaginians, since Sala is a Punic word meaning "rocks." They point out, not quite accurately, that there are no rocks in the vicinity, and that neither the geog­ raphy of Harmon, circa 500 B.c , nor that of Scylax, in 360 B.C., mentions a town by the name of Sala

Since 1958 there have been new excavations in the Chella

cemetery—the presumed site of a Carthaginian settlement and the known location of the later Roman town of Sala Colonia—which, according to Boube (1966), have unearthed neo-Punic relics dating as early as the third century B.C. Among the more recent sources, see Nacin (1963:13), who discounts Phoenician origins, and Κ L Brown (1969), who acknowledges them on the basis of Boube. The degree of confusion concerning origins is only compounded, rather than clarified, by an examination of Arabic sources. The geography of Morocco, pre­ pared by al-Ziyani, has this to say about Sala: "The first city built by the Berbers upon entrance into the Maghrib was Sala. It is said that Dhou El-Qarnein the Himyante founded it at the time of Alexander. . . Others claim that the founder of Sala was Afnqyeh the Himyante who built it after . . . Dhou El-Qarnein who had come much earlier. He entered the Maghreb with the Berbers. When he arrived at the location of Sala . . . his horse, which had stopped whinnying ever since he en­ tered Ifnqiyeh, suddenly gave a loud neigh, and in doing so, made the sound "Sla " Afnqyeh ordered the construction of a citadel at the point where his foot touched ground. The Berbers inhabited it and gave to it the name of Sala." (Translated from E. Coufouner's translation entitled " U n e Description geographique au Maroc d'Azzyany," p. 451.)

URBANIZATION IN NORTH AFRICA

39

ate meeting hall, pillars from the arch of triumph have been identified, and statuary and inscriptions, although inferior in quality to those at Volubihs, have been found (L'Encyclopedte colomale, 1948.40-41, describes the excavations that confirmed Tissot's 1878 conjectures about the city ) After the Roman period, both Rabat and Algiers drop from sight, whereas Tunis-Carthage and Memphis-Giza-Babylon retain their continuity. It is likely that the settlements at Rabat and Algiers were either abandoned by the Romans as they retrenched to defend themselves from the European invading tribes at home, or were destroyed by the Vandals who swung through Spain, crossed the strait at Gibraltar, and then marauded eastward across the North African littoral as far as Tunis. All we know is that Icosium disappears from the geographies of the time and the later Arab geographers describe the ruins of a city—variously called Shala or Sala—in the vicinity of the Bou Regreg River, which they attribute either to the Romans or the Vandals, indicating clearly that it had disappeared long before the Arab forces arrived. Our evidence cannot determine whether the Vandals ever reached as far south as Sala, for there is the usual confusion in the documents arising from the fact that regions and their chief cities often bore the same names. We know that they invaded the region of Sala in 476, but whether they conquered the town itself or, indeed, whether the town even existed by that date is not known (Rabat et sa region, 3, Les Tnbus 1920:51). Several hundred years later, when the Arab general, 'Uqba lbn Nafi', defeated the Byzantine governor of the Sala region and began the task of converting members of the rival Berber confederations that confronted each other on the separate shores of the Bou Regreg, there was scarcely anything worthy of note in the vicinity of the ruined Roman town. This must be contrasted with the relatively complete and vivid descriptions that have come down to us concerning the conquest by 'Amr lbn al-'A§ of Babylon and its environs, or the full descriptions of the Byzantine stronghold of Carthage, which resisted successive Arab attempts to conquer it throughout the seventh century, even after this same 'Uqba lbn Nafi' had founded his rival capital at Qayrawan (a process described graphically if somewhat fancifully by the historian alHakam). Events in the Mashriq, which were having important repercussions in Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo, had little effect on the

40

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Maghrib until the middle of the eighth century, when the Damascus-based Umayyads were overthrown by the 'Abbasid caliphate centered in Baghdad. The implications of this transition were decisive for the future of North Africa. A young descendant of the deposed Umayyads escaped the massacre of his family in Damascus and fled to Spain. Eventually, the Umayyad caliphate was reconstituted there as a rival to the one in Baghdad, and attracted many migrants from Syria The Caliphate at Cordoba, being a transplant of Syrian culture to Spain, served as a source of direct Mashnq influence upon the Maghrib and, therefore, had two very important consequences First, it created a significant break in traditions between, on the one hand, Egypt-Libya-Tunisia, which remained under at least nominal 'Abbasid control, and, on the other hand, western Algeria and Morocco, which were increasingly drawn into the orbit of the Umayyad caliphate of Spain. Second, western Islam was directly and decisively infused by Damascene culture, including the latter's unique architectural and urban traditions. (The delicate geometric traceries of shallow relief we associate with thirteenth-fourteenth century Alhambra are close cousins to those that adorn the Qasr Hisham, a much earlier Umayyad structure in the East) Thus, there was a detour in cultural diffusion that bypassed Egypt to move directly to Spam, and from there back mto North Africa. Sauvaget's observations in this regard (in his essay on Damascus, 1935:422-423) are particularly astute. This antiquity of the urban movement in Syria gave to the Muslim agglomerations of the region a particular characteristic, whereas Qayrawan or Basra were not yet in existence at the time of the Arab conquest, Damascus and Jerusalem already had behind them by that date a long past. . . . Syria . . . is the origin of the principles qfurbamsm that governed the development of the cities of Spain and the Maghrib. It is there, in effect—and not m Egypt or in Iraq, essentially rural countries—that the Arabs entered mto intimate contact with true urban centers. . . . One is able to think of certain characteristics of Maghnbme cities that appear originally foreign to the western basin of the Mediterranean (the "qaysanya," for example) as nothing more than Syrian achievements transported by the Umayyads to Spain, whence they were then passed on mto North Africa. [Italics m the original.] This unanticipated linkage of the urban traditions of Rome, Byzantium, and other early Arab developments m the "core" with

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41

the peripheral developments in Morocco and western Algeria is crucial for understanding urban developments in Spain (see Torres-Balbas, 1954) as well as in the Maghrib This break between the traditions of East and West was particularly important because it coincided temporally with a period of rapid urban growth in all parts of the Islamic world In the East, during the ninth century, Baghdad's rulers gradually lost control over the provinces nominally within their domain. At this time of increased provincial autonomy, many of the existing towns took on the characteristics of rival capitals. Thus, under the Aghlabids, Tunis became the real capital of the province of Ifnqiya (Tunisia), supplanting inland Qayrawan. It flowered as an important center of culture and learning, the Aghlabids reconstructed the Zaytuniya mosque in Tunis and made it the center of religious orthodoxy It was during this same period that Egypt's governor, Ibn T u l un > built his new royal suburb of al-Qa(a' 1' on the outskirts of Fustat, and constructed the mosque that still bears his name. The ninth century was also critical for Morocco, for it marked the founding of Fez, which was to become the prototype and ideal of a proper hadara (civilized settlement), and thus to influence all later cities in that region. Significantly, Fez received settlers from both Cordoba and Qayrawan, illustrating the types of influences that Morocco absorbed from her neighbors. Fez was initially founded some time near the end of the eighth century (791 is a date often suggested) by Idns ibn 'Abd-Allah I, on the site of the present "Andalusian" quarter Because its founder was murdered soon afterwards, the town did not develop beyond a simple Berber marketing center until his posthumously born son and successor, Mawlay Idns II, came to make it his capital in 809, building a mosque, a suq, and a palace on the opposite side of the Wadi Fez, the river that now bisects the old city The site was strategic, not only because it was copiously supplied with water (a factor stressed by all writers), but also because it lay astride the crossroads of the most convenient east-west route from Tunis to the Atlantic, at the point where it intersected the vital north-south route linking Tangiers with the Tafilalat. Growth was inevitable, particularly because the city became a refuge for political exiles. In 818 it received a sudden influx of several hundred families from Cordoba, and in 825 these were joined by additional political exiles, this time coming from the Tunisian capital of Qayrawan. The former installed themselves on the right bank of the Wadi Fez, in a quarter that subsequently became known as the 'Adwat al-Andalus, while the latter settled on

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the left bank, their quarter being labeled the 'Adwat al-Qarawiyin. The two quarters coexisted until the city was unified and expanded 3 by the Almoravids, who occupied it in about 1075. The beginning of the tenth century was not a propitious period for the cities of North Africa. The 'Abbasids, who had never suc­ ceeded in extending their hegemony over Morocco and who expe­ rienced increasing difficulty in keeping Tunisia and Egypt subject to their rule, finally tried to discipline their rebellious provinces. In the course of this attempt to reimpose control, Tunis was punished, and much of al-Qata'i' was burned to the ground. But these were merely the final vindictive acts of a declining power. Even as these events were occurring, forces were forming in Ifnqrya (Tunisia) around a pretender mahdi, 'Ubayd 'Abd-Allah al-Mahdi, who was soon to establish the only pan-Arab dynasty to originate in the Maghrib—the Shi'ite caliphate of the Fatimids. The second half of the tenth century was crucial, in ways that were very different for the futures of Cairo, Tunis, and Algiers. Spurning Tunis as the home of orthodoxy, the Fatimids estab­ lished a new planned capital farther south, along the coast and nearer to Qayrawan, calling it, appropriately enough, Mahdiya (from mahdi, "the rightly-inspired religious guide"). Significantly, it was a port city, for the Fatimids were more oriented toward the sea than any previous Arab dynasty. From Mahdiya they moved first toward the west, bringing the provinces of Algeria and much of Morocco under their control. As early as 922 they were already administering the province of Fez, as well as the whole region of the Tafilalat (Juhen, 1970.58), together with all intervening areas. But their true aim was not toward the periphery but toward the core, and that meant the east. Jawhar, the Fatimid general who had led the campaigns to sub­ due the Maghrib, now led his troops to Egypt, where they defeated the weakened and unpopular Ikhshidi rulers, almost without a bat­ tle, and occupied Fustat In that year, 969, Jawhar laid out the plan for a new walled city just north of the existing settlements, first call­ ing it Mansuriya but four years later renaming it al-Qahira (Cairo), in honor of the arrival of the newly installed Fatimid Caliph, Mu Ίζ al-Din Allah 3 There are numerous sources that describe the founding of Fez (for example, LeTourneau, 1949, 1961, 1965, Julien, 1970 38-39, and especially Levi-Provencal, 1938 23-53), but all are dependent on a single primary document, the Raw4 al-Qtrtds (see Beaumier, trans , 1860 7 ff)

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43

Once the Fatimids turned their backs on the Maghrib, however, they lost it. There was a revival of Mahkism (a branch of orthodox Islam) in Tunis. Sidi Mahraz, the patron saint of that city, lived at that time. And those whom the Fatimids had left in charge of North Africa when they turned eastward were not long in declaring their independence. Bulujian lbn Zin (whence the dynastic name, the Zinds) competently ruled, in the name of the Fatimids, all of present-day Tunisia along with eastern Algeria, either from Qayrawan or from his new capital at 'Ashir in Algeria (Abun-Nasr, 1971:84). It was this same Bulujian who, in the second half of the tenth century, apparently founded (or revived) the city of Algiers (Lespes, 1930:100). So well did he administer these territories that he was given the province of Tnpohtania (western Libya) as well. But his son, al-Mansur (984-996), who succeeded him, lost no time in declaring his independence from Fatimid control, an act of insubordination that was eventually punished by a strategy that myth has by now embroidered into absolute disaster: the unleashing of a "barbarian" invasion. Ibn Khaldun's Kttab al-'Ibar . . (Book of Reflections), a history written by the Tunisian-born scholar in the fourteenth century, some three hundred years after the presumed events, seems to be the major if not sole source of this tale of the wanton destruction of all of North Africa at the hands of two cruel and rapacious Arabian tribes, the Banu Hilal (the most notorious) and the Banu Sulaym. According to his account, the Fatimid Caliph in Cairo, alMustansir, seeking both to rid himself of the two troublesome tnbes, which had recently settled in Egypt, and to avenge himself upon the disloyal descendants of Zin, drove the tnbes out of Egypt, adding to the stick the tempting carrot of plunder According to Ibn Khaldun, some fifty thousand tribesmen swept across North Africa "like a plague of locusts," destroying everything in their path. While his writing is graphic, it is heatedly partisan and, therefore, oddly unconvincing. First, the numbers seem grossly exaggerated, given what we know about the size of tribal groups Second, it is hardly plausible to blame the decadence of several ensuing centuries on a single military invasion, no matter how brutal. And finally, there is good evidence to indicate that not everything was destroyed, even though Qayrawan, already in decline, never did recover from the depredations of the eleventh century The Zinds themselves survived in Mahdiya. Tunis persisted despite the set-

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back, and within a few centuries was experiencing her highest development. Another local group survived in Algeria in the independent "state" centered at Bougie, and the surface of Algiers' life was "hardly ruffled" (Spencer, 1976:6). Furthermore, Morocco continued to prosper. Nor was this second "Arab" invasion without benefit. As Abun-Nasr (1971:86) has observed, "one permanent effect which this invasion had on the Maghrib was that of spreading knowledge of the Arabic language into the countryside instead of it remaining limited to the towns. Prior to this invasion the Berber dialects formed the means of communication in the Maghnban countryside, but as groups of these Arabic-speaking nomads came from Egypt, Arabic gradually replaced the Berber dialects." While the Banu Hilal and their supporters appear to have inflicted severe injuries on Libya, Tunisia, and even Algeria, either their strength gave out by the time they reached Morocco, or the powerful Berber confederations of Morocco were more than an adequate match for them. In any event, they seem not to have affected the westernmost portion of North Africa, which continued to prosper. The eleventh century is, in fact, a time of city building in Morocco, not of urban destruction. Among others, the towns of Sala and Marrakech date from that century We know definitely that at the end of the tenth century there was no city on the right bank of the Bou Regreg, where present-day Sale is located, and that on the left bank there were only the ruins that the famous geographer, Ibn Hawqal, writing in 977-978, referred to as "Old Sala." The absence of an urban settlement on the important estuary of the Bou Regreg, a point strategically linked to the Gharb plain which stretches to its north and east, requires an explanation. It may have been because the estuary marked the boundary between two rival confederations, the Barghwata, who controlled the lands south of the river, and the Zanata, who controlled the territory to the north A border "battleground" can sometimes be conducive to the existence of a "neutral" trading center, but it is seldom propitious for orderly urban growth On occasion, however, a town may be established at a frontier if territorial defense or a new offensive is its hidden agenda Perhaps it was just such a changed situation—a strengthened alliance between the Umayyads and the Zanata—that led to the establishment of Sala In any event, by the middle of the eleventh century a small town called Sala was in existence on the right (north-

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45

ern) bank of the estuary. Its founding was attributed to a group called the Banu 'Ashara. Although the story of its founding is embellished by wildly fanciful myths, many of them derived from a play on the name of the first settlers,4 there is general agreement on 1030 as the date of its founding and on the genealogical descent of the first settlers.5 According to Brown, some time in the tenth century 'Ashara had been appointed by the Umayyad caliphate at Cordoba to be the dynasty's regent for central Morocco. In return for his services he may have been granted land at Sala, but it was apparently not until the next century that 'Ashara's grandson settled permanently on the site. A small town grew up around his house and, by the time the Almoravids arrived in the middle of the eleventh century, the town already had three quarters, all located in the southwest quadrant of the present walled city in the vicinity of the great Mosque (Rabat et sa region 1:28). The town was surrounded by walls, at least one of which followed the course of the old Roman road, long since grassed over. Although this settlement was not affected adversely by the incursions of the Banu Hilal, it was soon to be transformed by a quite different nomadic invasion, this time not from the east but from the south. It has been suggested that the great fourteenth-century Arab philosopher of history, Ibn Khaldun, while attempting to write a universally applicable theory of social change, had derived many of his ideas from Maghribi history, and had indeed used his knowledge of the great Berber movements there to "read back into time" the events that had given rise to Islam and the Arab expansion. His theory, briefly summarized, was that there was a state of ongoing tension and reciprocity between settled (urban and rural) and nomadic populations which "caused" a sequence of cultural stages that tended to recur every few generations. According to his theory, the harsh life of the desert nurtured tough warriors of great discipline and austerity, who were bound together of necessity by primordial ties of the strongest solidarity ('asabiya). Because of the dearth of resources in the desert, however, these Bedouins were 4 'Ashara means ten: hence the tales about ten infants born simultaneously and presented to the Caliph who rewarded their parents with the land, or the tales about ten brave brothers. 5 All historical accounts depend upon Ibn 'Ah, the nineteenth-century historian of Sala, supplemented often by material from Ibn Sharifa, 1965:179, who based his work on an anonymous twelfth-century historian. See, inter aha, Rabat et sa region 1, 1918.26-27; K. L. Brown, 1971:19.

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constantly attracted to the sown areas in the plains and river valleys, in which were concentrated agricultural wealth and the cities built upon this agricultural surplus. Due to their personal qualities of strength and courage, and because of their tribal social organization, which facilitated altruistic mobilization toward group goals, they succeeded in conquering the softer sedentary populations and in imposing their rule upon them. However, once transplanted from the environment that had required self-discipline aTrd~austerity and placed in a society based upon what Durkheim called "organic" solidarity rather than one unified by the blood-bonded principle of'asabiya, the second-generation urban-based descendants of the nomads adapted to "civilized" ways and to urban culture. During the period of this second generation, cultural advances and refinements reached new levels of creativity and achievement. But by the third generation, the dynasty was no longer able to defend itself By then their descendants had deteriorated into decadent, luxury-loving, and slothful men, hedonistic and self-serving, devoid of the discipline required to fight. This left them prey to the next incursion from the desert, Bedouins who in turn conquered and set up their own vital ruling dynasty, until they too lost their vigor and were, in turn, replaced. We do not know whether the Sanhaja Almoravids constituted the basic case that stimulated Ibn Khaldun's theory, but certainly these men from the southern desert, the al-Murabitun (literally, those from the ribat or fortified monastery, from which the English term, Almoravid, is a corruption), can serve as an illustration of it. Toward the middle of the eleventh century, just about the time that the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym were driven out of Egypt and began their attacks on the settlements along the North African coast, another major group of tribally organized nomads of the Sanhaja confederation were poised to enter Morocco from the southern desert. Traditionally, the Sanhaja were camel-herding nomads who circulated chiefly between southern Morocco and the kingdoms of Black Africa. They controlled the passage of the great caravans, which required safe transit through their territory. Like their present-day successors in this area, the Twariq (Touareg), their men were veiled, a custom that aroused comment even then and led to their also being called the mulaththamun or veil wearers (seejulien, 1970:76-93; and Hitti, 1951:541 ff). The Sanhaja had converted to Islam, but still remained illiterate in Arabic and relatively untutored in that system of beliefs. Several

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47

of their leaders made the pilgrimage to Mecca and, on their way back, recognizing their need for greater knowledge, sought a proper teacher for their tribe. Unsuccessful in their recruitment at Qayrawan, they continued their search until they found 'Abd-Allah lbn Yasin in the Sous area of Morocco. Ibn Yasin returned with them and set up, on an island off the coast of Senegal, a fortified retreat (ribdt) where he and the followers he had attracted withdrew to devote themselves to an austere life of "ardent asceticism." This retreat was a prelude to their proselytizing forays. The key to the caravan trade had always been the settlement at Sijilmasa. It was therefore not unexpected that the Almoravids should have sought control first over this crucial gateway to the south. By 1056 they held the oasis and were already pushing northward to capture the town of Taroudant, the capital of the Sous region. One of the generals of their forces, Yusuf ibn Tashfin, who was later to inherit the chiefdom when his cousin died in 1088, is perhaps best known as a city builder, for it was he who founded the town of Marrakech, which was to serve first as the capital of the extensive Almoravid empire and later as the capital of an even more fundamentalist sect that succeeded them, the Almohads (al-Muwahhidun, those who stressed the oneness of God). Arab writers differ in dating the foundation of Marrakech. Ibn Khaldun gives 1062, the most commonly accepted date, but this appears too early. Deverdun (1959, 1:59-63) cites a variety of sources suggesting dates between 1066 and 1077 and concludes that although 1070 was probably the year that Abu Bakr founded the qasbah at Marrakech, it was really Yusuf ibn Tashfin who later reorganized and structured the capital. In any event, the identity of the founder is confirmed by the Raw4 al-Qirtas, which recounts that "Yusuf ben Tashefyn . . . bought, from a Masmouda owner, the land for the city of Marrakech, and he placed his tent there, after which he built a prayer mosque and a small qasbah to store his riches and his arms" (my translation from the Beaumier translation, 1860:194). According to this primary source, Marrakech was originally not fortified; its walls were not constructed until the reign of 'Ah, Yusuf s son. 6 From their new capital at Marrakech, the Almoravids expanded 6

The story told by Mas'iidi about Cairo (and also Alexandria), namely, that a crow landed on the ropes demarcating the planned walls, thereby giving, erroneously, the signal to begin digging for the walls, is similarly told of Marrakech (Deverdun 1, 1959 142)—firm evidence of its fanciful origin.

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rapidly, conquering all of the Maghrib as far east as Algiers by 1082. In 1085 they answered the request of some Spanish princes to help them in their battle against the Christians; five years later they had conquered their allies and were installed in Spain. Under the Almoravids, Morocco and Spain finally acknowledged the 'Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad, thus uniting Morocco once again with the Islam of the Mashnq. Under the impenal hegemony of so powerful a dynasty, the capital city of Marrakech could not help but grow. By the beginning of the twelfth century, the city was no longer "the small fortress guaranteeing the Atlas roads but had become the capital of a Malekite and Berber Empire," a flourishing commercial center in the vital trade between Spam and the Niger that imperial unification had opened up (Deverdun, 1959, 1.77-79) Other cities in Morocco also benefited from Almoravid strength and wealth. Sala received a new mosque and numerous improvements, and, across the river, a small nba( was constructed in the uppermost portion of what later became the Qasbah of the Udaya. Eventually the city of Algiers surrendered to Yusuf s son, 'Ah, becoming "one of the cities chosen for architectural devotion to the Mahki rite of Islam expressed in the public buildings of the Almoravid emirs" (Spencer, 1976:6), as well as continuing its old function as a much-frequented port with crowded and prosperous bazaars. If Tunis also had come under Almoravid protection, she might have escaped her own difficult time as an object of attack by the Normans of Sicily. As it was, Ifnqiya had to await the next Moroccan dynasty, the Almohads, to come to her aid. The three generations of Ibn Khaldun's cycle coincide neatly with the one-hundred-year cycle of the Almoravids. During the first generation these nomads of the ribat fought bravely, extending their rule until they had united all of Morocco, Algeria, and part of Tunisia with Islamic Spain. By the second generation they had absorbed the high culture of Spanish Islam, and from their capital in Seville they were reexporting to Morocco the science, philosophy, arts, and, most important for our purposes, the architecture and principles of urban design that had been perfected in the kingdoms of Cordoba and Granada. 'Ah, the son of Yusuf ibn Tashfin, reigned from 1106-1143. "An Andalusian at heart, he succeeded in establishing the Spanish Moorish civilization in the Maghrib" (Deverdun, 1959, 1:84). But by the third generation, decadence and

URBANIZATION IN NORTH AFRICA

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sloth had replaced the vigor and cultivation of the forebears, leaving the dynasty defenseless against the next onslaught. A new and even more austere religious revival was in progress among a new set of "barbarian invaders," the Almohads, or believers in the oneness of God—fundamentalists as puritanical as the nineteenth-century Wahhabis of the Arabian Peninsula were to be. By the middle of the twelfth century, these Masmuda Berbers had left their retreat in Tinmel in the Atlas mountains and, following their leader, Muhammad lbn Tumart, had spread throughout North Africa. After defeating the main Almoravid army at Tlemcen, they captured most of Morocco's cities, finally returning to lay siege to the capital at Marrakech, which, after eleven months, finally capitulated. The Almoravid dynasty was thus overthrown in 1147. Their successors were to control an even larger empire and to increase the interplay between Spanish and Maghnban cultures. They were also to found the city of Ribaf, so we shall return to them at greater length. But first we must look at what was happening in the rest of the Arab world, and particularly to the major cities we have been comparing in this chapter. The eleventh and twelfth centuries had been trying times for both Cairo and Tunis, not only because of internal difficulties but because of the growing threat from Europe. The first crusade took place in the closing years of the eleventh century, and was directed specifically toward the region of greater Syria, especially Palestine. The second crusade, in the middle of the next century, followed a similar route, but by then a Turkish tribe, the Seljuks, had converged on the area from the opposite direction, had gained control of the 'Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad, and stood ready to oppose them. North Africa remained tangential to these incursions, although it could not help but be affected by the turmoil. By 1160, however, the Christians' target had expanded to Egypt. The Seljuks sent a force to assist the Fatimid defenders of Cairo, and when the Christian forces under Amalric approached the city from the south in 1168, the defenders set the torch to Fustat to prevent their attack. Their strategy succeeded, but the cost was high. Al-Qahira, which up to that time had served as a royal residence for the FaQmids, quite independently of the economic/commercial center at Fustat, was suddenly crowded with the latter's population, which sought refuge from the fire and destruction. After that, especially after $alah al-Din al-Ayyubl became head of the em-

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pire and restored Egypt to Sunni control, the city of Cairo expanded and experienced its period of greatest glory The crusades did not affect the Jazirat al-Maghnb in the same way. True, some of the children recruited in 1212 for the so-called children's crusade were, for a fee, delivered into slavery in Tunis, just after they set sail, they thought, for the Holy Land. And in the thirteenth century the ill-fated crusade of Louis IX did violate Tunisian soil (First captured during his invasion of Egypt, Louis was ransomed only to move his attack to Tunis, where he was killed.) But what the Mashriq was suffering at the hands of the French and English crusaders, the eastern Maghrib suffered from the Normans of Sicily. The latter, from about 1134 on, successively took possession of the city of Tripoli, and then the Tunisian settlements of Djerba, Gabis, Sfax, Mahdiya, and Sousse While they did not succeed in occupying Tunis, they controlled that city through its "protected" Berber chief Thus, at both the eastern end and the center, the Arab world was under attack from the north It was not strange that rescue should have come from the periphery—on the east from the Turkish tribes, on the west from the Berbers of the High Atlas, who founded the Almohad dynasty which defeated the Normans in 1160 and, in the years that followed, united the entire Maghrib, for the first time, under a single and local authority (Abun-Nasr, 1971:110). By the last quarter of the twelfth century a final split between the Mashriq, now unified under Saladin, and the Maghrib (including southern Spain), newly unified under the Almohads, had occurred. The divergence between East and West at this time was critical. The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were the years during which the Middle Eastern city matured to its fullest expression. For a split to have occurred at this point meant that each region evolved somewhat independently of the other, and combined into unique amalgams their early separate traditions, their common Islamic heritage from the seventh through the twelfth centuries, and their separate search for maturity. It was at this critical juncture that the city of Ribaf was founded, influenced indirectly from the Mashriq by the patterns of city building brought to Spain from Damascus by the exiled Umayyads, but deeply shaped by the forces in Maghnbi urban development that had already created such exemplars as Fez and Marrakech and that were shaping her twin city across the river, the town of Sala. Not

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only the physical form of the city, but also its social organization and its political system were to be quite different from those observed in Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, 7 although they were to have much in common with Algiers (so like Ribaf in history and functions) and Tunis (so like Sala, but on a grander scale). Since all these cities came under the jurisdiction of the Almohad empire, we must now return to the remarkable achievements of this dynasty and to the city they founded, Ribat7

The "theory" of the Islamic city, which was generated in the 1920s and 1930s, chiefly by French colonial officer-scholars involved in France's rule of North Africa, especially Algeria and Morocco, is therefore not generally applicable elsewhere. Some of the controversies that rage among "orientalists" over the nature and traditions of the Islamic city derive from the fact that the generalizations were generated in one place and then assumed to apply everywhere. We have chosen rather selfconsciously not to enter the lists of these controversies, not because we consider the question, "what were the intrinsic characteristics of cities built under Islamic law and adapted to the social structure of the medieval Middle East?" an uninteresting one, but because we believe that it can be answered only by careful case studies.

THE ORIGINS OF SALE AND RABAT: FALSE AND TRUE BEGINNINGS THE THIRD Almohad Sultan, Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur (11841199), who is credited with the construction of a city, as contrasted to a mere fortress, on the present-day site of Rabat, is reported (in Rawd al-Qirtas, Beaumier translation, 1860:325-326) to have confessed on his deathbed that he regretted only three things in his life. The first was having introduced to the Maghrib the nomads from Ifnqiya; the second was having freed the Spanish prisoners after the battle of Alarcos; and the third was having built the city of Ribat al-Fath, for it was a waste of the public treasury. This story perhaps endows him with greater prescience than he possessed, but had he been able to see beyond his death, he would have observed a virtual halt of all the constructions he planned for his royal city, and had he returned a scant fifty years later, he would have witnessed its destruction and progressive decay Soon wild vines were to bury much of the city, which then lay dormant for some 350 years until its refounding. And yet, whatever architectural and historic mementos Rabat now has that give her an ambience of an "oriental" city can be traced back either to Ya'qub alMansur or to the Andalusians who resettled the site in the seventeenth century. Nor did settlement ever cease in the vicinity. Throughout Ribat's l° n g sleep, the city of Sala continued to grow, assuming its modest place in Moroccan history—as a hadara town, but not the most important; as a commercial port, but not the most important, and as a royal residence, but not the most important. Fez and Marrakech always remained the undisputed capitals. At its founding, Ribaf's future seemed more promising. It will be recalled that some sort of ribat had been in existence on the site of the present-day Qasbah of the Udaya as far back as the tenth century, when it had been described as follows by Ibn Hawqal: Beyond the Sebou River in the direction of the lands of the Barghwata, approximately one day's journey, is the Wadi Sala. There is the last place occupied by the Muslims, a monastery-

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citadel [ribat] in which the Muslims gather. The ruined city called old Sala has been destroyed, but people still live there, attaching themselves to a ribat by it. There are 100,000 holy soldiers [murabits) gathered in this place who attack at will. Their ribat is aimed against the Barghwata, a Berber tribe which has spread in this area along the Atlantic Ocean which limits the soil of Islam.1 When the Almoravids arrived in the area in the next century, they evidently took over this fortress, which then came to be called the Qasr Bani-Targa, after a Sanjaha tribe that accompanied Ibn Tashfih (Rabat et sa region 1, 1918:9, 12), or simply the Qas.bah Amir Tashfin (Caille, 1949, 1:54).2 Under the Almoravids, however, this fort remained a mere subsidiary to the town of Sala, designed to protect the mouth of the river, to oversee the real city across the estuary, and to serve as a religious retreat on occasion. It did not 1 Virtually every source cites this quotation; we have used here K. L. Brown's (1969:22) translation of Ibn Hawqal, Kttdb al-Masaltk wa al-Mamaltk, de Goeje edi­ tion (Leiden, 1893), Part 2:56 2 The primary sources are niggardly, and have been used uniformly by the chief secondary accounts of Ribaf. The narrative that follows has been based upon the fol­ lowing sources. Primary- 1. Kitab al-Isttbsir β 'Aja'ib al-Amsdr (sometimes listed as an anonymous source, sometimes attributed to al-Baidaq). An Arabic edition was published in Alexandria in 1958, and a partial translation by Ε Fagnan, entitled Description extratte de I'Afrtque septentrionale au XIle Steele de notre ere, was published in Constantine in 1900. It is the latter that most secondary sources have used. Written in the seventeenth century. 2. Ibn Abi Zar', Rawd al-Qirtas. French translation by A. Beaumier is the one generally cited. 3 Abu al-Fida (1273-1345), Taqwim al-Buldan 4. Al-Idrisi (1100-1166), Nuzhat al-Mushtdqfi Ikhttraq al-Afiq. 5 Al-Marrakshi, trans­ lation by Fagnan as Htstotre des Almohades d'Abd el Wahid Merrakecht (Algiers:1893).

Secondary: 1. Al-Nasin, Kitab al-lsttqsa', written in the nineteenth century 2. Ken­ neth Brown, "The Social History of a Moroccan Town: Sale, 1830-1930." The first chapter covering the earliest history is republished mHesperts Tamuda. The remain­ der, revised, is published under the title People of Sale. 3. Jacques Caille, La Vtlle de Rabatjusqu'au protectoratfranc,ats and La Petite histoire de Rabat, a very condensed ver­ sion of the former. 5. Victor Piquet, Autour des monuments musulmans du Maghreb; Volume 3 is relevant. 6. Morocco, Affaires indigenes et Service des Renseignements, Vdles et trtbus du Maroc. Series on Rabat et sa region,Part 1, Les Vtlles avant la conquete. 7. Joseph Burlot, Decouverte de Rabat. 8 Mohamed Nagin, "Sale: Etude de geo­ graphic urbame " I have not given exact citations for these works (for which full publishing infor­ mation appears in the Bibliography) since, in what follows, I have tried to recon­ struct from the separate sources as consistent an account as I can. Clearly, the amount of agreement among them, which my work compounds, is most suspicious, for little new knowledge seems to be available. I have not attempted additional pri­ mary documentation or original research here.

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expand these functions until the time of the Almohads, followers of Ibn Tumart who first began his rebellion against the Almoravids in 1125 The Almohads first marshaled strength in their ribat at Tinmel in the High Atlas, before setting out to conquer The path they followed was almost the exact reverse of the one their predecessors from the Sahara had followed. First they secured their hold on the High and Middle Atlas regions, and then moved northward to Taza They then circled back through the central and Atlantic provinces, capturing Fez and an unresisting Sala in 1146. Only then did they return to the southern stronghold to lay siege to the Almoravid capital at Marrakech in 1147 Having thus gained control of Morocco, the Almohads set their sights on Spain, which was, as usual, under threat by the Christians Ibn Tumart's successor, 'Abd al-Mu'min, began to assemble forces just outside Sala, using as his base the old nbaf across the river. According to al-Baidaq, a contemporary who wrote his memoirs in Kttab al-Istibfar, and confirmed by Abu al-Fida in the later Taqwim al-Buldan, it was in the summer of 1150, when 'Abd al-Mu'min spent several months in his ribat making preparations for a campaign in Spain, that he decided to transform the troop assembly point on the left bank of the Bou Regreg into a permanent castle-fort, supplemented by a small town. He ordered the building of a fort enclosing palaces, a principal mosque, and opposite the mosque, a set of reservoirs which were filled by waters brought from the springs of'Ayn Ghabula almost ten miles away. Around this fort were constructed the houses of many of his followers. Between 1151 and 1163, 'Abd al-Mu'min often resided at his fortress-castle at Ribat, receiving delegations there and sending out communications. From the documents it appears that both the terms Ribat al-Fath and Mahdiya were used to refer to his setdement across the river from Sala. My own hypothesis, that Ribat al-Fath was then the specific name for the palace compound, while Mahdiya was the name given to the small town surrounding it, cannot be verified, but it is an interpretation that allows us to reconcile two seemingly contradictory facts. First, the primary sources state quite clearly that the use of the term Ribat al-Fath to refer to a new city being built does not occur until 'Abd alMu'min's grandson returns victorious from the battle of Alarcos many years later. And yet, Levi-Provensal has published the text of thirty-seven official Almohad letters, of which three early ones

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(two in 1156, one in 1161) are dated from the Ribat al-Fath, and another, probably written sometime between 1153 and 1156, mentions that the court has moved to Ribat al-Fath (Caille, 1949, 1:61). The name Mahdiya, intended to honor Ibn Tumart, the mahdi, never became very current and, after 'Abd al-Mu'min's death in 1163, was never used again to refer to Rabat. By 1163, 'Abd al-Mu'min had subdued all of the central Maghrib and began in earnest to plan for a massive attack on the Christians of Spain. According to the Rawd al-Qirtas, he summoned fighters from all over North Africa and commissioned the building or assembling of a large armada. The staging area for this invasion centered at Ribat al-Fath, but extended as far north along the coast as Cap Mamora (where the present city of Mahdiya is located) While the numbers given in this source must be grossly exaggerated— they cumulate to almost 400,000 horsemen and 100,000 foot soldiers!—there can be little doubt that his intentions were serious and that, in the process, the area around Ribat became heavily, if only temporarily, congested (Caille, 1949, 1:63, inter aha). 'Abd al-Mu'min died, however, before he could launch this new attack, and his son, Abu Ya'qub Yusuf, hastily left Seville to take his father's place in Ribaf. This new ruler did not share his predecessor's affection either for war or for the royal castle on the banks of the Bou Regreg, preferring Seville or the rebuilt and expanded capital of Marrakech. During the next twenty years, Ribat sank into oblivion. It is impossible to ascertain how much of his father's work had been completed by Abu Ya'qub Yusuf's death, and how much survived the neglect of those years. The town was revived, however, only after his death in 1184. He was succeeded by his son, Abu Yusuf Ya'qub, who was later to be described as the victorious one, al-Mansur. The new city at the ribat is attributed largely to his efforts. Ya'qub al-Mansur (1184-1199) clearly shared his grandfather's ambition to create at Ribat a royal capital whose importance would be commensurate with the glories of the Almohad dynasty. Indeed, his plans were even more grandiose. Apparently, the city began to revive from 1191 onward but, in the summer of 1195, just before Ya'qub al-Mansur departed for Spain, he issued special orders that an enormous city be built on the site and that the city be ringed by walls of incredible dimensions. The Almohad walls, probably completed by 1197, were constructed on only two sides of the agglomeration, the other two

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sides being formed by the ocean and the river. 3 Even so, the walls were almost four miles in length, enclosing an area of well over four hundred hectares. The western rampart began at the Burj al$irat near the ocean's edge, and ran some 3,505 meters to the southernmost tip of the present grounds of the royal palace. It had four gates, of which three still survive. The southern wall extended eastward toward the river and was pierced only by the Bab al-Za'ir. Some idea of the dimensions of the city demarcated by these walls can be gained by considering that the area included the present-day Qasbah of the Udaya, the Medina, the colonial city built under the French, the extensive grounds of the King's Palace (the Mechouar), plus the area that now houses all the government ministries. 4 Abu Yusuf Ya'qub's forces met those of Alfonso VIII at Alarcos, where the Muslims achieved a stunning victory. He himself was entitled al-Man§ur (the victorious) from that time on, and he must have been filled with euphoria when he returned to Ribaf to oversee the construction of his city which he formally renamed Ribat al-Fath. The documents concerning the city plans repeatedly refer to the fact that his new city was modeled after Alexandria and was intended to be a match for that Egyptian seaport. However, except for the fact that both were located on the ocean, there are no parallels in the design. The phrase seems to be merely a hyperbole to draw attention to the intended world importance of the city under construction. Within four years not only were the walls completed, but broad streets had been laid out and, in addition to the earlier palace and mosque, there were numerous residential quarters, a vast covered market, baths, hotels, workshops, and fountains (Caille, 1949, 1:71-72; La Petite histoire:\\). Christian captives from Spain were used in the construction of the city, to which Ya'qub al-Man$ur enticed men of letters, merchants, and artisans to supplement the military population {Rabat et sa region 1, 1918:15; Caille, 1949, 1:72). A masterful new gateway to the qasbah, which can still be seen at the entrance to the Qasbah of the Udaya, was placed in front of the area previously developed by 'Abd al-Mu'min. Sala also benefited from the rash of construction activity. The quarter of Tal'a was constructed at the same time (Naciri, 1963:15), and a bridge, originally 3 A third wall beyond the cemetery and near the ocean seems to have been overlooked in this account but may have been added later. 4 Details on the walls can be found in Caille, 1949, 1:125. Some discrepancies exist between this source and the earlier description by Mercier; see Chapter VI below.

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floating but eventually more permanent, was placed across the Bou Regreg to connect the twin cities (Rabat et sa region 1, 1918:29; Caille, 1949, 1:29; La Petite histoireA5; K. L. Brown, 1969:30). But the greatest achievements were the mosques. The Great Mosque of Sala, rebuilt on the site of the mosque of the Banu 'Ashara, was completed in 1196. Tradition has it that some seven hundred Christian prisoners assisted in its construction, along with Andalusian Muslims. The work was designed by an architect from Granada, if his name, al-Gharnati, can be taken as an indication of his origin (K. L. Brown, 1969:31). And construction of the Hasan mosque of Ribat was also well underway by then It was laid out to be the largest mosque of western Islam, and was exceeded in dimensions only by the old mosque of Samarra (in Iraq). According to the plan, as reconstructed, it must have had 302 marble columns in addition to 94 stone pillars. The prayer room alone was nineteen arches in length, crossed by eighteen traverses. And the massive square minaret was designed as a faithful but larger copy of the Kutubiya minaret of Marrakech and the Giralda (now clock tower) of Seville (Caille, 1954, also his La Petite histoire.36-37, Dieulafoy in Memoirs de I'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 43:167 ff.) The mosque was never finished. To this day the minaret is truncated, having only three of its four intended stories, and the recently restored courtyard remains innocent of superstructure, its columns, whether of marble or stone, having long ago been pilfered for other buildings. Not only the Hasan mosque, but the rest of the buildings of the ambitiously conceived city as well, were abandoned when Ya'qub al-Mansur died in 1199 The twelfth century came to an end—and with it the city of Ribat al-Fath. It is difficult to determine how much of the vast terrain enclosed by the still-standing walls of the twelfth century was actually built upon by the time the city was abandoned. Most probably, the only densely constructed zone was in the vicinity of the original ribat, on the site of what now constitutes the medina or old city. With the exception of the Hasan mosque, few ruins seem to have been uncovered when the French-built colonial city was constructed on the open space between the medina and the southern wall. Even the name seems to have vanished. Soon after Ya'qub al-Mansur's death, the grandiose title was dropped, and the place was referred to as the Qasbah of Ribat al-Fath, and eventually under its much earlier designation as, simply, the nbaf of Sala. The Almohad dynasty lasted another half century, but it was

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clearly on the defensive Defeated by the Spanish Reconquista forces in 1212 and in one after another of the subsequent confrontations, they were finally driven from the Iberian peninsula in 1238 (Between then and 1260 the Christian forces captured all of Spain save the Kingdom of Granada, which held onto its foothold in Europe until 1492 ) Nor did they fare better on the North African side, where their successors were already sharpening their swords. Ribaf received virtually no attention during this period, and Sala, although the recipient of a new defensive wall and a gate as well as some religious edifices, was not a favored place Marrakech was the chief Almohad capital on the African continent, and new towns at the inland defense line seem to have been treated with greater concern—towns such as Oujda, for example, in eastern Morocco Concern with the interior periphery made eminent sense for, by the beginning of the thirteenth century, another wave of nomadic invasion was forming—that of the Banu Marin, a tribe of Zanata Berbers whose traditional transhumant circuit ranged from its southern wintering point in the Sahara, between Sijilmasa and Figuig, to its summer grazing land in a valley of the eastern Atlas. Unlike earlier nomadic dynasties, they were not moved by religious fervor but rather by political conflict with the Almohads (Abun-Nasr, 1971:120-121), which may be why it took them so long to bring the various regions of Morocco under their control. The region around Riba{-Sala was almost the last to be subdued, and in the process what little was left of Ya'qub al-Mansur's city seems to have crumbled. In the fighting between the Almohads and Marinids in the vicinity of Ribaf between 1249 and 1253, the aqueduct from 'Ayn Ghabula was destroyed, the bridge between Ribat and Sala collapsed, and nine-tenths of Ribaf's shrunken population fled. In the words of Sala's nineteenth-century historian, al-Nasin: "Of the immense nbat that had stretched from the Chella to the ocean, nothing remained save the walls, the ruins of a mosque, and a group of houses surrounding the qasbah. . . . The city was once again regarded as a dependency of Sala, its decadence was so deep that once again it was designated simply as the Qala'a (citadel) of Sala."5 Leo Afncanus, visiting the site in the sixteenth century, reported little change. He found only a hundred or so houses, all in the vicinity of the Qasbah, only two or three inhabited quarters, 5

This quotation has been translated from the French citation in Rabat et sa region les villes avant la conquete 1, 1918 16, which gives the onginal source as al-Nasin 3 102

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and very few shops. The remainder of the city was overgrown with vines 6 The conflict also weakened Sala, which made an unwise alliance with Spanish forces to continue its resistance, a resistance it lived to regret. By 1260, Sala was very briefly invaded by the Spanish Within two weeks the Marinids assisted in repelling the invaders, but the price was capitulation to their rule. Under the Marinids, however, the city of Sala prospered. It grew in size, thanks to an influx of settlers from the surrounding countryside It benefited from an enhanced role as the major port for Fez, the Marinids' preferred capital. And it was the recipient of several architectural masterpieces, including the still standing but much deteriorated madrasa of Abu Inan, twin to the more famous one in Fez. The latter half of the thirteenth century and the early part of the fourteenth was a period of urban expansion, architectural achievement, and the maturation of urban forms throughout the Muslim world. In Spain, despite retrenchment to the south, this was the time of the construction of the Alhambra palace. And in the Mashnq, this was the period in which, under the rule of the Mamluks, cities such as Cairo reached their apogee of size and architectural elegance (Abu-Lughod, 1971 :ch. 3). In central Ifriqiya, a remnant of Almohad power lived on in the Hafsid dynasty, under which Tunis became Ifnqiya's true capital and flowered with important new mosques. In Morocco there was a similar peak in urbanization and architectural achievement at the time of the Marinids who, while bestowing their greatest gifts on Fez (see Le Tourneau, 1961), did not entirely neglect cities such as Sala. It was at this critical time of city building in the Arab world that Ribat vanished, reduced "to a simple market town largely in ruins" (Rabbe, 1922:51). The heights of architectural history washed past her, leaving no residue, and the promising role she had been assigned in the twelfth century was mercilessly snatched from her. Ironically, the Marinids' most noteworthy contribution to Ribat was their new funeral quarter, on the site of the ancient Chella just outside the Almohad walls. In this cemetery the Marinids constructed some of their most beautiful mausoleums in a setting of spectacular serenity that still attracts Moroccans and tourists alike who seek a temporary withdrawal from the urgencies of urban life. 6 Again, I have translated this from the French citation presented in Rabat et sa region 1, 1918 16, without verification They give Leon Afncain 2 22-23, as their source

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Architecture for the dead was not an inappropriate symbol for a city that had already, for all practical purposes, died. Sadly, even this last symbol was not destined to rescue it from oblivion, for by the fifteenth century the cemetery, although still attracting religious pilgrims, lay neglected. Ribat did not revive until the beginning of the seventeenth century. And by that time the histories of the Mashnq and the Maghrib (actually, of Morocco alone, as a final isolated fragment of the Maghrib) had diverged so completely that we can afford to ignore the comparative framework, so essential for understanding the earlier urban traditions of the Maghrib, and concentrate on Morocco with a sideward glance at Spain. By the seventeenth century, the Ottomans were everywhere in North Africa except Morocco. In Cairo, the transformation under the Mamluks during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries was essentially completed before the arrival of the Ottoman forces in 1516. Turkish rule merely reduced the once imperial state to a provincial backwater, and the once great capital to a stagnating secondary city. This was not the case for Algiers or Tunis. In Algiers the somewhat less than illustrious urban history of earlier periods was reversed under the corsair state of Aruj, and especially under Khayr al-Din al-Barbarrosa, who set up a Turkish regency in Algeria that was eventually extended to Tunis. Both cities expanded greatly during this period of Turkish protection. The reciprocal fates of Cairo, on the one hand, and the cities of the Barbary coast, on the other, must be understood in the larger context of world power. The sixteenth century, which was a period of revival in the western basin of the Mediterranean, was a period of decline in the eastern basin. But even this was merely a transitional phase in the long-term westward movement that had begun in the fifteenth century. The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 had created an added incentive for Europeans to find an alternative route to the orient, ushering in the "Age of Discovery." The seventeenth century thus witnessed the final displacement of international interest westward beyond the Strait of Gibraltar and into the Atlantic. As Braudel observed, from 1580 on the world of the Mediterranean was "suddenly plunged into darkness as other locations steal the limelight" (1972, 2:1186). Ribat's refounding in the opening years of the seventeenth century, when the Atlantic rather than the Mediterranean had become the kev arena of conflict and concern, was thus no accident. Nor

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was it accidental that the formative influences on its design and organization should have been drawn from Spanish Islam rather than from the core areas of the Mashnq. Ribat's revitahzation symbolized the extent to which Morocco had become detached from the rest of the Islamic world, and the extent to which it had been increasingly drawn into the hardened conflict between a Christian North and an Islamic South. The economic base that supported it during the first century of revival was, indeed, directly attributable to the shift in trade routes out of the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic. Corsair activity, which was becoming less and less profitable on the Barbary coast because of this shift, experienced a boom on the Atlantic. The center of that activity for some time was at Ribat, which attracted not only the exiled Moors from Spain but also naval "warriors" from as far away as Algiers and Tripoli. There were three factors that reinforced the cultural connection of Ribat with Spain. The first was the historical precedent of entwined population, government, and tradition between al-Andalus and the Maghrib The second was the break with the Mashnq, which sharpened when the Ottomans succeeded in drawing the rest of the Maghrib within their sway, leaving Morocco isolated. And the third was a population migration of significant dimensions In the course of several hundred years of the Reconquista, a series of expulsions from Spain took place that brought many Andalusians into the cities of North Africa. The final edicts of expulsion in 1609 precipitated the arrival of Ribat's new settlers. The height of Spanish Islam had occurred during the earliest centuries under the Umayyad Caliphate of Cordoba That caliphate had already collapsed by the early eleventh century when Sala was first constructed and long before Ribat w a s founded. Nevertheless, the Syrian-influenced architecture and urban organization of Cordoba and later of Seville undeniably served as a model for Moroccan cities, not only indirectly by setting a standard, but also directly, because settlers from Andalusia brought their ideas with them and architects and craftsmen moved freely back and forth. We have already seen how direct this influence was in the twelfth century at the time of the Almohads, when the rulers themselves brought plans, workmen, and even settlers back from Seville and Granada. But in the period that followed, this influence became even stronger. By 1238 the Almohads had been defeated in Spain, presaging their eventual displacement in North Africa. What was left of

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Spanish Islam withdrew to the narrow confines of Granada to play out the final act of a drama which, although it was to run another two hundred years until the curtain, was substantially over. At that time the outflow from the Peninsula of refugees who refused to convert to Christianity began in earnest. Many of the emigres were wealthy and educated and almost all went to the major cities of North Africa. There they joined the bourgeoisie or the religiousgovernmental service or swelled the ranks of skilled labor, both in the trades and in irrigated truck gardening. Tunis, Fez, and Algiers, in particular, received many such migrants. By 1492, with the fall of the Kingdom of Granada, Islam lost its final footing on the Iberian peninsula, and the options were drastically closed to the Moors of Spain. Repressive edicts gave them the choice of either converting immediately to Christianity or fleeing to North Africa. This was a time of substantial relocation, with whole communities moving en masse and often reestablishing themselves elsewhere as an intact unit. Some Muslims preferred nominal conversion to flight. These, termed Moriscos, 7 continued to practice their religion surreptitiously, while conforming outwardly to the required Christianity. Although it is, of course, impossible to determine their number, it seems to have been considerable. The subsequent inquisitions were directed toward unmasking these dissemblers, and the edicts that followed were aimed at expelling not only the avowed Muslims but the hidden ones as well. Religions practiced underground, however, naturally tend to deviate from the original and, despite best intentions to remain true to orthodox beliefs and practices, conformity to another system in external behavior inevitably leads to assimilation and undermines the sanctions that all cultures must impose as their ultimate weapon to achieve compliance with norms. Thus it was to be expected that, especially in the hundred years that elapsed between the fall of the Kingdom of Granada and the final expulsion edicts of the early seventeenth century, the Moriscos of Spain underwent a transformation that differentiated them radically from their coreligionists in North Africa. These changes were still insufficient for them to escape detection by the Spanish. At the beginning of the seven7 This term was applied to the Moors who remained after the reconquest, but the Spanish term, mudejares, was derived from the Arabic mudajjan, which simply meant "those permitted to remain." Political ramifications are discussed in Andrew C. Hess, 1968:1-25, esp. p. 3.

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teenth century severe and final pressure was exerted on the last remaining Muslims on the Peninsula, and renewed efforts were made to expose the Jews and Muslims who had made only nominal conversions, and to expel these underground communities. Ribaf became the recipient of two waves of these exiles between 1608 and 1610. The first immigrants came from the inland town of Hornachos, were classified as Muslims, went largely into the military service of the Moroccan Sultan, and were quartered in the Qasbah of the Udaya where they soon set up an independent state. The second wave of newcomers was composed chiefly of Monscos from various parts of Spain, and particularly from the coastal ports in the south, who fled quickly and were therefore unable to bring resources with them. These settled in the area now called the medina of Rabat, below the Qasbah, on a portion of the abandoned land that lay within the former dimensions of Ya'qub al-Mansur's city. There they too established a "city-state." All in all, the newcomers totaled approximately three to four thousand (E. Mercier) or six thousand (Marmol), but whether this latter estimate refers only to the Hornacheros or included the Andalusians is not clear (Rabat et sa region 1, 1918:22). Although both groups came from Spain, one cannot imagine a less compatible pair. The Hornacheros from the province of Estremadura (near the present town of Badajoz next to the Portuguese frontier) had fiercely defended their autonomy in an otherwise Christian area, had continued to circumcise their young despite nominal Catholicism, and had survived in the interstices of the law, extracting tribute from travelers, counterfeiting money (so it is claimed), and "buying" the right to bear arms, that is, protect their independence, from the Spanish sovereign, Philip III Anticipating that they were to lose these prerogatives, most left voluntarily a year or two before the edict to expel them was issued on December 3, 1609, and went to the area of Sala, where they were recruited into the military forces of the Saadian Sultan, Zidan Ahmad al-Mansur (Rabat et sa region 1, 1918:18; Caille, 1949, 1:213; Coindreau, 1948:37). It is likely that they proved as insubordinate in their new home as they had been in their old one. In any event, they were either quartered in the old nbat or seized it for themselves by 1610, and from that protected position they attempted to control, both militarily and economically, the weaker Spanish exiles who arrived after them. Philip III authored a series of edicts in 1609 designed to banish

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the Moriscos from Valencia, Granada, Murcia, and Andalusia, and it was from these areas that thousands fled, deprived of their wealth and bearing grudges that were to motivate them as strongly as their need for money. Many had been seamen, and these automatically sought their fortunes in the ports of North Africa, either on the Mediterranean side or on the Atlantic (Caille, 1949, 1:213). Several thousands arrived at Sala, where they attempted to settle, but their foreign ways were so offensive to the Slawis, who considered them decadent unbelievers, that they were forced across the river. They were apparently equally unwelcomed by the Hornacheros, who refused to allow them into the qasbah. They therefore settled in the area just below the fort, the area called "New Sala." A symbiotic relationship between the two groups seems to have been established, whereby the Moriscos served as crew and laborers for the pirate ships outfitted by the Hornacheros. And both groups were tolerated by Mawlay Zidan, only nominally the ruler of a fragmented Morocco, who left them to their corsair activities, in part because it weakened the Spanish, in part because the Hornacheros were supposed to pay one-tenth of their profits to the sovereign. Old Sala seems to have played little part in all this, although some Slawis must have been attracted by the growing profits to be made. Actually, then, in the opening decades of the seventeenth century, there existed three separate agglomerations on the shores of the Bou Regreg, each with its own life and identity, but each, as Caille noted so aptly (1949, 1:215), with a history and fate inextricably linked to the others. First there was Sala (by now on occasion called "Old," Sla al-Bali) on the northern bank, which remained nominally under the Sultan's control, although the local rebelliousness that had become pandemic touched from time to time even this relatively staid city. Second, there was the Qasbah that the Hornacheros had reconstructed, refortified, and now ruled with impunity. And finally, there was the newest group of constructions just below the Qasbah, on the site of the former town of Ribat alFath, occupied chiefly by the newcomers from al-Andalus. This last settlement was increasingly referred to as the " N e w " Sala (Sla

Jadld). New Sala was, however, considerably smaller in extent than the twelfth-century city envisaged by al-Mansur. The area delimited for the Andalusian town corresponds rather exactly to the zone currently occupied by Rabat's medina, a surface of only some ninety

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hectares, as contrasted with the more than four hundred hectares that had been circumscribed so ambitiously by the original walls (Caille, 1949, 1:246). As in the twelfth century, the revitalized town was bordered by the Bou Regreg, the ocean, and the many-gated western wall, but, to set off the smaller portion actually occupied, a new lateral wall was constructed, connecting the Bab al-Had with the Burj Sidi Makluf at the river's edge. This seventeenth-century rampart is now the most visible functioning wall of the medina— the wall that sharply separates the medina from the French-built colonial city on the opposite side of a major thoroughfare. With the exception of the ruined and then finally abandoned Hasan mosque, the land beyond this new wall was used exclusively for agriculture, and it was there that, much to the horror of the Slawis, the newcomers scandalously planted vineyards to provide themselves with wine. Not until the twentieth century, when the French selected Rabat to become the capital of their Protectorate, was the remainder of the area enclosed within the older walls finally built upon. Spanish influences were everywhere in the new town, as one might expect, given the origin of the settlers. Caille (1949, 1:246) attributes the regularity of the urban plan—four main streets running north and south and two major arteries crossing east and west—to the nationality of the founders and the models of urban design the Andalusians brought with them. While "diffusion" may have played a role, this point should not be overstressed. It must be remembered that many newly planned cities in the Islamic world had begun with very similar good intentions of straight thoroughfares, only to have had their grid patterns obfuscated by later modifications. Nevertheless, there seems to have been careful planning for which the combination of a high urban tradition brought from Spain, the self-conscious founding of the town by a group of related settlers, and the slowness of later growth must have been responsible. Less controversial is the fact that Ribat, like many other North African cities settled by Spanish emigres, received a rich heritage in the decorative arts. To this day, many of the doors to homes in the medina of Rabat are decorated with motifs also found in Spain, and these very same decorations are copied on doors in public housing projects and bidonvilles in the city. Crafts similarly reveal a legacy from the seventeenth century. Caille has noted (1949, 1:280) that the intricately painted floral designs on the boxes and trunks for which Ribat was justly famous had their origin in Spain, as did the

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particular designs for Rbati embroidery (uniquely floral rather than geometric) and ribbonwork, some of which are identical to those found on old vests in Estremadura and its environs. The Spanish refugees perhaps also brought with them a penchant for quarreling. The decades following their arrival were filled with conflict among these three small "cities" which at their height could not have contained a combined population of more than forty thousand, albeit a population of such diversity that perhaps conflict was inevitable.8 Played out on this tiny scale were many of the cleavages and controversies that have traditionally tortured hopes for Moroccan or North African unity. The alliances shifted in unpredictable fashion, the game oftertiusgaudens was played with consummate skill, and external powers often entered at the invitation of one of the players, only to seek their own goals in turn. All this complexity seethed in the small arena of seventeenth-century Ribat, but it was not trivial. Indeed, it presaged in sensitive fashion trends that were eventually to lead Morocco into colonial subjugation. The cleavages were ready-made for this game of shifting coalitions. The basic split had always been between the centralizing power of the Sultan and the centrifugal autonomies of local lords 9 8 Most secondary accounts in Western languages merely reproduce each other, not because they intend to copy but because they remain dependent upon the same few primary or earlier secondary sources. My account in this section does not pretend to be original. It is based chiefly upon the secondary works of Caille (1949), Coindreau (1948), and K. L. Brown (1969), who in turn have based theirs upon Brunot (1921, 1923), de Castries (1903), Chenier (1788), Dan (1649), Marmol (1667), Mouette (1683), and, of course, al-Nasm. The chief sources contemporary to the period are: 1 Father Pierre Dan, Htstotre de Barbarte et de ses corsaires. 2. Luis del Marmol Carvajal, Descripcwn general de Africa 3 Germain Mouette, Relation de captwtte dans les royaumes de Fes et de Maroc. Later secondary sources, in addition to Caille, Brown, and al-Nasin, are: 1. Louis Brunot, La Mer dans les traditions et les industries indigenes a Rabat et Sale and "Apergu historique sur la piratene saletine." 2. Comte Henri de Castries, "Le Maroc d'autrefois—Les corsaires de Sale," in Revue des Deux-Mondes, 15 February 1903. 3. Roger Coindreau, Les Corsaires de Sale 9 In the histories of Morocco much is made of a distinction between the blad almakhzan and the blad al-stba. The latter term, meaning literally the "land of dissidence," is clearly a pejorative term coined by the local historians who were, as might be expected, firmly in the court of the central authority (the Sultan), that is, the blad al-makhzan. 1 have avoided this term because I consider it biased and unnecessarily misleading. The denotation of the blad al-makhzan, on the contrary, is much clearerit refers to those parts of the country that accepted the suzerainty of the central power and paid taxes in kind, in money, or in service All the rest was siba, as far as the Sultan was concerned, even though it was not without order or organization

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or, increasingly, religious/military leaders the French called "marabouts." 10 A second cleavage was always potentially present, namely, between the settled urbanites and the more tribally organized semi-nomads who sometimes assisted the Sultan in suppressing local powers, but often were, themselves, the local powers fighting for independence. Within this more general context of fragmentation were the place-specific rivalries along the Bou Regreg. First, in Old Sala itself there were the dual strains of hadariya (urban) and badawiya (nomadic), along with the class cleavages between, on the one hand, a wealthy bourgeoisie of Muslim and Jewish merchants and, on the other, the artisans and seamen who also made up the hadariya population. Then there was the deep competition and mutual hostility between the residents of "Old Sala" and the Spanish newcomers across the river. And on the southern bank there was the fragile symbiosis between the Hornacheros of the Qasbah (proud, wealthy, powerful, Muslim, Arabic-speaking) and the Andalusians (poorer, refugees from diverse areas, many of them Moriscos), looked down upon as subjects by the Hornacheros and as "those Christians from Castille" by the true Slawis. In addition, there was another cleavage that strikes a thematic note for the future: the presence of a limited number of Europeans (French, Dutch, and English) who engaged in trade, who ransomed the Christian captives picked up as a "by-product" of piracy, and who served as consuls for their respective governments. On occasion, these governments are found to have interfered, quite unexpectedly, in the domestic squabbles along the Bou Regreg—a Spanish force here, an English admiral there. Given this complex cast of dramatis personae, it is no wonder that the history of the half century between 1610 and 1666 reads so confusingly and inconclusively. The plot began simply enough. Within fifteen years of their arrival, the Hornacheros had established their limited hegemony not only over the Qasbah (a small place with only two hundred houses and at most two thousand inhabitants), but also over the more numerous Andalusians of New Sala. They had also gained de facto independence from the authority of the central government, having rejected, driven out, or subjected to indignity a series of governors 10

Murabtt (French, Marabout) has been given a peculiar twist in meaning by the French, which distorts the "saintly" aspect while minimizing the original military aspect.

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who had been sent to rule them. These acts of insubordination had earned them their goal. By 1627, the Qasbah and New Sala were essentially united as an independent "Republic of the Bou Regreg," a republic that elected its own chief who ruled with the assistance of an elected council of sixteen advisors. The capital of this state was the Qasbah, and the Hornacheros retained a monopoly over the offices of political power as well as the economic rights to the profits from piracy. Clearly, rebellion by the Andalusians was inevitable—and not long in coming. In 1630, urged on by Sidi al-'Ayyachi, a maraboutic leader with considerable support among the tribes and within Old Sala, the Andalusians attacked the Qasbah. They were defeated only when the Hornacheros managed to use Old Sala as a base from which to counterattack from the rear. A somewhat brittle peace was then established, according to terms that gave the Andalusians a share in both the political and economic power of the Republic. This short-lived modus vivendi was perhaps shored up by outside threats, because shortly thereafter Sidi al-'Ayyachi's supporters, this time assisted by the residents of Old Sala, laid siege to both the Qasbah and New Sala. But it was always difficult to bring these independent towns to their knees through siege or blockade, since what provisions were blocked by sea could always be slipped in by land from the south, and vice versa. Thus, after an inconclusive siege that lasted over a year, al-'Ayyachi's forces withdrew, leaving the incompatible Hornacheros and Andalusians linked in an uneasy surface peace, under which hostilities festered (see Caille, 1949, 1:217-218 for more details). The Andalusians rebelled again in 1636, this time more successfully, since they had chosen a time when some of the Hornachero forces were busy fighting Sidi al-'Ayyachi and others had gone to Algiers. The Andalusian leader, al-Kasin, not only took over the Qasbah, ruling it from New Sala, but also set about to bring Old Sala within his authority He blockaded that city, but the forces of Old Sala, assisted not only by al-'Ayyachi but also by the ships of Admiral Ramsborough of the British navy, not only repelled his advances but, after destroying the bridge between the two banks, set up their own siege and blockade of the two communities on the southern shore These attacks were supported by a fifth-column revolt within the Qasbah, and finally al-Kasin was overthrown and imprisoned An intervention by the Sultan temporarily restored him to power However, when he was finally killed in 1638, the

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Republic of the Bou Regreg lost its de facto independence and came once again under the authority of the Saadian Sultan. By an agreement of April 1638, the Hornacheros were allowed back into New Sala, but the Andalusians, who were still in real control locally, refused to allow them back into the Qasbah. With all the players back in position, albeit somewhat reversed—for now it was the Andalusians who controlled the Qasbah stronghold, while the Hornacheros threatened them from New Sala—the same tedious game began again. Al-'Ayyachi renewed his attacks on the Qasbah and New Sala, the Hornacheros rebelled against the Andalusians, and the latter, in turn, called upon outside assistance from another marabout, Sidi Muhammad al-Hajj. By 1640, the latter had forced the Hornacheros to lift their siege of the Qasbah and, when al-'Ayyachi finally died in 1641, the three cities of the Bou Regreg were united under the authority of Sidi Muhammad, who appointed a leader from Old Sala as the governor over all three towns. By 1644 the Hornacheros, still dissatisfied, laid siege to the Qasbah and called upon the assistance of Sidi Muhammad al-Hajj, who finally expelled the Andalusians from there (Caille, 1949, 1:219-221). From about 1644 to 1660, New Sala and the Qasbah lived in relative peace and unity under the nominal authority of the Dila marabout, Sidi Muhammad, and his son, Sidi 'Abd-Allah. A final attempt was made by the Hornacheros and Andalusians, this time in concert, to throw off even this light yoke. Their rebellion, which began in 1660, lasted several years and, despite the aid Sidi 'Abd-Allah received from outside—the Portuguese, Spanish, and English all seem to have rendered him assistance—he was unable to suppress it completely. In 1664 the three cities finally reached an agreement to divide the profits from piracy more equitably, but this agreement came too late Weakened by perennial conflict, they finally lost the autonomy they had always sought Two years later, in 1666, the Alawite Sultan brought all three towns back within the authority of the makhzan (central power). Thus ended the free-enterprise corsair period of the republics on the Bou Regreg. After that, piracy became a state enterprise These turbulent if petty events, these tempests in the teapot on the Bou Regreg, are insignificant in themselves. They derive their significance only from what they tell us about larger forces within Morocco and because they are symptomatic of critical internal and external economic issues. The conflicts, despite appearances, were

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not capricious quarrels among cantankerous actors, the conflicts were economic ones over a very rich prize—the profits from piracy. We must therefore take a closer look at this economic base of seventeenth-century Ribaf Not until the twentieth century was the city to find another so capable of providing an economically viable foundation for urban growth. The decline during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was due to a suspension between two ways of making a living—the commercial functions of the earlier period and the bureaucratic functions of the present There is an old English sea chanty about the Sallee Rovers, much admired and feared for their daring exploits The subjects of this ballad were the corsairs who operated out of the shallow and treacherous port at the mouth of the Bou Regreg, in short, Sala. But in the interests of absolute accuracy, if not cadence, they should have been called the Rovers of Sla Jadid Even that appellation, however, would have been an inadequate description for, in fact, the captains and crews hailed from many points along both shores of the Mediterranean They were not motivated by mindless animosity toward Europeans, much as they may have seemed so to the British sailors. Rather, they were both patriotically defending their coasts from the depredations of others and enjoying a lively return from trade and privateering. Corsair activity was basically a livelihood, and not a bad one at that. Between 1618 and 1626 alone, the handful of ships operating out of the Bou Regreg managed to capture 6,000 prisoners from the high seas, as well as goods worth more than fifteen million English pounds (Caille, 1949, 1:223). It was also an old and respectable occupation, despite present stereotypes and politically motivated later interpretations. This type of trade-warfare had been practiced throughout the Mediterranean from earliest times (Coindreau, 1948: 13, 17-19) and was not a far-fetched analogue on the sea to the desert raids (ghazwa) practiced by bedouins. During the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries in particular, it was an occupation followed not only by North Africans but by persons of all nationalities and status levels—not only by Captain Hook but by Sir Francis Drake as well. If the sixteenth century was the peak of operations out of Algiers and, to a lesser extent, Tunis, the seventeenth century was the peak of operations off the Atlantic coast, for by then trade routes had shifted substantially, and the ongoing battle between North Africa and Iberia had shifted with them. Military occupation began to

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close one after another of the Moroccan Atlantic ports. In 1610, Larache was lost to the Spanish, followed in 1614 by the capture of the most active corsair port, al-Mamora (now Mahdiya), just up the coast from Ribaf-Sala. It was not surprising, then, that many of the corsairs who had formerly operated out of these various ports flocked to one of the few remaining places that had not been captured by Europeans—Ribaf. There had, of course, always been some corsair activity out of "Old Sala," since naval warfare, trade, and privateering always seem to have gone together. However, Sala's economy was never heavily dependent upon it. With the coming of the Hornacheros, whose wealth outfitted the ships, and the Andalusians, who provided the skilled seamen, and with world trade routes diverted more and more toward the west African coast, what had been a minor supplementary activity became a central and highly attractive one. So attractive, indeed, were the prizes to be gained during the early seventeenth century that the cities on the Bou Regreg drew large numbers of adventurers, not only from among the socalled "renegades" (that is, captured Europeans who converted to Islam), but also from among the corsairs who had previously worked out of other ports. A number of the latter, for example, migrated from Algiers, and throughout the period commercialoccupational ties between Algiers and Sala seem to have been particularly strong n The fact that so many of the individuals initially involved in the naval conflicts were European in origin and spoke Spanish made it easier for them to operate. They often used ruses to capture Spanish ships, fixing out their boats to resemble those of Spain, flying the Spanish flag, and speaking Spanish to lull their victims into trust (Caille, 1949, 1:225). It would be wrong to assume that the natives of Sala completely disdained the new lucrative activity, although they did tend to put a more political interpretation on their piracy. Brown has pointed out that the people of Old Sala thought of their pirates as mujahtdtn (stragglers against the infidel), and has stressed that "although the rise of piracy in the Bou Regreg was undoubtedly due to the new immigrants, the lists of captains and crew members show that the population of Sale played an active role" (K. L. Brown, 1971:70). It would also be incorrect to assume that piracy and trade were 11 Perhaps the most interesting of the corsair captains drawn to Sala was one called Murat al-Ra'is in Arabic, although he was a Dutchman from Haarlem named Jan Janssen before his conversion and his rise to prominence in Algiers

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separate activities carried on by separate sets of actors. Not only was piracy not incompatible with trade; it was, in fact, a form of trade. The corsairs purchased their gunpowder and arms from the Europeans and often sold back the booty they had captured from merchant ships. There was also a lively traffic in prisoners, who were sold as slaves or could be redeemed for cash by the European powers. Businessmen, qua consuls, and even members of Christian religious orders acted as agents for the ransoming of these captives (Caille, 1949, 1:236; K. L. Brown, 1971:74). In addition, there was trade of the more conventional sort, since by the seventeenth century the port at Sala was, along with that of Tetouan, the most important m Morocco. John Harrison noted in 1630 that during a forty-six day period some thirty foreign ships entered the port. Among the items being imported were linen and cotton textiles, woolen items, paper, opium, and glass, as well as, naturally, gunpowder, arms, and ship riggings. Items for export included skins and leathers, wool, wax, copper, and, occasionally, gold (Caille, 1949, 1:293). According to Brown (1971:74-75), "the countries with the most important commercial representation at Rabat and Sale were Holland and England . . . [but] by the middle of the seventeenth century the French had also established contractual trade relations." This trade was handled by merchants, the wealthiest of whom seem to have lived in Old Sala. These Muslims and Jews, mostly of pre-seventeenth-century Andalusian origin, had a strong working relationship with the more shadowy figures of piracy, and Jewish merchants, in particular, often occupied important posts in government, serving as ambassadors to the European powers (Mouette, as cited in K. L. Brown, 1971:76). Thus, it would be difficult to separate the legal, illegal, and governmental aspects of trade, even during the period of the independent republics. Such distinctions became even more difficult to make after 1666. The period of free-enterprise piracy and trade, of petty local squabbles among the three towns, of relative disengagement from the Moroccan interior, and of "foreignness," came to an end in 1666 when the estuary of the Bou Regreg was finally captured by the forces of Mawlay al-Rashid, founder of the Alawite dynasty which was to rule a relatively united and independent Morocco until the French invaded and established their "Protectorate" in 1912.12 After 1666, the three towns lived under the authority of the 12

The Alawite dynasty originated in the Tafilalat in the thirteenth century with a

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Sultan and were administered in the same way other cities in Morocco had traditionally been governed. Their independent and conflictual tendencies were suppressed, their trade and piracy were taken over as official functions, and the profits from customs and privateering were commandeered directly into the coffers of the state. The major effect on Ribat was that it lost its unique character. Once within the authority of the makhzan (central government), assimilation to Moroccan, Arabic, Islamic culture was assured. And once the economic base was similarly integrated as a state monopoly, it was at the mercy of the will of others. As Caille has noted (1949, 1:371), the city of Rabat changed profoundly under the Alwntes. In 1666 it was a quasi-independent republic engaged in piracy and at war with its neighbors. By 1900 the situation was completely different. Rabat was administered like other cities in the Empire, piracy was but a memory, and the city lived by trade and artisanry. The qasbah was no longer a fortification against the potential authority of the Sultan, but a place where the Sultan quartered the troops that ensured the compliance of his subjects in the town below. And the port was no longer a lively free enterprise, but gradually less and less important as the Sultan first controlled and then removed its functions to a more favored place (Mogador). The fifty years of its independence and the deviant character of its early settlers during that period, however, left certain stigmata on Ribat that the subsequent three hundred years of history have not entirely erased. Whether it is the quietly suppressed dignity of its people (more reminiscent of the dark-brooding Spanish than of the more volatile Mediterranean-Levantine), whether it is the surnames of many of its families (only thinly veiled Arabizations of Spanish names), whether it is the survival of some of its crafts (somewhat atypical for Morocco), or whether it is merely our imagination that series of religious personages (al-murabitiin) Throughout the seventeenth century the authority of their tribes was expanding, and finally, in 1659, their forces left the Tafilalat under the leadership of Mawlay al-Rashid, the putative founder of the dynasty Moving northward along the route followed by the earlier Almohads, they seized Taza, which became their first capital, and then proceeded to subdue Fez, the plains of the Gharb, and then the cities of Sala, New Sala, and the Qasbah. Thus strengthened and reinforced, they finally swung to the south to Marrakech, which they captured in 1169, and finally to the region of the Sus, which they occupied two years later Not since the time of the Almohads had a powerful dynasty been able to unite all of Morocco and to threaten the adjacent countries The present King of Morocco is a direct descendant of this dynasty

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embues perfectly ordinary events and objects with a romantic past, I do not know. But some of the contrasts still evident today between Rabat and Sale cannot help but relate, in part at least, to the very different origins and histories of the two cities. And some of the qualities of Rabat that set it off from other Islamic capitals such as Cairo, Damascus, or even Tunis, must in some way be attributable to her deviant and delayed beginning.

•IV· A CITY AMONG CITIES RIBAT was destined in the centuries that followed to lose much of her exotic appeal as she became more prosaically integrated into the development of Morocco. For if corsair adventures dominated the terms of her commerce in the seventeenth century, more conven­ tional (if diminished) commerce had completely supplanted that irregular excitement by the end of the eighteenth. And if inde­ pendence—even recalcitrance and dissidence—were her chief ad­ ministrative characteristics in the seventeenth, by the end of the eighteenth century Ribat had become one of the royal capitals of the country, a central seat of makhzan authority, and a regular stop on the annual itinerary of the Sultan, in which he held official court to receive the homage and gifts (hadiya) of the tribes in the region. Finally, whereas Ribat had begun as a mere dependency of Sala in the seventeenth century, by the end of the eighteenth she had clearly outstripped her rival in both size and significance. However, as had been the case in her earlier history, the major elements shap­ ing Ribat's destiny during this period were generated not from within but from elsewhere. The first acts of Mawlay al-Rashid (1664-1672), once he had brought the cities of the Bou Regreg under Alawite hegemony by 1666, were blatantly symbolic of the imposition of external control. Recognizing that from the beginning the qasbah had been the pre­ serve of Ribat's rulers, he took it over completely, expelling many of its residents and using the fortress to station troops loyal to him­ self. For further protection, al-Rashid refortified and strengthened the wall between the qa§bah and the city below, indicating that he anticipated as much trouble from his subjects as from any sea-borne invaders. Revealing additional proof of his anxieties, he ordered the construction of still another fortification, later known as the Qishla, which was strategically located in the open space of the Άΐΰ ceme­ tery overlooking the built-up area of Ribat,. This fort was too far inland to serve any defensive function vis-a-vis the sea; its sole pur­ pose was to control the city. (Among many sources, see Caille, La Petite histoire:16; Caille, 1949, 1:289, 295, 299; Rabat et sa region, 1, 1918:18-19).

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Al-Rashid sought not only military and political control of the city but also economic control over its lucrative trade and piracy, a not insubstantial prize since, throughout the seventeenth century, the port of the Two Banks continued to be, together with Tetouan, Morocco's most important gateway (Caille, 1949, 1:293). Now the Alawite Sultan himself received the profits, both the ransom sums and the receipts from the 10 percent ad valorem tax imposed on all goods entering or leaving the port. No attempt was made to suppress piracy. Instead, it became an official government enterprise, directed by the Sultan's agents, who took an ever increasing share of the benefits (Caille, La Petite histoire:17; Caille, 1949, 1:291). The European merchant-consuls remained within Ribat as before, but now they dealt with the government rather than with the corsair captains when they redeemed goods and captives. Thus the line between piracy for profit and warfare on the high seas became increasingly blurred; this proved to be a time bomb that was to lead within a century to the demise of piracy, whether official or unofficial. Ribaf appears to have exercised no functions of a capital city during this early period. The chronicles never mention official sojourns there, either by al-Rashid or by his successor, Mawlay Isma'il (1672-1727). Indeed, if the city suffered from benign neglect under al-Rashid, it seems to have been totally ignored by Isma'il, who lavished all of his interest and resources on his new capital at Meknes. Mawlay Isma'il selected the existing but much decayed town of Maknasat al-Zaytun, on the route between Fez and Sala, as the site for his ambitious scheme to construct a Moroccan Versailles,1 harnessing the labor of thousands of Christian captives to construct a vast palace complex, underground granaries, and a fantastic stable with capacity to accommodate some twelve thousand horses, we are told. He leveled the eastern portion of the existing medina to make room for an enlarged qasbah and, on the western side of the city, had an enormous set of thick walls constructed, to encircle a new urban zone within which his followers were ordered to build houses, mosques, schools, and markets (al-Nasiri 9, 1906:57-70). 1

Reveillaud (1916:unpaged) draws this comparison, and suggests that Isma'il knew about and admired Versailles, an allegation that, if correct, is a commentary on Morocco's increasing involvement with Europe. Other sources allude to his ambition to make an alliance with France by proposing marriage to a French princess, a proposal that met with undisguised derision in the French press.

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With his preferred capital so close to Ribat, it was little wonder that the latter was relatively neglected during his reign. Isma'il sought to base his control over Morocco on a newly constituted army designed to have exclusive loyalty to himself-—a sort of praetorian guard. (The older system, never abandoned but simply supplemented, was to use the so-calledjaysh [army] tribes, that is, tribes who gave military service to the Sultan in return for usufruct rights to large tracts of domainal land Throughout the Alawite period, the chief jaysh tribe continued to be the Udaya.) Isma'il assembled this praetorian guard by gathering up the dispersed descendants of the African blacks who had been recruited by alMansur, by assembling the harratin (primarily black agricultural vassals to the southern nomads), and by buying up male and female slaves in the cities of Morocco (al-Nasin 9, 1906:74-75). Out of these disparately recruited individuals (apparently selected on the grounds of color alone) he constituted a new army called the 'Abid al-Bukhari, and settled most of them in a specially constructed town between Meknes and Sala, called the Mashra' al-Ramla (Caille, 1949, 1:286). From this center, the black troops were dispatched to various parts of the country In Ribat they completely replaced the Andalusians in the qasbah, and one of their number was appointed qa'id (governor) of that settlement, which had its own administration (Caille, 1949, 1-298). In Sala they were stationed just north of the city, in the specially built Qasbat alGnawi, adjacent to the mausoleum of Sidi Musa (K L Brown, 1969:88, Rabat et sa region 1, 1918:33) With the aid of this new army, Isma'il finally succeeded in recapturing the Atlantic ports that had been occupied by foreign powers for more than half a century. He chased the Spanish from Mamora in 1681, from Larache in 1689, and from Arzila in 1691. He also reoccupied Tangiers, which the English had evacuated in 1684 (Caille, 1949, 1:286; al-Nasin 9, 1906:83-85, 97-104) He also managed finally to break the power of the independent corsairs of Ribat-Sala (Nagiri, 1963· 17), and to solidify a state in which dissent was effectively suppressed This suppression, however, did not last beyond his death in 1727 During the thirty years that followed, the battle over dynastic succession and the general disorganization that accompanied it permitted rebellion to bubble to the surface The praetorian guard, as one might have predicted, proved the most fractious, since its loyalty

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had been nurtured not to the state but to the man While the 'Abid al-Bukhari never usurped power, as their obvious counterparts, the Mamluks, had done in thirteenth-century Egypt, they did tend to use their de facto freedom from discipline to prey upon merchants and townspeople, to raid at will in rural areas, and thus to satisfy their personal and apolitical quests for wealth and power. Nor did the dissident regions of the country remain quiescent, once the central authority weakened. The people of Sala, for example, snatched back their autonomy, those who remained loyal to the makhzan had to move to Ribat (K L Brown, 1969:90-92). The groups in the Middle Atlas, ever secession-prone, became increasingly disruptive of the lines of communication between the shrinking parts of the country still under the Sultan's control. Ironically, these centrifugal events had the effect of strengthening Ribat's stature within the makhzan. Not only did the city remain loyal to the Sultan during these times of insurrection, but its location became increasingly strategic. Because the tribes interfered at will with the more direct mountainous route between the capitals at Fez and Marrakech, the Sultan was forced to go by way of the more circuitous coastal route On this path Ribat lay at mid-point of the journey, and therefore became a convenient place to spend the night. It was Mawlay Muhammad lbn 'Abd-Allah (1757-1790) who instituted the practice of stopping off at Ribat on his way between the two regular capitals—a practice that eventually led to the construction of two palaces there and, finally, to the elevation of Ribat's status to that of a secondary capital 2 The second half of the eighteenth century, then, begins a new period of importance for Ribat, but this shift in role and significance is not without strong countenndications, some of them "natural," some of them political, but all, again, external. 2

The Kttab al-Istiqsa' by Ahmad al-Nasin al-Slawi is a voluminous history of Morocco up to the end of the nineteenth century The final two volumes of his work, covering the Alawite period, were among the first Arabic sources to be translated into French, and have subsequently served as the common source for most secondary works on that period The translation by Fumey of these last volumes appeared in Archives Marocames 9 and 10, 1906-1907 It is not until page 270 of the translation (1906) that there is any mention at all of Ribat al-Fath (There is virtually none of Sala, either, despite the fact that al-Na$in hailed from that city and could have been expected, if anything, to have inflated rather than minimized its importance ) The first mention of Ribat al-Fath appears in the section on the reign of Mawlay Muhammad lbn 'Abd-Allah, when the text notes that he stopped at Ribaf on his way between Marrakech and Fez After that, the city begins to be mentioned quite regularly in the history

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The natural event with greatest impact was the earthquake of 1755. Known ethnocentrically in Europe as the Great Lisbon Quake, in actual fact this tremor shook a large area running along the north-south fault line down the Moroccan coast. Al-Na§iri's account indicates that this quake, or rather two quakes some twentysix days apart, caused enormous destruction in Meknes and Zerhoun, brought ocean waters over the walls of al-Jadlda (Mazagan) to litter the streets of that city with fish, and caused an enormous tidal wave at Sala, one that went so far inland that it entrapped a caravan coming up from Marrakech (al-Nasiri 9, 1906:381-382). The force of this tidal wave exacerbated problems in the harbor of the Bou Regreg, problems that had always existed to some extent. The Atlantic coastline of Morocco has few natural harbors, and none that is first rate. 3 While the estuary of the Bou Regreg was among the better harbors, from the beginning there had been problems related to its shallow and somewhat turbulent channel. Navigational difficulties are mentioned as early as the twelfth century, and are noted again by Leo Africanus in the early sixteenth century (Caille, 1949, 1:17). It will be recalled that these defects were turned to advantage by the early corsairs, who were skillful at escaping upstream, leaving the pursuing vessels to hover fearfully at sea or to risk all by running aground if they ventured in. The 1755 earthquake apparently had the effect of raising the height of the sand bar across the entrance to the estuary, and therefore intensifying channel turbulence at the point where the downstream force of the river's flow collided with the opposite force from the sea.4 While some (K. L. Brown, 1969) have made much of the physical deterioration of the port because of the earthquake, and others (Caille, 1949) have tended to discount it entirely, it appears that neither interpretation is completely correct. Navigation was undoubtedly made more perilous by the quake, but the port continued to function actively all the way into the twentieth century, the fluctuations in its rhythm of activity being related less to natural difficulties, which presumably remained rather constant, than to 3 Casablanca, for example, required an entirely artificial harbor to allow it to function, and it was the investment in this capital improvement that transformed the sleepy fishing village of Anfa into a world port of international importance. 4 Some confusion has arisen in the literature as to whether the navigational difficulties were caused by the sand bar or by the tidal conditions. This confusion may have arisen from the tendency of English-language writers to translate the French term bane as sand bar, rather than, more accurately, as bore, that is, a tidal wave in a river

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other factors, especially the existence of and preference for alternative ports that, while no better physically, were located or controlled differently.5 It was apparently these more political forces that led to a temporary decline in the importance of Ribaf's port functions during the second half of the eighteenth century. Muhammad ibn 'AbdAllah's reign (1757-1790) presaged a shift in the type of economic penetration that Moroccan "absorption" into the European trade system would eventually entail, exhibited in extreme form the ambivalence with which future rulers would respond to that absorption, and demonstrated the full range of contradictory strategies available to adapt to decreasing power vis-a-vis the West. It is in the context of these larger aspects of political economy that the eighteenth-century events determining Ribat's economic viability must be placed The period opens with a show of bravado, as Muhammad ibn 'Abd-Allah, buoyed by his successes in finally reuniting the country, dreams of recapturing Morocco's independent stance, using officially encouraged corsair activity as part of his naval war of defense To this end he outfits additional ships in Ribaf and Larache, all the while struggling to keep the insufficiently subordinate governor of Sala under control (al-Nasin 9, 1906.283). At the same time (1763-1764), he conceives the idea for an additional port in the south, one that would be more firmly under his supervision and closer both to his capital at Marrakech and to the still active caravan routes. Originally, this port, Essaouira (Mogador), was intended chiefly to expand his naval war. During this initial phase, then, the strategies of defending Moroccan autonomy and of raising money for the state operate in tandem. But the strategies do not work, and eventually come into conflict with one another. Muhammad ibn 'Abd-Allah's stepped-up corsair activities clash head-on with mounting European power until, to chastise the Moroccans for a particularly daring capture of one of their ships in 1765, the French heavily bombard Sala and Larache and threaten even worse (al-Nasin 9, 1906:295-296). By the following year, the repercussions of that humiliation are apparent. The governor of Sala, 'Abd al-Haqq Fannish, contests the Sultan's 5 In fact, the final abandonment of Ribat as a port was not due to the physical deterioration of the harbor, but rather to technological changes in shipping The introduction of deep-draught steam ships unable to enter the estuary required lighterage that could only operate under ideal climatic conditions

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power, even daring to close the gates of the city to bar his entry (al-Nasin 9, 1906:305) The Sultan finally puts down this rebellion, imprisoning the ex-governor, exiling his family to Larache, and confiscating all the properties of the Fannish clan. The Sultan is less successful in dealing with the external threat. In the same year (1766) he has to forfeit his right to wage naval warfare and his monopoly over trade. A twenty-clause treaty forced by France establishes "peaceful commercial relations" between the two countries and offers "guarantees" to the freedom and safety of maritime trade. The treaty is so one-sided that its terms specify that adherence to the treaty in Moroccan ports is to be supervised by the French consuls, but in French ports by the French themselves. The English receive similar concessions, as do the Swedes and Danes. 6 This brings to a close, for all intents and purposes, the warfare on high seas that the Moroccans called justifiable jihad and the Europeans called piracy. The fees promised to the Sultan in return for trading concessions perhaps suggested a shift in strategies. While he may still have wanted to preserve the autonomy of Morocco by excluding the foreigners, he also wanted the financial rewards that were offered to open Morocco to European commerce. With the humiliation of 1765 so recently and sharply etched, he succumbed to the second alternative, initiating the long insinuation into Moroccan affairs of the various European powers, a process which, before it culminated in 1912 in French military rule, went through a series of de facto steps of colonization throughout the nineteenth century. In the Sultan's new strategy, his port at Essaouira became central. It had originally been intended as a base from which to launch additional raids on European ships, which was deemed desirable because of the deterioration of the Bou Regreg harbor. A contemporary account by the secretary, Abu al-'Abbas Ahmad lbn 'AbdAllah, stresses this point: The Sultan Sidi Muhammad lbn 'Abd-Allah was passionate for . . .jihad. With this thought in mind he had ordered the construction of corsair-ships of war, which were anchored at the port of the Two Banks [Ribat-Sala].... However, during two months of 6

The relative powerlessness of the latter two is suggested by the fact that they agreed, in return for free trade, to pay an annual fee to the Sultan Needless to say, neither the French nor British agreed to pay any compensation (al-Nasin 9, 1906 308-311)

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the year, during the rainy season, these boats were useless be­ cause of the tide between the port and the river's edge. In other seasons there was too little water and sand obstructed the mouth of the river. . . . In order to circumvent these difficulties the Sul­ tan applied himself to the construction at Essaouira of a port that would have none of these inconveniences." 7 But the Sultan's capitulations to French and other European pres­ sures had made jihad a dead letter; instead, the port at Essaouira was turned to government-controlled trade for profit. Thus, the same leader who had begun by defending Morocco from economic inva­ sion ended by aiding and abetting that penetration. 8 The Sultan turned enthusiastically from piracy to "legitimate" trade. Wishing to exercise complete control over its profits, he even brought Christian and Jewish merchants to Essaouira in the belief that they would not be likely either to rebel against him or to engage in clan­ destine trade (al-Nasiri 9, 1906:294). Finally, in 1781, he ordered all the European merchants and consuls to go to Essaouira, which greatly depopulated the rival ports. This shift had a disastrous effect upon Ribaf-Sala. Ever since 1767, when the Sultan had sent his master builder to investigate the possibility of restoring the port and arsenal (the Dar al-$ina'a) of Sala, only to be told that the expense was too great (K. L. Brown, 1969:96; Naciri 1963:17), the estuary of the Bou Regreg had increas­ ingly been bypassed by trade. Brown (1969:99) tells us that in 1733, when British trade and interests were at their peak in Ribat, there had been some one hundred English commercial firms in RibafSala, as well as many other foreign firms. But due to the transfer to Essaouira, trade through Ribaf's port had dwindled by the end of the century, as had her foreign population. In 1797, the French con­ sul, by then "the last European to live in Rabat" (K. L. Brown, 1969:99), moved to Tangiers. It appeared that the port would never revive. 7

This is quoted by al-Nasiri in his Kitab αί-htiqsa', Fumey translation in Archives Marocames 9, 1906:293-294. Al-Nasiri also includes the theory of another author who suggested that Essaouira was construrted to take the trade away from Agadir, where rebels from Sus were conducting clandestine trade without sharing their profits with the Sultan (ibid.-294). See also Aubin, 1906:2. 8 One of the reasons a southern port was required was to transship goods carried along the traditional trans-Saharan caravan routes; these routes, instead of dying out with European penetration, actually received an added boost, due to European de­ mand for ostrich feathers and other African goods.

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Ironically, just at the time when Ribaf's economic base in trade seemed to have eroded forever, she received her first designation as a capital city—a substitution that previewed what would recur in another hundred or so years when she would lose her port functions permanently to Casablanca, while being compensated for her loss by selection as the capital city of Morocco. As early as 1768, Sultan Muhammad lbn 'Abd-Allah stationed a large number of the 'Abid, together with members of the Udaya jaysh tribe, at Ribat al-Fath. Clearing a large portion of the Agdal gardens just outside the southern Almohad walls, in the vicinity of the present-day palace compound, he had houses, mosques, schools, baths, and markets built for his new suburb. And in the midst of the Agdal, surrounded by his military forces, the Sultan built a palace for himself near his great Sunna Mosque. As had happened so frequently in Ribaf's history, however, this settlement was soon and abruptly aborted. The Sultan had assembled large numbers of the 'Abid (four to five thousand, al-Nasin tells us) and the Udaya (twenty-five hundred)—neither group particularly noted for its discipline—at a place far from his favored residences in the south. It was perhaps inevitable that, left so much on their own, his troops would become unruly. This they did within a brief period often years, forcing the Sultan to call upon loyal tribes in the vicinity to march against them and to disband their settlement at Ribat al-Fath. Some were sent to the Sous region, where they could be better controlled, while others were scattered in inland forts Eventually, lbn 'Abd-Allah's successor, Yazid (17901792), had the 'Abid removed entirely from all the port towns and restationed at Meknes, while the Udaya were regrouped in their original place of strength, Fezjadid (al-Nasin 9,1906:328-330; 376), thus bringing an end to the incipient city in the Agdal. Although the settlement was thus virtually abandoned within a decade, the nucleus of the palace and the Great Sunna Mosque remained, marking the region for redevelopment. As Caille concluded, "This attempt by Sidi ben Abdullah marks an important date in the history of Rabat, for it is the first attempt, albeit somewhat timid, to take up again the work of the Alomohad Ya'qub al-Mansour" (La Petite /wioire:132-133). From that time on, the Alawite Sultans always maintained a palace more or less at the site of the present royal residence, and the city of Ribat ranked among the imperial cities of Morocco where the Sultans resided from time to time, although less frequently than at Marrakech or Fez (Caille,

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1949, 1:372). Toward the end of the eighteenth century, then, Ribat was considered one of the imperial cities of the country and had clearly outstripped Sala not only in prestige but in size as well, for she is estimated to have had, just before the plague of 1799, a population of twenty-five to thirty thousand inhabitants (Caille, 1949, 1:316-317). The future brought radical fluctuations in her size and viability, but it was never again to bring her eclipse. The end of the eighteenth century marked a real setback for Ribat—the combined impact of contested succession after the long reign of Muhammad lbn 'Abd-Allah, accompanying civil strife and fragmentation, and disasters of epidemic proportions. At one point, the leading contender for the succession, Yazid, who presumably reigned between 1790 and 1792, barricaded himself within Sala, whose forts he had equipped with canons (Caille, 1949,1:287, Rabat et sa region 1, 1918:33), while the area around Ribat was harassed by tribes. One of these groups of nomads actually settled into the necropolis of the Chella, and the zone was badly damaged in the Sultan's attempt to dislodge them (K. L. Brown, 1969-101-102). Nor was Mawlay Hisham's one-year interregnum any more of a respite. Finally, the issue of succession was resolved, resulting in the lengthy reign of Mawlay Sulayman between 1793 and 1822. Many of the problems that had surfaced during the interregnum, however, persisted even after the return of "order." Bedouins continued to pillage fields and harass travelers, and their depredations reached the very gates and walls of the cities (K. L. Brown, 1969:107). The plague of 1799, which some say had killed up to two-thirds of the population of Ribat and Sala (K L. Brown, 1969:105-106; Caille, 1949, 1 317), was certainly not the last, although it may have been the most virulent Droughts and plagues recurred with dreary regularity throughout the early decades of the nineteenth century, and one reads with horror—and with disbelief—of the death of twenty thousand persons in the twin cities in the epidemic of 1819 (La Petite histoire 82). Nor did order return to the cities. Indeed, conditions were so bad that the Jews, who seem to have been the object of many attacks, were moved by the Sultan in 1805 from their quarters scattered throughout the cities into specially guarded millahs that were established at isolated edges of Ribat, Sala, and Tetouan (K. L Brown, 1969.102-103, Rabat et sa region 1, 1918:34) But Morocco at least retained some semblance of autonomy throughout these troubled times. This autonomy she was to lose progressively over the remainder of the nineteenth century

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The concessions that the European powers had forced upon Ibn 'Abd-Allah were renewed and even extended by the treaties signed between Mawlay Sulayman and the Powers in 1818—presaging the eventual domination of the imperialistic North over first the economy and then the polity of Morocco. If it is possible to recount the history of Morocco up to the 1820s as if she were the chief actor and determiner of her fate, certainly by 1830 this fiction becomes completely untenable. International trade and the scramble for colonies are the only meaningful terms of reference to understand the enormous changes Morocco underwent in the roughly eighty years that intervened between her incorporation into the world economic system and her final political reduction to the status of a French colony. The fluctuations in the role of Ribat during this lengthy period of increasing subjugation are less important than these larger changes that set the parameters within which the city was a sometimes favored but mostly neglected pawn. Miege has divided the economic history of Morocco during the nineteenth century into several "stages" of declining local control. 9 He characterizes the first period, between approximately 1830 and 1852—entirely within the long reign of Sulayman's successor, 'Abd al-Rahman—as dominated by an irregular pattern of primaryproduct export, chiefly grains and wool, and the import of a very limited number of European items: sugar, tea, and, increasingly, textiles. During this period, according to Miege, the makhzan was still basically in control of the modalities of exchange, and still retained the option to vacillate between closing off the country entirely or opening it even more to foreign trade (Miege 4, 1963:409). The second phase was clearly signaled in 1852-1853. Although it still appeared that Morocco had a choice as to whether or not she would be drawn irreversibly into the world capitalist market, by then this option was illusory (Miege 2, 1961:256). In fact, the major European governments successively imposed their "accords" on the Moroccan government—England in 1856, Spain in 1859-1860, and France in 1863 (Miege 4, 1963:409). These accords revealed conclusively that the question had not been whether or not the West would penetrate, but how that penetration would be 9

The student of Morocco's nineteenth-century economic history is deeply indebted to the incredible scholarship of Jean-Louis Miege, whose four-volume Le Marot et I'Europe, 1830-1894, published between 1961 and 1963, plus his other works, constitute central sources for the period. The section that follows is heavily dependent upon the data assembled by Miege, although at times our interpretation may differ from his.

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achieved and by whom (Miege 2, 1961:258). Although 'Abd alRahman (1822-1859) and his son, Muhammad IV (1859-1873), both struggled with the issue of whether to close or open Morocco to Westerners, after 1863, Miege points out, there was absolutely no choice. Morocco's fate had been sealed, along with that of the rest of North Africa (Miege 4, 1963:416). In this chapter and the next, we explore these changes, relating the transformations in Ribat's role and structure to them. For it would be foolhardy to assume that such far-reaching changes in the larger political economy of Morocco would leave its cities unchanged, and that a port city such as Ribaf would be the same after the realignment of trade and transactions as it had been before. Yet traditional French scholarship of the twentieth century has tended to view the cities of Morocco, as they had been "found" and studied in the opening years of the present century, before the imposition of direct French rule and colonization, as totally indigenous and insulated forms. Taking the economic and social organization of the cities at the turn of the century as the exemplars of the "traditional Islamic city," they have then read back into earlier periods as if virtually no changes had taken place in these "static" and "traditional" units. 10 This approach is obviously faulty, since the cities that the French fell heir to when they took over the direction of Moroccan affairs in 1912 had already been drastically restructured in the nineteenth century in response to the inroads of international capitalism and the resulting collapse of the internal economy. There has been at least one important attempt to overcome these deficiencies, namely, Kenneth Brown's social history of Sala between 1830 and 1930, in which he makes a very similar point: Morocco on the eve of the establishment of the French and Spanish protectorates seems to most observers to have remained 10 The works of the late Roger LeTourneau are, in this respect, quite typical. For example, a close companson of the content of three of his books on Fez, each purporting to cover a somewhat different period in the city's history, reveals a stasis that can only be explained by this strategy of taking French scholarship on Fez during the opening years of the present century (chiefly incorporated into the Villes et Tribus series) as an automatic surrogate for what Fez must have been like in earlier times Such glosses on history have obscured our understanding of the crucial and farreaching changes that took place just prior to the French conquest See his La Vie quottdienne a Fes en 1900 (1965), Fes avant le protectorat etude economtque et sociale d'une utile de I'occident musulman (1949), and Fez in the Age of the Martmdes (1961)

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unchanged . . . through the preceding decades of turmoil, and Sale is often cited as the outstanding example of the country's timelessness, its imperviousness to change.. . The Slawis maintained traditional styles of life and values more, for example, than the populations of Mogador and Casablanca . . Nonetheless [even] the Slawis had profoundly experienced the same social and economic transformations that affected the inhabitants of the larger cities of the interior or the coast (K. L. Brown, 1976:125). In particular, he notes that by the 1860s the small minority of Slawis who could mobilize capital had begun to buy up property in the city and to lend money to others. There was thus a new consolidation of economic power in the hands of this minority, who owed their sudden wealth to the economic changes taking place as a result of Morocco's integration into the world capitalist system (K L Brown, 1976 124).11 If this happened in Sala, the most insulated of the port cities, we can well imagine what the repercussions were in Ribat, more open to the changes wrought by expanding trade and heightened imports, and much more receptive to the growing number of foreign firms who began by insisting upon free trade, but ended the final third of the century by taking charge of Moroccan enterprises, although still through the indirect means of their "proteges." 12 Although we are getting ahead of our story here, it is necessary to preface the account that follows with this general caveat: a traditional culture, once it has been incorporated into the world view of foreign observers (because it has moved from a position of irrelevance to one of potential importance), is by that very process of observation and manipulation no longer purely "traditional." This variant on the Heisenberg principle alerts us to anticipate changes in Ribaf long before its designation as the capital of the French Protectorate. As we have noted above, the reign of Mawlay 'Abd al-Rahman (1822-1859) encompassed the real turning point in Morocco's growing loss of autonomy. But the sequence of events, the strategies followed to defend that autonomy against increasing odds, the ambivalent vacillations between peace and war, between monopoly and trade, between attempting to control trade and benefiting from 11

This 1976 book is a considerably reworked version of the final section of his 1969 dissertation, cited earlier 12 Literally, "protected" by a foreign consulate

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it—are all replays of the earlier rehearsals of Muhammad lbn 'Abd-Allah a generation before 'Abd al-Rahman, too, began by encouraging the resumption of corsair warfare, despite the official end that had been declared in his predecessor's treaties with Europe New ships were commissioned and outfitted, and their captains were authorized to "cross swords with the corsairs of war on the Maghnbi coast and on neighboring shores" (al-Nasin 10, 1907.129) But as had happened before, these forays met with disproportionate response from the Europeans In 1829 some Austrian ships were intercepted and forced into port at Larache and Ribat, where their merchandise was impounded. In retaliation Austria sent warships that besieged Larache and inflicted severe damage on the port (al-Nasin 10, 1907-130). This "affair" with Austria was not settled until 1830, when the British ambassador, John Drummond-Hay (a person of great influence in Morocco), accompanied his Austrian counterpart to Meknes to demand a personal apology from the Sultan {ibid -131-132) According to al-Nasin, this humiliation finally convinced the Sultan that corsair activities would have to be abandoned But there were events of even greater significance that signaled the same imperative. The French invasion of Algeria in 1830 was scarcely an ambiguous warning This invasion was to the history of the Maghrib what the 1798 Napoleonic expedition to Egypt was to the history of the Mashriq, namely, the most visible symbol that Europe had arrived and would eventually have its way, even though the process of absorption and subjugation was in each case to take another eighty years While the immediate impact on Morocco was chiefly symbolic, there were some very practical consequences as well. One of these was certainly the final abandonment of naval warfare, but the second and more important one was a realignment of trade, both internally and vis-a-vis the world. The conquest of the Algerian coastal plain by the French interrupted the traditional flow of goods across North Africa through the Taza Gap via OujdaTlemcen, and from there on to Tunisia and Egypt (Miege 3, 1962:73). This deprived Moroccan artisans of one of the major outlets for their leather and textile products On the othei hand, the closing of this route forced a diversion of at least some of the trans-Saharan traffic that had formerly connected with the Mediterranean ports to the north. Instead of moving northward, goods

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were rechanneled along a more southerly lateral route, temporarily stimulating the caravan trade focused upon the Atlantic port of Mogador Although this route declined by the 1880s, during the middle decades of the nineteenth century it grew increasingly active, in part because of the conquest of Algeria. By about 1830 Morocco also began to supply primary products (chiefly wool and skins) to European manufacturers and, shortly thereafter, to import processed goods from Europe, a second byproduct of the realignment of trade caused by the conquest of Algena. While the interior trade routes along the Marrakech-FezTlemcen axis were deprived of their eastern outlets, the port cities along the Atlantic coast began to be linked more intensively with the Continent. Growth of the port cities began to exceed growth of the interior towns and cities, due to this shift, just as the new emphasis on import-export led to a further decline in the artisan economy of Morocco. Involvement in international trade and the increased interest of European capitalists in both the raw materials and markets of Morocco led not only to a decline in local manufacturing but to a rise in prices. Inflation, well documented in Miege's account, was reflected in the rapid increase in land values, especially within urban areas, which in turn brought about significant changes in the class system within Morocco. Brown, in his study of Sala between 1830 and 1930, aptly summarized this restructuring during the middle years of the nineteenth century when he described it as the "enrichment of the few" and the "impoverishment of the many." The seeds for that shift were sown in the 1830s. During the early years of'Abd al-Rahman's rule, Morocco hovered on the edge of economic integration with Europe. Paradoxically, it was her own need that forced the doors open. Following mercantilist "theory," Morocco had been prohibiting the export of grains and wool since the end of the eighteenth century, which greatly reduced Europe's interest in her. But in 1825, after several years of poor harvest, there was a major crop failure and subsequent famine in Morocco. Europe's response was to send grain, which Morocco could hardly afford to reject. Between January and March of 1826, more European ships entered the harbors of Larache, Ribat, Mogador, and the previously ruined port at Mazagan (al-Jadida) than had landed during the preceding five years. According to Miege, seventy-five ships unloaded grain at Ribat in March alone (Miege 2, 1961:39-42). Although the profit motive

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rather than compassion accounts for this sudden assistance (during that year gram prices in Moroccan ports were double those in France), it became difficult for Morocco to continue the prohibition of exports, once recovery occurred. By 1827 supplies in Morocco had expanded so much that once again local grain prices were less than half what they were in French ports. By 1828, the restrictions against export had been lifted and Morocco became a supplier of grain to Europe. A similar change took place with respect to wool, Morocco's other potential export. Durmg the opening decades of the nineteenth century, European demand for wool was low, because mechanization of wool textile manufacture lagged behind that of cotton. Export of wool was tightly controlled, the Sultan having prohibited its sale outside the country except through his own port at Mogador. Between 1827 and 1835, however, the mechanization of wool textile production in France led to increased output and therefore heightened demand for raw materials. In 1831 Morocco lifted the restrictions on exports and became a major supplier of wool to France Hinting at the future rivalry between the old port at Ribat and the new one at Casablanca, the wool exported from the former was "third quality," while that leaving from Casablanca was "first quality" (Miege 2, 1961-54-67) In return for her exports of grain and wool, Morocco began to receive tea and sugar. Mint tea is so universally the national beverage of Morocco today that it is sobering to realize that it was not known in Morocco before the middle of the eighteenth century, and was a rare and treasured commodity as late as 1825, when it was listed as one of the special gifts made to the Sultan by the French consul (Miege 2, 1961 72). But by 1830, some 3,500 kilograms of tea were imported, and by 1840 this figure hadjumped to almost 300,000 kilograms (ibid..73) Sugar imports similarly increased during this period, although at a less dramatic rate (ibid.-7A). Throughout this first stage of heightened trade, Ribaf was one of the chief ports of Morocco, and the major shipping link with Europe (ibid. 175-176) Up to 1840 the wealthy merchants of Ribat were handling an increasing share of the foreign trade, including that destined ultimately for Casablanca. The city was the third largest urban agglomeration in the country, after Fez and Marrakech, and was the third most important industrial center, as well. One could easily have predicted that, as foreign trade expanded

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during the rest of the century, Ribat would overtake the two interior rivals and become the primate city of Morocco. This did not happen. Rather, her economic base in industrial production was systematically undermined, as imported textiles and other items manufactured in Europe progressively supplanted local demand for her products, and as other port cities, notably Casablanca, surged to the fore, absorbing the increase in shipping activity that otherwise would have gone to Ribat. In short, once again Ribat's history was to run countercyclical to that of the rest of the country. Just as she had vanished from sight by the fourteenth century, when Moroccan urban developments reached their medieval apogee, so during the second half of the nineteenth century, when the entire urban system of Morocco changed from one focusing upon the interior axis of the country to one debouching on the Atlantic coast, Ribat failed to reap the benefits of that shift, although she was not immune to the disabilities brought by Morocco's growing dependence upon and subordination to Europe. She had only one compensation. The boom growth deflected to Casablanca may have left her relatively stagnant, 13 but this stagnation guaranteed preservation of much of her original ambience and architecture, at least until the formal imposition of the French Protectorate in 1912. Before examining in more detail the process by which Morocco was integrated economically into the orbit of European colonialism, we must take note of the last alteration in Ribat's physiognomy prior to the "modern age," namely, the resettlement of the qasbah area and its new designation as the Qasbah of the Udaya, the term by which it is known today. In 1830, just when Mawlay 'Abd al-Rahman's attention was firmly focused on the coast and on his growing involvement with the European powers, dissidence again bubbled to the surface in the interior, as it habitually did whenever the central hand faltered. By 1831 the Sultan attempted to reimpose greater discipline upon both the jaysh tribe of the Udaya and its allies, the 'Abid, who had resumed their old free-enterprise depredations in the rural areas and against the merchants of Fez. He arrested their chief qa'ids at their stronghold in Fez Jadld, at which point the Udaya rebelled openly, 13 In 1840, the combined population of Ribat and Sala was estimated to have been about thirty-five to forty thousand, approximately the same as it was at the time of the first French-conducted census in 1918.

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invading Fez proper, routing the Sultan, pillaging his baggage, and even capturing his harim. They went so far as to proclaim 'Abd al-Rahman's rival, Sidi Muhammad lbn Ta'ib, as the true Sultan. 'Abd al-Rahman soon returned with an army and laid siege to Fez, which by then was completely controlled by the rebels. After forty days he succeeded in gaining their submission, and once again the Udaya pledged their allegiance to the throne (Caille, 1949, 1:331-334). But despite this act of contrition they remained unruly, and the Sultan was uncertain how to keep them under surveillance while still concentrating his attention on the coastal areas. In 1832, in the words of the chronicler, al-Nasin, "God gave him the answer." He decided to transfer the tribe out of the interior and to fragment it, sending one faction to Larache, another to Jabal Tsalfat, still another to Marrakech, and the bulk of the Ahl Sus faction to the vicinity of Ribat (al-Nasin 10, 1907:141-153). The old qasbah area of Ribat was by that time virtually abandoned, since Ribaf's peaceful assimilation into the makhzan had long since obviated the need to station troops there to control the city below. The decayed fortress was then known as "the Qasbah of the Andalusians," a reference to the early days of the Republic on the Bou Regreg, when the Hornacheros and then the Andalusians had controlled the city state from those heights. The leaders of the Ahl Sus faction of the Udaya moved into the ruins of the qasbah, while their followers camped southwest of Ribat, at the fort at Tamarra. By 1833, some four hundred arms-carrying members of the jaysh tribe had been moved into the qasbah, together with perhaps three times as many dependents, and the area was being rebuilt with housing and a full complement of related urban services. The Udaya lived apart and had little contact with the ordinary inhabitants of Riba(. Guards at the massive gate to the qasbah prevented outsiders from entering this domain under the direct authority of the makhzan, and the zone was administered by its own qa'id (Caille, 1949, 1:331-334). This separate administration was to persist well into the present century, perpetuating the polynucleation of the urban region into the three centers that had coexisted in the seventeenth century—Old Sala, New Sala (the medina proper of Ribat), and the Qasbah, now in the hands of the Udaya.

•WOT II*

-vCREEPING COLONIALISM

A CRUCIAL turnmg pomt m Rlbiifs history came at mid-century In the 1840s Rlbiit was still one of the most Important CltIes 10 Morocco, and a leadmg port, by the 1860s she had been supplanted. Although ships contmued to call m her harbor, the vital commerClal transactions were takmg place elsewhere As late as 1840, the Sultan still seemed to be 10 control of the modalIties of trade with Europe, but by the 1860s thiS was no longer true. It IS difficult to detach the fate of the city from the fate of Morocco's mdependence Both seem to have undergone cruClal tranSitlOns between 1840 and 1860. In the 1840s the pace of European mcurslOns slowed down, perhaps due to the economIC difficulties on the Contment that culmmated m the upheavals of 1848 ThiS penod of respite gave 'Abd al-Rabman, badly fnghtened by hiS milItary defeat by the French at Isly m 1844, a chance to set up some economic defenses. Followmg the model of Mubammad 'All, whose accomplIshments had been admired by the Sultan's son when he witnessed them m Alexandna on hiS return tnp from the Pilgnmage, he set up state monopolIes over Morocco's chief products, hop1Og thereby to control and regulate external trade as well as to appropnate the profits from It to strengthen rus mIlitary capabilIties. ThiS effort proved meffectlve. 1 Once European economic recovery began after 1851, there was lIttle that the Sultan could do to stem the tide of colomahsm. Morocco's ability to control the terms of her trade collapsed 10 the late 1850s under the Impact of a senes of treaties forced upon her, whICh gave greater freedom of operation to the European merchants and reqmred the rescmdmg of the government monopolIes. ThiS pushed Morocco mto a trade defiCit from whICh she was not to recover The change was apparent only one year after the slgmng of the Anglo-Moroccan trade agreement of 1856. In 1855, Moroccan exports had exceeded Imports by some 8 mllhon francs' value; 1 Among the sources that can be consulted on the monopolIes, see Mlege 2, 1961 228-234, and hIS Documents d'hlStolre economlque et sOClaie Marocaine au XIX· slecle, 1%949-50

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by 1857 her balance of payments showed a deficit of close to 2.5 million francs, a sum that was to grow (Miege 2, 1961.338) During the hiatus in trade of the 1840s there were also important realignments within the Moroccan bourgeoisie, a restructuring that only became evident during the boom period of the 1850s and early 1860s, when Casablanca emerged as the chief port of Morocco, as far as European traders were concerned. Growth that otherwise might have gone into Ribat was deflected to the rival port only a short distance down the coast—a fact of momentous and permanent significance in the history of Ribat Up to the nineteenth century, Casablanca had been an unimportant fishing town, originally called Anfa, in which the Spanish always maintained a modest interest. Although cereals from the surrounding plain had occasionally been shipped out of the primitive port, by 1795 even this minimal activity ceased. The port was closed and the foreign traders moved back to Ribat. During the opening years of the nineteenth century the port was not functioning at all. It was not reopened until 1831, when the export of grains and wool was legalized and some small quantities began to be shipped out (Adam 1, 1968:24-25). By 1834, however, Casablanca was still no more than a tiny settlement of some seven hundred souls—scarcely a promising beginning for the city that was to grow within the next hundred years into the primate city of Morocco and, indeed, the second largest city on the African continent. Why Casablanca rather than Ribat should have emerged after 1850 as the chief beneficiary of the new and increasingly European-controlled commerce of Morocco is not entirely clear Several factors, none of them decisive or inexorable, seem to have been involved. First, the Anglo-Moroccan treaty of 1856 (whose terms were extended to the Spanish and French in later treaties) abolished the Sultan's right to set differential tariffs in the ports of Morocco, and restricted his ability to intervene and otherwise direct trade. Since Ribat had previously enjoyed the favor of the makhzan and therefore had benefited from preferential customs legislation (Miege 3, 1962:48-50),2 she apparently lost her comparative advantage over Casablanca at this time. Second, during the second half of the nineteenth century steamships began to make more regular calls at Moroccan ports (Miege 2, 2 Adam, 1, 1968a 25 claims that Rbati traders had blocked Casablanca's competition by having the customs duties raised in that port, a differential that disappeared with the treaty

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1961:434). Not only did more ships come but, due to technological improvements, the average duration of voyage between France and Morocco decreased by almost two-thirds between 1850 and 1863 (ibid. :452). These steamships were naturally of much deeper draught than the sailing ships that had traditionally dropped anchor at the port on the Bou Regreg. The shallow port at Riba? now always required lighterage, whose hazards were intensified by the treacherous bore. However, it would be difficult to make a case for a superior harbor at Casablanca. It was, indeed, one of the worst natural harbors available (Stewart, 1964:157), and it had not been improved. Lighterage was similarly required, and it was against a rough and open sea. Given this lack of natural superiority, it would be difficult to claim that it was only changes in the technology of shipping that dictated the shift to Casablanca. A third factor seems to have been involved. European traders undoubtedly preferred to establish themselves in a new town over which they could exercise control and within which they might feel less unwelcome. In Ribaf they had been confined to a narrow space near the port, and as their numbers increased in the 1850s and 1860s the area allotted to them was not expanded. There was severe overcrowding. Furthermore, they felt uncomfortable and threatened within that large Muslim city. In contrast, Casablanca was virgin territory, and there was already a receptive Spanish community there (see Miege et al., 1954). While Casablanca obviously suited the foreign traders better, one must be careful not to overestimate their influence on Moroccan history at so early a date. It must be remembered that even in Casablanca they constituted only a tiny proportion of the population until the twentieth century. By 1905, there were still fewer than six hundred foreigners in the city, most of them Spaniards. Foreign influx, therefore, cannot account for the striking fact that between 1834 and 1866, Casablanca's population increased sevenfold, from seven hundred to over six thousand inhabitants (Miege 3, 1962, tables on pp. 14, 23). Moroccan, not foreign, immigration was the most important component of this growth. The fourth and perhaps most decisive factor involved in the shift to Casablanca, then, was an indigenous one. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that it was an internal struggle among contending urban bourgeoisies withm Morocco that led to the eventual domination of Casablanca. It was not so much foreigners who sought wider scope for their commercial ventures, unfettered from the tra-

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ditional inhibitions imposed in the existing cities. It was rather fortune-seeking Moroccans, anxious to break the "cake of custom" and to reap the rewards promised by collaboration with their European counterparts, who flocked to Casablanca—from Ribat herself, but most of all from land-locked Fez. The latter city contained Morocco's most powerful and entrepreneurially adventurous commercial bourgeoisie, many of whom were painfully aware that the interior routes that had sustained their power were in disarray. (France captured Oujda in 1847, effectively blocking the lateral trade route to Algeria, and even the caravans from the south were delivering their cargoes directly to the southern port at Mogador.) A new port offered them the opportunity to break into sea trade, and thus to challenge the merchants of Ribat, Sala, Tetouan, and Mogador, as well as to escape the supervision of the Sultan's agents. Mazagan (al-Jadlda) and, even more so, Casablanca benefited from this strategy. The latitude with which this entrepreneurial class operated was greatly widened by the institution of Protection—extraterritorial rights for foreigners that had been exacted from the Moroccan government from the eighteenth century onward and were comparable in degree and kind to the so-called Capitulations operant in the realms of the Ottoman Empire. Originally these extraterritorial exemptions from local laws and taxation applied only to foreign traders and diplomats, but by the middle of the nineteenth century they were being extended, in virtually unpoliced fashion, to the Moroccan agents with whom they did business. The privileges thus obtained by a Moroccan were enviable, since they included immunity both from legal responsibility, as judged in the Shari'a courts, and from taxation. 3 Doing business with Christian merchants and, indeed, putting oneself outside the jurisdiction of the Shari'a and into the legal hands of foreigners was scarcely a highly regarded act within the traditional elite. However, the rewards were tempting—so tempt3

Extraterritorial rights to foreigners went back at least to an eleventh-century commercial agreement between Pisa and Morocco, and during the seventeenth century three separate treaties with France had been negotiated. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, almost every Western foreign nation had such a nonreciprocal "most favored nation agreement" with Morocco, including the United States (Charles Stewart, The Economy of Morocco, 1912-1962, 1964:39-42). See also Earl Cruickshank, Morocco at the Parting of the Ways, 1935, chapter I for the system before 1885; and Leland Bowie, The Impact of the Protege System m Morocco, 1880-1912, 1970, for the later period.

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ing that many wealthy Moroccans allegedly bought the right to be proteges of a foreign power, even when they had no intention of serving as commercial agents for foreign firms. Those willing to become agents benefited doubly, and by the 1860s this group began to constitute, together with Jewish merchants who had previously played a similarly marginal role in Mogador and Riba{, a comprador class that facilitated the penetration of European commercial capitalism into Morocco. It was this group of local entrepreneurs who found the new port cities a receptive arena in which to work, one in which they could escape disapproval and possibly even ostracism by their communities Miege has argued with convincing evidence that the "bourgeois dynasty of today's Morocco was born in the nineteenth century" (3, 1962:33) "out of urban capitalism tied to the world market" (ibid. :28), and that this capitalism "was strengthened in the coastal cities after 1860 by commercial profit, speculation in land and usury under the cover of Protection" (ibid.-30). We would add that this new dynasty found its most fertile field of operation in Casablanca, rather than in the older port of Ribat, which was unreceptive and perhaps even repelled by it. Rbatis wishing to play the new "game" migrated to Casablanca, joining a number of the merchants from Fez who were busy parlaying wealth gained under the old system of internal trade into fortunes in the new One is almost tempted to characterize Casablanca as the heartland of a new blad al-siba, one that was to grow and eventually undermine Moroccan political independence. It is conventional in Moroccan history to distinguish between the blad al-makhzan and the blad al-siba largely on geographic and ethnic lines—the former more or less encompassing the plains and urban centers where Arab influence predominated, the latter centered in the mountain and desert peripheries where tribal confederations of Berber-speaking peoples resisted the imposition of central state control This may have been true at certain times, but to confine the analysis to this particular manifestation is to forfeit some of the power of the concept. The essence of the distinction is between those areas in which the Moroccan Sultan had legitimate authority to enforce a legal system, to collect taxes, and to command loyalty and support vis-a-vis external powers, and other areas that refused to submit to the makhzan's governance During the second half of the nineteenth century, in addition to the tribal areas of the blad al-siba, there de-

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veloped urban bourgeois areas along the Atlantic coast which, in alliance with European powers, similarly defied the Sultan's authority, resisted the legitimacy of his legal institutions, gained exemption from taxation, and undermined his foreign policy. While there had always been extraterritorial enclaves along the Moroccan coast held by foreign powers, only during the second half of the nineteenth century, and particularly in Casablanca, did Moroccans themselves join to create, in complicity with these outside forces, new zones of urban siba—beachheads for eventual colonial control. Between 1860 and the turn of the present century, one traces the inexorable expansion of these beachheads. It is possible to single out a few landmarks along the way that reveal how significantly Morocco was losing control over her own destiny, but these events should not be viewed as isolated turning points. They are merely visible confirmations of underlying changes, revealing that the initiative is no longer in Moroccan hands. The Sultan is only one, and often it seems the weakest, of the actors determining events. England, Spain, France, and even Holland and Germany take more initiatives than does the Moroccan ruler who, by the end of the nineteenth century, is reduced to trying to play one enemy off against another in a desperate attempt to stave off occupation The death of 'Abd al-Rahman in 1859 mercifully spared him from the next humiliation at the hands of Spain He was succeeded by Mawlay Muhammad IV, whose reign until 1873 was to span most of the subsequent phase of "integration." The clash with Spain was ostensibly over the hinterlands of Ceuta and Mehlla, two fortified towns on the coast of Morocco still held by Spain as of 1980 In 1854, a visiting Frenchman described the situation at Ceuta as follows: [Ceuta] is a delightful town, almost European in its aspect, and with its perfectly straight streets, paved as in real mosaic, and its white well-built houses, ranged in a graceful amphitheater—it contrasts strikingly with . . Tetouan which the bright sunshine of the Mediterranean enables one to see clearly at a short distance For three centuries Ceuta has possessed four admirable lines of fortification But in spite of its quadruple ranges of batteries, Ceuta permitted the Arabs, fifteen years ago, to take from it its very suburbs—a territory which the Spanish town held even before the time of King Ferdinand V, and which is as necessary to it as air is to the human lungs Ceuta has resigned itself to

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perfect impotence. . . . If in fact, you descend . . . to the line of demarcation . . . , you will find . . . on one side of the fosse . . . , seated gravely . . . one of the guards of the Sultan of Morocco .. . who looks fixedly . . . at the soldier of. . . Valencia or Seville. . . . At every fifty paces you meet thus Europe and Morocco face to face, silently staring at each other, in the persons of their sentinels.4 But in 1860 the Spanish stopped staring. They were emboldened to break out of their fortress and invade and occupy Tetouan. Nothing could testify more eloquently to the weakness of Morocco than the peace treaty signed in May. Not only had Morocco been invaded, and from an enclave in her own territory, but now she was required to pay an enormous indemnity to her invader. Once again, Sir John Drummond-Hay, whose close relationship with the sultanate continued to ensure the preeminence of Great Britain in both economic and political affairs, intervened to "conciliate" the disputants. Rather than opposing the indemnity, he arranged for slightly different terms and helped "secure" from an English banking house a loan to the Moroccan sovereign in the amount of over half a million pounds at extravagant interest, so that half of the indemnity could be paid immediately. To cover both the debt and the indemnity, the Sultan signed away his rights to the customs duties in Moroccan ports. One half of the customs receipts were pledged as security for the loan, while the other half was assigned directly to Spain to pay off the rest of the indemnity. 5 Customs fees were relatively high in the early 1860s, in part because the American civil war had cut off Europe's access to American cotton, and alternative sources had to be sought in Egypt and North Africa. In Egypt the result was a tremendous boom in agricultural prices—so dramatic that it unleashed Isma'il's ambitious schemes for public improvements and indigenous industrialization, but unfortunately so temporary that he was subsequently entrapped in skyrocketing indebtedness. In Morocco the same cycle 4 Xavier Durneu, The Present State of Morocco A Chapter of Mussulman Civilisation, 1854:x-xi. 5 See Abun-Nasr, 1971:290-292 for a summary of political events, Miege, 1969.57-64 for the various agreements; and Louisa A. E. Brooks and Alice Drummond-Hay, A Memoir of Sir John Drummond-Hay, Sometime Minister at the Court of Morocco, Based on His Journals and Correspondence, 1896.218-219, for a selfcongratulatory account of Sir John's role in this affair.

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could be observed, albeit at a somewhat more modest level. During the boom, the prices of agricultural commodities rose so much that raw materials which otherwise would have been processed by local artisans entered the export market, while to pay for these items Europe dumped textiles and leather products into Moroccan ports, displacing still more locally produced goods. When export demand contracted sharply in 1865, the system was unable to readjust, and imported goods continued to undermine those made within Morocco. This began the long process of decline in indigenous manufacturing that was to have such disastrous effects in Ribat and

Salu6

The late sixties initiated a new series of setbacks. Crop failures led to a famine in 1866, followed by the usual epidemics. By the end of the decade, Morocco's economic crises were intensified by retrenchments in European demand for wool, which led to a drop in its price. And perhaps signifying the growing dependence of the Moroccan economy on fluctuations in trade with Europe, during this time there began the first of a continuing series of massive migrations out of the countryside and into the coastal towns, where relief might be available and where labor might be sold. These migrations were to provide, even in advance of need, the nucleus of a proletarian labor force available to build the colonial enterprise. At this time, when urban artisans and farmer-herdsmen in the hinterlands were experiencing an erosion of their livelihoods, due to the breakdown of the symbiotic cycle of production and processing that had tied them together, wealthy merchants and officials— those with capital to spend or lend—were able to consolidate and expand their holdings, to buy up land (for use, for speculative profit, or as a front for Europeans who were still prohibited from holding real property in Morocco), and to extend loans at usurious rates to those suffering from the crisis. Miege suggests that during this period of the birth of urban capitalism in Morocco there was a realignment in the class structure of the country, with a small group 6 As late as 1858, when a well-documented report was written by Claude de Laroche, then vice-consul for France in Ribat, detailing the industrial structure of the city, Ribat still hosted at least a dozen carpet manufactories, as well as numerous shops for weaving mats andjalaba cloth, making hemp rope, and dyeing materials In addition, there were forty tanneries yielding leather for the 150 slipper (babuche) makers that employed some 1,500 workers and for the 8 saddlers In Ribat-Sala there were 30 active potteries producing 600,000 pieces a year (data summarized in Caille's La Petite htstotre 193-195) Most of these industries underwent precipitous decline during the remainder of the century

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of urban merchants becoming progressively wealthier as artisans 7 and peasants became increasingly impoverished During the re­ mainder of the century there was little to reverse this process, and much to intensify it In 1873, Muhammad IV was succeeded by his son, Mawlay alHasan, who, despite his competence and noble intent to modernize Morocco and guard her autonomy, 8 was to preside over her further subjugation during his twenty-two year reign So strong were the forces operating against independence by then that it is unlikely that any ruler following any policy could have forestalled the inevi­ table expansion of Europe One need only look at what was hap­ pening in the rest of North Africa in the 1870s to appreciate this fact. By the 1870s, France had succeeded in "pacifying" the coastal sections of Algeria, and colonization had begun in earnest She had energy to spare on designs in the direction of Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt. Tunisia's gradual incorporation into the world market had paralleled Morocco's Between 1848 and 1860, trade through the chief port of Tunis had doubled, and English cotton goods, woolens, and silks from France were already displacing local goods throughout the country (Ganiage, 1959, esp. p. 54). As in Morocco and Egypt, European bankers pressed loans upon the government, leading the Tunisian Regency deeper and deeper into debt (Ganiage, 1959:196-216). And as elsewhere in North Africa, the government was drawn to the verge of bankruptcy when the con­ traction came in the late 1860s (see, inter alia, Broadley, 1882, 1:142-147). The scenario unfolded during the 1870s, culminating in an invasion and conquest of the country in 1881, with the "permis­ sion" of the other European powers. 9 France did not have similar permission in Egypt. Indeed, the rivalry between France and England almost led to a stand-off, de­ spite the same promising beginnings. By the 1870s the Khedivial government was so deeply in debt to European bankers that even the sale of Egypt's interests in the Suez Canal (a venture that had 7 See, inter alia, Miege 3, 1962 137-155, Miege, 1973 366 ff, and Κ L Brown, 1976 129-174 passim 8 A highly flattering evaluation of Mawlay Hasan is found in 'Alal al-Fasi's The Independence Movements in Arab North Africa, 1954, esp pp 80-81 9 The chief contenders for Tunisia were Italy and France, but in the end it was German support that gave France courage to proceed, to "gather the 'Tunisian pear' offered to her at Berlin" (Ganiage, 1959 524)

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contributed in no small measure to her indebtedness in the first place) could not stave off the creditors By the end of the decade, Isma'il had been deposed, his personal domains confiscated, and a Dual Control, consisting of one Englishman and one Frenchman, had been established to supervise the national receivership—the former supervising public works and expenditures, and the latter receiving the customs dues and other income. But while France was otherwise occupied with her absorption of Tunisia, British troops landed at Alexandria, adding Egypt to the empire Despite this fait accompli, France did not readily give up her claim, and it was not until the Entente Cordiale of 1904 that she relinquished Egypt to England, accepting in return a most important compensatory prize, as we shall see. Given these developments, there could be no question that Morocco, too, lay in mortal danger The question is not why she was in danger, it is rather how she managed to retain even nominal independence during this period of world-wide colonial expansion. The answer to this question lies less with Moroccan capabilities, policies, and leadership than it does with rivalries among the various contenders for her domination—Great Britain, Spain, and France. It is significant that at the same time that Egypt and Tunisia were being parceled out to England and France, an international conference was called in Madrid to determine the future of Morocco Since agreement could not be reached concerning who would get this plum, arrangements were made concerning the mutual exploitation of the temporarily immobilized prize Just as the trade agreements of 1856, 1859, and 1863, together with the Spanish indemnity agreement of 1860, had set the terms for Moroccan developments during the 1860s and 1870s, so the Madrid Conference of 1880 codified the next stage of Moroccan absorption into the European orbit. Ironically, it was Mawlay Hasan himself who pressured for the conference, hoping thereby to get the Powers to agree to limit the proliferation of local proteges. And even more ironically, although he succeeded in this, and limited the number of proteges who could be sponsored by any foreign firm to twelve, the price exacted from him in return for this minor reform was one that eventually reduced the dependence of Europeans upon their proteges—for it allowed them to act directly in areas where they had formerly required surrogates. Up to that time, Europeans had been forbidden to buy land or buildings in Morocco (although they had already gained this right

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in the Ottoman domains by 1858). This prohibition reduced the attractiveness of investment in the country, although it did not preclude it Foreigners had, indeed, been buying real property by means of a somewhat risky subterfuge, namely through and often in the nominal title of their proteges. Obviously, pressures had been building up for some time to dispense with this restriction, especially as the number of foreign residents increased and the number of European-run firms and industries expanded. Article 11 of the Madrid Convention recognized the right of all foreigners to hold property in Morocco, giving them the right to buy land and to register their titles with the makhzan. In an attempt to control unlimited purchase by persons unbound by local laws, it was specified that authorization for purchase would have to be obtained from the Sultan before the transaction could be registered. In the event of dispute, a foreigner could appeal to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, that is, not through the local court system. While foreigners still complained that their rights were abridged and that the requirement of authorization unduly hampered them in their activities, in actual fact the change in law inaugurated a new and much more serious phase in the still indirect colonization of Morocco. 10 The effects were dramatic, even though they were less disastrous than they might have been, had direct European rule been instituted. 11 Because land purchase through proteges continued to be the dominant manner in which foreigners acquired property in Morocco 12 —at least until the next negotiations at the Conference of Algeciras in 1906—it is impossible to determine the extent to which foreigners extended their holdings dunng the closing decades of the century. However, all observers agree that inroads were extensive, particularly in Casablanca and its environs, where foreign merchants were even willing to contribute to subscriptions for 10 See the appendix entitled "Regime immobilier au Maroc," in Rabat et sa region 2, Les utiles apres la conquete, 1919, pp 163-164 11 The contrast with Tunisia is instructive There, following the French takeover, between 1881 and 1890 some fifty foreign individuals and companies managed to buy over one million acres of land from the moneyless Tunisian aristocracy See Ghazi Duwaji, Economic Development in Tunisia, 1967 92 12 One ingenious means of bypassing the makhzan's "permission" for purchase was recounted by Rankin (In Morocco with General d'Amade, 1908 78), who noted that Europeans not only "trade" in protections but "have even used the system as a means to acquire landed properties by foreclosing on mortgages which they have forced upon their proteges "

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public improvements, so secure did they feel in their position and property. 13 After 1880 especially, there was an influx of foreigners into Casablanca, making the existing facilities inadequate. There was an enormous demand for housing, and lands in the immediate environs began to be converted for urban use (Miege 4, 1963:354), setting in motion what was to be a most deleterious trend in that city, namely, wild land speculation that later made the replanning of Casablanca very difficult. Ribat and Sala seem to have been little affected by these developments, for they lay beyond the arena of major foreign designs. Instead, it was local landowners who began to buy up properties, to build within the walls on lands previously used for truck gardens, and to accumulate wealth. But even there, the grounds for such accumulation were changing—from raw material production to services, from processing and crafts to either port governmental service or distribution of imported goods. In 1891, Goss, a special correspondent for the British Morning Post wrote an article entitled "Morocco: The World's Last Market." The title aptly, if ironically, captured the theme of the closing decades of the nineteenth century Imported goods flooded the markets of Morocco. By 1888 tea had become the habitual beverage of the country, and in the 1880s and 1890s the import of sugar to sweeten it spurted upward. Cotton cloth from abroad was in great demand, both as a substitute for local textiles and because, at least in a few cities, styles were changing. The domestic oil lamps were being replaced by imported candles and even gas lanterns (Miege 4, 1963.387-392). Such changes in consumption naturally had an impact on the producers of raw materials and on local production centers such as Ribat and Sala. The close symbiotic ties binding centers of craft production to their hinterlands, which were both the source of their raw materials and the ultimate consumers for their products, were irreparably broken by the end of the century. Traditionally, the region around Ribaf-Sala was inhabited by farmers and herders (many of whom practiced both occupations in a transhumant pattern). Agriculturalists provided the city not only with its gram and vegetables, but with cotton, flax, and hemp for its industries. Herders raised the 13 Europeans began to improve some of the coastal towns as early as 1878, when foreign merchants and members of the consular corps opened a subscription to clean the streets of Casablanca, a year later they began some street paving there (Miege 4, 1963 351), as had the foreign community of Tangiers (ibid 352)

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goats and sheep that supplied milk and meat to urban residents, but these were also the source of the wool used in cloth weaving and rug making, and of the skins that were first tanned and then made into saddles, containers, and the babuche (slippers) for which the city was famous. With the decline of the textile industry in the nineteenth century, there was a progressive decline in the production of cotton and flax in the vicinity (Naciri, 1963:64), and the cotton farms were turned into vegetable gardens (K. L. Brown, 1969:198). By the 1880s only minor production in the cotton and linen industries continued, and "everyone wore foreign-made cloth" (ibid.:196) Local soap manufacturing had virtually stopped by the late 1880s (ibtd.:!57). Leather goods similarly underwent a drop in demand, the decline resulting not as much from the importation of European shoes as from the closing off of Morocco's traditional export markets in the Arab East and sub-Saharan Africa (K. L. Brown, 1969:258-259). One indicator of the declining importance of leather production was a reduction in the space allotted to shoemakers in the suq of Sala Until late in the nineteenth century shoemakmg remained one of the most important crafts in Sale, and almost all shops in the street [adjacent to the qaysanya or cloth market] were actually owned or rented by shoemakers. However, from somewhere around 1890 many of these shops began to be used by retail cloth merchants. From 1890 until the coming of the French in 1912, there was a steady extension in the retail cloth trade and a decline in shoemakmg (K L. Brown, 1969:155-156). Local demand for leather declined, reducing the need for tanners and ultimately for skins supplied by herders. Even pottery began to be displaced by British crockery, and the fez began to be imported from Austria While producers of raw materials could adjust by changing crops or serving the export market, and consumers obviously adjusted by substituting imported goods, the artisan-merchants faced a crisis. As Nagin notes, there was a "demotion of the artisan who had been the real center of economic activity and function in the city to a marginal worker" (1963:64), and a frantic search for alternate occupations Weavers turned to carpentry and itinerant peddling of European goods (K L Brown, 1969.198), while merchant-producers had no choice but to become wholesalers and retail mer-

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chants of the imported items. "The sons of many owners of soap factories, mills and gardens, of tanners and craftsmen and itinerant traders, became merchants from the 1880s o n " (K. L. Brown, 1969:158). The shift to imported goods had an even more disastrous effect on the national level, for Morocco's foreign indebtedness skyrock­ eted, the process that had ultimately sealed the fate of her neigh­ bors. By 1895 Mawlay Hasan had been succeeded by his young son, 'Abd al-Άζΐζ. He proved an easy mark for the European ad­ venturers, who found their profit in encouraging irresponsible ex­ travagance in the new ruler. Although the old debt generated by the Spanish indemnity had been paid off by 1883, new debts were pro­ liferating, in no small measure due to the unbounded credulity of the immature Sultan. By the opening years of the twentieth cen­ tury, one Harry Maclean had so ingratiated himself into the Sul­ tan's confidence that he orchestrated (for a fee, one suspects) the systematic fleecing of the imperial treasury. Here is one eye-witness account of "the court" around 1902. Everyday at four o'clock, the young monarch would . . . appear . . . and pay a visit to his Europeans, who always (as was the etiquette) awaited him at the appointed hour in the billiard-room or the offices. . . . It was only necessary to speak of something to Moulay Abdelaziz or show him a photograph or engraving in an illustrated paper. In a moment the royal imagination had caught the hint, and, without troubling about the price, an order was soon given to one or another of the rival merchants—sometimes two or three orders, to avoid disappointing any one. Usually the orders ran in series, according to the taste of the moment. For whole periods he would be devoted to sport, at others to photog­ raphy, at others again to machinery. . . . The order, once given . . . was forgotten . . . but the arrival of the object would revive his interest. The orders that have been juggled out of the Sultan by his European hangers-on are sometimes incredible. . . . The trans­ port of an English billiard-table on camel-back from Larache to Fez was the splendid idea of Sir Harry Maclean. . . . Numbers of different motor cars, bicycles, a hansom, and several horses have arrived. A Decauville railway has been half laid down at the en­ trance to the palace, and awaits better days. Steam launches, bal­ loons, ice machines, all the known photographic apparatus, cinematographs, wireless telegraphs, and so on—the most varied

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and capricious whims have been successfully suggested to the imagination of Moulay Abdelaziz, and the royal wishes dutifully carried out by interested agents (Aubin, 1906:134-135). The Sultan seemed to be playing directly into the hands of the European Powers, which were closing in for the kill. In 1901, France agreed to give Italy a free hand in Libya in return for recognition of France's predominant rights in Morocco. A FrenchSpanish agreement (in 1902) revolved around the possible partition of Morocco between them, although British opposition still dictated restraint. This last barrier was finally removed in 1904 by the Entente Cordiale, which recognized British supremacy in Egypt in return for a free French hand in Morocco. In the meantime, France was busy strengthening her economic levers over Morocco via debts. Stewart's account notes, Sultan Abdul Aziz, pressed for the means to fund the Moroccan debt, received a 5 per cent loan of 62,500,000 francs in 1904 from a consortium headed by the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas. The loan was secured by customs receipts from both imports and exports, two-thirds of the daily revenues to be paid . . . to the Service du Controle de la Dette. . .. The French agents who supervised the debt service were carefully selected, which underlined the fact that their function was to be more political than financial (Stewart, 1964:49). The scenario was familiar, since it had already been well rehearsed in Egypt and Tunisia. As we shall see, the final takeover also paralleled the earlier cases, but this action was forestalled for at least a few years by the reluctance of other powers to forfeit their economic stakes in Morocco. The Conference of Algeciras in 1906 was the final attempt to guard those interests. The results of that conference were not particularly favorable, either for France or Morocco. The open-door policy and the equality of all European Powers doing business in Morocco were both reconfirmed by the agreements. However, there was a very important modification with respect to "enforcement" of free trade. Spain and France were acknowledged to be politically supreme, and were granted the police power to supervise conditions in the eight ports open to foreign commerce, as well as in an area of six miles around each (Stewart, 1964:50). The physical beachhead was widening.

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The legal beachhead expanded apace. A surcharge on imports of 2.5 percent was imposed, and the proceeds earmarked for port improvements, although this was clearly an infringement upon Moroccan sovereignty. And even worse, Article 60 of the agreement gave full rights to Europeans to hold property and buy land in Morocco without first obtaining the permission of the makhzan (ibid.). The way was now clear for full economic conquest and, in addition, the opening wedges for actual military invasion had been neatly placed. As we shall see in Chapter VII, little time was lost in effecting both of these conquests. The extraterritorial police powers in the ports were used to justify and legitimate the landing of French troops at Casablanca in 1907 and the "submission" of the surrounding Chaouia plain soon afterwards. And the removal of the restrictions on foreign property ownership released a mad scramble for land, wild speculation, stepped-up foreign immigration—and the transformation of the coastal cities, which were the main targets of the new onslaught. We must therefore pause here to take a closer look at Ribat, just before these new forces were unleashed.

•VI · RABAT CIRCA 1900: THE PEARL OF M O R O C C O

WE ARE fortunate to have a detailed topographic survey of Rabat made just after the turn of the century by Mercier, a French scholar whose work undoubtedly provided valuable intelligence for the future conquest of the country. 1 This benchmark description, published in 1906 but based on observations a few years earlier, captures the city not at a "traditional stage," whatever that might have been, but at a moment when the city's role in Moroccan life lay poised between an older one no longer viable and a newer one not completely predictable. Her status as a port was considerably eroded; she was more and more superseded by Casablanca. Her situation as one of the leading producer-merchandisers of local processed goods was already severely undermined by the takeover of the Moroccan marketplace by Europe—a fait accompli that preceded the actual takeover of the polity. Both Rabat and her "poor relation" across the river, Sale, were essentially marking time, but for what it was not yet clear. Figures 3 and 4, the former showing the regional setting of the city and its articulation with Sale, the latter a detailed enlargement of the built-up area within the walls, are invaluable guides to the city "on the eve," 2 as the French sources so commonly refer to this time just before the establishment of the French Protectorate in 1912. The maps are based upon those accompanying Mercier's description. 1

See L. Mercier, "Rabat: Description topographique," Archives Marocames 7, 1906b:296-349, as well as his other works, which also serve as a critical source for this chapter. One is reminded of the voluminous Description d'Egypte produced by scholars attached to Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, which similarly served intelligence functions for subsequent campaigns, as well as more scholarly purposes. 2 "On the eve" serves in French scholarship as a kind of B.P. (Before the Protectorate, i.e, "civilization") divider of historical record. Thus, for example, the major French biographies of Moroccan cities (with the obvious exception of Adam's study of Casablanca, because that city virtually had no B.P.) all terminate at this point. See, for example, the works by Caille on Rabat; Gaston Deverdun's two-volume work on Marrakech des engines a 1912; and Roger LeTourneau's Fes avant leprotectorat.

FIGURE 3

RABAT CIRCA 1905

METROPOLITAN REGION OF

FIGURE 4

CIRCA 1905

THE CITY OF RABAT

ATLANTIC OCEAN

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From the maps and descriptions it is possible to reconstruct at least the physical form of this town of some 20,000 to 25,000 inhabitants, 3 which an 1883 observer identified as "by far the prettiest town on the Atlantic sea-board" (Stutfield, 1886:187), and another, two decades later, called "the pearl of Morocco" (Rankin, 1908:241). Most noteworthy were the intact walls—two sets of them, the smaller of which sharply demarcated the city from its surroundings. As Mercier noted, "in general form, the city of Rabat can be inscribed in a trapezoid, of which the north and south faces of the interior wall form the bases, the latter almost two times the length of the former. It is thus a compact city contained within a quasi-geometric shape, having neither suburbs nor farther dependencies" (Archives Marocaines 7, 1906b:297). While correct in general, his summary fails to mention the city's twin across the river, which admittedly could be reached only by small boats, as there was no bridge yet, or the three "palace-military" outposts which, while scarcely suburbs, did serve as potential anchoring points for urban expansion. These were: 1. the qasbah at the extreme northeast, 2. the palace, Sunna mosque, and quarter of the Tuwarqa guard, a walled complex backing up against the southern exterior wall; and 3. the fort-palace combination of the Burj Jadid (or Roetenburg fort) and the multidomed royal resting place, the Qabibat, along the coast toward Casablanca. While reference has been made to "two sets of walls," in actual fact the situation was a bit more complicated. First, there were walls encircling the qasbah itself Although these were somewhat deteriorated on the city side, that "zone apart" was still entered only from the spinning market (Suq al-Ghazal) via the original Almohad and still very impressive gate. Beyond that enclave were the so-called "interior" walls, delimiting the urbanized zone of Rabat itself and consisting of only three "legs." The fourth or river side was equipped with a natural fortification, the sharp stone cliffs themselves, which required only intermittent reinforcement. The least important of the "legs" was the short northern wall, added in the middle of the nineteenth century by 'Abd al-Rahman (Rabat et sa region 1, 1918:144), perched along the rocky ocean shelf some distance away from the northern limits of the built-up city, which ended at al-'Alu (the Heights). Between the wall and the dirt path that traversed the Heights was the enor3 Sale had another 15,000 to 18,000, bringing the population of the urban agglomeration to about 40,000, although the figures are obviously only estimates

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mous cemetery that still insulates the medina quarter of Rabat from the sea. Only one seldom-used gate, the Bab al-Bahr or Sea Gate, pierced this leg, bisecting it. 4 The lengthy western wall, which extended from the ocean's edge in a virtually straight line to intersect first with the southern interior wall at Bab al-Had and then with the exterior wall beyond the palace-Tuwarqa complex, was considerably older, dating from Ya'qub al-Mansur's overambitious scheme for Ribaf al-Fath. Two gates pierced the northern section of the western wall: one at alΆΐΰ, the other at Bab al-Had (Sunday Gate, named after the Sun­ day market traditionally held just outside it, but also sometimes called Bab Jadid, New Gate) Some eight hundred meters south of the Bab al-Had were the Gate of the Winds (Bab al-Ruwah) and the Lower Gate (al-Bab al-Tahta), which gave access to the palace complex This lower portion of the western wall linked the palace area with the city proper, but otherwise enclosed only farmland, since the nineteenth-century city was, of course, considerably small­ er than Ya'qub al-Mansur had anticipated It was, indeed, no larger than the ninety hectares covered by the seventeenth-century con­ struction of the Spanish settlers. The third "leg" of the interior enceinte was the so-called "Andalusian" wall connecting the Bab al-Had with the river about a mile to the east. There were three gates in this wall: the Bab alTibin (Straw Gate, so named because of its proximity to the straw market), the Buwaybajust beside it (diminutive for bab because it was so tiny that it could admit only one person at a time), and the most important entrance to the city, the Bab al-Shalla (also called Bab Sidi 'Ah Balrahi), about mid-point along the wall. This latter doorway gave access to a wide route that led southward to the Bab al-Hadid (Iron Gate, also referred to as the Gate of the Za'ir) at the outer southern wall and, after passing through this gate, took a turn toward the separately walled cemetery zone of the Chella A kilometer or more from the interior walls that contained the built-up city of Rabat, sufficiently far to encompass the palacemihtary outposts, was the second set of walls referred to as "extenor." These were simple mud brick ramparts five or six meters 4 There was also a second Bab al-Bahr in the city, a point of some confusion It was located at the river's edge toward the end of the Andalusian wall, just after that wall turned north to enclose the Millah or Jewish quarter This wall segment dated only from the early years of the nineteenth century, when the Millah was estab­ lished

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high, of which no traces remain today except for the Almohad sec­ tion of the southern wall from the "interior" western wall's exten­ 5 sion to a point high on the hills overlooking the Bou Regreg. While the western exterior wall no longer exists, the gateways can easily be located, since they served to channel traffic along major pistes (tracks) that eventually became defining elements in the French plans for urban expansion One of these routes con­ nected the Bab al-'ΑΙΰ with Bab al-Qabibat in the exterior wall, whence it continued on toward Casablanca. In later French plans this was developed into a major boulevard called Avenue de Casa­ blanca. A second route linked the Bab al-Had with Bab Tamasna in the outer wall; from there the route continued in the direction of Casablanca until it eventually joined the first. The path of this piste can be traced along Avenue Tamarra, another mam artery of the modern city. The third gate in the exterior wall was Bab Marrakish (also known as Bab al-Majaz, the Gate of Passage, and as the Bab al-'Adir al-Birrabi), so called because it was the point at which the route from the southern capital approached Rabat. A straight path joined this gateway with the Bab al-Ruwah, and it was through these two gates that the Sultan entered when he took up residence in the Dar al-Makhzan Whenever he was in Rabat, this gate was kept closed for security reasons. In contrast to the somewhat flimsy western ramparts, the south­ ern exterior wall (incorporating a substantial portion of the original Almohad construction) was one of the most impressive in the city—in large part because it was the only one that still served a vital defensive purpose. Not only did it shelter, just within it, the fully walled royal palace, together with quarters for the Sultan's personal military entourage, the Tuwarqa, 6 but immediately out5

I have been unable to learn when these walls were built and exactly when they were demolished, although the latter took place sometime during the early French period of expansion 6 The Tuwarqa were part of thejaysh (both 'Abid al-Bukhari and Udaya) units whose assignment in this quarter had originally been to guard the Sunna Mosque and to protect both it and the Dar al-Makhzan against pillaging tribes, that is, the Za'ir One recalls that it was Mawlay 'Abd al-Rahman who first settled such troops in the area, although they had soon to be removed Much later Mawlay Hasan built the walls of the Mechouar or palace-barracks complex and brought back the troops (Mercier, "L'Administration marocaine a Rabat," Archives Marocatnes 7, 1906 350401, esp 369-372) As was also the case in the qasbah, thejaysh hved with their wives and children in this "world apart " They were in involuntary military service for life, as were their male offspring More details can be found ibid 372-377

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side it was the terrain periodically subjected to invasion by a much-feared tribal group called the Za'ir. There were only two gates in this wall segment, one in a protected corner not giving access to the outside, which was called the Bab al-Ma§alla (the Oratory Gate) because it was used by the Sultan to give speeches and receive homage, the second called the Bab al-Hadid. By the time of Mercier this massive gate was already being referred to as the Bab al-Za'ir because it was there that the Za'ir so often ambushed urbanites daring to pass beyond its bounds. 7 Beyond the Bab alHadid the wall continued eastward, passing north of the Chella cemetery and ending at a high point overlooking the steep descent to the riverbed. There was no wall on the river side, and this breach in the defensive system made it possible for the Za'ir to outflank the defending militias and slip through the lines to threaten the farms and orchards around the ruined Hasan mosque. 8 I have stressed the defensive walls so much in this account because in many ways they defined the character of life in Rabat at that time. Hardly decorative, as the remnants are today, they were fundamental in their functions. First, they were closed each evening at sunset, and the keys were delivered to the governor of the city (the qa'id) who kept them until dawn, when they were again picked up so that the gates could be reopened. "Any traveler imprudent enough to arrive at the [exterior] walls after the evening cannot 7

At the time of 'Abd al-'Aziz there were periodic revolts in the vicinity of Rabat-Sale by the two tribes, the Za'ir and the Zammiir. Thus Dr. F. Weisgerber, in his memoir based on direct experience around the turn of the century (Casablanca et les Chaoma en 1900, 1935), recounts a horseback "excursion to Rabat, in the course of the summer of 1897," a time when the "city had been blockaded for several weeks by the Zaer and the Zemmour Its communication with the rest of the country came to be reestablished, but bands of pillagers still infested the seacoast" (p. 86). Additional blockades were reported in April 1903 (Rabat et sa region, 1:110), and especially in 1907, perhaps not unrelated to the French invasion of Casablanca in that year (ibid.AU). 8 The foregoing section has been based almost entirely on the 1902 map of Captain Larras and on Mercier's topography of Rabat (Archives Marocames 7, 1906b:318-321 on the interior walls and 315-317 on the exterior set). The information does not completely accord with that presented in his "Notes sur Rabat et Chella," Archives Marocames 5, 1905:147-156, which is his translation of the eyewitness description of the city by Ahmad Anga'i who had accompanied the French consul along the coast of Morocco in 1320 A.H. The discrepancies arise largely because internal gates to quarters are sometimes confused with gates in the major rampart systems. Mercier's information was recapitulated more than ten years later in Villes et trtbus du Maroc, Rabat et sa region, 1, 1918:143-146.

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enter the city until the next morning, unless he enjoys the favor of the qa'id and has taken care to announce in advance the probable hour of his arrival" (Mercier, 1906:366). Special admissions were made only through the tiny Buwayba for night-time travelers wishing to enter or leave the closely guarded city proper (Mercier, 1905:149). The same situation prevailed in the walled city of Sale across the river (see K. L. Brown, 1976). Second, the gates sharply defined an economic market/administrative taxing unit. Gate taxes were imposed by the city on all goods entering or leaving the unit, and guards scanned the transiting crowds for suspicious strangers and wanted criminals. While the city was scarcely a polis in Max Weber's sense of the term, it demonstrated at least two of his desiderata for a city, namely, defense and an autonomous market. (Clearly, it lacked autocephaly, since taxes were collected in the name of the central government.) Within the city itself, these two functions of defense and market served to subdivide the urban area into smaller-grained cells. However, before examining this internal structure we must take a final look at the environs, since it was on this virtual tabula rasa that the post-Protectorate "colonial" city was to be built. In actual fact, the slate was not entirely clean, and even small marks upon it channeled future developments, as we have already seen in the case of the "ghost" gates and their primitive road networks. In general, the region west and south of the walls was a veritable garden, remarked on in complimentary fashion by every observer. Thus, Sir John Drummond-Hay noted the "fine gardens, abounding in orange and pomegranate trees" (1896:92) in the river valley facing Sale during his visit in 1846, and Stutfield almost forty years later (1886:187) remarked on the same. Mercier, in particular, identified these gardens and orange groves as the property of the qa'id of Rabat, whose patronym, es-Souissia, still clings to the suburban district which today is Rabat's most recent and exclusive residential quarter. However, by the time he wrote, the tribal incursions had become so frequent that this pleasant zone beyond the southern exterior walls was completely unsafe. He noted that insecurity had increased so much by the turn of the century that even "the proprietor of these gardens [the qa'id] himself no longer goes there" (1906b:348-349). Equally beautiful—and by then equally insecure—were the gardens of the Chella just outside the exterior wall and the wilder zone in the vicinity of the ruined Hasan Mosque. Mercier tells us that "very few citizens venture to the side of the Tour Hasan, be-

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cause in the proximity of the river valley one can encounter illintentioned Za'er or Zemmour. But a walk through this area is highly favored by Europeans who go in groups, accompanied by guards and heavily armed" (1906b.341). Because of neglect, the zone was overgrown with cactus, but those willing to brave the lack of paths were rewarded with a view of Rabat's most important landmark, circumscribed by vestiges of walls twelve meters high, on one flank surmounted by the unfinished minaret towering sixty-five meters above. It is incredible to report, although at least two eyewitnesses confirm it (Mercier circa 1902-1903, ibid .342, and Rankin, 1908:261), that the great courtyard of the mosque had been desecrated by the installation of "a hideous white tennis-court" (Rankin), although Mercier noted that it was temporarily out of use because of the insecurity of the area Much safer for promenades were the gardens in the protected zone between the parallel western walls, near the Qabibat, and the quiet area on the Heights next to the cemetery (Mercier, 1906b:331-332). There, as well as farther south, were the groves and farms that provided the city with its fruits and vegetables. Even farther, beyond the western exterior wall, was the land "deeded" to the Udaya in return for their military service 9 Most of their troops were six kilometers from the city at the Fort of Tamarra; the land between the fort and the city was used for grazing their flocks and growing their crops Within this bucolic environment whirred the intense activity of the city proper, impermeably contained inside the interior walls The port area was still one of the most bustling quarters, even though all concurred that the economic base of shipping that had been her original raison d'etre could not survive much longer. Some desultory attempts to "modernize" had proven ineffectual, and a new pier or mole that had been built sometime about 1900 lay idle, surmounted by a rusting forty-ton crane (Mercier, 1906b 298) There was simply no way to overcome the difficulties posed by lighterage and navigational hazards. Stutfield had described the situation graphically in 1883 when he wrote (1886 191), We used to watch the lighters, engaged in stowing and unloading cargo on board the coasting steamers, shooting the bar—an excit­ ing and perilous occupation at the best of times, and quite lmpos9 This has recently taken on new significance, for the municipality now seeks to confiscate these lands so that planned expansions can be built

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I9OO

sible in stormy weather. As they near the mouth of the river, they mount the crest of a big wave, and, pulling with all their might, trust to luck and their own strong arms to carry them over. Sometimes a cargo will be detained for weeks together before it can be shipped. The situation had not improved by the time Mercier reported that "lighterage craft can only operate when there are no winds or when the winds come only gently from the east or northeast. Western winds create currents and waves that interrupt all communication with the shore" (1906b:382). And several years later, Rankin (1908:241) noted that "vessels have lain for twenty days outside the port, waiting in vain for the opportunity to land their cargoes," because of the raging surf that more and more kept Rabat "inviolate." Nor was the customs area what it used to be. Although all the commerce of the two cities was now done at Rabat, the customs fees, 10 percent ad valorem on all imports, were being collected by a French "Delegate of the Customs' Control for the Service of the Moroccan Debt," assisted by two local agents. He was a daily symbol of the changes that had occurred. However, because of its prior importance, the port still occupied a large area in the lower part of the city, where there were large and strongly constructed warehouses, better even than those at Tangiers (Mercier, 1906b:298). From the customs area one could enter the city proper by mounting a narrow steep street that was closed at the upper end by a new door, the Bab al-Marsa (ibid :299). Beyond this gate lay the major artery of Rue des Consuls, where foreign traders had always lived and worked, and where the few who still remained in the city were concentrated U p in the city, gates were frequently encountered. Mercier counted more than twenty of these unornamented barriers across streets, gates that could be closed at night or in times of trouble to insulate the various quarters of the city from one another (iM..324-328forahst). Just how many "quarters" (or huma) there were in the city was a matter of some disagreement, which means that they could not have been precisely delimited from one another. Mercier reports that some people he asked distinguished only five, whereas others could enumerate considerably more. He himself found it useful to distinguish eleven distinct subareas of the city, whose general locations are shown on Figure 4 10 10

This section based chiefly on pp 309-314 of Mercier, 1906b

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The first of these was al-ΆΙύ (the Heights) adjacent to the Qishla and including the cemetery. To the north one found tombs, but even in the southern portion containing residences there was a mix­ ture of sanctuaries, saints' qubbas and qur'anic schools. Adjacent to the transversal path were stables, inns or funduqs and other en­ trepots; noteworthy, however, was the absence of shops in this quarter (Mercier, 1906b:301, 310). The al-'Alu quarter, with its cemetery, was flanked on the east by the Qasbah and on the west by a small rectangular and isolated quarter called al-Ubira, north of the roadway and just inside Bab al-'ΑΙΰ. The Qasbah, contrary to its impressive appearance from the outside, actually contained an unattractive melange of poorer dwellings, many of them nuwalas (round thatched huts) on the rural pattern, rather than urban dwellings of stone to match the massive facade of the walls. These housed the Udaya troops and their families. Their dwellings were supplemented by the few mod­ est stores and workshops needed to ensure the quarter's relative self-sufficiency. Mercier reports that at the time of his observations the Great Mosque was in excellent condition, but that the madrasa (the school just inside the great gate next to the present-day Andalusian Gardens) was deserted and falling into ruin (ibid. :313-314). Al-Ubira evidently contained very little of interest, since Mercier's description noted merely its semi-industrial character; the quarter did, however, contain a new object of much curiosity, a mechanized steam mill recently built there by a European (ibid. :302, 310). Just south of al-Ubira, covering the western third of the city all the way down to the Andalusian wall, was the quarter of al-Juza', which Mercier describes as a relatively inactive, run-down residen­ tial district, despite the presence there of several shrines as well as the mahkama (the courthouse), which must have generated some traffic. Reflecting both the earlier regular planning of the city and possibly the slower and more orderly growth of the quarter, it was remarkable for its "thoroughfares"—two running the full length north and south—and their smaller perpendicular transversals and feeder streets. The thoroughfare of al-Juza' served as the spine of the quarter, and ran in an almost direct line from the tower at the ocean front all the way to the Bab al-Tibin in the opposite wall, giving access to the market in the southwest corner of the city called al-Usa'a (on whose site the French later constructed the Marche Central). Despite the fact that the street contained a

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number of shops, Mercier remarked that it presented an absolutely deserted appearance at ordinary times (tbtd :303-305, 310). The second thoroughfare, the Ridjal al-$uff (or Zanqat Sidi Fatah), constituted the eastern boundary of the quarter and extended from the Heights to the Andalusian wall at al-Buwayba. The lower portion of this street became more animated as it passed the courthouse, and even more as it approached the linear transversal of the city, the Suwayqa (small suq), then as now the most important commercial quarter of the medma What Mu'iz al-Din Allah Street was to medieval Cairo, or the Zaytuniya Street was to Hafsid Tunis, so the Suwayqa was to Rabat. Along its wide course, flanked by raised and paved sidewalks, were concentrated most of the commercial and industrial establishments in the city; along the unpaved (for drainage) center of the roadbed moved an incessant procession of amblers, shoppers, men and animals transporting merchandise and materials on their backs, venders, Qur'an chanters seeking alms, and so on The street was one of the longest in the city, stretching from the Bab al-Had in the western wall all the way to the Bab al-Rahba (the grain market), and then continuing down the slope to the river gate (the second Bab al-Bahr) at the eastern extremity of the town. As was typical in premodern Arab cities, there was a regular sequence of fairly specialized markets that supplanted one another along the length of the street, and as was also often the case, different segments were individually named The segment called Suwayqa was that portion between the Bab al-Had and the Mosque of Mawlay Sulayman. It was here that one found almost all the butchers and food stores for the city (both of which are still in their old locations today, although they have been joined by fish sellers who appeared in response to European demand during the early Protectorate period), as well as the entrepot for straw (near the Bab al-Tibin, of course), and workshops of all sorts. Al-Jutiya was the name of the next segment, this market specializing in old metal goods, armor, copper objects, oddments, and even spices,11 but it soon gave way to al-$ababitiyin, the market of the shoemakers, which also included other leather workers such as saddlers and harness makers At this point, then as now, the Suwayqa underwent a significant 11

One suspects that, as had happened in Sale, this rather diverse market had gradually developed in place of the shoemakers, whose number was declining and whose demand for space had thus decreased

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change in its final segment, al-Kharrazin. At the intersection of Suwayqa with the street leading out to the Bab al-Shalla was the entrance to this completely covered suq, within whose deep shade were found shoemakers, cord winders, and the beginning of the textile market. On the right-hand side was found the Jama' alKabir, which occupied, together with its associated cemetery, all the space between al-Kharrazin and the Andalusian wall, up to the intersection with Rue des Consuls. Again one can only marvel at the continuity in the relative locations of the vanous aswaq (pi. of suq) and their products. 12 The end of this segment was marked by the Bab al-Rahba, that is, the entrance to the large square in which grain was stored and sold, with its nearby mills and bakeries. From there one could either go down a narrow path to the river's edge at Bab al-Bahr, or turn southward into two of the least salubrious quarters of the city: Waqqasa and, after that, the independently walled Millah or Jewish ghetto, located at the most isolated corner of town. Mercier lists al-Rahba as a separate quarter, a distinction not without justification. First, it was demarcated by its own door, second, in contrast with the highly public character of the Suwayqa, few entered the Rahba quarter without a specific purpose; and third, whereas the former was primarily a retail commercial zone, albeit with workshops in the interior courts behind the marketing stalls, the latter was almost exclusively (with one notable exception) a wholesale and industrial quarter The grain market occupied the central square, around which were arrayed the tin and coppersmiths (on one side), the tar merchants (occupying the second side and half of the third), the blacksmiths (who shared the third), and, on the final side, the Jewish jewelers, the only retailers in the zone Just off the square, in functional symbiosis, were the sellers of bulk charcoal, who provided fuel for these industrial processes. Beyond the square, on the slopes down toward the river, were found the workshops of the dyers (dependent upon the river for water supply and an outlet for their effluent) and the shops selling iron goods (Mercier, 1906b:311-312). With the exception of goldsmithing, then, one could classify all the industries in this quarter as "noxious," which indicates a highly functional segregation of land uses. As one might expect, residential districts abutting an industrial zone would hardly be selected by the wealthy or those with power 12

For details on the Suwayqa, see Mercier, 1906b 305-311

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to choose. Thus, the Waqqasa quarter just southeast of the Rahba housed a poor and marginal population, often in nonfamily units. The quarter contained deteriorated housing that had never been elegant, and "attracted" male migrants from the far south—the Draa valley at the edge of the Sahara—who eked out a marginal livelihood as colorfully garbed water earners, vending cool drinks in the city to the accompaniment of clanging cymbals, or as unskilled porters selling the strength of their backs. The quarter was not exclusively residential, since it also contained workshops of tailors, cobblers, potters, and tanners, the latter two overflowing from the adjacent quarter of noxious trades (ibid. :300, 312) The tanneries, with their odors and debris, were a fitting introduction to the next quarter, the Millah, entered through a single gate at a sharp angle from the street that led down from the Waqqasa, and entirely walled. Guards protected the lone entrance. Ever since the tense times of the first decade of the nineteenth century, the Jews of Rabat had been assigned to this segregated quarter by edict of Mawlay Sulayman, before that time they had lived throughout the city. Even though the community was not poor and, indeed, many of the leading merchants of the city were Jews, the quarter was among the least attractive m Rabat, remarkable for both its filth and odors. Animal bones, skins, and other debris from the quarter's kosher butchers were piled up near the Bab al-Millah near the meat shops, which were followed by the vegetable and spice merchants. The quarter had only one main thoroughfare, along which were the workshops of the artisans—tailors, shoemakers, leather toolers, silk embroiderers, and so on (ibid -312-313) The poor appearance of the quarter was due in part to the difficulties entailed in carting garbage the long way out through the single and off-center entrance, but it was perhaps also due, here as in many other parts of the world, to the fact that Jews found it expedient to conceal their wealth behind drab and rundown exteriors, lest it attract covetous attention from the authorities. Retracing one's steps through the Millah and Waqqasa and back to the end of the Suwayqa through the Bab al-Rahba, one returned to the bustling commercial core of the city, the east-west linear suq now joining at right angles a north-south commercial thoroughfare of comparable importance, the famous Street of the Consuls, which mounted the incline to terminate at the Suq alGhazal (spinning market) near the entrance to the qasbah The lower portion of this street, south of the Nakhla Mosque, consti-

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tuted the heart of the cloth market, by then trading more and more in imported goods. The shoe shops of al-Kharrazin on the south and the establishments of the cloth merchants, foreign traders, and money changers of Rue des Consuls on the east were the external borders of the residential and handicraft quarter of al-Hufra, which must be included as part of the commercial core of the city. The remaining quarters were primarily residential. These in­ cluded Bu Qarun, at the geographic center of the trapezoid and thus well insulated from the commercial and industrial activities that in Rabat tended to seek the edges of the agglomeration rather than its middle; and al-Buhayra, in the northeast corner of the city, at the base of the qasbah and just east of the similarly residential urban portion of al-'ΑΙΰ. Both Bu Qarun and al-Buhayra were quiet, family-oriented quarters with solidly built simple-fagaded housing bordering narrow paths that were overarched at frequent intervals by brick vaults, some of them even allowing communication from one second story to another on opposite sides of the street. Even today, these sections of Rabat are most evocative of the past, being "picturesque" in the least objectionable sense of that term. AlBuhayra had previously been a zone where many of Rabat's Jews had lived, before they moved to the Millah. Perhaps because of this, the quarter was still not densely populated. Its feeling of expansiveness was further intensified by its access to the vast open space of the spinning market, the exposed path along al-'ΑΙΰ, and the even vaster cemetery beyond {ibid. :299-311). There was a final quarter, not listed as such by Mercier, yet com­ parable in character to the qasbah, and that was the zone of the Tuwarqa next to the palace Rather than a military camp, their zone was a residential quarter within the walls of the Dar alMakhzan complex, where foot soldiers and cavalry were housed, together with their families, in nuwalas or huts on the rural/ nomadic pattern. Since military activities consumed only a fraction of the time of only a portion of the population, the area enjoyed a lively commercial and industrial life. All trades were found there, and many of the men were engaged in buying and tinting the wool that their wives spun and eventually wove into rugs (Mercier, 1906:373). The area was subdivided into two districts: one in the northeast corner of the enclosure near the lower gate (al-Bab alTahtlya), which housed the Bukhari; the other in the southeast corner, near al-Bab al-Fawqiya (upper gate), containing the Ahl Sus (ibid. :373-374).

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To what extent is it legitimate to speak of Rabat, as it existed at the turn of the century, as a city independent of the twin town across the river? Certainly, the two constituted an economic unit, and there was no doubt that people and goods moved freely between them, despite the lack of a bridge. Brown (1969-140-141) has established the fact that "there had always been Slawis among the amtns, the administrators of customs, at Rabat," and "many of the principal merchants along the Rue des Consuls in Rabat, both Jews and Muslims, were Slawis." 13 Not only the wealthy and powerful, but common people as well, commuted between the two banks, as Mercier observed One notices, every day, at sunset a considerable movement, coming and going, between Rabat and Sale. There are the native commerpants with stores in Rabat who return to their homes in Sale; a large number of women who sell woven wool or silk embroidery in one of the two markets; peasants from one bank who have business on the other and carry their products on mules, donkeys or camels, notables from neighboring tribes who come on horseback to consult with one of the qa'ids or to buy something for their wives, to get gunpowder or other objects (1906b-342-343) Nevertheless, despite the economic symbiosis and the freedom of movement between the cities, they were distinct with respect to two crucial functions: defense and governance Sale had its own system of walls, easily as impressive as those of Rabat, and was defended by its ownjaysh and 'abid, stationed north of the city. The town had its own gates and imposed the gate-tax upon goods entering the unit And finally, Sale had its own qa'id or governor in charge of order and administration, separate from that of Rabat. Autonomous administration is the factor that requires us to treat the two towns as independent units, despite their close relations.14 Each town was administered by its own qa'id. In Rabat, the qa'id was military chief as well as administrative head not only over the city itself, but its hinterland as far south as Fedalla (that is, almost 13

It should be noted that, even then, the interchange was not symmetrical Reflecting the greater opportunities in Rabat, Rbatis did not have shops in Sale to balance those in Rabat run by Slawis Today, one notes the same pattern, with workers commuting into Rabat from Sale in the morning and returning home at night 14 Even different policies were followed For example, whereas foreigners were not permitted to live in Sale at all, they had always been able to live in Rabat, albeit within a small subarea.

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to Casablanca) Pointedly, his jurisdiction did not extend to the northern bank of the Bou Regreg (Mercier, 1906:351) That waterway was as significant an "authority boundary" as it had been when Sale was first founded as the outpost of the one Berber tribal confederation against another. Because Rabat was considered one of the "royal" capitals of Morocco, her qa'id was directly responsible to the Sultan, and had to coordinate his activities more closely with the fiscal and military officers of the Dar al-Makhzan than was true for his counterpart at Sale. One of the chief functions of the qa'id was to oversee "law and order" in the town (The royal jaysh troops bore heaviest responsibility for external defense.) In this capacity he had at his disposal a corps of some forty men whose responsibilities included guarding the representatives of foreign powers (including the Frenchman who supervised the collection of the Moroccan debt'), policing the markets and arresting persons designated by the muhtasib (inspector of the markets) as engaged in fraud, arresting criminals, as well as serving as couriers, escorting isolated travelers, and accompanying convoys In addition, when the Sultan was in town, members of this corps might serve in the honor guard or help protect the hadiya (ibid. .355-357). Clearly, with so small a force and so many diffuse duties, the corps was not sufficient. In order to maintain a night patrol it was augmented by soldiers. There were three patrols responsible for night watch, beginning at ten in the evening: one in the zone between al-Ubira and the Suwayqa, a second in the center of the city and the southeast, and the third in the northeast quadrant of the town. Supervision of the prostitutes' quarter came under their jurisdiction, as well (ibid.:360-362), while a separate patrol stood guard over the gate to the Millah. Whether this system substituted for, or merely supplemented the more informal and communal one described half a century earlier by Durrieu, I do not know, but one suspects that when times were troubled, the gates between the quarters were carefully closed and citizens joined in patrols to fill out the efforts of the skeletal official force.15 The qa'id of Rabat also served as the surrogate for the Sultan 15 Xavier Durrieu (1854 32) notes that "in every quarter of the principal towns, one of the richest and most influential of the Moorish inhabitants receives from the Emperor the charge of watching over the maintenance of order and the public peace Every night this Moor is bound to patrol the streets of his district, in which office he is assisted by his neighbors " Mercier unequivocally notes that the numerous gates of the quarters closed from seven in the evening (1906 369), although Brown's oldest informants in Sale did not remember this happening

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when the latter was not in residence, leading the Friday prayer and receiving in the name of the Sultan the hadiya (literally, gift) and the jarlda (special levies). The hadiya was collected from tribal groupings and, in the cities, from "semi-corporate" units that might be called guilds, if that term can be used to refer to collectivities of artisans and craftsmen and other occupational categories lacking the full corporate character found in the medieval European model. The amin or chief of each occupational group collected contributions from its members, which were then transmitted as hadiya in the name of the group {ibid.:353). According to Brown (1969:277), "by 1890 the 'gift' had been transformed into a direct money tax and by 1904 it had increased some twenty times." A second important official of the city was the amin almustafad, who collected the gate tax on all goods entering Rabat and the per capita charge on animals slaughtered in the abattoir, as well as taxes on skins, beef sales, and other animal-related items. After sums were set aside to discharge the amin's responsibility for sanitation in the city, the excess proceeds from these taxes were presumably turned over to the public treasury. According to Mercier, the amin al-mustafad of Rabat employed five or six mule drivers whose job was to gather all excrement and filth from the city and dump it into a creek at the edge of the sea at a point halfway between the interior walls and the Burj Jadid, an unoccupied zone (1906:391-392). However, Mercier also opined that the job was done very inefficiently and when it rained, not at all, which meant that the city was extremely dirty. Certainly the frequency with which epidemics struck offered evidence of the inadequacy of the sanitation service.16 The situation with respect to water was somewhat more favorable, since the provision of a water supply and public fountains had always been a highly regarded act, well supported out of various religious foundation (hubus) bequests. Water was brought to the city from two separate sources. That from 'Ayn 'Atiq came from the vicinity of Tamarra via an aqueduct along the coast, and served most of the public fountains in the city. Only three houses evidently had private conduits from this system: those of the qadi, of Mawlay Rashid, and of the sharif of Wazzan. The second source 16 Dr Weisgerber's description in 1897 depicts Ribat in the throes of one of these periodic outbreaks He speaks with horror of "streets blocked by smallpox and pest victims, from which each morning the corvees collected the corpses" (1935, based on earlier observations 87)

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was 'Ayn Ghabula south of Rabat. Mawlay al-Hasan had a covered aqueduct built from this spring in order to supply the Dar alMakhzan, the Tuwarqa quarter, and the baths of the Agdal. This spring had formerly also served as the source of water for Sale, but that system was in ruins by the time Mercier observed it (1906b:328-330) In addition to the spring-fed public fountains, of which there were about twenty in the city, each house or group of houses had its own well from which a somewhat brackish water was drawn to be used for washing and irrigation; people with more delicate tastes, who found this water unpleasant, could go to the Chella to bring home more palatable drinking water (ibid.:331). Responsibility for constructing and repairing the aqueducts, public fountains, and the like rested with another important municipal official, the nazir, who as the agent of the religious trusts (fyubus) had ample resources for these and other public services in the city (ibid.:330; see also Mercier, 1906:399-401). Other important functionaries had legal rather than municipal "housekeeping" duties, among whom the most significant were the qadi (Mercier, 1906:393-398), and the mufti, who rendered religious judgments (fatwas) for him (ibid.:398-399). Somewhat more limited in scope was the muhtasib, named by the Sultan from among the most experienced, wealthy, and (one hoped) honest merchants, and charged with policing the markets against fraud and testing the quality of goods, particularly comestibles, to be certain that they had not been adulterated or spoiled (ibid. :392-393). According to Brown, the muhtasib had experienced a steady erosion in his powers and importance from the beginning of the nineteenth century, when he had been an important intermediary between well-organized guilds and the central authorities, and the end of the nineteenth century, by which time both his role and the power and structure of the guilds had been severely undermined (1969:279283). Nevertheless, in Rabat he still served a visibly prestigious and potentially critical function in protecting the health and standards of the city. The final public features of the city were the religious/educational institutions, with which Rabat was liberally endowed. There were six major mosques, some thirty-three secondary mosques within various quarters, and another twenty-six college or instructional mosques. Qur'anic education was available in almost all of them, as were many other services, including medical care and sleeping accommodations. The city also contained shrines and zawiyas (re-

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treats for the numerous religious brotherhoods). (See Mercier, 1906a:99-195 for details.) Given this elaborate system of administration and control, it is difficult to reconcile the contention of many orientalists that Islamic cities lacked coherent governance with our picture of Rabat as she was poised "on the eve." Indeed, Mercier concluded that "all of the wheels of the machine exist" in order to administer the city. In telling fashion, however, he completed that statement with the revealing phrase that "all that is lacking is the engine driver" (1906:367). In his view, the "engine driver" was to be French. In 1907 French troops lay just offshore, waiting to take up what France referred to as the "mission civilisatrice," a variation of the white man's burden. The Moroccans, needless to say, did not share this definition of the situation.

-VIITHE ORIGINS OF URBAN APARTHEID [Lyautey's urban plannmg] mcluded one essentIal condItIon the complete separatIOn of European agglomerations from native agglomeratIOns The European population centers must be separated from those of the mdlgenous populations for political, economIC, samtary, and aesthetic reasons, as well as for town planmng purposes HENRI PROST (chief planner of the French Protectorate under Lyautey) m Royer, ed, L'Urbamsme aux colomes

The European city IS not the prolongation of the native city The colomzers have not settled m the midst of the natives They have surrounded the native City, they have laid siege to It Every eXit from the Kasbah opens on enemy terrItory FRANTZ FANON, A Dymg Colomallsm

THE French mvaSlOn went off WIthout a hItch After all, there had been enough dress rehearsals elsewhere, and European powers were now qUlte adept at the sequence first manufacturmg "the mcldent," then sendmg m troops to "deal With It," thereby creatmg the confUSion and notmg which, after the fact, were always used to Justify the need for direct rule The BrItish had done It m Alexandna as the prelude to their conquest of Egypt There, Bntlsh troop ships were convemently pOised m the harbor when rumors were floated about a "massacre" of Europeans The Bntlsh forces stormed ashore to defend theIr compatnots-and yet no less a personage than the EnglIsh comptroller general of the Egyptian customs office m the port was adamant and very explICIt about the fact that there was no hostIhty

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toward foreigners in that city until after the troops had landed and begun to attack the populace. x The French had already done it in Tunisia, again as the prelude to their conquest of that country. A. M. Broadley, in a two-volume, well-documented expose of this entire process,2 tells us how the French engineered their casus belli virtually out of thin air, after several unsuccessful tries. First, they claimed an invasion of Algeria by Tunisian tribesmen, and sent out a major army to take action against the "invaders." However, not only did they not actually engage these tribesmen in battle, they couldn't even find them. Nevertheless, their army marched all the way to Tunis, hoping for an incident that did not materialize. Finally, naval forces steamed to Sfax on the rumor of a "massacre of foreigners." However, the diary of an eyewitness to those events revealed that foreigners had been ordered by their consuls to take refuge on boats in the harbor "just in case," even though none had been molested. Despite the fact that foreign properties were guarded by Tunisian inhabitants who also raised a flag of truce, French troops stormed the city and pillaged as they pleased, especially helping themselves to the property of their own compatriots and other foreign traders. Only after this French attack did the population of Sfax fight back. The invasion of Casablanca in August 1907, ostensibly for the purpose of protecting the resident Europeans, was no exception to this pattern. At least two English eyewitnesses noted similar discrepancies in the events, of whom one has left us a detailed report. Here is Dr. Robert Kerr's verbatim account: When I left Rabat on the morning of August 1st [1907], I was not aware of the state of affairs at Casablanca. On arrival, I found several ships lying in the bay crowded with refugees . . . in fear of coming hostilities. After waiting two days on board, and on receiving a note from His Britannic Majesty's Consul that the town was quiet, I went ashore. There was now no danger. . . . We could walk about the streets with a native soldier, no one molesting us. In proof of the good order and security which prevailed the day previous to the bombardment, Mr. Hans, the correspondent of the London Daily Mail, rode with a friend unescorted two miles into the country without seeing anyone. 1

Eyewitness account of Baron de Kusel (Bey), An Englishman's Recollections of Egypt, especially chapter 9. 2 A. M. Broadley, The Last Punic War, esp. Volume 2.

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Under the circumstances, the I ^mbardment was most wicked and unjustifiable and had been planned to take place on Monday morn­ ing several days before. On Friday morning a Frenchman told me that the bombardment was arranged to take place on Sunday morning, but out of respect for the religious feelings of the Brit­ ish public it had been deferred till Monday. About 3:30 on Monday morning, August 5th, Mr. Hans and myself received an urgent note from Mr. . . . the Consul, to re­ pair at once to the British consulate. The landing of a detachment of French marines at 4:45 A.M. was announced by a terrific fusil­ lade There was no resistance, and the natives, being taken by surprise, fled precipitately. The marines then marched down to the French Consulate, shooting down every one found on the streets. To say that the French Consulate was threatened on Sunday, and that the native guards fired on the marines when they landed on Monday morning, is absolutely untrue. Simultaneously with the landing, the bombardment began. Everything was disorder and confusion. An hour later Maulai El-Ameen came with a white flag. . . . [S]hortly thereafterwards the firing ceased . . But it was impossible to restore order. . . . [S]ome sixty marines had been landed to protect the French Consulate, which had never been in danger [italics mine]. 3 Nevertheless, the French did claim that their consulate had been attacked, and did claim that the fighting that escalated after their invasion had, in fact, precipitated it. Using the justification that they had been charged by the agreements at Algeciras with "pre­ serving order" in and around Moroccan ports, they expanded their Casablanca beachhead to include most of the fertile Atlantic plain around it. By 1912, when the Protectorate was officially declared, they more or less "controlled" the central core that included Rabat, Sale, Meknes, and Fez as well as Casablanca. At the time of the Casablanca invasion there had also been a pincer movement that, under the direction of General Lyautey, pressed westward from the Algerian frontier through the Taza corridor, although the two en­ claves were not joined until 1914. These advances can be seen clearly on the map in Figure 5 which shows, in the unconscious irony of colonial language, the "stages of pacification" achieved be­ tween 1907 and 1921 4 3 4

Robert Kerr, Morocco after Twenty-Five Years, pp 316-317 This map is based on Figure V, opposite ρ 80, of Residence Generale de la Re-

FIGURE 5

'PACIFICATION"

OF FRENCH

THE STAGES

'Pacified" 1907-1913

Tangiers

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135

While Fez is shown on this map as having been "pacified" by 1912, in fact this was not quite correct. Fez, the primus inter pares capital city of Morocco remained, throughout the long years of French occupation, a center of dissidence and rebellion—the cradle of the nationalist movement. And it was to Fez's lack of submissiveness that Rabat owed her new destiny. Initially the French in­ tended to establish the capital of their Protectorate in the city of Fez. Indeed, at the point of final conquest, when General Lyautey dis­ embarked at Casablanca on May 13, 1912, he proceeded directly to that city to meet with the Sultan. According to Caille (1949, 1:568), "His [Lyautey's] letters and papers then carried at their head . . . 'Residence Generale de France au Maroc, Fes.'. .. A note of July 8, 1912, mentioned the departure of Moulay Hafid from Fez to Rabat in these terms: 'He withdrew provisionally from the capital where the Residence Generale remained' " (italics mine). There is, in short, ample evidence to indicate that Rabat had not been pre­ selected as the capital of Morocco, and that the decision to move the capital there was a matter of extended debate accompanied by con­ siderable reluctance. It was not until a year later that Lyautey had rationalized necessity, finally arguing forcefully for a recognition of Rabat as the capital of the Protectorate, since security in Fez re­ mained uncertain and, indeed, the entire security of the colonial administration was so tenuous that a coastal location was required to prevent encirclement. The Treaty of Fez, concluded at the end of March 1912, "legiti­ mated" colonial control over Morocco. To Spain was given the northern rim along the Mediterranean coast opposite Gibraltar, not because Spain was strong but because she was weak. Great Britain rejected categorically the presence of a strong France that might challenge English hegemony over the entrance to the Mediterra­ nean, and agreed to Spain as a compromise, confident that with so cooperative a partner she could continue to manipulate matters to her interest. The other party to the treaty was the Sultan of Morocco, by then Mawlay 'Abd al-Hafiz, who had begun by re­ placing his weakling brother, 'Abd al-Άζϊζ, in the fight against the French, but had ended a series of losing campaigns by signing the treaty of capitulation. Even so, within a year the French found him publique Francaise au Maroc, La Renaissance du Maroc This self-congratulatory ac­ count of French accomplishments includes the anonymous chapter on urbanism later published under Prost's name

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so "difficult" to work with that they pensioned him off in Tangiers, as they had his brother before him, there 'Abd al-Hafiz spent his time writing §ufi poetry, his place having been taken by a more docile puppet for the French administration, Mawlay Yusuf From 1912 to 1925, Mawlay Yusuf was a figurehead Sultan while the real power in Morocco was wielded by Louis Hubert Lyautey, Le Marechal, as he was often called without reference to his name, so unique a figure did he cut (Yusuf reigned until 1927, but Lyautey was recalled in 1925, thus ending their collaboration ) The position Lyautey occupied, Resident General, was without ques­ tion far more important than that of Sultan, despite the convenient fiction built into the Treaty of Fez that the "Chenfien [from sharif, since the royal family claimed descent from the Prophet] Empire is an independent state which governs itself, under the control of the French government " 5 The extant structure of the Shanfian gov­ ernment was immediately "modified," with the French Resident General superseding the Moroccan ministers of foreign affairs and war Henceforth, Morocco's foreign relations were to be handled by France, and the occupiers were to provide their own "military services " For most other matters, parallel or duplicate structures were established, and power was simply transferred to the French branch, effectively truncating all but the ceremonial and symbolic functions of the Moroccan structure New administrations were added that were exclusively French While the details of this are be­ yond our needs (they were explicated in the series of official de­ crees, dahirs [Arabic zahir], issued jointly by Lyautey and Yusuf between 1912 and 1917, by which time a relatively stable reorgani­ zation had been achieved), the basic principle to be grasped is that the Resident General became, for all intents and purposes, the re­ pository of all the powers of the republic in the Shanfian Empire As an official report explained, "he approves and promulgates in the name of the French government all the decrees—dahirs— rendered by the sultan and foreign powers He is the commander in 5 Morocco, Direction des Affaires Indigenes, Vdles et trtbus du Maroc Documents et renseignements in seven volumes, constitutes the basic source of information both be­ fore and after the Protectorate was established. It is as important in (often inadver­ tently) conveying the French attitudes toward Morocco as it is a source of data For example, the two volumes of this series that deal specifically with the cities of Rabat and Sale, ι e , Rabat et sa region, both contain the term 'conquest" in their subtitles (Les Vtltes avant la conquete and Les Villes apres la conquete) The quotation in the text is from ρ 9 of the latter, the irony of this introductory remark in a book that con­ tains conquest in the title is apparently lost on the writers

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chief of military forces on land and sea. He replaces the minister of foreign affairs and communicates with other members of the French government " 6 One might ask why the French felt it necessary to maintain the fiction of Moroccan sovereignty Was it merely a euphemism, or was the fiction useful? There were, in fact, several functions that the system fulfilled. The first and perhaps least important one was to facilitate control over the "natives" by endowing "French will" with religious legitimacy, since the Sultan's descent assured respect. However, the French had studied enough Moroccan history to know that force had always been necessary to activate that legiti­ macy within the blad al-makhzan, and that within the large shanfian family there were always sufficient contenders to threaten the Sultan's monopoly over legitimacy Indirect rule was no substi­ tute for military control On the other hand, the fiction was highly functional in two other arenas- first, the contest between the Resident General and the French government in the Metropole, and second, the French posi­ tion vis-a-vis the other European powers Lyautey had spent a number of years in Algeria observing what he described as the inef­ fectiveness of that administration He considered the Algerian form of administration, where every local decision had to go back to France, to be a fatal mistake that had tied the hands of the French governor in ways he sought to avoid. By using the Sultan's theoret­ ical sovereignty as the rationale for local autonomy, he assured his own freedom of action—although, as we shall see on the issue of moving the capital to Rabat, this technique never freed him from fiscal dependence upon Parliament. With respect to the other European Powers, the fiction was even more useful. The international agreements of Madrid (1880) and Algeciras (1906) were still in force, and these accorded equal eco­ nomic rights in Morocco to all signatory powers. If France were to circumvent this parity, she could do so only by collapsing her inter­ ests into the Moroccan state. As an astute observer later remarked, not only did Lyautey use the Sultan to escape interference by the French Parliament, but "he and his successors . . used it to circum­ vent the treaty prescriptions of economic equality. Thus, enter­ prises like railways, phosphate extraction, coal mining, and oil prospecting have been organized by the Moroccan 'State' to keep 6 Rabat et sa region Les Villes apres la conquete, ρ 19 Governmental reorganization is fully described on pp 9-22

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them in strictly French hands."7 Only this reasoning explains why capitalist enterprises that in other colonial empires were executed directly by European firms awarded concessions by the government were, in Morocco, government-sponsored monopolies— even though the financing and administration of the firms were equally foreign. One of the first tests of strength between the French Parliament and the new Resident General was over the issue of the capital city. Despite the original intent to set up the capital in Fez, Lyautey soon saw the folly of this decision. He followed the Sultan in flight to Rabat, a city he had earlier admired for its site and beauty and in which he set up his provisional headquarters. Soon he was arguing forcefully for its designation as the definitive administrative center for the French Protectorate. 8 His reasoning was explicit: Rabat lies at the intersection of the three major axes of Morocco, one toward the Taza, one toward Marrakech and the third one along the coast; but almost all the economic interests of Morocco are concentrated on the last two.. .. With regard to the whole of Morocco Fez would be in an eccentric situation which would slow and impede any administrative action, and this especially since it is impossible for an indeterminate period of time to conceive of direct and safe communications between Fez and Marrakech. I assert that life is much more healthy in Rabat than in Fez where the summer is exceptionally difficult; all these conditions will weigh heavily upon the recruitment of civil servants and the installation of their families. . . . I also believe it is necessary to be near Casablanca which, by the nature of circumstances, will be the commercial metropolis and the largest European center in Morocco. . . . I think therefore that only Rabat combines all the conditions favorable for the sound and complete installation of a 7 See the remarkably insightful critical account offered by Melvin Knight, Morocco as a French Economic Venture. Quotation with italics in the original is from p. 34. 8 Scholars interested in this period of Moroccan history are fortunate to have a variety of primary sources to work with that document the specific positions and more general ideological views of various officials. Lyautey himself was a compulsive letter writer, speech giver, and transcriber of thoughts and feelings. These have been assembled in several sources· Louis H. Lyautey, Paroles d'actwn; and Pierre Lyautey, ed. Lyautey I'africam, in four volumes Of most relevance here is the section entitled "Notes et directives pour la creation d'une capitale a Rabat," pp. 145-180 of Vol 1 of Lyautey I'africam, from which the following quotation has been translated.

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central and efficient administrative operation and for the rapidity of communications. .. . Finally, I call attention to a prime consideration, that is upon the fact that European or other complications may occur again and threaten the internal security of Morocco, and for this reason it is most important to shelter the administrative headquarters from any alarm and possible breakdown of communications, which would be the case only in Rabat . . I urge the government [therefore] to nominate, as soon as possible, Rabat as the definitive administrative headquarters of the Protectorate, since lasting uncertainties in this regard may only call for the worst inconveniences; it is urgent to start the permanent installations, since headquarters offices cannot remain in uncomfortable and precarious sheds. (Lyautey's letter of June 19, 1913, in Lyautey I'afncatn 1, 1953:147-148 ) Despite his protests, however, the French government delayed and vacillated, holding back the credits Lyautey had demanded in order to establish a proper headquarters {ibid., 1-159-160). And Lyautey's "residence" remained, for the first few years, the same small fourroom house he had bought in July 1912, around which he had installed temporary barracks (ibid. .162) for the growing staff of civilian experts whose work he sought to supervise and direct, even in its most particular details. Among the staff he assembled, and with whom he continued to play a very active role, were his city planners. For he had early developed a passion for town planning, which he channeled now into shaping his "royal" capital of Rabat, a city he referred to as the "Washington, D.C. of Morocco," in contrast to Casablanca, which he likened to New York (Caille, 1949, 1:569). Because of the considerable power available to Lyautey as Resident General and because of his particular interest in planning and his attachment to Rabat, it is impossible to ignore the character of Lyautey himself and the theories of Moroccan urban development he held and elaborated, for the city was literally reshaped during the first decade of the Protectorate under the direction of a man with strong convictions and, what is rarer, the resources to put those convictions into practice Born in Nancy in 1854 of aristocratic royalist parents, Lyautey overcame a childhood spinal injury and, perhaps, overcompensatmg for it, distinguished himself in a military career His antiquarian and "cultural" preoccupations appear incongruously to have paral-

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leled his role as a "man of action." The letters he wrote from Italy when in his twenties reveal a voracious appetite for museums, ancient urban splendor, and elegant artifacts, and perhaps support the contention of one contemporary that Lyautey would have made a fine museum curator, had he not been a general. His first taste of the Orient came in 1880 when he was assigned to Algeria, but this was a brief encounter. Far more important, I believe, was a trip he made to the Balkans in 1893, when he was close to forty. This may have been the experience that fired his ambitions, which came perilously close to those of his hero, Alexander the Great, known also as "the builder of cities." In any event, the letters from his Balkan trip reveal the same adolescent exuberance and antiquarian romanticism of the earlier trip. Perhaps the peak of rapture was reached in Constantinople, of which Lyautey wrote: "The five days of the indescribable fascination and charm of Constantinople have been such a bout cf intoxication for eyes and brain that. . . [I am] dazzled. All through the night, during the worst sleep I have ever known in my life, there danced before my eyes sunsets in which minarets fluttered, while cupolas were drowning in violet" (quoted by Howe, 1931:50-51). His return voyage took him through Greece and then Italy, where he raved over the cities of Florence, Ravenna, and Venice. One year later he was on duty in Indo-China, under the tutelage and, indeed, the spell of General Gallieni, from whom he claimed to have learned his metier as a soldier and administrator. In 1897 he went eagerly to Madagascar to rejoin Gallieni, who played the role there that Lyautey was to play even more grandly in Morocco. Later in life Lyautey remarked that he had two great passions, one of which was for town planning. (The other was for "native policies"!) And, in his words, "it was in Madagascar that I first understood the beauty of the urbs condita when I saw with a father's eye the small town of Ankazobe, whose plans I had drawn on that very ground." 9 How he must have felt when given the cities of Morocco to preserve as "his" museum and their European quarters to build to designs of his own choosing! His enthusiasm for his newly chosen capital cannot be doubted, 9 General Vacher, "Lyautey Urbaniste," in Royer, ed., L'Urbamsme aux colonies 1:115-125, deals primarily with Lyautey's planning of Ankazobe in Madagascar. The quotation appears on pp. 120-121. Also quoted in Jean Dethier, "Evolution of Concepts of Housing, Urbanism and Country Planning in a Developing Country: Morocco, 1900-1972," in L. Carl Brown, ed., From Madtna to Metropolis, p. 201.

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nor his proprietary attitude toward it. Note the passion with which he recounted, in a speech given a dozen years after the event, his outrage at having his new toy damaged at the very outset: The first time I saw Rabat, five years before coming there as resident general, was in 1907 as an emissary to Sultan Moulay Abdel-Aziz. I was transfixed by an impression of the charm and poetry of that incomparable city. Thus, when I returned in 1912 as resident general I rejoiced, in the midst of all the heavy preoccupations of the hour, thinking about what my eyes would find again as soon as my horse passed through the gate. However, what I beheld, instead of the beautiful horizon of the ocean, whose view had been broken by nothing more than the great cemetery, were some hideous constructions already half-finished . . . they were actually two armories of that classic type which is most horribly designed. My first impulse was to prohibit their continuation . . . but . . . there was no human force capable of preventing their actualization. I was limited to ordering a suspension of the work. Two days later, in Fez, he met by accident a group of French tourists, including a M. Trenchant de Lunel, a Beaux-Arts graduate who had traveled widely in the East, and with whom Lyautey discussed the horrid new barracks and his fears. Lyautey continues: He took a pencil and, knowing the impossibility of destroying the barracks, . . . he made me a sketch, showing how they might be "dressed" a I'Arabe and rendered tolerable. My response was to beg him not to return to France, that I would take him, starting immediately, as provisional "Director of Fine Arts," and that he would start work in Rabat the next day. And he was for me a highly valued helper throughout this whole period, saving artistic masterpieces of Morocco and adapting the new administrative buildings, which we needed to erect, to the style of the country. 10 Into the hands of the new Fine Arts Service Lyautey entrusted his prizes, whole feudal terrains including the inhabitants, whose beauty and harmony were to be preserved, even at the cost of health and progress, if need be. The philosophical justification Lyautey gave for his approach cannot be dismissed entirely as propaganda or rationalization, self10

Lyautey, speech delivered at the University of the Annales, Pans, December 10, 1926, in Paroles d'action, pp 445-446 (italics added)

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delusory as it may now appear and must have been, at least in part, at the time. For beneath the bombast and smugness of his speeches there lies a deep consistency that indicates strong belief Again I must quote to give a sense of the man and his self-image. Lyautey was a man with a dream: That of which I dream, that of which many among you dream with me, is that amid much disorder which disturbs the world . . . there should begin to develop steadily in Morocco a strong edifice, ordered and harmonious, which could offer to the world the spectacle of a congregation of humanity where men, so unalike in origins, dress, occupations, and race, continue, without abdicating any of their individual conceptions, their search for a common ideal, a common reason to live. Yes, I would dream that Morocco appeared as one of the most solid bastions of order against the mounting tides of anarchy. He continues in the same speech: Yes, in Morocco, and it is to our honor, we conserve. I would go a step further, we rescue. We wish to conserve in Morocco Beauty—and it is not a negligible thing. Beauty—as well as everything which is respectable and solid in the institutions and traditions of the country. . . . All of your researches conserve and save, whether it be a question of antiquities, fine arts, folklore, history, or linguistics. We found here the vestiges of an admirable civilization, of a great past. You are restoring its foundations. 11 Yet out of the "best intentions" in the world, Lyautey created a system of cultural and religious apartheid, segregating Europeans in new cities laid out on vast open spaces and "following a plan aimed at realizing the most modern conditions—large boulevards, conduits for water and electricity, squares and gardens, buses and tramways" (1927:452) while confining Moroccans to the oldest cities, which, he decreed, should be touched as little as possible. Let us turn to Lyautey once again for an analysis of how he viewed the issue of apartheid, how he justified it in moral and practical terms, and what goals he sought to achieve, both latent and manifest. His 1926 speech is his most explicit and complete statement on these matters. His discussion begins with the remark that 11 Lyautey, speech delivered at the Congress of Moroccan Higher Education, Rabat, May 26, 1921, in Paroles d'actwn, pp 340-341 (italics added)

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in Algeria the entire picturesque heritage, "which would have led to so much profit in tourism," was squandered when pretty and old "native quarters" were cleared for various other uses. Nothing has been more deadly for the originality and charm of the Algerian cities, of so many oriental cities, than their penetration by modern European installations [The attempt to bring in necessary installations and to widen streets, etc J upset completely the whole indigenous city, . . . leaving nothing but a few more and more reduced islands, abandoned by anyone of influence, in which one could find only dense hovels and slums. . . [The preservation of the native towns is] not only a question of aesthetic satisfaction . but a duty of the state. Since the development . . of tourism on a large scale, the preservation of the beauty of the country has taken on an economic interest of thefirstorder (Lyautey, 1927:450-451, italics added) The natural tendency of Europeans upon entering a foreign place, his analysis continues, is to preempt the center, which causes both the European and the native to suffer Apartheid is essential from the beginning if irreparable harm is not to be done to both communities His analysis continues Large streets, boulevards, tall facades for stores and homes, installation of water and electricity are necessary, [all of] which upset the indigenous city completely, making the customary way of life impossible. You know how jealous the Muslim is of the integrity of his private life, you are familiar with the narrow streets, the facades without opening behind which hides the whole of life, the terraces upon which the life of the family spreads out and which must therefore remain sheltered from indiscreet looks But the European house, with its superimposed stones, the modern skyscraper which reaches ever higher, is the death of the terrace, it is an attack upon the traditional mode of life. AH the habits and all the tastes [of these two ways of life] oppose one another. Little by little, the European city chases the native out; but without thereby achieving the conditions indispensable to our modern life, so sprawled out and agitated. In the end it is always necessary [for the European] to leave the indigenous town and, in haste, create new quarters. But by then it is too late the damage has been done. The indigenous city is polluted, sabotaged; all of its charm has gone, and the elite of the population has left. The experience of all too many Algerian cities was there to teach us. It was

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therefore much simpler, since we would have to leave [eventually], to begin by installing ourselves outside (ibid.A52, italics added). It was not only simpler; it was safer. In the words of Lyautey's chief of municipalities, a clear separation of the two cities would yield three great advantages: political, hygienic, and aesthetic (note that he placed aesthetic last). Safety was involved in the first two. First, by separating the two social communities, political advantages could be obtained, for not only would the two groups inevitably conflict if mixed together indiscriminately, but, and this our author implies but leaves unsaid, military control over the "native quarters" could be imposed more readily and ruthlessly if one did not have to worry about the safety of one's compatriots. Health safety was another advantage. Not only could the new European towns be equipped with all the latest amenities and sanitary facilities, but "one also avoided direct contact of the European population with indigenous elements of the lower class, whose physiological misery and filthiness would be important factors in the spread of epidemics." 12 That these "indigenous elements of the lower class" were to be employed in the new city as laborers, domestics, and so on, bothered him no more than it had white slaveholders in the United States who also favored separation. In short, the policy of urban development involved: 1. minimal alteration in the Moroccan quarters, which were to be preserved and protected both from those unwise foreigners who, against their own best interests, might want to live there, and from those Moroccans who, in an undignified attempt to abandon their "noble savage" ways, might wish to improve their homes by modernizing them; 13 12

De la Casimere, 1924:88. This section is identical to a report de la Casimere issued in mimeographed form dated March 1922. See "Note sur les plans d'extension des villes et l'urbanisme au Maroc," Document 754, Archives Outre-Mer, Aix-enProvence 13 Note the tone of de la Casimere's account· "Not only was new construction separated sharply from the old medinas but also very strict watch was kept by the Service des Beaux-Arts and the Services Mumapaux so that nothing would alter the traditional character and coherence of these cities of the Maghrib. Moroccans were, in effect, on certain points endowed with an active spirit of assimilation, and it was believed that certain among them, desiring to increase their revenues by renting to Europeans, sought to modify in an awkward manner the indigenous buildings, thus creating discrepancy and a melange des moeurs which the political sagacity of Marshall Lyautey always sought to prevent" (1924:96, italics added). He also notes here that

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2. the creation of a cordon sanitaire around these native reservations with a greenbelt of open land; and 3. the design and construction de novo of the most modern, efficient, elegant cities that Europe could produce. The man whom Lyautey brought to Morocco to work under his direction on the critical job of designing the new imperial cities and overseeing the establishment ofjust the right degree of articulation with and insulation from the medinas was Henri Prost, who remained under Lyautey between 1913 and 1923, that is, during virtually his entire residency.14 Prost, born in Paris in 1874, had studied architecture at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des BeauxArts, culminating his early architectural career by winning the coveted Prix de Rome in 1902. Like Lyautey, he was captivated by the Orient and, in particular, by the city of Constantinople. Indeed, in 1905 he made a detailed study of the monuments and street patterns of that anciently rooted city. Certainly one of the many affinities between Lyautey and Prost, who are acknowledged by contemporaries to have been not mere colleagues but intimate friends, must have been their admiration for that city. (Prost was to spend the years between 1931 and 1951 as city planner for Istanbul.) Nor should their common admiration for the Italian cities be overlooked. Prost had spent time at the Villa Medici in Florence; and not only can the impact of the Florentine pattern of urban expansion beyond the city walls of the medieval town be seen in Prost's 1910 prize-winning plan for the expansion of medieval-centered Anvers, but it is also evident in his design of the new Moroccan special permits from the Service des Beaux-Arts were required in the medinas to make certain that new constructions would respect the local style. Another even more interesting provision appears in the laws. Not only were European-style buildings prohibited from the medinas, to prevent compromising "the picturesqueness of the native quarters," but modern building materials and methods were also prohibited, regardless of style, "for the protection of the trades and professions of all those who fabncated or employed local techniques and materials . . to assure these workers of a livelihood through the exercise of their customary activities" (ibid). 14 Some effects of this collaboration are explored injole, Khatibi, and Martensson, "Urbamsme, ideologie et segregation." There are a number of sources on Prost and his work upon which my summary is based, but they are patently biased and there are major discrepancies. Among the sources are: J. Royer, "Henri Prost Urbaniste," pp 3-31, in the special issue on Prost, Urbamsme 88 (1965); J. Greber, "Henri Prost 1874-1959"; A. Gabriel, "Henri Prost et son oeuvre a Stamboul", Academie d'Architecture, L'Oeuvre de Henri Prost Architecture et urbamsme, and J. Royer, ed., L'Urbamsme aux colonies et dans les pays troptcaux.

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cities. Of perhaps even greater significance is the fact that Prost, unlike many "fine arts" city planners, had become deeply interested in the legislative tools for putting plans into operation. In 1913, just prior to going to Morocco, he had been in charge of a mission to study urban legislation in Germany, England, and Italy. Lyautey was later to point with pride to the fact that the planning legislation of the most "modern kind," which was passed in Morocco, predated by several years similar laws passed in France. Lyautey and Prost were, in any case, a close team. Prost was assigned the task of designing modern appendages for every major city within the jurisdiction of the French, of designing from scratch several new towns and port cities that Lyautey envisaged (among them, Kenitra and Agadir), and of coordinating the work of his Planning Section with that of the Fine Arts Service, whose chief charge was to preserve the native cities. Prost evidently moved quickly: he first arrived in Morocco in December 1913, and by Bastille Day of 1914, barely half a year later, Lyautey was announcing that "an eminent specialist [Henri Prost] has devoted himself completely to this problem, and the completion of his work, as far as it concerns Casablanca, Rabat, and Marrakech, is today, I can assure you, no more than a question of days." 15 How fast he moved—and, indeed, how fast France entrenched itself in the framework of the dual city—may perhaps be gauged by this remark by Edith Wharton, who visited Rabat in 1918. After describing the exotic walled city, she exclaimed: "Set in this legendary frame was the unexpected spectacle of an intensely modern community, leading a life of European activity and usefulness. . . . I really felt myself in France, in a happy and prosperous France free from the unbearable horror of war." 16 Maps reproduced by de la Casiniere show the master plans for expansion of European towns appended to Rabat, Marrakech, Fez, Settat, Meknes, and several others. All have more or less the same stamp. If at all feasible, next to the convoluted medina was open land (the cordon sanitaire). Beyond was a widespread, regular, modified radial street system interlaced with perpendiculars of somewhat narrower widths arranged around central points of public and monumental focus, generally landscaped or attached to parks. Peripheral ring roads connected segregated industrial districts concentrated at ports, at railway exchanges, and on the out15

Lyautey, speech delivered in Casablanca, July 14, 1914, in Paroles d'attion, p. 117. 16 Wharton, "Madame Lyautey's Chanties m Morocco," p. vni.

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skirts. Articulation with the native city was kept to a minimum, using no more than the major streets on either side of the wall. Figure 6 shows the bare outlines of Rabat's expansion, atypical only because a cordon sanitaire could not be established. Contrast this with Figure 7, showing the plan for Fez, which demonstrates the ideal. A cordon sanitaire around Rabat could not be established because foreigners had already moved in, buying up the land just outside the city walls even before Prost could put together his rapidly designed master plan. A similar situation was even more evident in Casablanca, where land speculation by Europeans had been rampant during the decade prior to the formalization of the Protectorate. The medina of that city was only a modest one, nevertheless, European encroachments were already so close that the wall and fringe area on the side abutting the colonial quarter had to be torn down to permit the construction of Boulevard du 4eme Zouaves. This major thoroughfare served as both social and physical barrier to divide the domains of "natives" and Europeans, in place of the preferred system of native wall and greenbelt. With the exception of these two minor deviations from ideology, lamented by Lyautey and his planners as "failures" and "unavoidable evils," the goals identified so explicitly by the French policy makers were methodically translated into action during the first decade of the Protectorate, when the colonial edifice was constructed. To execute these plans, the French devised an elaborate system of laws and regulations that gave a patina of legitimacy and equity to the process These laws governed the ownership of real property, the conversion of vast public domains to private freehold, and the registration of land titles by a French administrative apparatus— registration that automatically removed these lands from the jurisdiction of Muslim courts and placed litigation within a parallel French judiciary. Other laws defined the grounds according to which property could be expropriated by the state for purposes of "the public good," established a mechanism for urban reorganization and redistribution of property rights via the formation of land syndicates, and regulated street widths and alignments, building heights, land coverage, and construction standards differentially in vanous parts of the city. Each of these legal devices, heralded as a harbinger of progress and order by its French inventor, became a tool not only for city planning but for the systematic transfer of Moroccan resources to the French colonists and to their new and elegant urban quarters

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FIGURE 6

OF

APARTHEID

M A P OF R A B A T CIRCA 1 9 2 0 , S H O W I N G C O L O N I A L E X P A N S I O N S

PLAN FOR FEZ

OF

FIGURE 7

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APARTHEID

·VI~\~\· BUILDING THE COLONIAL EDIFICE French Rabat at the present day IS a masterpIece, famed throughout the world, of successful town plannmg and archItecture. E.

LEVI-PROVEN~AL,

"Rabat," Encyclopedra of Islam, 1st ed., circa 1936

WE HAVE seen the process whereby the French first insinuated themselves economically into Moroccan affairs, and then completed their conquest mIlitarily wIth the full if reluctant compliCIty of the other European powers. We have seen the creation of the political subterfuge of Sharifian rule, behInd which the enormous power of Lyautey was only imperfectly disguised. We have explored the ideology of apartheid, whICh Lyautey elaborated andJustified in terms of the protection It offered to the integnty of Moroccan culture, and we have introduced some of the key assistants whom Lyautey recruited to carry out his schemes-techmcians who apparently shared wholeheartedly his goals and values. These factors were in intensive conjunction In the single decade between 1913 and 1923, during which the urban hierarchy of Morocco was fundamentally restructured and the major cities in the country transformed. I The fissure between the colonial coastal hierarchy of CIties and the interior indigenous hierarchy, which had already appeared durIng the nineteenth century, opened wider at this time. Casablanca 1 There IS general agreement that the first phase of French urban planmng m Morocco comCided With the Lyautey-Prost team, although somewhat different termmal dates have been suggested. Paul Couzlllet, III an article he wrote whtle Chef de Service de I'Urbamsme III Morocco m 1945, dtstmgUlshed two periods up to hiS time: the first between 1913 and 1923, the second between 1923 and 1945. See hiS "L'Urbamsme et l'amenagement des villes au Maroc." Jean Dethler, wrltmg m 1970, diVided hiS analysIS mto three penods, the first between 1906 and 1926; the second between 1926 and 1946, and the thud after 1946. See hiS "SOlXante ans d'urbamsme au Maroc."

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151

surged ahead of all other ports in the colonial hierarchy, and two new ports, Agadir and Kenitra, were added to the roster. Rabat, because of its administrative role as capital of the Protectorate, became central to the colonial superstructure that was imposed upon the original urban system of the country. As a result, the city began to grow at a faster rate than the rival and more populous former capitals, Fez and Marrakech. Eventually she would overtake them in size, but because of their great head start, this would not occur until later. The split in the urban hierarchy was paralleled by a fission within each of the major cities, as Lyautey's planners designed extensive appendages intended to house, at luxurious standards and at outrageously wasteful densities, an upper caste, consisting of French civil servants and a foreign bourgeoisie, which was superimposed upon the class structure of the country. As we shall see, the land so generously assembled and then sold to the European colonists had been expropriated from the Moroccan sacred and secular domains for the subsidized use of newcomers, and the proceeds from their sale were ploughed back to provide a full complement of site improvements and municipal services for them. Meanwhile, the Moroccan areas were neglected under the guise of respect for their cultural integrity. This double standard ensured that the caste differences created by economic and political colonialism would be reflected sharply in a gap between the physical conditions of the two cities—coexisting but not interpenetrating. Not to leave matters to chance, this "natural" segregation on economic and cultural grounds was buttressed by laws which, while they did not speak specifically of apartheid, guaranteed that, in the words of the French, "the two races" would remain separate. Although it is conventional to characterize these developments as the introduction of a "dual" system—the creation of a parallel or "dual hierarchy" of urban places and the building of parallel or "dual cities"—this way of putting matters is in fact misleading. It is more realistic to view these changes not as the proliferation of a duplicate or supplementary structure but as the introduction of a new dominant structure, to which the preexisting cities became increasingly subordinate. The French system was not side-by-side and apart, the ideology of Lyautey notwithstanding. It was above the Moroccan system. Furthermore, its existence depended upon reducing the latter to the status of a submissive partner, from whom resources, both material and human, were to be extracted. This was

152

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true at the macrolevel of the urban system as well as at the microlevel of single cities such as Rabat. In the present chapter we examine the reorganization of the urban hierarchy of Morocco, which became irreversible during the first decade of French rule, and the creation of the new colonial cities that Prost immodestly claimed reflected "the genius for order, proportion, and clear reasoning of our country" (1932a:80). Our thesis is that the French genius for exploitation was certainly as evident in this early period as were the other virtues exalted by Prost. To trace the changes in the urban hierarchy it is necessary to reconstruct the relative population sizes of the various cities of Morocco before the creation of the French Protectorate. Unfortunately, no census figures are available for this early period, and therefore our analysis will have to be quite tentative. Despite the absence of reliable figures, however, it is possible to reach some general conclusions The first is that Fez and Marrakech, the two interior capitals of the country, had always been much larger than Meknes and the twin cities of Rabat-Sale, the other capitals. Whereas the former pair each had populations on the order of magnitude of perhaps 80,000 to 100,000 by 1912, the second pair each had, at most, about 35,000 to 40,000. Of the four largest urban agglomerations in the country before colonization, three were definitely on the interior axis and the fourth owed its importance more to that interior link than to its "accidental" coastal location. In contrast, the coastal towns, while numerous, tended to be very modest in size After Rabat, the largest port cities were (in indeterminate order) Tetouan, Mogador, and Tangiers, followed by those of even lower rank, such as Safi, Mazagan, Larache, and Casablanca. I have compiled Table 2 from a variety of conflicting sources, and present the somewhat fictitious early figures merely to give a rough sense of the magnitudes involved. In contrast, the population totals for 1921 are based upon a formal census in the French zone, and begin to take on a more realistic value. These figures allow us to observe how quickly Casablanca pushed its way into the upper ranks of the urban hierarchy, moving easily into third place to join the two traditional metropoli of Morocco, Fez and Marrakech, in the category of towns with 100,000 or more inhabitants. By 1936, Casablanca had clearly surged to the head of the list, becoming the largest city in the country, with a quarter of a million residents. Mazagan (al-Jadida),

B U I L D I N G THE C O L O N I A L TABLE 2

Place Name Interior System Fez Marrakech Meknes Oujda Coastal System Rabat Sale Mogador Tetouan Safi Tangiers Larache Mazagan Casablanca Kemtra

CITIES OF MOROCCO, 1830S TO 1921,

1834-1836» 18Ί6-1857*

— — — —

— — — —

22,000

25,000

— 10,000 16,000 8,000 7,000 2,500 800 700

—

— 14,000 22 000 10,000 10,000 4,500 1,500 1,600

—

153

EDIFICE BY SIZE

1866-1867»

1910-1913

I921b

— — — —

100,000' 1 (70,000) (40,000)c

124,500 145,000 38,159 22,280

26,000 12,000 (1872)1, 15,000 (1895)e 16,000 21,000 11,000 12,000 5,000 4,000 6,000

25,642d 18,800"

33,714 24,300

16,000°

19,503

—

—

IN SPANISH ZONE

(8,000)1 (20,000)1 (5-7,000)1 (6,000)' (12,000)' NEW CITY

25,806 FREE ZONE SPANISH

22,093 110,934 10,074

a

M i e g e 3 , 1962 14 and 23 " Statistical Appendix to de la Casiniere (1924), Table I ' Very untrustworthy figures presented in Kerr, 1912 4 d Based upon first French censuses (house counts) Rabat et sa region 2, 1919 77 ' Sale figures, as reproduced in Κ L Brown, 1969 339-342

another port favored by the French, and Kenitra (onginally called Port Lyautey), an installation created de novo as a "dual city" to take some of the shipping pressure off Casablanca, also grew phe­ nomenally after 1912, as these became key participants in the colo­ nial urban system. Rabat shared in the growth propelled by French colonization, although not as dramatically as the new ports After almost a century of relatively stable population, she began to grow, increasing by almost a third during the first eight years of occupa­ tion. With the introduction of French colonial administration, foreign immigration stepped up dramatically, a factor that accounts for some but not all of the population growth in the coastal towns. Clearly, this source of demographic increase was most significant in the newer ports, where it was supplemented by a migration from other parts of Morocco of Jews who tended to attach themselves economically to the foreign ventures. Thus, by 1921, the popula­ tion of Casablanca was mostly "minority," since only 46 percent of the residents were Moroccan Muslims, 22.3 percent were French na-

154

B U I L D I N G THE COLONIAL EDIFICE

tionals, 15.8 percent were foreigners of other diverse nationalities, and an equal percent were Moroccan-born Jews. Kenitra, the new port, and Oujda, which took on new importance as the border post between Algeria and Morocco, both attracted substantial numbers of foreign settlers. By 1921, only 51 percent of Oudja's population was Moroccan Muslim, while 20 percent was French and another 23 percent "other" foreign. In Kenitra, foreigners accounted for 41 percent of the total population and Moroccan Jews an additional 2 percent. Reflecting her dual status as both indigenous capital and significant link in the evolving colonial urban system, Rabat's growth rate was neither as sluggish as that of the indigenous interior capitals nor as dramatically explosive as that of the foreign-dominated ports. The population composition, however, was changing. By 1921, despite an increase in absolute numbers, Moroccan Muslims had declined to only 59 percent of the total population of Rabat, whereas French nationals constituted 21.4 percent, other foreigners 10 percent, and indigenous Jews another 10 percent of the total. In contrast, Sale's population remained homogeneously indigenous. Only 4 percent of her population was foreign, and these were all segregated into the military and railway zones outside the walls. What was changing in Sale was the fact that Moroccan Muslim migrants from the countryside, expelled from their lands or drawn to new jobs in the capital, were settling in the city but were commuting across the river to work in the foreign quarters of Rabat. In marked contrast to the situation on the coast, the cities of the interior attracted few foreigners. By 1921, only 1 percent of Marrakech's residents were French, and only a handful were nationals of other foreign countries. Fez was similarly unreceptive to colons, and such foreigners constituted less than 3 percent of her population. Even Meknes, which lay in the midst of a hinterland of fertile plains rapidly being preempted by European farming ventures, was only 11 percent foreign by 1921.2 These differences in the size and significance of the foreign populations in various cities obviously affected the extent to which French plans for "dual" towns could be actualized.3 Plans were 2 All figures for 1921, including the distribution of population by nationality, have been computed from raw data presented in the Appendix to de la Casiniere (1924), unpaged. 3 One should be careful not to project the Algerian situation onto Morocco, for the latter country never attracted anything like the number of French colons who

B U I L D I N G THE COLONIAL EDIFICE

155

made for European quarters to be attached to Fez, Marrakech, Meknes, and Rabat, but of these four only Rabat attracted a sufficiently large foreign population to fill up the space allotted and to provide a base adequate to support the full complement of social and economic services. In Prost's account of the accomplishments of urban planning in Morocco up to 1923 (see his article in Royer), he included a series of maps showing the basic outlines of the extension plans for Meknes, Marrakech, and Fez.4 In each, the new quarters are still dwarfed by the existing medinas, and appear decidedly secondary in importance. Only in Rabat does the planned extension overwhelm the existing medina, encircling it and preempting all possible avenues of expansion. One could easily argue that Rabat was the most successful exemplar of French "dual city" planning in Morocco. In Casablanca, the "native" original was too truncated, the foreign additions too undisciplined, and the pace of development too frantic to permit adequate control. On the other hand, in the interior capitals, the European population for which the new cities were planned never materialized. I propose, therefore, to examine in detail the planning and execution of Rabat's expansion between 1912 and 1924, not only because the urban ecology of the present-day city settled in Algeria. By 1926, following a period of heightened immigration, there were still only about 100,000 foreign subjects in the French Zone of Morocco, of whom three-fourths were French nationals; most of the remainder were either from Spain (about 15 percent) or Italy (about 10 percent). Even with the increases that subsequently occurred, the number of foreign residents barely exceeded 350,000 by the peak period of 1951-1952, of whom about 300,000 were Frenchmen. (Source: Gouvernement Chenfien, Service Central des Statistiques, Recensement general de la population en 1911-1952. VoL 2, "Population non marocaine," p. vu.) Contrast this with the more than one million foreign residents of Algiers alone who left after the revolution. 4 The inclusion of these maps is the only difference between two oft-cited sources, which to my knowledge have not been noted as identical. Chapter XVIII, entitled "Urbanisme," in La Renaissance du Maroc (Poitier, 1923:361-393) is not identified by author, although the title page lists several collaborators and many of the other chapters are signed. Significantly, Prost is not listed as one of the collaborators, although Albert Laprade, his chief architect, is. On the other hand, this very same chapter, supplemented by the new maps, is reproduced verbatim in Royer's edited volume of the proceedings of the 1931 conference, L'Urbamsme aux colonies . , pp. 59-80, under the title "Le Developpement de l'urbanisme dans le protectorat du Maroc de 1914 a 1923." In this collection, the author is identified as Henri Prost. I have been unable to determine who actually wrote this piece, but suspect it was prepared in Prost's office (possibly by Laprade) and then appropriated by him.

156

B U I L D I N G THE COLONIAL EDIFICE

was irrevocably determined by decisions made during that period, but also because the case clearly illustrates the various processes by which the colonial cities of Morocco, so extravagantly praised by planners and foreign visitors alike, were actually created. Both the successes and failures of the approach are thrown into high relief in the case of Rabat, a city designed as a showcase of the Protectorate and under the continuous and vigilant control of the authorities. If there were "failures," they were intended. The creation of new cities, especially when they are the conscious result of intent and control, requires three basic sets of ingredients. First, there must be an overall plan to guide development, a plan that takes into account anticipated as well as present population, and that, if the city is intended to be an extension of an already extant community, integrates in a sensitive and efficient manner the newer quarters with the existing ones, paying special attention to the compatibility of adjacent land uses and to the pattern of the circulation system, so that the older sections are well articulated with their extensions. Second, resources are required to permit actual construction of the planned city. Land is required on which to site the city, and there must be some systematic way of retaining ownership over the land needed for streets and other public purposes, and of subdividing and distributing the remaining portions for private construction Labor is needed for the building process itself, and funds are essential to provide underground municipal utilities such as water lines and sewers, other site improvements such as lighting and street paving, and public buildings and parks. Third, regulations over the actions of individuals are required to assure compliance with the plan Particularly when construction is to be done not by the state but by private enterprise, the authorities must guide and restrain private developers so that their additions will contribute to the fulfillment rather than the undermining of the plan Regulations may also be required for ancillary goals such as preserving an architectural heritage or maintaining the social segregation of different groups. Finally, if the city is to perpetuate itself in an orderly manner, there must be a system of governance to oversee day-to-day affairs and to set policies for the future. On the surface, Rabat's extension was a virtually unqualified success, an achievement of which her French planners were justifiably proud Only when one examines the costs hidden beneath the superficial success does one begin to question this benign evaluation

BUILDING THE COLONIAL EDIFICE

157

There is no doubt that the master plan drawn up by Henri Prost was impressive. The maps comprising Figure 8 show the skill with which existing features of pre-1913 Rabat were sensitively inte­ grated into the scheme and were used as the basis for a rational or­ ganization of the newer quarters. In accordance with Lyautey's ideology, the plan ignored the inte­ rior of the walled medma, and did not augment the number of gates giving access to it. If anything, the plan increased the encapsulation of the zone. As we have already noted, the planners were unable to create the desired "greenbelt" around the old city because the land had already been bought up, but over the protests of the European purchasers Prost and Lyautey succeeded in establishing "a zone non edtficandt [in which construction was forbidden] of 250 meters in width just outside the walls," which Prost defended as being needed "for military reasons." 5 It was in this open space that the major boulevard (Joffre and Galheni) that separated the medina from the European city was built, running east and west parallel to the Andalusian wall, which was strengthened—indeed, partially reconstructed—by the French This barrier was expanded by means of the Triangle Park, which reached into the heart of the ville nouvelle A comparison between the map showing the pre-1913 system of pistes and the Prost plan for circulation will indicate how articulation was achieved between the old city and the new. While the connections were strictly limited, they were there. Indeed, the paths leading from the medina gates to the exterior wall gates served as the template for the circulation system of the new city—a most skillful design As can be seen from Figure 6 (p 148 supra), the core of the colo­ nial city occupied the zone originally included in the ambitious plans of Ya'qub al-Mansur but then never built up. The commer­ cial district was concentrated just west of the Triangle Park, and a wide ceremonial street followed the path of the earlier piste from the Bab al-Tibin all the way up to the Sunna Mosque and the gate to the palace complex There, with consummate sensitivity to symbolic impact, the plan provided for the dual rulership of the na­ tion On the heights just east of the palace and on the opposite side of the ceremonial road, perfectly parallel in extent and location, was the new administrative zone of the French Protectorate, which culminated, at the top of the hill, in the site selected for the baronial 5 This unguarded remark is quoted by Pierre Pelletier in "Valeurs foncieres et l'urbanisme au Maroc," ρ 39

158

B U I L D I N G THE C O L O N I A L EDIFICE

FIGURE 8a

RABAT BEFORE 1913

BUILDING

F I G U R E 8b

THE

COLONIAL

EDIFICE

RABAT'S N E W CIRCULATION SYSTEM

159

160

B U I L D I N G THE C O L O N I A L

EDIFICE

residence that Laprade was later to design for Lyautey's use. This was imperial city planning at its "best." This core area, some five times larger than the acreage of the medma, would have been more than ample to accommodate the an­ ticipated foreign population which, after all, was never even to reach 50,000 by the peak of colonization. A reasonable planner, concerned with the needs of the entire population of the city, not just with its foreign residents, would not have reserved more than this core area for foreign use, even if he favored development at ex­ tremely low densities. In the event that demand eventually ex­ ceeded supply, there existed at least two adjacent peripheral zones into which the foreign community could have expanded, namely, the fertile area south of the exterior walls and the Agdal zone just west of the palace complex. It is hard, then, to rationalize on technical grounds Prost's deci­ sion to preempt for the European city not only the core area and the Agdal zone but also the area due west of the medina, outside the Bab al-ΆΙΰ and the Bab al-Had The designation of the so-called Ocean Quartier, along the coast, as part of the colonial city was the major mistake in the plan, revealing in raw form the distorted view of the future held by the planners For by allocating all the land be­ tween the interior and exterior western walls for the French city, as well as all the land to the south, the plan ensured the encirclement, indeed strangulation, of the medina, and guaranteed that commen­ surate growth of the Moroccan city could not be orderly. By this action, all avenues for the medina's expansion were effectively bar­ ricaded. (The same error was made in Casablanca.) Was it any wonder that Moroccans were eventually forced to the outskirts of the ville nouvelle, into bidonvilles constructed chiefly on land that Prost had designated as unsuited for residence7 He had left them no choice. Many of the later difficulties in planning Rabat stemmed from this initial miscalculation. To accommodate a European population that always remained in the minority, never exceeding one-third of the total, Prost blocked out an area ten times larger than the exist­ ing medina. In marked contrast, he neglected to allocate any land at all in his initial plan to accommodate a Moroccan population that was destined to grow tenfold in the next few decades Not only had he not planned for this growth but, even after it had begun to oc­ cur, he did not understand why it had occurred It is ironic that less than a decade after completing his work in

BUILDING THE COLONIAL EDIFICE

161

Morocco, Prost was rapporteur at the Congres International de l'Urbanisme, held in conjunction with the 1931 Exposition Colomale, where the issue of inadequate housing and other facilities for "native" residents in cities was identified as the most pressing problem facing the colonies. His "Rapport General" presumably summarizes the views of conference participants, but his own attitudes are exposed by the words he chooses (1932b:24). In the course of the discussions a new fact of [hitherto] unsuspected magnitude was revealed. The automobile, together with the network of roads leading in all directions, is the cause of an evolution of enormous consequences, posing problems of prime importance Descending from the mountains and from distant hinterlands, from the least accessible villages, the native, beguiled [s'amuse] by these methods of transport which have been offered to him, the native leaves his place of birth with his whole family, lured by the large cities, particularly in North Africa [emphasis added]. Continuing his analysis, Prost notes that because of this migration, the native cities have become greatly overcrowded, and that people have begun to settle on the outskirts where they have developed informal agglomerations, composed of precarious shelters, which constitute a hazard, escaping the surveillance of the Municipalities. It is a distressing situation, these natives are accustomed to sleeping in tents or in dispersed gourbis in the countryside where the sun is the sole, albeit powerful, means of sanitation The encampments improvised by these men, simple and primitive, around the cities, constitute most dangerous sources of contamination, despite the ceaseless interventions of Health Services Given this type of thinking, it would have been remarkable indeed for Prost to have planned for the irrational migration of these primitive souls, used to sleeping on the ground and not in houses' But the fact was that their migration was hardly irrational, nor was it all that unpredictable. Not the pleasures of automobile travel but two more fundamental causes were responsible for migration, and both had been brought about by French colonization While we shall treat them in greater detail in the next section dealing with the "factors of production" of the French cities, we must note them in passing here First, the preemption of the best farming land in

162

B U I L D I N G THE C O L O N I A L EDIFICE 6

Morocco, the registration of freehold title to land "enclosed" against herding, and the expropriation of communal, crown, and religious trust lands—in favor of French investors—significantly reduced the livelihoods of Moroccan peasants and transhumants, dislodging them from the hinterlands and thrusting them toward the cities of the coast And second, the existence of a construction boom in the port cities generated an enormous demand for manual labor, while the immigration of European households generated a comparable demand for providers of menial services. However, be­ cause this labor was recompensed very poorly and because housing (or even space) had not been provided for this labor force, the new­ comers had no other recourse but to settle where they could and construct crude shelters against the elements. It was not a lack of proper surveillance by the Health Services that caused the problem, it was a lack of money and space Thus, despite the care lavished on the plan, 7 the great attention paid to detail, and the fastidious sense of aesthetics evinced by both Prost and Lyautey, we must judge Rabat's master plan a failure, for the elegant French quarters were achieved at terrible costs That the plan was generous to a fault in allocating land for the European res­ idents, while completely indifferent to the future needs of Moroc­ cans, is eloquent if silent testimony to the true intent, rather than the rhetoric, of Lyautey's pious "respect for the natives " Lyautey said he favored separate development for the two races, what he re­ ally meant was separate and unequal development How unequal will become increasingly clear as we examine the resources—land, labor, and funds—that were devoted to building the showpiece, Rabat. We must ask at this juncture, where did the land come from that was so generously assigned to the European city? Was it already in French ownership and therefore available for such an inequitable distribution, or did it have to be acquired? To answer this question 6

"Most of the European lattfundia m French Morocco are in the best valleys, plains and low plateaus of the northern and best third of the country the cream of lands made irrigable at public expense has been turned over to Europeans " Melvin Knight, "Economic Space for Europeans in French North Africa," ρ 364 7 Prost was nothing if not systematic He tells us that first the master plans were sketched on small-scale maps showing the general layout, then topographic surveys were made and detailed plans for small areas were made These were drawn up, dis­ trict by district, and then superimposed on the larger-scale planning maps Such neatness in contrast to the initial gross error 1 See his 1932a 61 for a description of his working methods

BUILDING THE C O I O N I A L EDIFICE

163

we must go back to our earlier remarks about the Protectorate system, whereby the Resident General acted for France and France acted for the Shanfian state As the "successor state" of the Shanfian figurehead, France considered itself the owner of the state domains, the crown lands, and, by a bit more manipulation, even the lands left in trust with the religious Ministry of Hubus, the only administrative portion of the Moroccan government ostensibly left in Moroccan hands To ask who owned the land and to inquire how the French managed to sell it to private foreign developers, especially since they themselves had never bought it, is to commit a crosscultural "gauchene." The system of land tenure in Morocco was based on principles so different from those of the Code Napoleon, 8 with which the occupiers so conveniently worked, that one scarcely knows where to begin to explain matters. But even a superficial examination of what happened reveals that the French exploited to their advantage every discrepancy between the two systems, in order to gain control over vast areas of Morocco, including the land on which they built their cities. This was done perfectly "legally," in accordance with the laws that the French wrote for the Sultan's signature. Charles Stewart, in his study of the Moroccan economy, summarized the features of the five major types of land tenure in force in Morocco in 1912: mulk land, or privately owned freehold, much of which was cultivated by a system of sharecropping in rural areas; f^ubus land, administered by the religious foundations, the usufruct being earmarked for a charitable purpose and the tide being inalienable, domainal land, residual land to which the Sultan kept title (even though its usufruct might be assigned), which was likely to fluctuate in extent with the military might of the makhzan; so-called jaysh or army land, which was domainal land whose usufruct was granted to certain Arab tribes in return for their military service, and collective or communal lands, held in common by members of a tribal fraternity, apportioned among the families of the tribe, and periodically reapportioned to maintain equity This latter also included traditional grazing lands that were not subdivided at all 8 While it was different, it certainly was not as complicated as the French claimed, nor can we agree with the dismissal of the Moroccan system as not quite conferring property rights In Les Villes apres la conquete, there is an appendix on "Le Regime immobilier," pp 159-167, in which the following sentence appears "In reality, it is not possible to consider property in Morocco in the same sense as in France, that is to say, as it is constituted by Roman Law and by the Code [Napoleon]" (p 160)

164

B U I L D I N G THE COLONIAL EDIFICE

Mulk land was concentrated chiefly in the cities and the fertile plains around them, as was most of the hubus land (deeded from mulk or domainal ownership). Collective land was found chiefly beyond the cities, in the mountains and less fertile zones of almost purely Berber habitation. Domainal land obviously was in regions under the direct fiscal control of the Sultan, as was, of course, the derivative jaysh land.9 Each of these tenures required a slightly different strategy of expropriation. The right of foreigners to buy mulk or freehold property in Morocco was freed from the restrictions imposed by the 1880 Madrid Convention and the 1906 Act of Algeciras as soon as the Protectorate was declared, but there were still problems because the lands had not been surveyed, and there were no sure mechanisms by which foreign buyers could determine the validity of the titles bought or ensure their future legal claims to the property. Several laws were passed to satisfy their eagerness to gain "security." A new landed property regime called tmmatnculatwn was instituted in Morocco governed by the Dahir of August 12, 1913. It was derived from the regime of landed property in force in Australia and is known as the Torrens Act, which has equally been applied in Tunisia. It consists of land registration in special rosters called Livres Fonaers, each property cleanly and distinctly delimited on the ground under a name and number in a particular order, with the proper topographic and juridical determinations, and with a definitive and precise statement as to its owner. The owner receives from the administration an authentic duplicate of the title which has been established. . . . The regime of lmmatnculation is open to all landowners (native Moroccans and foreigners). They have, by consequence, to submit to French jurisdiction all possibility of litigation; in return for this they receive the official title to their land (Rabat et sa region 2, 1919:161, italics added). Although this law was passed very early, the administrative apparatus took some time to set up. Lyautey sympathized with the 9 While this is certainly not the most basic or original source, it is the clearest summary I have seen See Stewart (1964 17-26) A fairly complete summary of how each of these types was interpreted by the French is found in J Rey (who was Conservateur General de la Propnete Fonciere au Maroc), "La Propnete immobiliere "

B U I L D I N G THE COLONIAL EDIFICE

165

eager French investors when he addressed the foreign community of Casablanca at a banquet on Bastille Day in 1914, assuring them that finally, after months of effort, he had gained the cooperation of the Geographical Service of the Army to do the necessary topographic surveys, and that by the following October the Livres would be ready, at least for those regions of the country considered heartland, namely, in the vicinity of Rabat, Casablanca, and Oujda (Lyautey, 1927 118) However, by June of 1916, the only region as yet covered by the apparatus was Casablanca-Rabat (Rabat et sa region 2, 1919 161) How did this system work 7 Although we cannot go into the details, it should be obvious that in a society where land rights and types of ownership did not conform to the Roman model, the opportunities for fraud were spectacular, particularly where transactions were taking place in French between foreigners who knew French law and its procedures and Moroccans who did not Furthermore, many Moroccans were reluctant to "revalidate" their ownership through the French system, since this meant transferring their rights of litigation from the Islamic court to the French one In short, foreigners began to register in the livres fonciers land that they had not actually purchased, or had purchased from someone who did not really own it, and to register doctored deeds which included larger areas or more rights than they had purchased The procedure specified that anyone could protest a registration for a short period after its entry, but since these registrations were published in French, many whose lands were registered by others without their knowledge actually lost their titles When they found out, their only recourse was to fight (and lose) in the French court Similar subterfuges were later applied to the communal or collective properties of the tribes, as French land purchasers bought up and registered the more fertile tribal lands for their agricultural ventures Since none of these were in the cities, however, we can safely skip over the nefarious practices used with regard to them, only the subsequent enclosures are important to us, for they were largely responsible for the influx of rural migrants who eventually ended up in the bidonvilles of the cities In assembling the land on which the foreign cities were built, The basic source, prepared to guide the occupation in its handling of various types of ownership, was Emile Amar, L'Orgamsatton de la proprtetefonctere au Maroc Much of his material was later incorporated into the Vtlles et tnbus series

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domainal lands and hubus lands 10 were the critical categories, for it was here that basic "differences in interpretation" were used to disguise wholesale expropriation. Taking these lands for a "public purpose" not only permitted the European cities to be established, but even allowed the use of profits from the sale of these lands to pay for the site improvements (roads, lighting, water, drains) without which private developers could not have built. The alternative "interpretations" turned on whether these lands belonged to the state (from which religion was not separate), and therefore could be disposed of as the "state" chose, or whether the tenure was in trust for the community as a whole, and therefore could not be alienated in ownership although it could be assigned in use. They also turned on the extent to which the French administrators were the "state." The French, of course, chose the most convenient interpretation of the situation. De la Casiniere (1924) is so confident that the French did nothing wrong that he explains with appalling honesty just what was done. He notes that "the task of the protectorate," namely, to obtain the land on which to build the European cities, "had been facilitated in Meknes, Fez, and Marrakech by the fact that almost all of the suburban land was the property of the free domain of the state [domainal makhzan land] or of pious foundations controlled by the state [hubus land]." 11 He continues: At Fez, more than half of the land of the new city was the property of the state. These [lots] constituted the first lots that were placed on sale in 1916, always at a reduced price and carrying an obligation to build. . . . At Marrakech, the situation was much more favorable than at Fez, in the sense that almost the entire perimeter selected for the new city was part of the private [sic] domain of the state. The same procedure [of auctioning off the land, requiring immediate 10 Ominously, the dahir ofJuly 7, 1914, enumerated all hubus and domainal lands and specified the steps that would have to be taken, including getting the "ad hoc" authorization from the Makhzan, to sell this land (Rabat et sa region 2, 1919 165) Lyautey had the audacity, in a speech of August 20, 1917, before the Superior Council for the hubus to compliment the Moroccan agents of the hubus for their great success at raising money He notes that "recent strict regulation of Moroccan practices has brought into circulation the assets [biens ] of the habous, which thus ceased to be in mortmain, to the great benefit of the colonists established m the country " (Paroles d'actwn 230) 11 De la Casiniere, 1924 88-89

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construction, and the use of the profits from the sale of the land for services and site developments] was followed as early as 1913, and the European center of Guehz today has more than 1,500 inhabitants (ibid.:89). And just in case he has not yet been sufficiently explicit, he spells out in full detail the even less scrupulous case of Meknes: The municipality was able, in 1919, to conclude an agreement with the administration of habous, an agreement in which the town was able to acquire at a reduced price almost the entire amount of land contained within the perimeter of the new city. . . A great part of the land was resold at auction, and the profits went to the municipal budget, which used them, as had been foreseen in the agreement, to execute public works required for developing the town (roads, drainage, a system of potable water] (ibid.:S9). The same policy was followed in Kenitra, where "all of the lands on which the new center was to be built belonged to the Chenfien state; a plan of amenagement [a site plan] was then drawn up and the lots placed for sale under conditions analogous to those which we have described earlier for Fez, Meknes, and Marrakech" (ibid. :91). The point is obvious. Land "belonging to the state" was sold by auction, and land illegally alienated from the hubus was bought by the municipality and resold at a profit to Frenchmen who built on territories that had been improved and readied for urban settlement with funds supplied by either their purchase price or the difference between their purchase and sale prices. It all looks very reasonable until one thinks the matter through. The sole beneficiary of state lands and hubus properties was the French colon. Matters did not work out quite so neatly in either Casablanca or Rabat, and for these places new strategies were required. In Casablanca foreigners had been buying and furiously speculating on land since before the time of the Protectorate, and a considerable amount of unplanned construction had already occurred in patches, with large portions of open land being held for higher prices. In Rabat, for different reasons, it was not easy to assemble the land for the new town. The Chenfien state possessed very little land, and that which it did possess was either in broken sites or situated at an eccentric

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position (Aguedal): consequently, the administration was obliged to acquire from individual owners all the sites necessary for the installation of public buildings . . . [and] for open spaces [the municipal park, the Triangle, and the garden around the Hasan minaret]. . . . The consequence of this state of things was that if Rabat were not to encounter the great difficulties which Casablanca had faced, the application of a plan of amenagement would require a full legal apparatus: expropriations and syndicated building societies (ibid. :90). It was the failure at Rabat, or rather the inability to use there the strategies of expropriation that had worked so well elsewhere, that led to the elaboration of the laws of planning and expropriation which Lyautey and Prost devised to "take for a public purpose" land that was inconveniently held in freehold rather than in large blocks by the state or the foundations. On the surface, these laws were little different from those of police power and eminent do­ main that are normally at the disposal of urban planners, but the fact that the French were not quite representative of all the people in the state, and that they used these laws exclusively for their own benefit, made them instruments of unmitigated exploitation. On the surface, the goals of the Moroccan law on expropriation, as established by the dahir of August 31, 1914, were most reason­ able. The law permitted the public powers to condemn any area needed for a public purpose, to determine through a tribunal the price to be paid as compensation to the owners, and then to take the land and reassign its ownership, sell it, or use it for streets, utility 12 easements, and the like. This, it will be recognized, is the familiar power of eminent domain. Why in this instance was it so oppres­ sive an instrument? For one thing, it was assumed, erroneously, that the legitimate owners of a property slated for condemnation and expropriation were those who held formal French title to the property. N o compensation was paid if legitimate title could not be produced. It was also assumed that a French-constituted tribunal could unilaterally determine a fair price for the expropriated land. The French system of jury determination was not operative in 12 Ibid , ρ 97 Details and a reproduction of the laws themselves can be found in SablayroUes, L'Urbamsme au Maroc It should be noted that entire zones could be condemned for reasons of "beauty, of health, or even because of the increased value the owners might otherwise derive "

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Morocco, only later was an appeals procedure established but, even then, appeal had to be made to the French court, which immediately placed a Moroccan owner at a disadvantage. 13 In short, public purpose essentially meant French purpose. In fact, by 1927 further dahirs had been passed which decreed that French settlement in and of itself was one of the public utility grounds for taking land from the natives^14 Furthermore, in cases of emergency, special powers were granted to the state that allowed it to bypass even this minimal set of legalistic procedures Thus, the dahir of November 8, 1914, "permitted the administration, after an investigation of only eight days, to take possession of the expropriated lands after depositing an indemnity, arbitrated in this case by a justice of the peace of the locality." This special provision was applicable "in cases of emergency, or where the land had not been built on, or for the realization of military works" (de la Casimere, 1924:100). In other words, it was also possible to take land and demolish structures without negotiating compensation if an emergency were declared. We do have records of one instance in which these emergency powers were used. Again I shall let de la Casimere speak for himself (pp. 99-100), for no indictment could be as strong as the self-satisfaction he expresses at this successful use of Moroccan emergency planning powers. The most remarkable . . . example of the efficacy and rapidity of the Moroccan procedure of expropriation is given by the enlargement, during the opening months of 1922, of the Boulevard of 4eme Zouaves at Casablanca. . . . Between 1912 and 1917 . . this projected road was blocked . . . by a bastion of the ancient walls, which were demolished at the later date; but even after this operation the future boulevard still appeared as an irregular pathway. . . . The confusion of these buildings [native funduqs, shops, houses, the qaysanya or cloth market, etc ] was nothing in comparison to the complexities of the legal property rights over them. . . . The enlargement of the boulevard . . . was thus a 13 De la Casimere considered the French jury system a disaster because it placed too many obstacles in the way of the public powers' He preferred the dictatorial methods of Morocco See 1924 98, for his views 14 Perhaps the most scathing indictment of this particularly ingenious definition of public purpose is the highly critical and cynical book by Melvin Knight, Morocco as a French Economic Venture, esp pp 57-67, where he gives his views on the laws of expropriation and immatnculation

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delicate operation and the administration envisaged . . proceed­ ing step by step. . . . At the beginning of December 1921, Marshall Lyautey, struck with the disagreeable appearance which the major entrance to Casablanca still presented, decided to speed up the enlargement of the Boulevard. . . . He gave orders for this operation to pro­ ceed without delay and to be pursued with great haste so that the improvements would be completed before the arrival in Morocco of Μ Mtllerand, that is, by the beginning of April 1922. . . During the course of. . . [less than four months], a declara­ tion of the public utility aspect of this project was promulgated, the order of condemnation involving no less than 154 buildings was issued, and . . . the properties within the roadway were to­ tally cleared by March 15, and on the 5th of April M. Millerand made his entrance by way of the new Boulevard, completely constructed and equipped with curbs and sidewalks and with the central divider planted with yellow flowers [emphasis added] He adds that, of course, the "procedure of expropriation never went. . . to the Tribunal of the First Instance," that is, no one had the courage or know-how to appeal the decision. It is clear from the foregoing how the land devoted to the new cities of Morocco was assembled. Some had been bought outright from the original (?) Moroccan owners, although this seems to have been very little. Most had been purchased at the auctions run by the government, auctions in which a Moroccan could not participate, even though the land being sold off so cavalierly was his national legacy. I have been unable to find out exactly how much land was transferred to European hands through these various methods of immatriculation, auction, and expropriation during this first peri­ od But we do know that up to about 1925, when Lyautey was re­ called, foreign ownership had not yet assumed the massive propor­ tions it would reach during the decade that followed (Knight, 1937:58-59, 67). For the combined period between 1915 and 1937, we do have exact figures on registered land (published in April of 1937 by La Conservation Fonciere) which show that foreigners had registered acreages in excess of Moroccans, and held title to lands whose value far exceeded that of natives, both in the urban and rural portions of the country Table 3, based on data reproduced by Pelletier (1955:13), gives some idea of foreign holdings The totals are not only impressive in magnitude but reveal the

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NUMBER OF TITLES, VALUE, AND AREA OF LANDS IN RURAL AND URBAN

MOROCCO REGISTERED BETWEEN 1915 AND 1937, BY NATIONALITY OF OWNER (value

in million francs)

Land Registered

Nationallity of Owner of Land as Regustered Other Muslim Foreign Moroccan French Total

Urban Land Total titles Value of land (millions) Area (hectares)

10,029 734 5,900

3,036 151 1,550

5,541 363 5,400

18,606 1,248 12,850

Rural Land Total titles Value of land (millions) Area (hectares)

8,577 390 816,300

1,520 34 61,750

26,102 372 921,100

36,199 796 1,799,150

18,606

7,556a )4,556] 185 63,300

32,643 8 131,643) 741 926,500

55,085a )54,805) 2,050 1,812,000

Total Land Total titles Value of land (millions) Area (hectares)

1,124 822,200

a

These discrepant figures are in Pelletier's account, my own totals (in brackets) are somewhat different I believe the figure 55,085 should read 54,805,7,556 should read 4,556, and 32,643 should read 31,643

extent to which foreign holdings, on the average, exceeded native holdings in terms of extent and value per hectare. In the cities, foreigners held over 13,000 pieces of property, at an average size of more than half a hectare apiece, and an average value per hectare of well over 100,000 francs. Contrast this with the less valuable urban land held by Moroccans. While the average plot was one hectare, this hectare was worth only 67,000 francs. Granted, many Moroccan owners had still not registered their titles, but the wealthiest undoubtedly had, so that this figure probably overestimates the size and value of the average Moroccan holding. We have seen where the French obtained the land on which they built their villes nouvelles Now we must ask who provided the labor to build them. Here the answer is easier, and need not detain us. Most of the labor was provided by Moroccans, although certainly they were assisted (directed) by Europeans—to some extent French, the dominant immigrant group, but mostly Spanish and Italian, who came prepared to do much of the skilled manual labor We have some data from the port, where debarkees were asked their nationality and, if they intended to remain as immigrants,

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their occupations. Let us look at some sample years for which both pieces of information are available.15 In 1918, for example, about 2,000 French, 630 Spaniards, 90 Italians, and lesser numbers from assorted countries came to settle in Morocco. In that year, only 154 reported that they were in the construction trades. In 1919 numbers were up. Almost 7,000 Frenchmen arrived, together with 1,640 Spaniards, 621 Italians, 193 English, and small numbers from other nationalities. Of those declaring their occupations, 580 were construction workers. Even in the peak year of 1921, with close to 9,000 French immigrants, 2,000 Spanish, almost 1,600 Italian, and so on, the number of construction workers was augmented to only 1,300. Clearly, these were insufficient forces to build the cities that were literally doubling in size in a decade, to pave the roads, build the railways, and construct the new ports. In fact, during the 1920s one did not hear of excess population, of unemployed workers, of a population explosion or irresponsible breeding, one heard only of a labor shortage, ofjobs and opportunities in the coastal cities, of the need for workers to help the French in their mushrooming projects. To meet these needs there were the urban artisans whose traditional livelihoods had declined because of imports, and the newly arriving villagers seeking work. By the 1920s, Rabat had begun to develop a four-tiered class system with a caste line dividing the highest two from the bottom two At the apex of the system were the predominantly French (and other northern European) entrepreneurs and civil servants, numbering in the thousands, who settled chiefly in the core ville nouvelle south of the medina. In the second tier were the more proletarian European workers, many of them from southern Europe (Spanish, Italian, and Gibraltan), somewhat fewer in number, who settled primarily in the less elegant colonial quarter of Ocean. A caste-hke gap separated these two groups from the Moroccans who were, in turn, subdivided between the group that was urbanized before the colonial period (including the ruling class, the bourgeoisie, and the artisans) and the newcomers from the hinterlands who entered, at the bottom rung, the dependent labor force geared to providing brute strength and menial services for the colonial enterprises The former occupied the medina, while the latter settled into any overlooked interstice, first overcrowding the more msalu15 I am indebted to Anthony Sullivan for having assembled these figures from Annuaire economiaue el financier (1924) 9-11

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bnous quarters of the medina, but then beginning to overflow into isolated pockets (such as Douar Dabbagh and Douar Doum) on the periphery, as well While this is a somewhat over simplified view of the situation, which ignores compradore and liaison groups, it does indicate at least the bare outlines of a "division of labor" that was to become increasingly refined and differentiated in the next few decades The third prerequisite for building the colonial city was money, for an entire infrastructure had to be created ex nihilo, and new services had to be introduced to care for the foreign populations that aspired to a life not at the level to which they were already accustomed, but at the level to which they wished to become accustomed For, as was the case with Englishmen who went to India, most of the immigrants who flocked to Morocco were workingclass or petit-bourgeois at best They migrated chiefly to improve their positions, and the standards they wished to establish for themselves in Morocco were definitely at a level far above their life styles at home, they were commensurate with their new position as part of the ruling caste The elegant quarters foreigners built for their own use were achievable only because 1 they were granted preferential access to building sites, 2 they were required to abide by laws governing construction and design which, while suited to their needs, effectively excluded Moroccans, 3 they (or at least their sponsors, the Protectorate administration) controlled the municipal government apparatus that passed these laws, and 4 the Protectorate administration was free to allocate public funds preferentially to satisfy "urban" needs according to their own priorities—that is, to concentrate on the urban needs in the quarters they inhabited We have already shown how foreigners gained preferential access to building sites In the next chapter we examine how the governmental apparatus was used to make certain that the foreign population would be the chief beneficiary of fiscal and legal resources

-IIIXALL DONE ACCORDING TO THE LAW

FRENCH polIcy m Morocco under Lyautey was remarkably conSIStent. At the natIOnal level, as we have seen m Chapter VII, a dual system of separate but hardly equal admInIstratIOn was establIshed. The French claImed that they had so much respect for Shanfian legItImacy that they would not tamper wIth Its mstItutIons or tradItIOns. Thus, they dId not abolIsh the sultanate; they merely handpIcked the unruly mcumbent's successor and reqUIred hIm to sIgn all laws they mtroduced. They retamed the IslamIC legal code and Its courts, and dId not abolIsh the mstItutIon of the bubus, although they dId confiscate much of ItS wealth. In short, they apparently left mtact the polItIcal and legal forms that eXIsted before theIr arnval. However, they methodICally constructed a parallel admInIstratIve apparatus-headed by the French ResIdent General, supported by bureaus, agenCIes, and mImstrylIke bureaucraCIes-to whIch they systematIcally transferred all power. They mstItuted a new system of land and property ownershIp accordmg to the Napoleomc Code, mdependent of the shari'a, and set up an appropnate JundICal apparatus to enforce legal claIms under It, thereby removmg real power over economIC affaIrs from the Moroccan courts. In the name of the Moroccan government, they entered mto publIc ventures such as phosphate mmmg and other forms of explOItatIOn of the natIOnal resources, and used the proceeds to create an mfrastructure of ports, roads, and raIl lmes deSIgned to faCIlItate foreIgn-sponsored capItalIst enterpnses. In the name of the Moroccan government, they collected taxes that they called "tradItIonal," namely, the tertlb (ArabIc tartib), but mampulated the terms m such a way that foreIgners, m fact, tended to be taxed at rates lower than those paId by Moroccans. In all of these actIVItIes, they always claImed that they dId not WIsh to supplant natIve powers and mstItutIons, but merely to supplement and strengthen them. In actual fact, theIr strategy was to retam the form of the tradItIonal system whIle emptymg It of ItS powers. Each parallel French mstItutIOn ab-

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sorbed the decision-making autonomy of its counterpart Moroccan institution, while leaving the shell as untouched as possible. At the urban level, the same strategy was pursued, with equal success. As we have seen, the French claimed that they respected and admired the Moroccan medinas too much to tamper with their beauty or traditional ways of life. Thus, they did not remove the walls but, in fact, reinforced them. They did not modernize the structures but, in fact, passed laws to prevent their alteration. In short, they tried to keep intact the physical arrangements of the cities they found. However, they methodically constructed separate and parallel cities in a system of urban apartheid, new cities that drained away the economic base of the medinas and became the focus of lavish improvements. First the land on which these cities were built was expropriated or "absorbed" into the French domain, and then the proceeds of its sale were used to create the needed infrastructure. And just as had been true at the national level, a dual urban political structure was set up as the mechanism by which decision-making power was transferred from the Moroccan to the French system. In Morocco the French could not claim, as they had in Algeria and Tunisia, that indigenous urban centers lacked a system of municipal governance and administration. Indeed, they were forced to acknowledge, and cope with, the existence of strong municipal traditions which, like the national state and the physical medinas, they claimed to respect. Paul Decroux expressed the French dilemma accurately: In Algeria . . . the communes which exist today [1932] were the work of (French] legislation. . . . In the Regency [in Tunisia], municipal home rule was equally unknown. All administration was centralized. The local affairs, minimal as they were, were resolved at Tunis by the . . . central government. Only the city of Tunis possessed, since 1858, a sort of municipal council. In Morocco, on the contrary, the Protectorate found itself in the presence of large urban agglomerations which properly speaking had no municipal life but which had a certain local administration to which they were attached and a long past of which they were proud. . . . The cities of Morocco were not simply "bourgs"; they had large populations . . . [and] were insulated like citadels. . . . The sentiment of individuality of Moroc-

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can cities was . sharpened by the spirit of rivalry which existed between them. . . All these circumstances favored the blossoming of a certain local life and explain why, in Morocco, France found upon its arrival cities the likes of which were not to be found in Algeria and Tunisia.x Recognizing the complexity of the indigenous form of municipal government, the French sought first to study and then to "use" it. Mercier's analysis of the administrative structure of Rabat "on the eve" was further elaborated in the series on Vales et tnbus, and repeated with mechanical regularity in all French books on Moroccan cities (such as those by de la Casimere, Decroux, and Sablayrolles). The roles of the pasha, the qadi, the muhtasib, the amin almustafad, and so on are meticulously outlined, as if the authors were searching for some way to adapt for their own ends this elaborate administrative apparatus they could not dismiss. Their failure to adopt from the beginning the same pattern of dual and separate development on the local level that they had instituted nationally may have been prompted by their humility in the face of the obvious effectiveness of the extant system. In any event, the first attempts to set up viable municipal administrations under the Protectorate were uncertain and experimental No problems arose concerning the cities of the interior, where foreigners constituted an unimportant minority and where military security took priority. There, the "intelligence bureaus," later subsumed under the Bureau of Native Affairs, administered the cities directly, and since these bureaus were military organs, it was not possible to disguise the fact that force was the sole source of their legitimacy (see Decroux, 1932:25) The situation in coastal cities such as Casablanca, Rabat, Mogador, Mazagan, and Safi was somewhat different. There, at least for a brief time after the signing of the Protectorate Treaty, the native administration was kept intact; however, the French Consul in each city shared power with the city's Pasha, reproducing in microcosm the model of Lyautey's relationship with the Sultan. These provisional arrangements were soon formalized, but in a way that blatantly violated the Lyauteyan principle of separation On June 27, 1913, a law was promulgated entitled "Dahir relative to the organization of municipal commissions in the ports of the 1 Decroux (1932, abstracted from 11-13) For further discussions, see his Chapter 15 339-362

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Cherifien Empire " The dahir provided, in the five municipalities noted above, for the establishment of joint commissions composed of both European and Moroccan officials and representatives, who were to collaborate in governing the cities (Decroux, 1932:25-26). This legislation was applied to Rabat by July 5, 1913, when the commission was formed and the following members officially appointed. The pasha of the city was designated president of the commission, while the French chief of municipal services was appointed vice president. (All decisions taken by the commission were to be countersigned by both these officials.) In addition, four French administrators, ex officio, sat on the council, an agent representing the controller of the (public) debt, an agent from the central bureau of finance (responsible for collecting revenues), the director of municipal public works, and the physician in charge of hygienic services and public health A fifth Frenchman served by virtue of his position as first vice president of the local Chamber of Commerce. Moroccan administration was represented by the presence on the commission of both the muhtasib and the amin al-mustafad, ex officio. The membership was completed by eight French,2 six Muslim, and two Jewish representatives, selected from among the "notables" of each community and appointed by vizinal decree (see, inter aha, Rabat et sa region 2, 1919:35-36). The functions assigned to the commission included "deliberating" on issues of general welfare, approving contracts relating to the city, accepting gifts and legacies to the public purse, overseeing the organization and functioning of municipal services, supervising the planning and construction of roads (ibid :36), and drawing up a recommended municipal budget (Decroux, 1932:27). The commission, in actual practice, functioned poorly. It suffered from a number of failings. First, it was neither a legislative nor an executive body, being given the power to deliberate but not to decide. Second, it was in no way representative of the "people" of the city, since the lay members were appointed rather than elected.3 Third, despite their numerical superiority in the city itself, 2

Decroux (1932 27) gives this number as only four Leandre Vaillat, in his Le Peuple marocam (1934 39), leveled a strong critique at Prost, called him a virtual architectural dictator in Morocco "Instead of having the people participate in the decisions concerning urban planning and architectural design, he himself [Prost] appointed the municipal or town councillors, choosing them from among the local elites Similarly, the heads of municipalities were not elected mayors but sorts of specialists or 'burgermeisters ' " Needless to say, when Vaillat deplored the lack of public participation, he was referring to the French public 3

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Moroccans were greatly outnumbered and outvoted in the com­ mission, there being only nine Muslim as compared with fourteen French and two Jewish members. Fourth, although ostensibly the pasha was "president" and therefore the highest ranking member, in actual fact it was the French chief of municipal services who was intended to be in control, and indeed who ran the city. 4 And finally, the commission, despite all precautions to pick "cooperative" na­ tives, was the scene of much bickering and ill-will, since it was one of the only institutions in Morocco in which French and Moroccans confronted each other over a common task. The confusion arose because, although the municipal services section was a perfect example of the French technique of setting up parallel institutions, the commission idea made it appear that the service existed not only for the benefit of the European community, but for all. On paper, at least, Moroccans seemed to have been given a say in the policies that would guide urban laws, expenditures, and decisions, but when they tried to exercise that right, the commission quickly proved its incapacity. It was this final failing that caused the 1913 dahir to be rescinded only four years after its promulgation. Lyautey had considered the Tunisian experiment of "mixing the races" in administrative offices and deliberative bodies to have been an unmitigated disaster and, in Morocco, with the sole exception of the handful of municipal commissions, he had assiduously avoided such contact. He saw the failure of the commissions as proof of his position (Decroux, 1932.55, note 39), and his argument is echoed in Decroux's account. The worst failing [of the system established by the 1913 dahirj . . is that it united within the same assembly Europeans and na­ tives, which was a grave error. [W]hether the indigenous element was superior or inferior in number to that of the Euro4

The case is put very honestly by the authors o(Les Vtlles apres la conquete "The native organization of Rabat has remained as it was before the installation of the Pro­ tectorate but a control organization has been created alongside the old One essential principle has governed, in effect, in relation to the reorganization of the city's admin­ istration to maintain the existing functions of the Makhzen and to create a new or­ ganization, Municipal Services, destined to guide and strengthen its authority The administration of the Protectorate exercises a sort of tutelage over the native functionaries while leaving [alone] their prestige vis-a-vis their subjects " (quoted from ρ 33 with emphasis added) Thus, according to the authors, all the old functionaries re­ tained their roles, although they were now subject to "guidance" and "control" from the chief of municipal services

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peans, one arrived rapidly at annihilation. The deliberations of the assembly took place in French, of which the natives could comprehend nothing. As it was practically impossible to organize the discussion in two languages, the natives were malcontent (1932:28-29). To put an end to these difficulties, a new dahir was promulgated on April 8, 1917, and under these revisions, "the pashas became the active agents of municipal authority and were invested with regulatory powers . . . [but] assisted and controlled on the one hand by the Chief of Municipal Services, a functionary of the Protectorate, and on the other hand by a deliberative body, the Municipal Commission" (ibid.:30 with emphasis added). This revision cleared up some of the confusions of the earlier legislation, and placed the urban administration well in line with the philosophy of parallel and separate structures The Moroccan system was stripped of decision-making power. The shell of "pasha, muhtasib, amin al-mustafad" was retained in name. However, the French chief of municipal services, supported by a sizable staff and charged with planning and executing urban improvements and maintaining the city, held the real reins of control The "representatives" from the local community were shunted to a siding, well off the track of power, where they could fight to their hearts' content, if they were ever called into session Once in session, they could not make themselves understood, and in practice, the two language groups often met separately 5 Their approval was not required for action, and their deliberations took place in a vacuum In the rare event that they reached agreement, they could make a recommendation to the chief of municipal services, but there was nothing in the law that required him to listen to, much less follow, their advice. They were demoted from deliberative bodies to "consultative." The outcome of this was that the French chief of municipal services came to exercise vis-a-vis the Moroccan pasha as much power in the city as Lyautey did vis-a-vis the Sultan on the national level While nominal control was in the hands of the pasha, who was 5 In January 16, 1919, a circular was issued requiring that the mixed commissions be subdivided into three sections one for the Europeans, one for the Muslims, and one for the Jews These bodies deliberated separately in their own languages (Decroux, 1932 60-62) The commissions were consultative only, they offered advice but their opinion was in no way binding (ibid 63-64)

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charged with enforcing all laws, proposing the municipal budget, regulating markets and exchanges, establishing municipal taxes and duties, issuing building permits, establishing easements for the public roads, issuing regulations on planning and public projects, and so on (Decroux, 1932:45-47), the real power resided in his French counterpart, the chief of municipal services. According to Decroux, the latter was the functional mayor of the city. Officially designated as "an aid to the pasha," he was in fact his equal, his substitute, and perhaps his superior (ibid.:53) 6 Although the chief may have been superior to the pasha, he was not in sole control, for the French system of centralized administration meant, abroad as at home, that many of the more important decisions affecting the city would be made by centralized ministries rather than at the local level.7 In fact, the Resident General was ultimately charged with governing the municipalities, which he did through a "Direction de l'Administration Mumcipale," one section of which supervised administration and budgeting, while the second section, headed by Prost, was concerned with physical planning (Decroux, 1932 155-157). In addition, urban policing was in the hands of the French chef de la surete regionale,8 most of the funds that reached the municipal budget came as subventions from the central administration and were often earmarked for specific purposes, and the laws on building and planning followed "models" that were adopted nationally and then applied to specific municipalities through local arretes (decrees). Although from one standpoint one could interpret this central control as an abridgment of the power of the local chief of municipal services, from another standpoint one recognizes that such controls actually strengthened 6 No attempt was made to conceal this Thus, in the discussion on municipal organization in the 1948 volume of L'Encydopedie colomale et maritime Maroc 185-186, we find the following statement "The Chef des Services Municipaux is answerable to the Directcur de l'lnteneur Just as the civil superintendent controls the caid | in rural areas |, the Chef des Services Municipaux controls the pasha in his acts of planning and city administration " 7 For a clear exposition of the French system of local government, one of the four "basic types" in force in the world today, and the one that was instituted throughout much of the Third World, regardless of the nationality of the colonizer, see Harold F Alderftr, Local Government in Developing Countries, first section 8 The importance of this shift cannot be overestimated The real power of the pasha, as delegated agent for the Sultan, always resided in his police power to enforce the makhzan's rule When he was deprived of this his role became purely ceremonial

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his hand locally in his power bid against the pasha, for it made him a direct delegate and agent for the Protectorate administration, whose power on the national level was absolute. It was this national power, sometimes exercised directly but more often operating indirectly through the local administration, that both made possible the system of urban apartheid which assured concentration of different population groups in separate quarters of the city, and made certain that the quarters inhabited by foreigners would receive virtually all the benefits of public expenditures. This could not have been accomplished so effectively if local autonomy had been allowed to persist, for then the local power structure might have influenced the outcome. This could certainly not have been done so discreetly if representative government had been introduced, for then public debates might have caused embarrassment, even if they failed to change the outcome. A final alternative—that of administering the medinas and the villes nouvelles separately and giving them their own budgets and rights to make local regulations and set independent priorities—was never even considered, for that would have left too much power in the hands of the all-Moroccan medinas, and would have required military administration to prevent its exercise. The system adopted proved a most effective instrument for disguising French power behind a fagade of legal and fiscal legitimacy. We have alluded throughout to the existence of urban apartheid, without ever specifying how it was created. Strictly speaking, there were no laws, such as those in South Africa, to forbid social intercourse between natives and foreigners. No passes were required by Moroccans wishing to move from one place to another, a technique used extensively throughout southern Africa to control blacks and confine them to native reserves. There were not even urban-specific laws that required Moroccans to live in the medinas or foreigners to live in the villes nouvelles. But despite the absence of these forms of direct legal segregation, the de facto separation of the "races" was almost as perfect as Lyautey wished. Could this have been achieved simply through voluntanstic methods, through the indirect method of economic inequity and demand? Probably not, much as some contemporary Moroccans would like to believe. But if it was not done through apartheid legislation per se, by what means was it achieved? My contention is that it was done very effectively through administrative discretion, and that the form of municipal governance

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described above gave free play to specific agents whose discretionary judgment was unlimited, and who were in a position to act "in a perfectly legal manner" to keep the two populations apart. In this process, two organizations seem to have played a particularly crucial role—both employing the same legal mechanism, the building permit. The French administrative organization chiefly responsible for keeping Europeans out of the medinas was the Service des BeauxArts, whose ostensible charge was to preserve the architectural and historic heritage of the country. To this end, the service established its jurisdiction over "historic zones" and the area surrounding "monuments" to be preserved or restored. In conjunction with the chief of municipal services, in whose office the detailed plans for specific quarters were drawn up in conformity to the overall design of Prost, the Service des Beaux-Arts declared certain areas in the vicinity of such monuments as the Hasan mosque and the medina walls in Rabat to be zones of non edificandi, completely prohibiting construction in them. In the remainder of the medina, the service exercised tight control, requiring a building permit for every new building or remodeled structure. Rather than issuing an ordinance specifying the types and styles of structures permitted (such as an architectural control regulation, for example), the service required a drawing and plan of every proposed alteration or new structure to be built. It then issued a permit to proceed only when it had determined that the style was consistent with the zone and the plan did not violate the "character" of the area. De la Casiniere is explicit about the purpose of this procedure. To obtain the desired results, ministerial decrees, complementing and reinforcing the local decrees on voines [of these more below], prescribed special rules to which constructions in the old cities were to conform (ministerial decrees ofJuly 8, 1922, for Rabat; of September 23, 1922, for Meknes . . .). Their thrust essentially consisted of obliging the builder to respect the local "style," very different from one town to the other; to prevent any infraction on this rule, the requests for permission to build were passed upon not only by the administrative authority but by a local representative of the Service des Beaux-Arts (1924:%). According to de la Casiniere, these ministerial orders were intended "to prevent or hinder European constructions which would compromise the picturesqueness of the indigenous quarters" {ibid.), but

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what they also did was to make it virtually impossible for a European to build or remodel a house in the "native quarter," unless he were willing to do without exterior windows, a European-type kitchen, or any other amenity which, in the discretionary opinion of the representative of the Beaux-Arts Service, would "ruin" the city.9 In the initial legislation, the discretionary power was shared between the Beaux-Arts Service and the Office of Municipal Services, which sometimes occasioned controversy or allowed an applicant the opportunity to play one off against the other This area of potential overlap was rectified by the dahir of April 1, 1924, "relatif au controle du Service des Beaux-Arts et des monuments histonques," which asserted the superiority of its authority not only over historic districts but over structures adjacent to all public buildings or buildings used by the public (Sablayrolles, 1925:48). The remainder of the city was the sole responsibility of the pasha, "who has delegated his powers over the municipality to a French functionary" (Sablayrolles, 1925:27, italics ours), namely, the chief of municipal services. In short, it was the Office of Municipal Services that drew up plans for the individual quarters of the city, set aside land for public ways, supervised the redistribution of property where it was required by the plan, established building regulations concerning land coverage, height of structures, style of fagades, setback requirements, even height and degree of openness of frontyard walls, and controlled the issuance of building permits to ensure that these regulations, which varied markedly from district to district within the city, would be complied with. These regulations, referred to deceptively by the very narrow term vome (road), covered many areas in which modern law has determined they cannot be defended as necessary for public health and safety. Furthermore, the law, as we shall see, left enormous discretionary 9 It should be pointed out that Moroccans also were 'petrified" at the "traditional" form, but this was intended largely to discourage them from renovating their dwellings to rent to foreigners (see de la Casiniere, 1924 96) The net effect was to return Morocco to the situation of the late nineteenth century, when Dr Kerr, for example, had sought to rent a house in Sala but was not permitted to do so by the city's pasha In connection with his house in the medina of Rabat, he reported that "for the first fifteen or twenty years [of his stay, that is, 1886-1900 or so] no house could be obtained without a government order, nor could we obtain a joiner or mason to repair the same without permission of the governor Any windows we might desire to make for light and ventilation had to be done by ourselves under cover of night and with the utmost secrecy" (Kerr, 1912 259)

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powers in the hands of the administrators. It was these powers that were used to discourage if not prevent the movement of Moroccans into "European" quarters As the French civil servants involved were so fond of pointing out, the urban legislation on voine, introduced into Morocco via the all-important dahir of April 16, 1914, was the most advanced in the world 10 —preceding by some four years the passage of similar legislation with respect to French cities (but with one marked difference, as we shall see), and by five the first court validation of zoning laws in the United States Never before had municipalities been given such power to plan and to police constructions The lengthy preamble to the dahir of April 16 on voine tries to give the impression, however, that the aims were modest and the powers conferred neither unusual nor unjustified, given the dimensions of the "crisis" in Morocco The prodigious development of certain cities in Morocco revealed clearly the need to impose, for the good of all, a methodical street system [voine methodique]. Until now, the administration could intervene only by taking occasional and specific actions. The present dahir is for the purpose of filling that gap by instituting a complete legislation governing roadways The system which it establishes is different from the French system. . It is inspired by different preoccupations, particularly impelling in Morocco: that of health, above all, to which all private interests must be sacrificed; the need to act quickly in order to somehow prevent too rapid development, and the interest in aesthetics, which is required to preserve the picturesque riches of the country. It does not innovate in anything and limits itself to adapting to the French character the spirit of the most modern foreign laws (as quoted in Sablayrolles, 1925:38). Such a modest claim for so sweeping a law The law does, indeed, begin (but not end) with streets. The first section deals with alignments, streets, and easements, and establishes the procedure whereby land may be expropriated for these purposes. It gives the power to governors or pashas (read chefs des services mumcipaux) to issue arretes declaring that the land is 10

Sablayrolles suggests that there were precedents in Germany, Italy, and Egypt (1925 38), and Lyautey praised Prost not only for his architectural talents but for having made a complete study of the legal mechanisms available for planning in various European countries, on which he based his innovative laws

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needed for a public purpose. Once the arrete is published in the Bulletin qffictel, no one may build on the areas shown on the official map (published with the arrete), and arrangements are made for the transfer of title, with or without compensation. Where a building already occupies a public way, it can no longer be maintained or repaired without special authorization (Sablayrolles, 1925:39). From "streets" it was a simple logical leap to a master plan, for as the law points out, alignments for particular streets only make sense within a larger plan for the quarter or even the city. Thus, the second part of the dahir deals with the plan d'amenagement et d'extension, and enables the creation of a legally binding plan for every city in the French zone The plan, to fix the widths, paths, and profiles of all existing and new streets, the location and extent of open spaces, such as gardens, parks, and forests, and the servitudes to be established in the interests of "public security, hygiene, circulation, and aesthetics," was itself declared "of public utility" by means of a dahir {ibid.-40) These plans could be either for entire cities or for particular quarters and, like the arretes on roadways, once promulgated, they then served as the legal basis for expropriation. 11 A similar logical step also takes us from streets to the houses that border them, and thus to the regulations (called police des constructions) which were covered in the third section of the dahir of 1914 This section made it mandatory for anyone seeking to build or repair a building to receive prior authorization from the administration. Once the "standards" had been determined (and they could be different in various subareas of the city), they were to be enacted into law via arretes which, in combination, would serve as a sort of building code. The dahir enabled regulations fixing maximum heights of buildings, the minimum dimensions of buildings having interior courts, the number of stories, the minimum sizes of rooms, the type of system to be used for the evacuation of wastes, the kinds of building materials to be employed, and so on. "In addition one is permitted to impose upon owners servitudes necessary for purposes of hygiene, circulation, and beauty. Notably, in certain quarters and on certain streets one can require a wide setback to create more open space, . . fix the proportion of land coverage, . . require side yards between buildings . . One can also forbid certain kinds of buildings and establish the architectural style to which facades of buildings must conform" (Sablayrolles, 1925:46). 11

Mauret (1953 162) enumerates the specific dahirs governing each of the subareas of Rabat, almost all promulgated between 1918 and 1925

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Article 12 not only granted to the pasha (read chef des services municipaux) the power to police all constructions in the city, but enabled every city to set up its own regulations on buildings by means of a municipal arrete called "reglement de voine." Despite this apparent bow to home rule, "to encourage municipalities to elaborate such regulations and to serve as a guide in the establishment of appropriate . . regulations, the central administration fProst's] has judged it desirable to draw up a model reglement de voine, which has been published in the Bulletin offiael of July 3, 1916" {ibid. :47) In fact, various cities and towns simply adopted this model legislation—Rabat by an arrete of January 8, 1919, as amended February 2, 1921; Sale by a similar arrete on September 1, 1924 {ibid.)—giving substantial uniformity to the system by which constructions were regulated. It was the reglement de voine, in combination with the power to grant or withhold building (and remodeling and repair) permits, that constituted the basic mechanism by which urban apartheid was enforced in Rabat and elsewhere The power of the chef des services municipaux to plan individual quarters separately, and to set up entirely different building regulations in various parts of the city as he saw fit, plus his discretionary right to grant or withhold building permits or to impose special conditions upon special applicants, provided him (and his assistants) with at least the potential ability to reserve certain areas of the city for exclusive European occupancy, while making native quarters extremely inhospitable to European would-be settlers. We can see some of these mechanisms in a closer examination of the provisions of the model code. In the European quarters, generous setbacks were required, which precluded constructing a Moroccan courtyard house, any interior court had to occupy at least one-fifth of the area of the surrounding walls, a house set back from the alignment had to enclose its front yard by an iron gnllwork or wall that could not be above eye level; roofs were to be slanted at no more than thirty-five degrees, special types of utilities (bathrooms of Western style) were required, and so on. On the other hand, in "native" quarters, flat roofs were required and visual overviews of adjacent terraces were prohibited, no posters or European signs were permitted, and architectural style and facade were rigidly specified. (For fuller details, see Sablayrolles, 1925:4952, also Prost, 1932a-61-62.) By setting up such differential regulations, the administration

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sought to keep each group "in its place," through both cost (in the same way that the poor in America are excluded from certain suburbs by zoning and building regulations that place housing well beyond their reach) and convenience, that is, by making it impossible to build modified Moroccan housing in European quarters or modified European housing in Moroccan quarters. Over and above these techniques of persuasion was the ultimate power to deny permission to build—and although one would scarcely expect to find documentary evidence proving that the Office of Municipal Services systematically denied such permissions when they were requested by the "wrong" people for the "wrong" zones, I would be very surprised if this did not happen quite frequently. For the rationale and the ideology were there, and were subscribed to uncritically, indeed defensively, by the French urban planners and administrators, as evidenced in their writings We noted earlier that the Moroccan dahir of April 16, 1914, went far beyond similar legislation instituted in France several years later It did so in two very important ways, both of which had implications for the issue of urban apartheid. First, in France a citizen had recourse to the courts if he felt that the discretionary power of the planner or executer of the building regulations had stepped beyond bounds; in Morocco there was no such appeal.12 No legislature framed the regulations, they were by administrative decree. And no provision was made for appeal to a higher authority, such as the courts, to question either the legality of a provision (such as has been done in the United States with respect to specific types of zoning) or its application in the particular instance In Morocco, it was primarily a "rule of men," rather than laws, and of men whose deepest commitment was to apartheid The second difference had to do with the mechanism of expropriation, to which we alluded in Chapter VIII but to which we must now return for a closer look. One provision of the April 16 dahir, of which its framers were most proud, was the system it established for the creation of "Associations Syndicales des Propnetaires Urbains." This appeared in the section of the law dealing 12 In cases of condemnation and expropriation, there were mechanisms available for appeal Because of the short deadline available for protests, and also because proceedings were in French from beginning to end, foreigners were more likely to avail themselves of this recourse than Moroccans In the case of building regulations and administrative discretion in their application, however, there was no clear legal recourse

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with "modalities of execution" of the plans of amenagement and the reglements de voine. T h e chief " m o d a l i t y " was the police p o w e r to expropriate land for a public purpose, whether that p u r pose was for streets, public buildings, easements, or a reorganization of ownership in order to carry out a subdivision plan. The powers and procedures regarding these associations were originally established by a dahir of August 31, 1914, and were further expanded in the April dahir of 1916 and a subsequent and m o r e detailed one promulgated N o v e m b e r 10, 1917. Prost took pride in his innovative system for redistributing parcels of urban land that had been prematurely subdivided before planning. In contrast with the system available in France at that time, whereby the government, in order to replan a district, had to expropriate par zone, that is, buy up an entire zone from its multiple owners, set aside land for streets and other public uses, resubdividc, and then sell the residual building plots, the Moroccan system delegated these powers to private associations of landowners. Prost confessed that this alternative was really necessary because the P r o tectorate lacked sufficient funds to expropriate and compensate par zone. In order to eliminate these costs, the government invited p r o p erty owners in certain urban areas (that is, the villes nouvelles, particularly in Casablanca and Rabat) to form "associations syndicales," whose officers, in cooperation with the urban planners and in conformity w i t h the master plan for streets, w o u l d pool all land in the zone, deed to the city those easements needed for streets and utilities, and reapportion and redistribute the residual lands among the members of the syndicate according to an elaborate formula that took into account the size and location of their original holdings and the relative values of the redistributed lots (for details, see La Renaissance du Manx.366-367, de la Casiniere, 1924.97-107, Sablayrolles, 1925 55-60) Presumably, this approach allowed the g o v e r n m e n t to recapture the surplus value created b y i m p r o v e ments to the land by means of a "benefits" tax, although there seems to have been m u c h slippage between intent and execution. T h e law was a peculiar one While recognizing that the right of expropriation belonged exclusively to the police p o w e r of the state, in essence it allowed the delegation of police powers to privately constituted land companies chartered by the French and tied directly to the system of immatriculation (that is, land ownership registration with the authorities coming under the jurisdiction of the

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13

French rather than the Islamic courts). We have already seen how the system of immatriculation was used to deprive Moroccans, either individually or collectively, of their lands, we can now see how even single holders of mulk (freehold) urban lands could be driven out of particular zones of the city by the mechanism of the syndic ates The French officials could declare certain zones to be needed for a "public purpose" (replanning), and thereby halt construction. AH "legal" owners, that is, those who held formal French title through the mimatriculation system, would then form a private company of shareholders to which the authorities ceded police power. The syn­ dicate then reassigned lots at its own discretion, in collusion with the office of the chief of municipal services. The possibilities for "ridding" quarters in the villes nouvelles of any Moroccan owners who happened to be there were multiple and unrestrained. First, they could be eliminated a priori if they had not registered their ownership under the Torrens Act. Second, even if they had, they were at the mercy of their French neighbors, who could assign them unusable or valueless plots when the time came for reassign­ ment of the grouped land Again, it is impossible to document how much chicanery went on under cover of this legal mechanism, but we must assume that fraud sometimes occurred. How, otherwise, could the territories on which the villes nouvelles were built have been transferred so completely to exclusive foreign control' The law had another intriguing aspect Although theoretically the land companies were private firms, and although theoretically the state was supposed to be collecting from owners the surplus value generated through urban improvements, in actual fact many of the land syndicates received subsidies from the public purse to assist them in their operations As de la Casimere notes (1924:101), In effect, the Dahir of November 10, 1917 gave to these associa­ tions the power of puissance pubhque which permitted them to proceed to a complete redistribution of properties within their perimeters This redistribution is radical in effect, all the land, whether built upon or not, is considered held in common by all members of the association and is reapportioned anew after set13 Sablayrolles (1925 57-58) puts the matter baldly "The right of expropriation belongs only to the police power, but through any act declaring ζ public purpose, which is done through a dahir or a vizinal arrek, this |police power] can be delegated to any public establishment, corporation or private individual," according to article 3 of the dahir or August 31, 1914

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ting aside the expropriated portion needed for the roads. . Losing owners are indemnified, most of the costs being covered by the association. But, as de la Casiniere continues, "the syndicated association, however, can receive a subvention from the city or from the state to balance its budget." Thus, not only did the system facilitate the clearing of Moroccans from European zones, but it also permitted the occasional use of public subsidies for this purpose. This brings us to our final point. We have seen the mechanisms used by the French to achieve urban apartheid—to separate the two "races" within the city. This separation facilitated differential allocations from the public purse to the two communities through the indirect means of space. Each quarter within the city could be financed at luxurious or penurious standards as the authorities saw fit, by means of capital improvement and municipal service budget allocations. The power to allocate funds, although theoretically in the hands of the pasha and the consultative municipal assembly, was actually in the hands of the French-controlled central ministries (which offered subventions to the various municipalities) and the chief of municipal services who, in cooperation with the central organization for municipalities, made actual budgetary decisions The importance of this cannot be overestimated, for the power of the purse was the sine qua non without which the villes nouvelles could not have been built and maintained It was also the method whereby resources were systematically redistributed from the poor (Moroccans) to the rich (foreign community). We have noted that the third prerequisite for building the colonial city was money—public funds to create ex mhilo the infrastructure of roads, utilities, and municipal services commensurate with Lyautey's ambitious visions of the most advanced and modern facilities in the world (Lyautey, 1927:452) Unfortunately, the Moroccan base onto which these most advanced facilities were to be grafted was, to say the least, backward. Take the case of roads. From all accounts of the nineteenth and even early twentieth centuries, there were literally no roads or bridges in the country Observer after observer remarks on the complete absence of wheeled vehicles in Morocco (inter alia, Durrieu, 1854:59-60, Stutfield, 1886:5, 184), and although there are isolated references to carts in earlier history, 14 it is generally agreed that when the French unloaded their so-called "Algerian carts" at 14

In Les Sources inedites de I'htstoire du Maroc 3 335-337, there is a document of

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the Wadi Sebou in their invasion of 1906, they introduced a new era in Moroccan transport. Soon, "the movement and supplying of [French] troops in 1911-1912 revolutionized the primitive transport facilities. Wheeled traffic was introduced rapidly to replace the overworked camels which died off on the trails to Fez" (Knight, 1937:36, citing Marcel Boussen, 1934) Military necessity also had initiated the first functional rail line in the country, built in 1911 between Casablanca and Rabat for the use of the French army. "Savings realized from moving military goods by rail instead of camel were estimated to equal the entire cost of this line after only eight months of its operation" (Stewart, 1964:148).15 The building of roads became a top-priority activity of the occupation, and it is ironic that although the Moroccon debt prior to the Protectorate had served as one of the "reasons" for outside control, now the Protectorate borrowed even greater sums to make whatever improvements it wished One French writer mentions with pride these accomplishments - "Before the Protectorate one could not find even one kilometer of road in Morocco. In 1914, under a loan of 35 million, the public works built the first roads. By 1930, after many successive loans, there were 5,242 kilometers of roads" (Pelletier, 1955.10). Urban streets were an important part of this development Between 1912 and 1923, close to 500,000 meters of principal arteries were constructed in the fifteen most populous municipalities of Morocco. Of these, 70 percent were in the new cities that the French had constructed for their exclusive use The comparable percentages for collector roads and secondary streets, respectively, were 84 and 70 percent 16 In Rabat the contrast was particularly striking. Of the more than 60,000 meters of street length paved beMarch 21, 1541, which mentions the use of carts by Moroccans in order to move artillery I am indebted to Andrew C Hess for this reference 15 Predecessors existed, but these were not really functional There were, for example, the one-kilometer track built in 1888 as a demonstration model for Mawlay Hasan by the Belgian government, and of course the "toy" in 'Abd al-'Aziz's palace (see "Les Chemins de Fer," in the Maroc volume of the 1948 edition of L'Encyclopedie colomale et maritime, pp 424-433) Knight (1937) says the line paid for itself in three months instead of eight, but I have not found the original figures to verify either estimate 16 De la Casiniere (1924), Statistical Table 3 in the Appendix, gives information on the length of major arteries, collector streets, and secondary roads existing in Moroccan cities before 1912, and the length of roads of each kind built after that date in both the medinas and the new cities I have computed the relative proportions of new roads in each kind of quarter from his data

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tween 1912 and 1923, 94 percent was in the European city, only 6 percent in the medina (Pelletier, 1955:34) Certainly the principle of "touch the native city as little as possible" was carefully respected—particularly when the expenditure of money was involved. Similar discrepancies could also be noted with respect to street lighting, sewers, drains, trees and parks, water supplies, and the rest of the urban amenities being lavished on the colonial cities The native quarters were well protected from these "intrusions " One could understand, if not fully excuse, this neglect if the funds spent so disproportionately on the colonial appendages had indeed been raised primarily from Europeans, but this was not the case In fact, where they had not been paid for out of the proceeds of the sale of lands taken by chicanery or force from the Moroccan community, they were financed by a system of regressive taxation that fell disproportionately heavily upon the Moroccans, who received virtually nothing in return Here the ruse of "respect for native traditions" and especially for the archaic device of the hubus was turned to French advantage Taxes paid by Moroccans and foreigners alike were used for foreign needs, while Moroccan needs were presumably met by the "traditional" mechanism, that is, proceeds from the hubus Strident as the tone may sound, the following quotation taken from a public relations release of the Istiqlal party, prior to independence, is mild in comparison with the provocation, and is completely borne out by our case- "It is the French contention that the past forty years have brought untold benefits to the Moroccan population These claims are disputed by the Istiqlal [Independence] Party of Morocco because they conflict with the facts Virtually all governmental policies have been directed toward the enhancement of the French colonial population . at the expense and to the detriment of the Moroccan people." 17 Only a few examples need be cited to substantiate this indictment with respect to urban areas. During the early years of the protectorate the major source of governmental income was the tertib tax, derived from agricultural usufruct and husbandry This tax had been reintroduced by a 1913 dahir, and was now payable by Muslims, Jews, and foreigners only 17 Moroccan [Istiqlal] Office of Information and Documentation, Morocco under the Protectorate, 1953 This was issued to refute the voluminous slick publications issued by the French to demonstrate the great "progress" made, such asL'Oeuvre de la France au Maroc de 1912 a 19S0

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in money, rather than in kind, which had previously been acceptable As early as 1916, however, rebates were given on the tertib to anyone "clearing land for European-type colonization. . These early exemptions . led to a decree in 1923 which provided that one-half of the tax be rebated to those farmers using 'European methods,' " a system that remained in force until 1950 (Stewart, 1964-83). Proceeds from this tax (note that in most cases Moroccans paid at least twice the rate of Europeans), together with locally raised customs, gate taxes, and so on, went to pay for municipal improvements, services, and other urban requirements. Budget receipt and expenditure figures for the fiscal years 1913-1914 and 1916-1917 are highly suggestive. In the former year, total receipts for the French Zone amounted to almost 16 million francs, of which 21 percent had been raised through the tertib (the single largest source), and only 1 6 percent from urban taxes. In that same year, total expenditures reached over 21 million francs, of which close to 13 million francs (60 percent) were allocated as direct subventions (subsidies) to the municipalities This inequitable situation had grown worse by 1916-1917 By that year, total receipts had almost quadrupled, of which fully 30 percent came from the tertib and only 4.4 percent from urban taxes. And yet, by then, 83 percent of all expenditures went as subventions to the municipal governments (Morocco. Gouvernement Chenfien, Protectorat Francais au Maroc, Annuaire Economique et Financier, 1917:81). Most of these expenditures were made in urban areas where foreigners predominated. For example, let us examine the per capita budget expenditures in 1921 in selected Moroccan cities. In general, the higher the proportion of foreign residents in a city, the higher the per capita expenditure Thus Casablanca, less than half of whose population was Moroccan Muslim, had per capita budgetary expenditures more than three times as high as those in Fez, certainly the larger and more important city, which had the misfortune to contain a population that was 90 percent Moroccan Muslim. Rabat, with less than 60 percent Moroccan Muslims, enjoyed a per capita expenditure level more than seven times greater than that for the much larger agglomeration of Marrakech, 90 percent of whose population was native and Muslim. Table 4 shows the rank order and per capita expenditures in 1921 for Morocco's fifteen municipalities, together with the percentage of population that was Muslim 18 18

I have computed these figures from the data presented in de la Casimere (1924),

194 TABLE 4

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LAW

BUDGETS OF MOROCCAN CITIES IN 1921, PER CAPITA EXPENDITURES AND PERCENT MUSLIM

City Kenitra Rabat Mazagan Casablanca Mogador Settat Safi Taza Meknes Oujda Fez Sale Azemmour Marrakech Sefrou

Per Capita Rank in Expenditures Expenditures (francs)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

269 5 185.2 118.0 106.1 83 1 74.6 65.6 65.1 60.9 57.0 34.5 31.3 27.0 24 7 21 8

Percentage Muslim

Population Total

57 59 76 46 50 75 83 73 73 51 90 85 93 90 58

10,074 33,714 22,093 110,034 19,503 6,825 25,806 7,500 38,159 22,280 124,500 24,300 13,967 145,000 8,332

The tendency for the European-dominated towns to receive most of the funds for improvement, and the tendency within towns for the European quarters to absorb most of the available resources meant that the initial advantages given to the colonial quarters by planning were consolidated and reinforced with each passing year, thus widening the gap between them and the "native" quarters, and increasing both economic and ethnic segregation in the city. Not only urban amenities, but also social services such as education and medical care, were also grossly unequal in their distribution, ensuring that the caste gap would not be bridged through class changes. While our data here are from a somewhat later period, the situation earlier had been even less equitable. Thus, in 1932, when only 4 percent of the total population of Morocco was French and another 1 percent other European, a loan was contracted from the French government, to be repaid out of taxes and the profits of the phosphate industry, for the purpose of financing schools and hospitals. In each of the three predominantly Muslim cities of Marrakech, Fez, and Meknes, European hospitals were allocated between 4 and Statistical Appendix Tables 1 and 2. It should be noted that from the beginning Rabat received a particularly large subvention to support its symbolic function as capital. According to Sablayrolles, 1925, this amounted to some 2,750,000 francs annually.

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5 million francs, while Moroccan hospitals received, respectively, 500,00(), 800,000, and 500,000 francs. As one observer put it, " N a ­ tives outnumbered Europeans more than ten to one in the com­ bined populations of these three cities, but got just over an eighth of the hospital facilities. A per capita ratio of eighty to one against the natives is excessive in a country where they pay most of the taxes. Less than a third of the loan provision for instruction went to in­ stitutions for natives. . . . Per child of school age, Europeans got over thirty times as much as Muslims." 1 9 While our examples could be expanded, little purpose would be served by filling out an entire bill of particulars. All we need estab­ lish here is that, with respect to the plans made during this initial period of the Protectorate, the European additions received detailed and loving attention, while the medinas were callously ignored; that the plans irresponsibly allocated disproportionate amounts of land to the colonial appendages, given the relative needs for space of the two populations to be accommodated, and that the re­ sources—land, labor, and money—required to build and equip these new cities were systematically drained from the Moroccan sector to subsidize the European. French Rabat was a remarkable achievement in modern city planning, but its elegance and affluence rested in more ways than one on the "backs of the natives " These inequities established at the origin, however, could not have been maintained without two additional mechanisms by which Moroccans were effectively excluded from reaping at least some of the benefits being poured into the European quarters. These mechanisms were: the laws of planning, construction, and zoning through which Moroccans were prevented from moving into the new quarters, and the system of municipal government through which Moroccans were excluded from the decision­ making apparatus of their community. 19 Daia are drawn from theBw/ietin officiel, supplement to No 1027, July 1, 1932, ρ 14, as cited in Knight, 1937 105 The editorial comment is his

-9(THE FAILURE OF PLANNING

A FORMER chef de service de l'urbanisme of Morocco, Paul Couzinet, summed up the accomplishments of the first period of urban development (between 1913 and 1923) as follows: 1. Plans for the most important cities of Morocco had been made. 2. The essentIal legislation needed for planning, expropriation, protection of monuments, street alignments, etc. had been drafted and put into effect. 3. Municipal life was organized. Local authonties had been set up, budgets for the cities were adequate, and most public improvements (street paving, lighting, water and transportation) were orgamzed and proceeding smoothly. 1

In all of these he was correct. Only the years following would reveal how well these accomplishments served the purposes of the colomsts and how poorly they met the needs of the Moroccans. In 1922 it appeared too early to tell. One observer descnbed Rabat's flUId state at that time: Today, the site of the new city of Rabat, all of the agglomeratIon ... [both) outside the walls as well as in the mdigenous city, resembles a bIt-although less so than Casablanca-a vast ship1 Paul Couzmet (1945) 26. EVidently, French authors borrow rather freely from one another smcc Couzmet here merely repeats without acknowledgement the words of his predecessor, Emmanuel Durand, m Royer (1932.81) Work on a sewer system began m 1912, and by 1927, fortY-SIx kilometers of drams were m operation In Rabat. The SocH:;te Marocaine de DlstnbutlOn d'Eau had been given the water concessIOn In 1915, and Rabat's gas and electnClty were also being supphed by that company from 1917 on Public street IIghtmg was provided for the CIty m 1922, and the first bus service was Inaugurated m 1920 See Annuarre Economlque et FltlanCler 1929 (Casablanca, Impnmene Reumes), p. 400. These Improvements were not Without their costs. Thus, Lyautey, m a letter dated Apnl2, 1922 (Lyautey l'afYICaltl, 4, 1957'194), recounts that "the day before yesterday" he saw With horror a "huge telegraph mstallatlOn on a gate ., [of a protected monument while] today, when I walked by the Boulevard Joffre, I notICed that the entire lme of walls IS rumed by a gigantIC electnc mstallatlOn set up on the walls themselves." He considered thiS sabotage, and eventually arranged to have the Wires removed

FAILURE OF

PLANNING

197

building yard [chantier de constructions], and only after a few years, beginning with this unpleasant period of preparation, will the city take on its true character and definitive shape. For the moment, Rabat still guards its special character . . . that of a small elegant provincial town where one is always happy to recover in the calm of privileged nature, green, and still full of poetic memories of past ages. 2 It would not guard it long, and in any event changes had already occurred. Rabbe's account, while nonscholarly, is valuable because it allows us to determine the extent to which Prost's plan had been carried out toward the end of his decade of service in Morocco. Among the improvements already in place were the rail lines that ran along their original course, the Boulevard Joffre-Gallieni, and terminated at the train station just outside the Bab al-Had (Rabbe, 1922:91). Only later would the rail lines be relocated to an under­ ground tunnel and the station moved to its present location along the Avenue Dar al-Makhzan (now Muhammad V). The Experi­ mental Gardens (Jardin d'essais), where new types of trees and other vegetation were being tested for possible introduction into Morocco, had already been planted {ibid. :91-92). The western extenor walls had been torn down to make room for the city's expan­ sion {ibid ·90), and the elaborate Mane Feuillet Hospital was just being completed at its coastal location, replacing the primitive mili­ tary hospital that dated back to the initial days of the occupation. This construction complemented the adjacent Institut Pasteur created in 1915 (ibid. :92) Some part of the sewerage system had al­ ready been installed, since the main drain debouched through a tunnel just underneath the Roetenburg Fort, now renamed Fort Herve {ibid :93-94) 3 Also completed was the paving of a number of thoroughfares, particularly those where Europeans lived or con­ ducted their businesses. Contrary to Prost's intent, the desired segregation between Europeans and Moroccans was still far from complete Prost com2

Ρ F Rabbe, 1922 88 Construction was destined to increase exponentially in the years ahead Private construction in Rabat increased to 13 5 million (francs') by 1926, to over 25 million in 1928, and 94 million by 1930 (Durand in Royer, 1932 93) Another source, Maurice de Perigny, Au Maroc, published a few years earlier (1920'), is nowhere as complete as Rabbe, and has therefore served merely as cor­ roboration 3 Rabat el sa region 2, 1919 28, claims that the French enlarged and "completed" the system of drains in the native city, but I can find no other reference to this

198

F A I L U R E OF P L A N N I N G

plained about the tendency for Europeans to settle in the old city, despite admonitions to the contrary, noting that the first Europeans who came to Morocco, at the same time as the troops, had to settle, for their own protection, inside the walls of the old cities. Those who were not in the military or civil serv­ ice were owners of small businesses and most of them had lived in Algeria or Tunisia. These businessmen were a potential obsta­ cle to our program's goal of separating Europeans from Moroc­ cans, and we have had to provide strong incentives to . . . coun­ terbalance [their tendencies to settle inside the walls]. . . . Therefore it was necessary to set up fast and convenient means of communication between the modern city and the native city on which the former was more or less parasitic (1932a:60) I cannot tell whether these businessmen were still living in the medina by the 1920s, but they certainly were still doing business there. The foreign merchants had vacated their shops and ware­ houses in the Rue des Consuls, and now local merchants there sold (to a growing foreign clientele) objects of art, jewelry, rugs, arms, embroidery, leather goods, copperware and pottery. The foreign merchants had gravitated to the opposite side of the medina, chiefly to the newly paved Boulevard of the Heights (al-'Alu). Describing this zone in the vicinity of the communal fire station as one of the most active in town, Rabbe notes that "it is there, in the recently built apartment structures, that one finds entertainment places, hotels, cafes, shops, agencies for transport" (1922:107). European merchants were also installed in the shops along the straight street of al-Juza', which stretched from the Heights down to the Bab alTibin (iW. :137). This street had been paved with crushed stone and bordered by sidewalks, as had the Boulevard al-'ΑΙύ (Rabat et sa re­ gion 2, 1919:25-27), where a "large opening has been made in the wall at Bab al-'ΑΙΰ to facilitate the circulation of carriages and cars" (tbid.:27). The rest of the medina remained the province of the "natives." The Suwayqa retained its indigenous character, the only gesture to European demands being the insertion of a fish market at the section near Bab al-Tibin. There were, however, some limited im­ provements. From a photograph included in Rabbe's book it is evi­ dent that the center crown of the Suwayqa had been cobbled, al­ though there appear not to be any drains, and the street was still shaded by the traditional reed mats stretched overhead (photo op-

F A I L U R E OF P L A N N I N G

199

posite ρ 128). A similar type of paving had been placed on the Rue des Consuls and in the Millah. This latter quarter had undergone a marked change According to Rabbe, chains no longer blocked the entrance, and the guards were gone. Most of the younger inhabitants, both men and women, had adopted Western-style clothing (ibid :124). He re­ marks in passing that, of all "classes in society, the Jew has ob­ tained, as a consequence of our occupation, the greatest, most radi­ cal emancipation" (ibid..125). In fact, the first "natives" to cross the barrier into the European city were Jews from the Millah, who would settle in the Petitjean district just over the wall. It was in the new European quarters that the major changes were taking place, however. The quarter of Ocean was a mass of build­ ings, as new structures began to replace the crude wood and tin shacks that had offered the earliest shelter there (Rabbe, 1922:87). According to the somewhat earlier document prepared by the oc­ cupation (Rabat et sa region 2, 1919:26), this quarter had posed a major problem. Because it had grown so rapidly, it presented "a somewhat chaotic and disorganized ensemble," with fifty or more units going up each month The municipality tried to control this by requiring permission to build, and began to enforce the use of more solid building materials. Evidently, some progress was now being made. The most settled quarter of the new city was in the vicinity of the commercial-administrative-ceremonial axis between the Bab alTibm and the Sunna Mosque, the street then called Dar alMakhzan. It was already equipped with the graceful arcades that still shade pedestrians, and the Post Office and the Palace of Justice, designed along pseudo-Moorish lines, were both under construc­ tion by 1921 (Rabbe, 1922:142). The peripheral areas, in contrast, were very sparsely settled. The administrative zone was under con­ struction, as was Lyautey's residence There were isolated struc­ tures in the Tour Hasan area, but almost none in the Agdal, which was known primarily as the site of an elegant amusement park (ibid. :151), the one Edith Wharton had admired so much a few years before (1918:vm). Even in advance of construction, however, the peripheral circula­ tion system was in place, much as Prost had designed it. Rabbe notes that the coastal piste linking Rabat with Casablanca had been virtually abandoned since the construction of an excellent interior route parallel to it, which was drawing away all the commercial and

200

FAILURE OF P L A N N I N G

tourist traffic This new highway was filled with automobiles, trac­ tors, and mule-drawn Spanish carts (1922:85). Other major paved roads included the Avenue de Casablanca from Bab al-'Alu to the Qabibat, the Avenue Mane Feuillet from the city to the hospital, Avenue Tamarra, Avenue des Orangeries (outside and parallel to the western Almohad wall), Avenue de la Gare, and of course the Dar al-Makhzan and Boulevard Joffre (Rabat et sa region 2, 1919:27) The new city was taking on concrete shape. In a rapture of romanticism appearing toward the end of his book, Rabbe recounts his vision of the future, of "Rabat in the Year of Grace 1950," a vision that comes to him in a daydream atop the Tour Hasan (1922:158 ff). Seeking something beyond the sea of half-finished buildings, the chantier de constructions so in evidence, he imagines the finished city. He "sees" its thriving port with an unceasing movement of great ships entering and leaving the great harbor; he "sees" a city with an industrial structure which is second only to Casablanca, and he "sees" the quaint whitewashed towns of Rabat and Sale, still preserved as perfect specimens of the past. What a clouded crystal ball, his. Had he stood in the same place in 1946, at the time when Ecochard, Morocco's next great city plan­ ner, was rushed in to handle the problems of Morocco's urbanism turned sour, what would he have seen' A moribund port, virtually no industry save traditional brick-making and food preservation, bidonvilles (shack towns) spreading down the slopes behind and beyond him, medinas choked and increasingly proletarianized, and a foreign population whose days were numbered—who would be gone in a decade. The seeds of all of these incipient problems were present at the time of his daydream. Maritime activity, in fact, disappeared from Rabat's port by 1921, the unintended victim of intensive develop­ ments in rival ports that were too short a distance away (Casablanca 4 chiefly, but also Port Lyautey and Fedalla). The first bidonvilles had begun to form in Douar Doum behind him in 1921, and in Douar Dabbagh beyond the Qabibat at the ocean front just one 5 year later. By 1947 these two shack towns would contain over 25,000 inhabitants—more than had occupied the entire medina of Rabat in 1913. The quaint white medinas of Rabat and Sale were already beginning to crowd up, the last of the available building 6 sites, their interior gardens, having been preempted by housing 4 5 6

Robert Montagne et al, 1952 140 Ε Mauret, 1953 158 Κ L Brown (1969 175) tells us that "when the French arrived in 1912 there were

1

O c e a n Front with Rabat's Walled cemetery in the right foreground; Sal6 in the distance

2

T h e Western A l m o h a d Wall o f R a h a t

3

T h e Qa$bah of the U d a y a

4

The Only Bridge between Rabat (foreground) and Sale (distance)

5

Tourist Shop just inside Main Gate of Medina at End of Boulevard Mohammed V

6

The Suq of Sale Medina

7

T h e Qaysariya of Sale

8

Courtyard of Rue de Suwayqa

9 Cafe on Boulevard Mohammed V, Corner of Rue al-Mansour ad-Dahabi

10 The Ville Nouvelle: Rue de Toulouse Going toward the Cathedral

11

Souissi Villa, Upper-Class Suburban

12 BidonviUe of Rabat

V'·

13

Public Housing under Construction

14

L'Ocean Quarter, Rue de Leningrad Going toward the Church

FAILURE OF P L A N N I N G

201

By 1947, densities would have doubled to an incredible 750 persons per hectare, as each medina housed over 50,000 inhabitants (Mauret, 1953:159) And industry? Rabat's chief industry remained administration. She became the Washington, D C , of Morocco, as Lyautey had predicted, offering great opportunities to French civil servants and those providing goods and services to them, but offering little in the way of manufacturing jobs to absorb the Moroccans who came in ever greater numbers, driven off the land by enclosures, marginahzation, drought, and ambition, only to find that little provision had been made for them in the city, with respect to either jobs or housing. In 1931, Prost had innocently pondered how it would be possible to build new cities for these "brave but poor" newcomers, "without increasing their costs of living and their salaries to a point where this abundant but inexperienced labor force would become unusable" (1932b:24, italics added). In his usual manner, Prost had identified without understanding the problem. In truth, without raising wages and providing well-paid employment, there was no way to provide, within the market system of housing, a place for the newcomers to live. Between 1920 and 1947, they made their own homes on land to which they had no title (but in many cases rented from the very European who had earlier bought their country's state or hubus land1) Not until the arrival of Ecochard was an attempt made to provide subsidized housing on a large scale, or to designate or "legitimize" certain peripheral quarters for Moroccan use. That is why we have treated the period from 1923-1926 to 1947 as the second phase of French urban planning in Rabat. It was the period during which the errors made in the initial phase "came home to roost" in magnified proportions. 7 To understand this second phase of urban development in Morocco one must understand the changes taking place in the colonial economy—and because that economy was already part of the world system, in that larger arena as well. During the first period the colonial edifice was built in the coastal cities and efforts were concentrated on creating the infrastructure. By the 1920s these still some forty-two irrigated gardens covering an area of some thirty-five hectares in Sale By 1930, many of these gardens had been converted into built-up areas " 7 Dethier (1970 22-29) sets the dates as 1926-1946, claiming that Ecochard arrived in the latter year I am persuaded by Mauret (1953 164) that the third period for Rabat began in April 1947 with the reorganization of Le Service de l'Urbanisme under Ecochard

202

FAILURE OF P L A N N I N G

tasks had largely been accomplished. The great port at Casablanca had been constructed and inaugurated in October of 1921, facilitating a rapid increase in traffic of all sorts (immigrants as well as goods). The rail and road systems were essentially in place and had been designed to collect all goods, incoming and outgoing, at this point before transshipment. An impressive roster of foreign financial institutions controlled European investments in the country, while foreign firms monopolized "modern" commerce, the import-export trade, and had begun to develop a modest array of light industries. 8 But the future wealth of Morocco was to come not from these petty operations but from the export of minerals and of agricultural products, both of which required the full "pacification" of the country and a fanning out of the colonial enterprise from the coastal enclaves to the hinterlands. By the mid-twenties this was well underway. Phosphates, Morocco's chief mineral wealth, had been discovered on the plateau just beyond Casablanca, and became the first mineral to be exploited for foreign exchange. (Morocco is still the world's most important provider of phosphates.) Lyautey found the state monopoly over this product a valuable means for raising local funds, giving him access to important discretionary funds not dependent upon parliamentary approval. The remaining mineral wealth, however, lay locked in the Atlas and Anti-Atlas regions that were not finally "pacified" until the end of the 1920s. Colon agriculture however, was already expanding into the "pacified" zones, into what Lyautey had called "useful" Morocco (that is, the great series of Atlantic plains that dipped deeply into the country along the lateral river depressions), during this same period. Such expansion was facilitated by changes in the tertib regulations (in 1916 and again in 1923), which liberalized the tax rebates available to the colons, and by new and ingenious methods for 8 A list of foreign banking houses with offices in Rabat as early as 1916 included La Compagne Algenenne (with headquarters in Paris), La Banque AlgeroTumsienne (headquarters in Paris), Le Credit Foncier d'Algene et de Tunisie, La Societe Immobihere Lyonaise-Marocaine, Caisse Nationale d'Epargne, etc Other foreign companies in the city engaged in import-export (such as G Braunschwig, Conat et Cie , Peyrelongue Aine, Gabriel Breton et Cie , etc ), leathers, skins and wools (Degregone), general foods (Robic), paper and household goods (Cousin et Cie ), furniture (Echaubard), drugs (Marchesseau), builders (such as Tur et Tanguy, Verdier, Cougoule-Devergne, Dubois), printers and other trades See Rabat et sa region 2, 1919 64-66 Among the foreign industrial operations were flour mills (two French and one Swiss), brick factories (all three French), a factory to prepare artificial stones (French), soap factories, fisheries, foundries, and quarries (ibid 56)

FAILURE OF P L A N N I N G

203

confiscating communal lands so that they could be released for "development." Preempting the prime bottom land and enjoying public subsidies in the form of irrigation projects, a small number of French colons (never more than one percent of the total population) came to control the best 7 to 15 percent of the arable farming land in Morocco, each European "farmer" owning a very generously proportioned plot (the Residence argued that small plots were uneconomical), which he exploited by using "wage labor" of Moroccans, most of whom had previously worked the land on their own. We have already noted that when the tertib was reinstituted in 1913 the French required that the tax be paid in money, hitherto, a portion of the crop had sufficed. This monetization of the tax had the same effect in Morocco as it had elsewhere in Africa, where its purpose had been identical. By specifying that the tax be paid in money, it forced commodities into the exchange market and eventually began to create a proletarian labor force, pressured to sell its labor for cash, out of a population whose subsistence cycle was mortally wounded by colonization. Progressively driven to more and more marginal lands, where their vulnerability to periodic dessication and other disasters was intensified, many of these peasants and herders began to seek alternate opportunities. As early as the 1920s, some went to France as laborers, but the colons, fearing the loss of their cheap and inexhaustible supplies of labor, managed to place a moratorium upon such emigration. Moroccans were in demand as farmhands, but opportunities (and pay) were greater in the cities, which were building up rapidly. Migration to the urban boom towns on the coast was inevitable. It would be an anachronistic error to attribute these early migrations to the cities to population pressure (except insofar as displacement to marginal lands had decreased the means of subsistence). The rate of natural increase had not gone up during this early period Rather, the pressures were created by colonial expansion into the rural hinterlands, and were intensified by the monetization of the tax system, as well as the availability of imported goods that were becoming necessities (such as sugar and tea). Movement to the new mines and the cities was definitely being encouraged to help fill the gap in what was increasingly being defined as a labor shortage, ironic as that may seem from the vantage of today's unemployment. 9 9 The preceding discussion depends heavily upon Stewart (1964), Knight (1937, 1953), and Montagne (1952), but data and allegations have been verified wherever

204

FAILURE OF P L A N N I N G

The results of all these changes in the economy were sensitively reflected in demographic developments between 1926 and 1951. From the standpoint of urban planning the logical terminal point for this middle colonial period is 1946-1947, but our only firm and detailed data come from the census of 1951-1952. A census was evidently conducted in 1947, and is cited by some French writers who had access to these figures by virtue of their administrative positions in the Protectorate government, but the results were never officially released. Three major trends occurred during this period, each of which had important repercussions on the size and composition of Rabat's population and hence upon the needs for housing and urban utilities in the city. First, there was a moderate increase in the total population of the French Zone of Morocco, initially due to immigration from abroad, but eventually attributable also to natural increase. Second, there was a heightened rate of urbanization, caused largely by a substantial redistribution of the Moroccan population from rural to urban areas. And third, there was the final and complete bifurcation of the urban hierarchy into a system of "coloniallinked" cities that were growing rapidly, and a system of "traditional" cities reduced to a backwater of virtual stagnation. Each of these trends requires amplification. There existed in the French Zone of Morocco, at the beginning of the Protectorate, a population of somewhere between 4 and 5 million, almost entirely Muslim, although including an indigenous Jewish minority of perhaps 2 percent and a few thousand Europeans concentrated chiefly in Casablanca. The census of 1926 enumerated 4.7 million Moroccan Muslims, but this was undoubtedly an underestimate, since much of the country remained areas of "dissidence" (siba, a term the French adopted to equate opposition to colonial invasion with an earlier and quite different precedent). In addition, there were slightly over 100,000 Moroccan Jews and an equal number of foreigners (from Europe or the French colonies in Algeria and Tunisia), both counted more accurately, since these groups were concentrated largely in the cities under French control The total population in 1926 was given as 5 million. possible in official French publications such as L'Encyclopedte colomale et maritime Maroc and L'Oeuvn de la France au Maroc de 1912 a 1910 Valuable data on the extent and size of European agricultural holdings can be found in Miegc, 1971, esp pp 70-72

FAILURE OF P L A N N I N G

205

The situation had not altered drastically by 1931, when the number of Moroccan Muslims was estimated (somewhat more accurately this time) at about 5 million, local Jews at 125,000, and foreigners at 172,000. Between 1931 and 1936, foreign increase tapered off, reflecting the dashed hopes associated with the world depression and the decline in prices of agricultural products that reduced the attractiveness of colonies. By 1936 the foreign community had increased to only 200,000. The indigenous population, on the other hand, was clearly being enumerated with more accuracy as the remainder of the country came under increased French control. It is this fact (rather than any real growth, since there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that rates of natural increase had yet gone up) that accounts for the radical upward revision in the total population, now estimated at 6.25 million. Between 1936 and 1951 several significant factors changed. First, immigration from France picked up considerably, inflated temporarily by refugees fleeing the German occupation of France. When the war ended, many but not all of them returned to France. By 1951-1952 the foreign community had leveled off at 363,000, a number that would drop rapidly and drastically after Moroccan independence was achieved in 1956 At the same time, the Jewish population began to grow from natural increase, thanks to its concentration in the cities of the colonial system, well favored by sanitation and medical facilities. However, after peaking in 1948, this group began to decline in size as emigration to Israel commenced. By 1951-1952 Moroccan Jews totalled some 200,000, a number that was to decline precipitously after 1956 in a pattern that closely paralleled the exodus of Europeans. Within the Muslim Moroccan majority an entirely different dynamic had begun. In the late 1940s, as had happened in many other parts of the developing world, death rates, particularly in urban areas, began to drop sharply, and for the first time natural increase became an important cause of population growth in Morocco. By 1951-1952 the Muslim population had reached 7,442,000 and the total population of the French zone stood at about 8 million Despite the decline in mortality rates for Moroccans, the existing extremely high fertility rates persisted, which led eventually to the present rate of natural increase of 3 percent per year, one of the higher in the world, and at least double what it had been between 1936 and 1952 This larger population base fed chiefly into the cities of the coun-

206

FAILURE OF P L A N N I N G

try. Before the French occupation, despite the existence in Morocco of a long urban tradition, fewer than 10 percent of the people had lived in cities, including small towns This proportion is quite consistent with what we know to be the case in most preindustnal societies. Over the years, increments to the foreign population had gone almost exclusively into the cities of the coast and, during the later Protectorate period, 80 percent of all foreigners were to be found in urban areas. A similar distribution was noted among the local Jewish population, which again had always been predominantly urban. There was some internal migration, as this group shifted out of the declining towns of Mogador and Fez and into more promising arenas of commerce in Kenitra, Rabat, and Casablanca but, as before, four out of five Jews lived in urban areas. The situation was quite different for the Moroccan Muslims, who remained primarily rural However, from under 10 percent urban in the opening years of the Protectorate, they changed to 20 percent urban by the late 1940s Given the large numerical base of this group, this "modest" shift accounted for a substantial proportion of all urban growth. The number of Moroccan Muslim urban residents increased from some 400,000 in 1921 to about 1 5 million by 1951. And by the end of that period, growth had begun to come at least as much from natural increase in the cities as it came from immigration to them. By 1951-1952, about 25 percent of the total population of French Morocco was living in the nineteen communities with municipality status This increased urbanization, however, was not randomly distributed among the various cities and towns of the country The split between the colonial hierarchy and the residual "traditional" hierarchy, which was incipient during the early years of the Protectorate, became glaringly discrepant during this second phase of growth. Figure 9, which plots (semi-log) population growth for selected cities in each system between 1921 and 1951, demonstrates this divergence in a conclusive manner. Marrakech, Fez, Safi, Mazagan, and Sale were typical members of the "traditional" hierarchy, with few foreign residents and only a minor role in the colonial enterprise; their growth curves are virtually flat. In contrast, Casablanca, the new port of Kenitra, the border post of Oujda, Meknes, and Rabat were typical components of the "colonial" hierarchy, containing substantial European populations and serving as centers for production, administration, and distribution

207

F A I L U R E OF P L A N N I N G

1,000,000

100.000

10,000 1921 FIGURE 9

1951

RELATIVE GROWTH IN THE T W O URBAN SYSTEMS, 1921-1951 (SELECTED CITIES, FRENCH ZONE ONLY)

for the Metropole-controlled economy and polity; each of these towns doubled its population every ten to twenty years. 10 10 In addition to the official census volumes, there are a number of secondary analyses that can be consulted for more details. I have not burdened this account with a great many figures, in part because I believe that the early "census" counts,

208

F A I L U R E OF

PLANNING

Demographic growth, the move to the cities, and the special attractions exerted by these cities in the colonial network all had their impact on the urban agglomeration of Rabat and Sale, although during this period in quite different ways, since Rabat was in the colonial system while Sale remained somewhat peripheral. The persistence of this duality was odd, and was probably due to the fact that there did not yet exist a bridge over the river to permit easy connections from one bank to the other. One would not be built until the final phase of colonial urban development The agglomeration's combined population had risen from about 40,000 when the Protectorate began to some 58,000 by 1926, most of the growth occurring in Rabat, which received virtually all of the foreign immigrants. Sale, however, had also begun to grow, absorbing villagers and tribal groups from the Gharb plain who had been displaced by the expansion of colon agriculture. After 1926 the pace of growth quickened. Within five years (by 1931) the two cities contained a population of about 80,000; they had increased to 115,000 by 1936, and finally to in excess of 200,000 by the census of 1951-1952. Three-quarters of the combined population was concentrated in Rabat, which had tripled in size during the twenty-year period in question. Some of Rabat's growth had, of course, come from foreign immigration. The European population reached 9,000 by 1918 (but this included Algerians, Tunisians, and the military forces, as well). There were about 15,000 foreigners by 1926, some 22,000 by 1931, over 27,000 in 1936, and, after the temporary burst of wartime, the foreign population leveled off at about 42,000 by especially of Moroccans living outside the coastal towns, cannot be given much credence The apparent growth in that population before the late 1930s is due more to improved reporting than to any change in the strictly demographic variables Roger LeTourneau, in his "Implications of Rapid Urbanization," missed this point entirely Many authors of secondary sources have failed, in my opinion, to exercise sufficient caution in using official returns, which contain numerous unresolved discrepancies from volume to volume With these caveats in mind, the reader is referred to the works of Hassan Awad, "Morocco's Expanding Towns," which is more or less a summary of his [Hasan 'Awad] Jughrajiyat al-Mudun al-Maghriblya, R Escallier, "La Croissance urbaine au Maroc," which appeared first in Annuaire de I'Afnque du Nord 11, but whose entire special section on urbanism in the Maghrib was bound separately and reissued under the title Villes et soaetes au Maghreb, Ralph Thomhnson, "Les Relations entre les ranges des villes et leurs populations au Maroc 19361971," and his "The Parnate City in Morocco Casablanca or Rabat or None'" See also my "Moroccan Urbanization—Some New Equations "

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1951 Therefore, approximately 27,000 of Rabat's growth between 1926 and 1951 was attributable to an increase in the number of foreigners. Another 8,000 to 9,000 of the increase was attributable to the growth of the resident Jewish population, partly from natural increase by the later years, but primarily due to migration from other Moroccan ports during the early years. In 1913 Rabat had contained only 2,400 Jewish residents; this number rose to over 12,000 by 1947 before dropping to 10,000 in 1951, due to emigration (Mauret, 1953-158) The bulk of the population increase that occurred in Rabat during the two decades in question, however, was attributable to the immigration of Moroccans from the hinterlands of the Gharb and from the marginal lands of the south to which they had been driven According to Mauret (1953-157-158), the Moroccan Muslim population of Rabat and Sale combined quadrupled between 1926 and 1947 Each decade there was a doubling of the population, which is equivalent to a growth rate of about 7 percent per year— all the more remarkable since not more than about 1 to 1.5 percent could have been from natural increase at that time. This was the phenomenal growth that Prost had entirely neglected in his plan. In one generation the number of Moroccan Muslims in the two cities had risen from fewer than 40,000 to 156,000, two-thirds of whom were in Rabat. Close to 90,000 newcomers needed housing in Rabat, and another 25,000 or more had to be accommodated in Sale. Where did they go? And under what conditions did they live—this overwhelming majority of the population that had been allocated so niggardly a share of the urban terrain? At first, many simply headed for the medmas. Mauret (1953.159, following Montagne, 1952:141) suggests that by 1947 the medinas of Rabat and Sale each had populations of about 52,000. If true (and these figures seem a bit high to me, given the more reliable 19511952 census figures, which are lower), this represented an enormous increase in the densities at which they were housed, from 400 persons per hectare to 758 persons per hectare for the medina of Rabat and from 240 to 650 persons per hectare in Sale, between 1918 and 1947. However, even if we accept slightly lower population estimates for these two areas, it is clear that such increases could have been achieved only through the conversion of every available open space to housing use, 11 the subdivision of bourgeois 11

This was definitely true in Sale, which before the Protectorate had a great deal

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residences into densely packed apartments and rooming houses, 12 the usurpation of a variety of structures designed for nonresidential use, 13 and the doubling up of households through subleasing. Even such intensive use of space in the medinas, however, could absorb only some of the population pressed for shelter. And the only other preexisting "legal" quarter for Moroccans, the Palace compound of the Tuwarqa, was not available, since only persons in the tribes in service to the Sultan were allowed to live there. According to Mauret (1953:159), this area contained a population of some 6,430 in 1947. If, therefore, we consider this population and add to it the approximately 44,000 Muslims crowded into the medina of Rabat (we have here excluded the 7,500 Jews in the

of open land, used for gardens, within the walled enclave. The map reproduced in Mauret, 1954:33, shows clearly the disappearance of this land between 1915 and 1952. In Rabat, however, the most open space available was in cemeteries and could not be converted for dwellings. 12 The collective inquiry of 1948-1950 headed by R. Montagne, Natssance du proletariat marocain, discusses this phenomenon in Rabat, basing the analysis on the observations of M. Petitpre and older studies by Baron et al., especially their "Logements et loyers des travailleurs indigenes a Rabat-Sale," Bulletin Social et Economique du Maroc 4, (1937). From these studies it is clear that as early as the 1930s a number of Moroccan bourgeois owners of homes in the medina of Rabat had converted their spacious quarters to apartments. The kitchen and patio were used in common, while entire families were assigned to single rooms; in this way, a home of eight or nine rooms was made to accommodate up to a dozen households Bachelors from the south, in particular, crowded into these converted rooming houses (see inter alia Montagne, 1952:178-79). The proletarianization of the medina was thus one of the first consequences of Prost's oversight, an irony for the avowed defender of "conservation." 13 The conversion of funduqs (old inns for traders, with storage facilities for their goods), stables, warehouses, and other nonresidential structures to permanent rooming houses where densities were extremely high, where there were no sanitary facilities, where light and air often did not penetrate, and where bidonville-type structures were also built m courts or on balconies, seems to have been a later act of total desperation. While the data come from a very recent period, the descriptions are evocative of the earlier developments as well. See the unpublished thesis of M. R. Chene (1971) or the more accessible report she prepared for CERF (1971), entitled La Vie des families dans lesfondouks des medinas de Rabat et de Sale. Montagne (1952:179) reports even worse "At a much lower level are some of the urban facilities which poorer immigrants to the city may be forced to use: sometimes, in exchange for a modest fee, these people may gain the 'right' to sleep on the floor (with no roof) of a cafe with strangers who have bought a similar right. Finally, there are those who sleep under the city gates or in trenches around the city walls "

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Millah), we can account for only about half of the known Muslim population in the city. Where were the rest? By 1947 approximately 20,000 were living in "legal" quarters (grudgingly yielded to Moroccans) that had been established just beyond the quarter of Ocean in the 1920s and 1930s. Some 17,200 found refuge in Darb Akkari, which had been hastily subdivided and chaotically built to serve (mimicking the earlier solution at Casablanca) as the "New Medina," a function it never really fulfilled. Only here was there some inadvertent mixture of the European working class spilling out from Ocean and its social "equivalent," the native middle class (Montagne, 1952:141; Mauret, 1953:159; 1954:35). In addition, modest accommodations for another 3,000 middle-class Moroccans had been built by the hubus just east of Akkari and bordering the Avenue Tamarra, although by the 1950s these minimal dwellings were already in the process of proletarianization. This small enclave was incongruously sited in the midst of the elegant European quarter of Orangeries (Adam, 1968a:64), an accident due to the location of hubus land rather than the considered judgment of the French planners. The French authorities remained callous and blind to the growing needs of the Moroccan poor. Whatever efforts were made in their behalf came from indigenous ingenuity or the traditional mechanism of the hubus. By the late 1940s, another 25,000 of Rabat's Muslim inhabitants were living in bidonvilles, 14 some 6,400 in Douar Doum on the pasha's land, perched precariously on the escarpment above the saline flats bordering the Bou Regreg, and the remaining 18,000 in Douar Dabbagh, on hubus land that had been subdivided and rented cheaply to the occupants, who put up makeshift dwellings. Both of these settlements dated back to the 14

While it is conventional to attribute the proliferation of bidonvilles to the period of the Second World War, when there was a moratorium on construction in Morocco, we have already noted their formation in Rabat as early as 1921-1922. Some writers have suggested that Sale did not develop bidonvilles until World War II, but M. Nacin presents persuasive evidence to the contrary See his "Quelques exemples devolution de douars a la peripheric urbaine de Sale." He dates the formation of Douar Jdid back to World War I, and the decisive period of settlement of Douar Smaala from 1935 through World War II. Some problems of "dating" turn on the question of the transition from a "normal" rural douar, housing agriculturalists in portable reed huts (the nuwala), to an "urban" clandestine settlement with improvements in building materials to make use of the detritus of industrial society Today, all rural houses have tin roofs (btdon), but would certainly not be called bidonvilles.

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early 1920s but had continued to expand during the ensuing thirty years. Although the authorities routinely clucked their tongues and expressed their alarm over these "foyers d'infection," they did nothing to subsidize or improve them and, indeed, passed laws making it illegal for the occupants to build permanent structures to replace their shacks. Perhaps they believed that if they ignored the bidonvilles, they would go away. When they did not, and indeed continued to expand, the municipal planners finally decided to "clear the slums" and build "low-cost housing." These developments, too little and obviously too late, did not occur, however, until the final phase of colonial urban planning after 1947, and we shall reserve discussion of them to the next chapter. Finally, a small minority of Moroccan Muslims had "escaped" the confines of apartheid, even though the policy had not been changed and this trend was not viewed with approval. I cannot determine exactly how many Moroccans were living in the so-called European quarters of Rabat by 1947 Montagne alleges that it was 12,000, but I am certain it could not have been that high. In any case, even according to Montagne's calculations, at least 2 or 3 thousand of the Moroccans living in the European quarters were Jews, which means that we need account, at most, for 8 to 10 thousand Muslims. 15 The majority of these were either domestic servants given living quarters as part of their wages, or gardeners and farmers who tended the land toward the outskirts of the city proper Nevertheless, by the late 1940s two "alarming" trends had begun, first, the Ocean quarter, declasse and wedged in between the medina and Darb Akkan, began to be "invaded" by Moroccans; and second, some members of the Moroccan aristocracy, assimilated into the civil apparatus or thriving as compradors to the French-run "modern sector," had begun to move into villas originally built for European use (It should be noted that Moroccan legislation never prohibited Moroccans from living in the European quarters, class, informal exclusion by proprietors, and social sanctions seem to have guarded these preserves without formal apartheid laws ) Louis Villeme, writing at about the same time as Montagne's group, discusses these new developments. He notes (1952:89) that 15 According to the census of 1951-1952, there were only some 8,000 Moroccan Muslims in the European quarters of Rabat at that later date, and this must have been higher than in 1947

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213

there exist. . . homogeneous Moroccan enclaves at diverse points of the vast zone which constitutes the ville nouvelle. Such are the Tazi subdivision, the Cite Habous, and the quarter of the Touargas which groups around the Palace the servants and employees of the Makhzen. . . . At the periphery of the new city are constituted the famous bidonvilles: douar Doum, douar Debarh which . . encircle the European city . . . [Near Yaakoub-El-Mansour, built after 1948 and discussed later] have been created new Moroccan quarters: douar Akkari, Khebibat tending toward almost complete homogeneity. The quarter of Ocean presents a more complicated arrangement, where the intermixture of the two societies is an accomplished fact. There, from repurchase of land and houses, and above all from construction in the open spaces are houses and shops for the Moroccans. While the quarter has stabilized from the European point of view it is still in full evolution, in full Moroccan dynamism. The infiltration has followed the major streets: the avenue of Temara has been transformed into a Moroccan street by the extremely recent constructions. The same is true in the streets which cross Avenue Temara, rues Mistral, Emile Zola, Lamartine [where there have been built] Moroccan houses, villas with elevated walls and windows protected from sight It was almost as if Prost's error had been "self-correcting," albeit belatedly and insufficiently. The zone that logically should have been assigned to Moroccans from the beginning was being taken over by them, with or without permission from the planners. Far less important numerically were the isolated Moroccans who had breached the walls of segregation and braved the icy stares of their new neighbors to move into villas of the ville nouvelle proper. Villeme is disturbed because he fears that this type of housing is "poorly adapted to Moroccan family life," even though the "installation of Moroccan families in some modern villas of the European quarters begins to become more frequent" (ibid 76). His objections are that the villas of six and seven rooms are too small for the families of Moroccan "notables," and that the neighborhood's appearance is transformed when Moroccans build their high walls to protect the privacy of their gardens, walls that "are higher than the regulations permit" (ibid. 77-78, emphasis added) There is no doubt that these first courageous "pioneers" were all drawn from the highest ranks of Moroccan society, people with

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F A I L U R E OF P L A N N I N G

the means to afford such housing and with ambitions of becoming evolue (an incredible French term, meaning "evolved to a higher state" and applied to frankified "natives"). Villeme reports (ibid. :90) a fascinating study of a sample of 100 high-ranking makhzan officials by area of residence. Of these aristocrats, 27 percent had homes in Sale, 30 percent lived m the medina of Rabat, and another 19 percent lived in the Moroccan enclaves scattered throughout the ville nouvelle (7 in Tuwarqa, 6 in Cite Habous, 4 in Lotissement Tazi, and 2 in Darb Akkan). Only 22 had villas or apartments in the ville nouvelle proper (8 in Agdal, 9 in Orangeries, and 5 in Centre de Ville). Given these figures, it is unlikely that more than a few thousand Moroccans (or several hundred families) were actually bona fide residents of European quarters by the late 1940s, and these were acknowledged to have "invaded" only recently. Shall we call this situation success or failure? It depends upon the point of view. From the narrow vantage of Lyautey and Prost, success was fantastic. Almost all foreigners had been expunged from the native quarters (save a few artists holed up in the Qasbah of the Udaya) 16 and, despite the incredible pressures that had built up in the few areas open to Moroccans, only small areas had been ceded (Ocean) and only small numbers of the "best" Moroccans had been able to pierce the barrier of apartheid. From a wider perspective, both of welfare and of planning, the situation was an unmitigated disaster. The city was a spatial projection of a caste system that had solidified out of the political and economic conditions of colonial development The basic inequities established in the economic sphere had been sharpened and intensified by political decisions that had poured the resources of Moroccans and Europeans alike into the quarters built for foreigners and still inhabited almost exclusively by them. On the other hand, the costs of these developments were borne by Moroccans whose low wages subsidized their employers and whose increasingly unbearable housing conditions were one of the reasons why wages could be kept down Bidonville housing had been invented. The Moroccan increasingly supplemented his regular job by a second one—that of building his own house The costs of reproducing his labor were thus partially borne by himself, while his employer reaped the benefits. In both ways, Moroccans helped the colonial edifice to flourish. 16

Villeme (1952) discusses this on pp 86-88

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215

There were only two alternatives open to avert an impending explosive situation. One was to permit social/economic mobility, by means of which the gap between the two castes might be bridged and Moroccans might come to share increasingly in the advantages of the new economy, the new city. The other was to subsidize the lowest caste just enough to avert revolution, to provide minimal housing and other services to preserve the labor force, and by so doing, to make concrete in the urban ecology of the city the caste system that had been established. The policy adopted took the latter course. Between 1947 and the "end" of colonial rule in 1956, the occupation struggled mightily to keep the lines where they had been drawn—expanding occupations, but not very far, expanding urban reserves for the "natives," but not enough. These strategies may have temporarily forestalled but could not prevent the revolt.

-exlllCONCRETIZING THE CASTE CITY

A NUMBER of scholars, Moroccan and French alike, have taken objection to my use of the term "caste" to describe the colonial situation in Rabat, some on the grounds that caste has a contextual meaning specific to its originating circumstances in India, which makes it inapplicable elsewhere, and others on the grounds that the gaps in Moroccan colonial society can be adequately explained by the class characteristics of the two groups that led them, naturally, to play different roles in a dual economy. Usually, persons objecting on the latter grounds are also offended by my use of the term apartheid to describe the caste-concretized Clty.1 I agree that "caste" of the Indian variety did not exist in Morocco (or anywhere else for that matter), but use the term in its broader sense, namely, as indicating a tight association between an ascnptlVe status (in this instance, nationality/religion) and a preordained position in the class structure, a predetermined set of "life chances" as Weber used that concept. And in this sense I find the term accurately descriptive of the situation in Rabat when apartheid was at its greatest. Let me illustrate with a brief survey of the labor force in the city, according to the census of 1951-1952, agam the only one available. Table 5 has been derived from a variety of tabulations in several volumes of that census. Even given the relatIvely unsophistIcated occupational categories and the gross "ethnic" diVIsions into Moroccan Muslim, Moroccan Jew, and non-Moroccan (the latter including a wide range of statuses, from the highest protectorate offiCIals to the proletarian class of southern European ongin, to the unskilled "guest workers" from nearby TuniSIa and Algeria who, although non-Moroccan, hardly belonged WIth the French, 1 At a conference on urbamsm m the Maghnb, orgamzed by the SOCIal SCIence Research CounCIl m Tumsia m June 1976, my presentatIOn stImulated conSIderable debate among the Maghnbi scholars present, revolvmg around the term caste. Earher, Abdallah LaroUl (personal conversatIOn) had raIsed an objectIOn to my use of the term apartheId, on the grounds that the Moroccan legal mechamsm tor segregatIOn was not the same as that used m South Afnca I de. not claIm that It was, but find the term a useful shorthand for a system whICh, m Its results. "'as only shghtly dIfferent.

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THE CASTE CITY

TABLE 5 LABOR FORCE IN RABAT AND SALE IN 1951-52 BY SEX, NATIONALITY, AND OCCUPATION

(active population only, divided into 7 basic categories of industry)

Fishing, Artisans, Mining, Industry, Agriculture Building Rabat Moroccan Muslim 8 Males Females Moroccan Jews b Males Females Non-Moroccans' Males Females Sale Moroccan Muslim" Males Females Moroccan Jews b Males Females Non-Moroccans' Males Females

Percentage m Industry Category TransporAdmin I tatwn, Personal Professional Guards I Ordnance Commerce Service Intellectual Army Number

42 27

16 3

13 6

— — —

53 6 47 6

8

—

37

—

24 9

12 5 120

42 64

5

— —

64 7 57

48

32 12

—

7 66 5

10

65

—

—

28,870 7,270

22 8 116

6 25

9 13

— —

2,253 716

77 10 6

45 12 3

33 60

15 6

—

10,889 4,706

14 5

20

9

—

56

26

—

—

10,940 1,940

5 9

8 16

— —

637 231

3 21

23 48

18

579 182

—

—

2 14 9

5 7

173 10

14 3

4 11

—

—

' Recensement 1951-52, Vol 3 (Rabat, 1955), Table XIII 44, 45 b Recensement 1951-52, Vol 4 (Rabat, 1953), Table IX 92, 94 ' Recensement 1951-52, Vol 2 (Rabat, 1954), Table XXI 83, 85 Note Percentages by rows do not necessarily cumulate to 100% because of omission of "ill-defined" category and very small numbers, especially for females

either),2 the relative positions of the three groups can be discerned with ease (see Table 5). Reading between the lines allows us to interpret these figures in a way that makes the cleavages appear even more clearly. First, we note that non-Moroccan males monopolized the positions of 2

Although we cannot separate out these groups in the data for Rabat and Sale, it is possible to do so at the country level, using information contained in Morocco, Gouvernement Chenfien, Service Central des Statistiques, Recensement general de la population en 1951-52, Volume 2, Population non marocatne Table XXIII, pp 95-99 From these tables we learn that of the 6,620 males in the labor force who were classified as "Francais de statut musulman" (that is, North Africans), most were either in transportation (24 percent) or industry (21 percent), the somewhat fewer working females in this strange category were domestic servants In these characteristics they

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THE CASTE C I T Y

power. Fully 50 percent were administrators (political/bureaucratic control) or soldiers (military control), and these were almost exclusively drawn from the "highest caste," that is, the French. Almost a fourth worked in industries, and 9 percent were involved in commerce. Within these two sectors, northern Europeans were likely to occupy positions as employers, administrators, and clerks, while those from southern Europe (Spain, Portugal, Italy) were more likely to be salaried employees doing semi-skilled and skilled labor. Firms in which foreigners worked were of somewhat larger scale and were concentrated in the "modern" sector, that is, transportation and utilities, factory production, building-supply manufacture, import-export trade, banking, and the retailing of imported or manufactured goods. Some rough indication of the scale of operations in which Europeans were involved can be derived from the fact that, in Rabat's commercial sector, 31 percent of the nonMoroccans were employers of others, 61 percent were salaried employees, and only 6.6 percent "worked on their own account," that is, were independent entrepreneurs or vendors. This, as we shall see, was in marked contrast with Moroccan commercial workers, who were concentrated in very small-scale and marginal operations While Rabat's "major industry" remained government employment, there had been some development of larger-scale industry and commerce, which was clearly the domain of the foreign "castes." A small aristocracy of native Moroccans was beginning to find employment in this sector, but largely in unskilled capacities. Moroccan Jews occupied a "caste" position ambiguously attached both to the older indigenous system of production and distribution and to the foreign system. Three-fourths of the Jewish males in the labor force (and almost 60 percent of the Jewish females with occupations) were in industry and commerce. Most of these remained in the smaller-scale "traditional" sector, as suggested by their distribution among employers, employees, and "own account", about 14 percent were owners and 66 percent resembled urban Moroccans more than they did Frenchmen Southern Europeans also were quite different from the French. Fifty percent of the Spanish men in the labor force, 70 percent of the Italian men, and 68 percent of active Portuguese males were engaged in "industry," although only about one-quarter of the French male labor force was, and these mostly in managerial posts The category of Moroccan Jew was similarly deceptive, since that group was essentially bimodal, containing a minority assimilated into the colonial enterprise and a sizable majority confined to the Millah by their traditional artisan trades

THE CASTE C I T Y

219

employees Artisan production was in modest-sized units averaging about four or five persons, if we assume workshops of uniform ethnic identity, which was apparently typical However, 20 percent of the "industrial" workers worked "on their own account," indicating marginal operations. In commerce the situation was even more marked. In contrast to the non-Moroccan labor force, we find in the commercial sector that 39 percent of the Jewish males were employers, 28 percent were employees, and fully one-third worked "on their own account." The latter implies tiny shops or even itinerant vending. Nevertheless, whereas Jews were excluded from the military and administrative arms of the occupation, they had begun to participate in at least some of the foreign-associated "modern" ventures, as revealed by lists of company names. Moroccans clearly occupied the lowest position in the caste ranking. They were the only group for whom farming and fishing appeared as significant occupational categories. One out of every eight Slawi workers (male and female) and one out of every twenty Rbati male workers were engaged in these primary activities. Like the Jewish Moroccans, the Muslims were largely concentrated in handicraft industry and petty commerce, although transportation also engaged a sizable number (16 percent in Rabat and 14.5 percent in Sale). Unfortunately, the census volume on Moroccans is not as detailed in presentation as are the volumes on Jews and Europeans, therefore, comparable percentages cannot be computed to show the distribution of Rabat-Sale's industrial and commercial workers among employers, employees, and single entrepreneurs. However, these data are available for Moroccan males in all nineteen municipalities combined. Among urban Muslim males working in "industry," 10 percent were employers, 77 percent were employees, and only 13 percent worked "on own account." This would indicate a substantial "proletarianization" of the Moroccan labor force not consistent with what we know to have been the case in Rabat. The figures are undoubtedly heavily weighted by the Casablanca situation, where most of the new heavy industry of the country was located; there, the proletarianization of the Moroccan labor force had gone very far by 1951. In Rabat, by contrast, the depressed artisan sector remained the chief outlet for Moroccans classified as "industrial workers," and the ratio of workers to employers and "own account" was undoubtedly much lower. The situation in commerce, however, did not vary that much

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THE CASTE C I T Y

from city to city. By 1951 the proliferation of the tertiary sector, of marginal vending and so on, was already noted throughout Moroc­ can cities, and was evidently absorbing a substantial proportion of the excess labor force. In the commercial sector, 30 percent of Moroccan males were classified as owners, only 13 percent as employees, and an incredibly high 56 percent were listed as petty entrepreneurs "working on own account." One final piece of evidence concludes this brief and inadequate discussion of occupational stratification (tentative because of insuf­ ficient data), and this relates to the female labor force. It was among females that the caste lines were particularly clear. Non-Moroccan women in the labor force were heavily concentrated in the adminis­ trative apparatus of the state and in modern firms. In contrast, Moroccan women in Sale were still following traditional occupa­ tions in the artisan sector (weaving, rug-making, and so on). Their sisters in Rabat, however, had already been converted into an un­ derclass of domestic servants, cleaning the homes of the colons, car­ ing for their children, washing the clothes worn and cooking the meals eaten by the highest caste. By 1951, two out of every three working women in Rabat were servants. This is perhaps the most sensitive measure indicating how Rabat's poor had been "ab­ sorbed" into the colonial enterprise. Whether one accepts the term "caste" or not, one cannot avoid the conclusion that, particularly in Rabat, a complex but rigid sys­ tem of class stratification along ethnic lines had become established by the late 1940s and early fifties. Not only was this system rigid at the moment, but it was also self-perpetuating, another symptom of caste. According to the 1947 census, of the European population in Morocco, 99 8 percent of the school-age boys and 88.7 percent of the school-age girls were enrolled in school. In contrast, fewer than 10 percent of the Muslim boys of school age and only 2.5 percent of the Muslim girls were attending school. 3 This did not bode well for bridging the life-chance gap, for transforming the caste lines into mere class differences. The caste system was displayed neatly, although imperfectly, in the physical ecology of the city. From the beginning of the Protec­ torate, efforts had been made through planning to keep the differ­ ent populations apart, but because of the myopia of the first plan­ ners, who failed to "see" the Moroccans or to set aside additional 3 Data from Moroccan [Istiqlal] Office of Information and Documentation, Morocco under the Protectorate, Table XXII, ρ 52

T H E CASTE CITY

221

space for the burgeoning population that would migrate to the city during the 1920s and even more so in the 1930s, segregation was incomplete There was an almost accidental quality to the selection of the sites preempted by the Moroccan newcomers, which meant that they tended to be scattered: a plot of hubus land here; an unused piece of unbuildable terrain there, an entrepreneur holding land for speculation in an outlying area but not adverse to renting to "squatters" in the meantime, a group of huts for domestic servants in a yet unbuilt section of the new city. At all weak points in the urban fabric the pressures of Moroccan needs for space had broken through, resulting in enclaves—some large, such as Dabbagh and Doum, most small and uncaptured by the statistics—that were beginning to give the original neatly bifurcated urban design a checkerboard appearance. A concerted program of resegregation was called for, one that would solidify and tidy up the pattern by creating vast concentrations of Moroccans to take the pressure off the residual areas reserved for Europeans This was the task of the final phase of colonial urban planning Between 1923 and 1946-1947, as we have seen, the problems simply piled up. The departures first of Prost and then of Lyautey left a lacuna of power and an inertia of bureaucratic plodding. The mechanisms established during the first period were perfunctorily applied, and the slippage Lyautey had so often averted, simply by taking a proprietary interest in "his domain" and using his dictatorial powers to countermand developments that displeased him, became a common occurrence. True, the scale of operations increased, requiring a complete bureaucratic overhaul of the apparatus of planning and municipal control (described in detail by Durand in Royer, 1932:88-93), but this apparatus had lost its direction and passion. True, the planning legislation had been modified by the dahir of March 1, 1927, but this revision had merely strengthened the powers of the state without either altering its goals or expanding the limits of its original approach. Some changes had been forced upon the Protectorate administration by the sheer pressures that were overwhelming Casablanca, a city whose population had increased from 247,000 in 1936 to 682,000 by 1951-1952, and a city that even Prost never did manage to control. The creation there of the "New Medina" and of the "Cite Habous" (that romantic and inauthentic stage set designed by Laprade, described in his article in Royer, 1932, which became the showpiece of the Protectorate) had been limited and short-lived at-

222

T H E CASTE ( ITY

tempts to meet the "needs" of Moroccans These efforts were soon replaced by discouragement, supplanted by a reluctant tolerance of the bidonvilles that proliferated in uncontrolled fashion to house the newcomers who could not be accommodated in either the new medma or the small city of the Hubus Although there were a few exceptions, in general the planners still sought to encourage, guide, and control private construction, they did not try to build houses. This began to change even before the final period of colonial urban planning, the phase associated with wide-scale construction under Michel Ecochard. Significantly, it was the arrival of French refugees during World War II that led to a redirection of policy. Dethier (1973-212) captures the irony of this In 1939, the Moroccan towns were submitted [subjected?] to a new and massive influx, that of Europeans fleeing from the imminence of war. . . . In order to furnish housing . . the state forced house-owners to put part of their houses at the disposal of the newcomers This measure discouraged private investment in the building industry and made the situation worse In an attempt to solve the situation on its own, the state created the "Office Chenfien de l'Habitat Europeen" (OCHE) in 1942 The tide of this first official organization reflects the main preoccupations of the Protectorate at this point—to insure the establishment of foreigners in the best possible conditions This clear preference for foreigners, in the face of the appalling living conditions that every day grew worse in the Moroccan quarters of the city, was blatant confirmation of the government's priorities, and could not have gone unnoticed The nationalist movement that had been there from the beginning of occupation, but which had gained new strength and purpose ever since the infamous Berber Dahir of 1930, was now coming into full mobilization (see 'Alal al-Fasi, The Independence Movements of Arab North Africa, 119 ff.) There was increasing unrest channeled through the organized apparatus of the Istiqlal, which the French clearly began to fear Perhaps this fear underlay two gestures made in 1944. First, the Prefecture of Casablanca hired a consultant to plan the city. The "Courtois Plan" that resulted was shocking, in that it recommended (for the first time) the construction of an enormous housing district for Moroccans. The funds requested were commensurately great, and the promise ended there None of the funds requested to execute the plan was forthcoming, perhaps the fear

THE C ASTE ( ITY

223

was not great enough yet And second, the name of the OCHE was changed to "Office Chenfien de l'Habitat" (dropping the term "European"), and a new section was added, charged with paying attention to Moroccan housing needs The first operation undertaken by this new branch was the construction of relocation housing for seven hundred families in the Douar Dabbagh bidonville of Rabat, this section of the city now being renamed more elegantly as Cite Yacoub al-Mansour (Dethier, 1973:213). The trame sanitaire of Kora, begun by 1943, was scarcely on the scale needed (it will be recalled that the population of Dabbagh had reached 18,000 by the late forties), but it did give symbolic substance to the fact that the state was finally prepared to consider—if not always follow through with—the question of housing urban Moroccans What was needed, however, was a massive infusion of money and planning talent In 1946, Michel Ecochard was invited to Morocco to work under the Resident General, Eric Labonne. He was the first forceful and dynamic planner Morocco had had since the departure of Prost. Finding the administrative apparatus inadequate for the ambitious national plans he wished to make and for the extensive direct construction he felt was needed, he urged a reorganization. The Residential Decree of April 19, 1947, completely retooled the Service de l'Urbanisme, and Ecochard was placed at its helm (Mauret, 1953:164) Endowed with virtually dictatorial powers and favored with a generous budget, he proceeded to assemble an impressive team of coworkers who would, during the next six years, give an entirely new direction to urban planning in Morocco Ecochard's initial pronouncements gave great promise that, after all these years, Moroccan needs would be receiving the attention they deserved. He stated that "for 35 years, Moroccans have been forgotten" (as quoted in Dethier, 1973:215), implying that he did not intend to perpetuate this neglect. Indeed, he did not, although, as we shall see, not only was most of his attention too little and too late but, in many ways, it may have been more harmful than the not-so-benign neglect that had preceded his efforts For it was his contribution to Moroccan cities—and to Rabat in particular—that concretized the urban spatial divisions already established in untidy form, and that pressed Moroccans into a straitjacket of ill-adapted and grossly unesthetic minimal housing—housing that was replicated on so extensive a scale that it foreclosed the possibility of later integration.

224

THE CASTE CITY

The caste divisions within the city were solidified during this third and final phase of colonial urban planning. In addition, there was created a new system of large-scale spatial segregation of classes within the Moroccan population itself, which had previously intermingled at smaller scale. These patterns would persist into the era of independence, giving to post-colonial Rabat its "caste-like" appearance, long after the departure of the Europeans. This was France's last legacy to the city. Admittedly, Rabat was not as central to Ecochard as it had been to Prost and Lyautey. Not only did Ecochard lack the "romantic temper" of his predecessors, but the very nature of the colonial enterprise had been transformed in the intervening years, making exotic concerns decidedly superfluous. From a colony treated as a milch cow, strategically handled lest the raw materials being extracted dry up or have their access blocked, Morocco had become a farm, a mine, and a factory, where Europeans converted the wealth of the soil, both surface and underground, into a "gross national product" with the aid of a labor force that had been shaken loose from its subsistence base to provide a surplus labor reserve in the cities, available at very depressed wages. 4 Rabat was not the center of this new industrialized base Casablanca was. Ecochard's task was to make this industrial operation work more efficiently, to keep the labor reserve out of the cities until it was needed, and to placate and preserve the urban labor force already there by providing it with at least a minimally healthy home. It is only in this context that his strategies form a pattern Foremost was his plan for the national system Aware that rural migrants were clogging the cities of the coast in excess of need, but far more sophisticated than Prost who had blamed this migration on an interest in travel for its own sake, he rightly decided that only development of the interior cities and towns and an enhanced at4 The industrial development of the country is the single most important factor to be studied However, it is beyond the scope of this book to undertake such an analysis Two excellent analyses exist to which the reader is referred. See relevant chapters in the collective work, Industrialisation de I'Afrique du nord, introduced by Gaston Leduc, which presents a fairly conventional discussion biased in favor of the mission civihsatnce, or much better, Albert Ayache's Le Maroc Bilan d'une colonisation, which is packed with data in support of a position critical of the French From Ayache's data it is clear that it is not just a matter of prejudice or preference whether one interprets Moroccan industrialization in one way or another His convincing work completes the documentation begun by Melvin Knight (1937)

THfc C A S T E

CITY

225

tractiveness in the rural areas could serve to deflect some of this movement He therefore recommended rural development programs but, despite the widening powers given to him as director of the Urbanism Service, he certainly could do no more than urge other government ministries to act That they did not, or at least not at a scale sufficient to have an impact, is evidenced by the fact that the coastal cities continued to grow more rapidly than the interior towns, indeed, the gap between the two urban systems widened during Ecochard's period of service He was somewhat more successful in streamlining the industrial system. He recognized that economic activity in the country was concentrated along the coastal strip between Casablanca and Kenitra and, being a follower of Le Corbusier, he enthusiastically embraced this trend, seeking to intensify the connections between Casablanca and Mohammediya, and indeed to bring Rabat within the industrial orbit by improving the highway stretch between it and Casablanca, even though this was already the best road in Morocco. He envisaged an industrial belt, parallel to the highway and rail line, that would attenuate Casablanca toward the north until it connected with Rabat which, in turn, was encouraged to expand in the southwesterly direction. Two advantages would accrue First, and less importantly, the economic base of Rabat, which was too heavily dependent upon government administration (a sector ill-equipped to absorb Moroccan immigrants), would be expanded and diversified. And second, of prime importance, the overconcentration of economic activities in Casablanca would be reduced. The plan was a sort of bloodletting to reduce the pressure on that city. For obvious reasons, Casablanca always occupied a central place in his thinking. It was the heartland of the colonial enterprise, and the city, with its large proletariat, was feared to be a breeding ground of revolution. (In actual fact, the "traditional" centers such as Fez and Sale proved to be the true breeding grounds for the nationalist movement.) Casablanca was the city with the most dramatic (that is, extensive) housing problems, the largest bidonvilles, the highest crime rates. It was French Morocco's most visible section, the one most exposed to the eyes of the world, and therefore the place where the government felt most sensitive. It was only natural, then, that the preparation of a new plan for the city should have been Ecochard's foremost priority. Affection and commit-

226

T H E CASTE CITY

ment were obviously there, too, in addition to the plan Ecochard authored a book about Casablanca, and most of his published arti­ 5 cles dealt with that city's problems Since his chief focus was Casablanca—an industrial complex with virtually no reminders of its undistinguished precolonial his­ tory except residual fragments of an unattractive medina—it was natural that Ecochard could so easily throw overboard all preten­ sions to "preserve the cultural heritage of the natives " He had little sympathy either for beaux-arts conservation or for romantic pseudo-Moorish designs He viewed the Moroccan in the cities chiefly as "a factor of production" who needed a place to live, good health to work, and a means of getting from home to his job In short, his urban policy emphasized the facilitation of modern indus­ trial efficiency, the rationalization of vehicular circulation, zoning to isolate industrial and commercial districts from residential zones, and the provision of mass-produced "sanitized" worker housing in easy communication with places of employment Quantity became the avowed goal for housing (Dethier, 1973 216-219) Quality had to be sacrificed if the low-paid workers were to be able to afford the housing (One cannot really raise objections to this, given the low quality of the existing quarters, but one wonders why the alternative solution of higher wages was never even hinted at) Sites for satellite cities were to be acquired at the peripheries of the cities, and these sites were to be subdivided into minimal plots within which minimal single-story houses were to be arrayed in orderly rows, and minimal services (communal water taps, latrines) provided The trame sanitaire was born In Dethier's words (1973 220) The main object here was to put on the market a sufficient quan­ tity of living quarters to encourage the resettlement of bidonville inhabitants Always behind his [Ecochard's] thinking about lower-class housing lurked the idea of a single human type [Whether in an urban or a rural area and regardless of region] the prototype remained the same fF]or this "modern Moroccan" the panacea of the "8 χ 8 meter cell" was conceived "la trame Ecochard " 5 See Μ Ecochard, Casablanca le roman d'une ville and his other works, including Problemes d'urbamsme au Maroc" and Urbamsme et construction pour le plus grand nombre "

THE CASTE CITY

227

Ecochard was quite explicit about his "vision." On the infrastructure of future quarters, where the major streets, the open spaces, the secondary roads, and the public building areas have been reserved [we shall ordain the] creation of a trame sanitaire (with streets, water lines, and sewers). In this trame samtaire will be hard-surfaced buildings [en dur] as well as provi­ sional structures (nuwalas and baraques) produced by the inhab­ itants. . The base element of this trame sanitaire is the minimum housing cell, established after research and experimen­ tation, at 8 m. χ 8 m. and containing two habitable rooms with obligatory orientation toward the south or the east, a W. C , a kitchen, the whole unit around a courtyard. . . The actual den­ sity of this trame . . . is 350 inhabitants per hectare. 6 The scheme will be recognized at a glance as a mixture of the "sites and services" idea that became very popular among Third World planners several decades later, and the "mimimum house shell" approach favored by other development planners. Ecochard was well ahead of his times. But if the planners who followed him had looked carefully at his results, they might have hesitated before imitating them. We might note in passing here that the density Ecochard recommended was higher than obtained in the existing bidonville of Dabbagh, which at that time housed only 250 persons per hectare Furthermore, Ecochard specified that no alterations could be made in the minimal shell house, which made the plans far more rigid than advocates of this approach would now recom­ mend However, in some projects that were to be built through self-help, the opportunities for variation in the house were there; only the orientation and mechanical street lines remained inflexible. Most of Ecochard's "cookie-cutter" projects were slated for Casablanca and Mohammediya, but there was one zone in Rabat in which Ecochard took a special interest—the Douar Dabbagh, now more elegantly renamed to "honor" the founder of Rabat It will be remembered that the founding of Ribat al-Fath was one of the three things Ya'qub al-Mansur had regretted in his life. Perhaps he had premonitions of the ragged zone that was to bear his name 6 1 have translated this excerpt from the quotation presented in Mauret, 1953 165-166, unfortunately Mauret does not give the original citation for this quotation

228

T H E CASTE C I T Y

Douar Dabbagh had several features that made it ripe for Ecochard's attention. First, it was located toward Casablanca along the main linear axis he wished to develop. Second, it extended parallel to the rail line between the two cities, adjacent to an irregu­ lar industrial district flanking the tracks. Modest industrial expan­ sion, particularly textiles, had been taking place there, thanks to the stimulus of the war, during which there was a heightened demand for import-substitution goods. Third, it contained a labor force which, although consisting of rural and oasis migrants for the most part, was by now primarily proletarian. Many residents worked at the fringes of the "modern foreign" sector of industry and com­ merce as low-paid semi-skilled and unskilled employees. Fourth, its housing conditions were an embarrassing eyesore, particularly those parts that could be seen from the highway. (Even today, the remnants of this bidonville and its extensions are screened from view wherever possible to reduce their impact on visitors passing by ) It was, in short, an ideal site on which to try out the design for a self-contained satellite town aggregated out of 8 χ 8 meter cells In the studies and plans that were made under Ecochard's direc­ tion and executed between 1948 and 1956 under the new plan d'amenagement for Rabat-Sale, "La Cite Yacoub al-Mansour" oc­ cupied a central position. The Service de l'Habitat expropriated seventy-five hectares of vacant land, and by 1953 had built almost 1,500 cellular houses. This was only a part of the larger scheme, in­ tended eventually to house 35,000 to 40,000 inhabitants in five neighborhoods, each with 7 to 8 thousand persons and served by its own school, clinic, police station, social service office, postal branch, shops, public baths, and open spaces. The satellite town was flanked by a seventy-four-hectare industrial zone (between it and the rail line), where it was hoped that the residents could work without having to commute to other parts of the metropolis. It also had its own "central business district," an arcaded area around a large square containing the chief mosque—all done out of beige concrete using simplified, almost abstract, "Moorish" lines. The city was separated from Akkan by a zone in which building was prohibited (a fatal mistake, as we shall see), and was also sited back from the sea, the zone between it and the shore also being declared a servitude non edificandi (see Mauret, 1954:5-8) The idea behind the project was, of course, that residents of the existing bidonville of Dabbagh would be relocated to this new ad­ jacent town as soon as their units were completed, and that their

THE CASTE CITY

229

substandard housing would be destroyed to make room for the next phase of construction. Only a small portion of the bidonville, however, was ever cleared. As any student of slum clearance projects would easily have predicted, the new construction became a supplement and not a substitute for the "informal" town, which was still needed; indeed, the bidonville sections continued to grow as quickly as the trames sanitaires, spreading illegally into the areas that had been "protected" as zones of non edificandi (see Figure 10). It would be unfair to blame the planners for this "miscalculation." At the very time they were attempting to "get ahead" of the demand, in order to remove the insalubrious housing that had already been put up, a new demographic factor had been introduced which they could neither have predicted nor contained. The precipitous drop in the Moroccan death rate that began in the late 1940s created a population pressure greater than anyone could have imagined. The migrations of the 1920s and 1930s seemed minor in comparison with this new onslaught. Yacoub al-Mansour, enormous as it was, was too little, and if the intent had been to replace the bidonville completely, it was certainly too late. The thirty years that had been lost could not be recovered. The planners, by extending Douar Dabbagh, acknowledged that the area along the Atlantic coast had been "ceded" to Moroccans. Ocean had been the province of the "darker Europeans," and few French planners regretted that its position—wedged as it was between the medina and the other Muslim area of Akkan-QabibatYacoub al-Mansour—guaranteed its eventual transfer from European to Moroccan "turf." The strategy was not to prevent the Moroccan city from expanding, but rather to contain that expansion west of the major thoroughfare and railroad tracks, using these barriers, together with the industrial zone, as a functional substitute for the greenbelt cordon sanitaire Prost had favored. Thus, while the satellite city represented a marked advance over earlier approaches in that it legalized Moroccan occupancy over a large area and helped to provide additional housing for the "natives," it did not challenge the philosophy of apartheid Indeed, its chief effects were to increase the scale at which segregation was imposed and to add class segregation to the ethnic-caste segregation already achieved. The attitude of the planners toward the second area in Rabat that had been preempted by baraques—namely, the Douar Doum overlooking the river—was not so sanguine. While the enclave was con-

230

THE CASTE C I T Y

FIGURE 10

GRADUAL REPLANNING OF DOUAR DABBAGH

siderably smaller than Dabbagh, its location was far more threatening. It was much too close to the highest-value land in the ville nouvelle, which was extending beyond the Chella toward the airport. This zone was now being planned as the Quartier Aviation, destined to house an expansion of the administrative district as well as villas for many of the civil servants connected with government. Certainly this group did not look enthusiastically upon its neighbors, the 6,000 inhabitants, mostly migrants from the south, who lived in ramshackle huts without benefit of sanitation, but who could not easily be removed. 7 7

Montagne's study at the time (1948-1950) indicated 1,331 households living in clay houses (including 284 rooms), nuwalas (440), baraques (1,270), and tents (3). In

THE CASTE CITY

231

The plan for this quarter, enacted into law by 1951, envisaged the complete removal of the baraques. For a site of twenty-seven hec­ tares adjacent to the settlement, a plan for a Moroccan cite was drawn up, using the obligatory 8 χ 8-meter module. This project was expected to absorb any of the residents in Douar Doum for whom removal from the area would constitute a hardship. The in­ tent was to destroy the bidonville after people had been relocated. (A discussion of the plan for Aviation, together with site plan maps, can be found in Mauret, 1954:9-14.) Incidentally, in contrast with the twenty-seven hectares allotted to the Moroccans, the new villa and apartment house quarter for Europeans was allotted one hun­ dred hectares! As had happened in Dabbagh, however, the dream of rehousing the slum dwellers and destroying the offending bidonville was a foolish one. The project, called Youssoufia, was built and even ex­ tended, but Douar Doum remained and spread even farther; it has since been joined by an entire string of settlements (Larrach, Tadouka, Bouaouid, Am Azagann, Bargach, 8 Laouna-Jdid, Doum Jdid, Hajja, Maadid, Thami, and Khadija) that by today have encir­ cled Aviation from the river side, only the projects'of Youssoufia and Takadoum (added later) insulate the villas of Aviation from the poorest quarters of Rabat. The third area designated to receive low-cost housing for Moroccans was on the outskirts of Sale, a clear indication that finally the abnormal cleavage between the two cities was bridged—both literally and figuratively. From the early days of the Protectorate, residents of Sale had been commuting to Rabat for work. It will be recalled that twenty-seven of the one hundred high makhzan officials studied by Villeme had homes in the medina of Sale In addition, merchants from Sale sometimes maintained shops in Rabat. However, with only a single bridge upstream 9 and the in­ adequate system of small boats that plied between the shores of the contrast to the low density at Dabbagh, there were 492 persons per hectare in Doum Many of the residents of Doum were engaged in providing vegetables and flowers for the European residents of the ville nouvelle (1952 158), and therefore were de­ pendent upon proximity to their European customers 8 Named after Pasha Ahmad Bargach, on whose land Doum was built (Montagne, 1952 158) 9 This bridge, constructed early in the Protectorate period, made it possible to bypass Sale on the route from Meknes to Rabat, a fact that contributed to Sale's loss in importance (K L Brown, 1969 211)

232

T H E CASTE CITY

river near the port, it was difficult for the poor to commute for work. By the early fifties, however, a better bridge (still on boats) was in place, and Rabat's quarters were becoming so saturated that Sale became attractive to migrants. The disengagement of Sale from the "traditional" system and its incorporation into the "colonial" system, as a subsidiary of Rabat, is seen clearly in its growth curve. Up to 1951, Sale's growth curve paralleled those of slow-growing Fez and Marrakech. From 1951 onward, the slope of growth turned sharply up, with population almost doubling in ten years; indeed, between 1951 and 1961, Sale's population increase was proportionally greater than Rabat's. Here was the beginning of a new form of the "dual city." Mirroring the cleavage between Rabat's European and Moroccan quarters was a new cleavage, between Rabat as a whole, the dominant partner, and Sale, increasingly a declasse "Moroccan quarter" dependent upon Rabat. By 1951 it was beginning to serve as a dumping ground for a lumpenproletanat too poor to live in Rabat. In fact, when baraques were outlawed (briefly) at Yacoub al-Mansour, the structures were resold to persons who set them up on the periphery of Sale (Nagin, 1965). In connection with the new plan, the state expropriated large swaths of land on the plateaus of Biftana and Tabriqat for housing and an industrial zone The Service de l'Urbamsme et de I'Habitat retained ownership over the latter site (Nafin, 1963-24) of some eighty hectares for the purpose of constructing a trame sanitaire with low-cost housing on the Ecochard module (Mauret, 1954 8) Another section was sold to private owners while the municipality retained control over the Biftana site and subdivided it for middleclass villas (Naein, 1963:24, 41). The plans for Tabriqat underwent subsequent change, and in the end the Ecochard module was rejected in favor of groups of apartment buildings of two to four stories Furthermore, the occupants, who were screened for admission by the governor of Sale, were not exactly in the lowest income class, since apartments rented for 2,000 to 3,500 francs a month. Therefore, the Tabriqat project, that had been intended as replacement housing for bidonville dwellers, 10 failed to serve this purpose. As Najiri concluded (1963:41), 10 A bidonville had formed just off the route from Sale's airport, where it could be seen by every visitor This created an urgent desire to move these settlers into the housing at Tabriqat (Najin, 1963 43)

T H E CASTE CITY

233

The construction of this low-cost housing was in response to an imperative: the reabsorption of the bidonvilles. But the rate of growth never caught up with the population increase. The beautiful buildings were soon obscured by the shantytown of Tabnqt, the contrast throwing into highlight the discrepancy between what could be done in contrast to what needed to be done in order to get rid of the need for bidonvilles. The integration of Sale into the metropolitan economy dominated by Rabat, in fact, resulted in a rapid proliferation of shantytowns. As noted earlier, two of these predated the Second World War: Douar Jdid and Douar Smaala. These continued to expand, and to them were added the settlements at Tabnqat, Douar Onk Ejjmel, and Sidi Bougettaya, the latter shading over toward the rural model (Figure 11). (See Nagiri, 1965, for a sensitive and detailed analysis ) The plan d'amenagement of Rabat drawn up by the Service de l'Urbanisme between 1948 and 1953 did not deal exclusively with areas of low-income Moroccan housing. Indeed, even greater efforts were expended on middle and upper-income areas for European expansion, even though the number of foreign residents had stabilized. Subdivision and circulation plans for the quarters of Agdal, West Agdal, the new suburb of Souissi, the area near the Tour Hasan, and so on, were all completed and enacted into law (Mauret, 1953:170 lists the plans and their dates of enactment), as if the handwriting on the wall that signaled the demise of the French occupation were not there. The French planners were thinking in terms of the next twenty-five years, not realizing that they should have been dismantling the colonial edifice rather than expanding and improving it. The first Frenchman to go was Ecochard, but he was ousted not by the revolution but by French business interests His dictatorial attempts to control speculation and limit profits by land expropriation had antagonized real estate promoters and speculators, who finally brought about his removal in 1953, only three years before the Protectorate ended (Dethier, 1973:221) By that time, however, the plans and programs had been so firmly established that they continued with a momentum of their own, carried on by many of the planners Ecochard had recruited and trained. Even after independence, some of these technicians stayed on, and after they left, their Moroccan successors, trained in France and inheriting the ap-

F I G U R E 11

L O C A T I O N OF THE M A J O R B I D O N V I L L E S OF R A B A T AND S A L E

THE CASTE C 1TY

235

paratus created by Ecochard, continued to run the Service in a similar manner, not stopping to rethink priorities. That was to come later. Such continuity was all the more incredible because the cities themselves were the scenes of fundamental upheavals, during and especially in the aftermath of the transition to independence. That story is too complex to be retold here. The struggle for independence was a long one, intensified from 1943 onward, but beginning from the onset of the occupation. It took Stephane Bernard some 655 pages to convey its sequence and to analyze the contending forces (see his The Franco-Moroccan Conflict 1943-1956, 1968), and there is even an account written by the leading figure of the independence movement (see 'Alal al-Fasi, The Independence Movements of Arab North Africa, 1954) For our purposes we need only recount briefly the results first of the war of liberation and then of the final retreat of the French. In the Parliamentary debate over that retreat, the French minister of foreign affairs showed overwhelmingly that the emancipation of Morocco had become inevitable because of the activities of the terrorist [sic] groups and the commandos of the Moroccan Army of Liberation on one hand, and the spontaneous disintegration of the protectorate's political and administrative machinery on the other. Apart from reconquest, which was inconceivable, the overwhelming change of heart and the rebels' resistance had left France no course but to consent (Bernard, 1968.369) What she consented to was the Franco-Moroccan diplomatic convention initialed at Rabat in May of 1956. In June, the French high commissioner of Morocco stepped down to become France's ambassador to Morocco, and the process of transition was initiated. Sultan Muhammad V returned from exile to assume his role as head of state, a role that he had never forfeited and that the liberation movement had supported Although the liberation war was neither as protracted nor as bloody as that waged by the Algerians, and although the European colony was never as entrenched or as massive as that of Algeria, nevertheless the transition involved significant dislocations, particularly in the cities along the coast. Rabat, because she had been capital of the Protectorate, underwent the most dramatic changes, even more dramatic than those that occurred in Casablanca, for the business interests in the latter city held on longer than the civil ser-

236

THE CASTE CITY

vants who were concentrated in Rabat. Between 1956 and 1960 there was a massive emigration of foreigners from Morocco, both of the dominant French from the southern zone and, to a lesser extent, of the Spanish who had controlled the northern zone. The two zones were reunited under a single government, owing allegiance to a ruler who was a direct descendant of the dynasty that had ruled Morocco since the seventeenth century—since shortly after the refounding of Ribaf by the Spanish moors. His return marked a new beginning for Morocco and for Rabat Both the country and the city faced a long process of decolonization, a process of excising the mauthentic and exploitative while retaining and building on the modern infrastructure, a process of absorbing and modifying the physical shell left behind by the departing colonists, and a process—the most difficult—of blending together the extremes of social and physical space that had been their legacy from the colonial caste system.

•WOTIII*

•9UI* THE CRISIS OF DECOLONIZATION

1952 and 1971, the number of foreigners in (the combined French and Spanish Zones of) Morocco dropped from 539,000 to 111,909.1 In the earlier year, foreigners constituted almost 6 percent (5.8 percent) of the total; by the latter date, they represented less than 1 percent (0.7 percent). The decline in the indigenous Jewish population was similarly dramatic. In 1951-1952, in the two zones combined, there were 218,000 Jews, who constituted 2.3 percent of the total population. By 1971, their numbers had declined to 31,119, and they represented only 0.2 percent of the total. During the first fifteen years of decolonization, then, the Muslim Moroccan population increased from less than 92 percent of the total to over 99 percent. By 1971 Morocco had been transformed into one of the most ethnically homogeneous countries in the world (see Table 6).

BETWEEN

TABLE

6 . P O P U L A T I O N OF RESIDENTS OF M O R O C C O BY N A T I O N A L I T Y AND RELIGION,

1935-1971 Moroccan Muslim Year 1935" 1952" 1960 1971

Total 7,040,000 9,342,000 11,626,232 15,530,378

Moroccan Jewish

Foreign

No

%

No.

%

No

~%

6,590,000 8,585,000 11,067,929 15,267,350

93.6 91 9 95.2 99.1

185,000 218,000 162,420 31,119

2.6 2.3 14 0.2

265,000 539,000 395,883 111,909

3.8 5.8 3.4 0 7

a

We have combined the populations in the French and Spanish Z o n e s for these years to make the data equivalent to that of later years SOURCES Resultats du recensement de I960, Vol. 1 on Nationahte, sex et age (Rabat, 1965):9, Table 1-2, which presents information on the populations in the Spanish and French Z o n e s for 1935, 1952, and total for 1960, and Population legale du Maroc (Rabat, D e c e m b e r 1971).4, Table I, which gives the distribution of population according to the Census of Population and H o u s i n g taken in 1971.

Moroccans reinhented their own country after more than forty years of occupation—but it was a country that had been transformed by the process of colonization, and they were a people whose life had been irrevocably altered in little more than a genera1

This chapter, with only m i n o r changes, has appeared in the Arab Studies Quarterly, 1 (Winter 1979):49-66, and is reproduced with permission.

240

C R I S I S OF D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N

tion. The problems they inherited would be compounded in the years to come by the working out of trends that had their origin in the Protectorate period, and to these would be added new ones resulting first from the flight of foreign capital and then from the reimposition of neocolonialism through external "assistance." The economy and the cities were the two arenas in which the effects of decolonization were experienced most intensely. In the former, Morocco inherited a structure that ill suited an independent nation. The entire economic infrastructure was geared to the system of world trade in which Morocco the colony played a decidedly subordinate role. Exports were concentrated in the area of unprocessed commodities (particularly minerals, but also fruits and vegetables) characterized by low and volatile prices. In return, Morocco depended upon Europe—and overwhelmingly on France—both for heavy producer and consumer goods and for a wide array of light consumer items that, in fact, it would have been quite capable of producing locally. A large proportion of the Moroccan urban labor force worked either at handicraft production, for which little market outside the country had yet been developed, or in petty services that contributed nothing to the balance of payments and not much to the local gross national product The result was a disturbing imbalance in international accounts, a trade deficit that was even worse than it appeared to be. Furthermore, the regional imbalances in development were extreme. The partition of Morocco between Spain and France had been disastrous for national integration. Each "protecting" power had developed its own self-contained infrastructure of roads, railways, and ports, avoiding any transit through the other's zone. There were therefore only a few tentative links between the northern rim of the country, with its weak lateral connections along the Mediterranean coast, and the southern portion of the country, with its radial system converging on Casablanca or debouching toward Algeria on the opposite side. When these two systems were reunited, the result was a poorly coordinated system of regional economies at three different levels of development: the coastal cities on the Atlantic, together with their hinterlands, which were "most developed"; the interior regions of the French Zone, together with their cities, which were less developed but at least contained infrastructure and the beginnings of a market-oriented system of production; and the Rif Mountains and eastern stretch along the Mediterranean coastline of

C R I S I S OF D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N

241

the former Spanish Zone, which lacked even the most basic prerequisites for development (even though, as it has recently turned out, this region was potentially rich in resources). The new country was faced with the problem of integrating these separate economic regions, a task compounded by the cultural differences that had resulted from the imposition of two separate systems of colonization. The major economic problems facing the new nation were to reorient the economy away from the colonial structure, to survive the flight of French capital that accompanied the exodus of foreigners, and to create out of the natural wealth of the country a selfsustaining and unified agricultural and industrial system capable of growing at a rate faster than demographic increase. Only through this could a sufficient number of jobs be generated and a higher standard of living for the Moroccan workers be attained. Unhappily, these goals were not reached, despite the great promise and potential of the country. 2 During the first decade following the Second World War, economic growth in French Morocco had been higher than that in either Tunisia or Algeria. Indeed, between 1948 and 1954 it amounted to 6 percent per year, more than twice the rate of population increase. Phosphates were an important factor in this growth, output increasing from a prewar maximum of 1.8 million tons to 5.3 million tons by 1955. And the mimboom in industrial growth from 1949 onward, encouraged by a protectionist policy and financed by a substantial inflow of foreign private capital, contributed as well, with industrial development growing at 7 percent per year (Amin, 1970:164) Almost all of Morocco's important industries were started during this time, although most of these were light (tbid. 165-166) As Amin notes (p. 165), "As in Algeria and Tunisia, around 1947-8 investment suddenly multiplied threefold. . . In Morocco the expansion of colonial agriculture and the exploitation of the country's mineral wealth constituted, until 1955, the mam motor of development." Furthermore, although Moroccan exports were scarcely sufficient to cover the imports demanded chiefly by the foreigners, the balance of payments was more than made up for by French and American military expenditures, that is, payments to Morocco for military bases. Between 1950 and 1955 not only was there no trade deficit, but Morocco actually accumu2 The following section depends heavily upon Samir Amin, The Maghreb in the Modem World Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, esp chapter 6, pp 164-187 His is a highly critical but convincing analysis

242

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lated "almost 20 thousand million (francs)" m foreign holdings (Amin, 1970:167). These payments concealed the basic ill health of the underlying condition. Despite this promising beginning, the early years of decoloniza­ tion between 1956 and 1962 brought stagnation. Not only was there an abrupt drop in investment, but there was a steady drain of capital as foreigners liquidated their holdings. Because of Moroc­ co's "gentler" pace of decolonization, in contrast to Algeria, for example, this process took place over a long period of time, during which foreigners sold their assets in unhurried fashion, accumu­ lated savings that were not reinvested, and, thanks to the lack of currency controls, repatriated their funds to drain the system. This gradual pace of divestiture meant that Morocco's economic struc­ ture changed much less than that of Tunisia or Algeria during the first decade of decolonization (Amin, 1970:176). Between 1956 and 1965, foreigners sold almost 500,000 hectares of the best agricul­ tural land to a handful of Moroccans who became the new big land­ lords of the country "The social structure of Morocco therefore changed more than the economic structure" (ibid. :177). Although Moroccans thus "bought into" the agricultural empire of the colons, perpetuating the great inequalities of the distribution of land and therefore ensuring the continuation of the rural exodus to the cities,3 they were less successful in taking over the newly or­ ganized industrial ventures (with the exception of phosphates, which had been a government enterprise from the start), much less expanding them. Industrial employment remained stationary and in some places even declined. The industrial structure had been equally inequitable, but at least it had begun to provide jobs, its 3 Some measure of this inequality is given in the study of the economy reported by the staff of the Schema Directeur de Rabat, "Analyse economique," as published in Bulletin Economique et Social du Maroc 32, 1970 57-80 By the time of their study, the "modern sector" of agriculture (chiefly the ex-colonial sector sold to the "new class") involved an area of 1 4 million hectares, subdivided among 5,000 households, each holding on the average 280 hectares In contrast, the "traditional sector," con­ sisting of 4 million hectares, had to support 1 8 million households, at an average holding of 2 2 hectares per household, even though the commission charged with investigating the question of agrarian reform had determined that the minimum via­ ble plot to support a household was 13 hectares Some 87 percent of the rural heads of "owning" households had plots of less than 4 hectares, while 13 percent of all owners controlled 65 percent of the arable land See ρ 59, which depends heavily on Michel Villeneuve, "La Situation de l'agnculture dans l'economie du Maroc," but unfortunately does not give the complete citation to this work

CRISIS OF D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N

243

stagnation, in the face of the rapid demographic increase, posed an enormous problem for the newly independent state.4 Ironically, independence came toward the beginning of the period of exponential growth of the population, compounding the economic challenge. The French, and to a lesser extent the Spanish, had been sitting on a time bomb that had just begun to detonate during the terminal years of the Protectorate (1948-1949 to 1956). It exploded in full force in the 1960s and 1970s, just at the time the new nation was trying to cope with the problems of decolonization, a reorientation of the economy from colony to independent self-sufficiency, and the issue of economic and cultural integration. Between 1960 and 1971, the Moroccan Muslim population increased from 11.2 million to 15.3 million, growing from natural increase at the rate of 2.9 percent per year.5 In addition, there was a massive population transfer from rural to urban areas. During this interval, the increase in rural areas (on the average less than 2 percent per year) was less than natural increase, while that in the urban areas (averaging 5.5 percent per year) was much more. All told, 1.2 million Moroccans moved from rural to urban areas during those eleven years, which created a tremendous need for jobs that a stagnant economy could hardly provide ("Analyse economique" Bulletin Economique et Social du Maroc, 1970:58). At first, the decline in the number of foreigners and Jews created a small breathing space for this population increase. But because Moroccans had always constituted more than 90 percent of the population, even during the height of colonial settlement, on a numerical basis their exodus made little dent in the slope of popula4 In Amin's analysis, he makes much of inequality as a cause of the slow gains in living standards. He points out that, although the economy grew between 1950 and 1954 at the rate of 6 percent per year, overall household consumption grew by only 2 percent, something that could come only from unequal distribution. (He fails to note population increase here, the second cause of the discrepancy ) He concludes that "The 'golden years' of colonial rule were golden only for a very small sector of society," a conclusion we cannot fault (Amin, 1970.171). 5 Division du Plan, Royaume du Maroc, estimated the total population at the midpoint of 1964 at almost 13 million, of whom almost half were under the age of 15, indicating that the "demographic transition" had been going on for some time. See La Situation economique du Maroc en 1964, 1965, chapter 1. A competent demographer working at that time concluded that the crude birth rate of Morocco was about 50/1000 and that the death rate had dropped from 25/1000 in the 1950s to 20/ 1000 in the 1960s, making the annual rate of natural increase about 3 percent. See Amor Benyoussef, Populations du Maghreb et communaute a quatre, esp. pp. 47-62. This rate of natural increase has persisted into the 1970s.

244

C R I S I S OF D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N

tion increase Far more important was the space they vacated and the opportunities their departure provided for social mobility for a small class of Moroccans. Since foreigners had monopolized the better-paid jobs in government and private enterprise, and had occupied both spacious latifundia in the countryside and extensive areas in the coastal cities, their disappearance left a sizable vacuum. This vacuum was soon filled by a small group of privileged Moroccans, however, making the relief it had provided only short-lived. Relentless population increase meant that pressure would continue to build—but there were to be no new safety valves.6 Only a total transformation of the economy could provide sufficient jobs, particularly in urban areas, to absorb this population increase in a productive way. Unlike many other newly independent Third World countries, Morocco was fortunate to have had ample financial and other resources available at the moment of decolonization to allow it to attempt such a transformation. The tax rate, which had been very low (a factor that had made her so attractive an outlet for foreign investment earlier), was raised, which placed enormous funds in the government coffers Imports had dropped, in part because of the departure of foreigners with their demands for manufactured consumer goods, while the rental of foreign bases continued to provide substantial overseas assets, which meant that the balance of payments appeared more favorable than it otherwise would have been (Amin, 1970:171) This trade surplus provided an opportunity that could have been used to import the heavy producers' goods necessary for state-sponsored development projects in basic industries to generate further economic growth. For this to occur, careful economic planning was required, planning guided by an ideology and executed by an elite dedicated to breaking the ties with France, holding local consumption in line until the massive investments had been made, and controlling the process of economic development to maximize eventual multiplier effects from a concerted investment program Work began on the Five-Year Plan for 1960-1964, which was intended to achieve these goals, but in the meantime an interim two-year Capital Improvements Plan of 1958-1959 was put into effect, which hinted that the main emphasis would not be on state-sponsored economic development but upon the creation of "make-work" jobs and the 6

For a brief time in the 1960s and early 1970s, the migration of several hundred thousand Moroccans to Europe as "guest workers" was to provide temporary relief of dubious value This trend has recently (1979) recommenced

CRISIS OF D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N

245

use of the public purse to subsidize nongenerative consumption goods such as housing Indeed, 17 percent of the almost 900 million dirham budget was allocated for housing, while only 6 percent was allocated to industry and power generation (iW.:183) It is difficult to condemn this approach out of hand (which Amin does), for it was certainly true that the Protectorate government had sorely neglected the needs of the Moroccan population not only for housing but for health, education, and other social services, and this neglect had created an enormous backlog. Furthermore, the drive for independence had been led by nationalists without any particular social program beyond "getting rid of the foreigner," and their followers fully expected that once that goal was achieved, the fruits of the country would be theirs to enjoy. The elite had moved into the vacuum left by the foreign caste, and the privileges that accrued to these positions so newly occupied were dependent in part upon maintaining the system that had created them. Since independence had been achieved without the violent struggle Algeria was to wage, and had neither been mobilized nor accompanied by a social revolution, it was unlikely that matters could have proceeded very differently. The new Five-Year Plan, as finally designed, was "radical" in that it proposed a disturbance to the existing system of free enterprise that perpetuated the social inequalities in the country, and was potentially "unpopular" in that it proposed a postponement of consumption for the masses in favor of investment in heavy but generative industries. It was almost a foregone conclusion that it would be rejected, which indeed it was. Despite attempts by the government, led by the Union Nationale des Forces Populaires, to adopt such "socialist" policies, the efforts failed when King Muhammad V dismissed the government in May 1960 and assumed the chairmanship of the Cabinet in place of Ibrahim Abdallah, head oftheUNFP (Amin, 1970:176,180-181). When King Hasan II succeeded his father in March 1961, he proceeded to ignore the Five-Year Plan, despite its "formal adoption," and it became a dead letter of only academic interest. Instead, in 1961 "emphasis was transferred from the industrialization plan to an emergency program for the relief of unemployment" that "apparently gave work to a maximum of 70,000 unemployed for a fairly brief period and in conditions of very dubious profitability" (ibid. :184-185). These efforts did not prevent the stagnation or even decline in the economy. Not only was industrialization not moving ahead, but

246

CRISIS OF D E C O L O N I S A T I O N

even agricultural production had ground to a halt. For example, grain production dropped from 34 million quintals in 1958 to 28 million in 1964—scarcely a development designed to keep population on the farms (See La Situation economique du Maroc en 1964 165.) By this time Morocco's period of grace vis-a-vis foreign exchange had run out. Foreign government aid dried up, as did the funds that previously had been paid for military bases which now gradually closed down. In order to meet the annual deficits created by the continued repatriation of capital and the gap between imports and exports, Morocco had to draw on her foreign holdings to meet her obligations. Amin dates the turning point for this in 1961, although he notes that "for a few more years, from 1961 to 1964, Morocco was still able to ignore this steady deterioration in her economic relationship with the outside world by drawing on her major foreign assets. Then, suddenly, when these assets fell below the acceptable limit, the country had to embark upon a programme of austerity" (1970.173) An eight-year opportunity, which could have turned the Moroccan economy around, had been lost, and it was not to come again. In place of the forfeited potential employment in productive industry, jobs were created by multiplying government posts. Public-sector jobs for Moroccans increased almost tenfold (from 27,000 to 240,000) between 1955 and 1964, accounting for close to 80 percent of the entire expansion of the Moroccan nonagncultural labor force from 600,000 to 870,000 during that period (see Table 1.178 of Amin). The Moroccan budget increased almost threefold between 1955 and 1964, in large part because of the expansion in the number of employees (ibid. :177). Although one could not claim that some large proportion of these new workers were not needed, only a handful were required to replace departing non-Muslim functionaries (whose number dropped from 41,000 in 1955 to 15,000 by 1964). The expanding schools, hospitals, and other government-sponsored activities, including housing, absorbed most of them—more than were really needed. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that government employment was in part serving as a system of disguised relief whose transfer payments were intended to keep the burgeoning urban population from rebelling. Between 1964 and 1971 the employment situation did not alter drastically, although eventually the opportunities for expansion in public-sector employment reached an end. After that, unemploy-

C R I S I S OF D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N

247

ment and disguised unemployment in the petty tertiary sector began to increase, with the former reaching 15-20 percent in poorer urban areas, and the latter absorbing as much as 70 percent of the male labor force in some marginal communities. While poverty and underemployment were perhaps even harsher in rural areas, the systematic transfer of the surplus population from rural to urban areas continued to displace the problems to the latter, more visible arena. We must examine what had been happening to the rate of urbanization and to the relative growth of different cities during the opening decades of decolonization, for these not only perpetuated trends that had been set in motion during the long years of colonization, but had begun to alter some of them in the direction of greater balance and integration. To understand Rabat's developments since 1956 one must know the context not only of the stagnation of the national economy and the proliferation of government employment (which, after all, was concentrated in the capital), but also of the general move to the city, since the conurbation of Rabat-Sale served as a prime target for this migration. Clearly, one trend perpetuated into the postcolomal period was heightened urbanization. From approximatley 25 percent urban in 1952, Morocco had become 35 percent urban by 1971, and there seemed to be no end in sight. 7 Projections suggest that half of the population will live in cities by the mid-1980s ("Analyse economique," Bulletin Economtque et Social du Maroc 1970:58, 61). But two things had changed since independence. First, the growth rates of cities in the colonial hierarchy and those in the traditional hierarchy began to converge, with the former growing somewhat more slowly than in the past, while the latter expanded at rates considerably higher than before. The result was a certain equalization of the two systems, if not convergence into a single system. While it is still too early to predict trends from only the two postcolomal data points available (the censuses of 1960 and 1971), it appears that a considerable amount of unification took place in that short time. Table 7 presents information on the popu7

Discrepancies in estimates of "percentage urban" derive from different definitions Officially, only residents of the municipalities (by legal definition) of Morocco are listed as "urban" in government statistics However, there are now a number of towns with sizable populations that, nevertheless, lack municipal charters I have included these with "urban," but have omitted municipalities with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants

CRISIS

248 TABLE

7.

OF

DECOLONIZATION

M A J O R U R B A N C E N T E R S OF M O R O C C O , POPULATIONS,

Population

in Thousands

Prefecture, Municipality, or Town

1936

1952

1960

Casablanca Rabat-Sale [Rabat o n l y ]

247 115 | 83]

682 203 |156]

[Sale o n l y ]

| 32J 190 144

Meknes Tangiers Oujda Kenitra Tetouan

1936-1971

Intercensal Growth Ratea 1936-1952 1952-1960 1960-1971 % Increase

% Increase

% Increase

965 1,506 303 523 |227] | 3 6 7 ]

176 77 | 88]

41 55 | 46]

56 73 [62]

| 47]

| 76]

[156]

[47]

] 62]

[105]

215 179

243 216

333 325

13 21

37 50

75

140

176

248

87

26

41

— 35

— 81

142 127

188 176

— 131

— 57

32 39

18 —

56 81

87 101

139 139

211 —

55 25

60 38

Safi Khouribga Mohammediya Agadir al-Jadida

25 8 10 — 24

57 20 25 30 35

81 41 35 17 40

129 74 70 61 56

128 150 150 — 46

42 105 40 — 13

59 80 100 —" 40

Taza Bern Mellal ( N A M ) ' Kasr el-Kebir Larache Settat

15 10 — — 18

22 16 32 42 25

32 29 34 31 30

55 54 48 46 42

47 60 — — 39

31 81 6 — 17

72 86 41 —' 1 40

Berkane ( N A M ) Oued Zem (NAM)

— 6

— —

20 —

39 33

— —

— —

95 —

Ouezzane Nador Jerada ( N A M )

16 — —

21 22 —

26 — 19

33 32 31

— — —

— — —

27 — 63

15 12

22 17

26 21

30 29

— —

— —

15 38 —

Marrakech Fez

Essaouira Sefrou F k i h B e n Salah (NAM) Sidi K a c e m ( N A M )

— 6

— 15

— 19

1971

13 24

27

—

—

27

—

—

42

Khenifra ( N A M ) Youssoufia ( N A M )

— —

— —

— —

26 22

— —

— —

— —

Taroudant (NAM) Khemisset ( N A M ) Azrou (NAM)

9 — —

— — —

— — —

22 22 21

— — —

— — —

— — —

Sidi S h m a n e ( N A M )

—

—

—

20

—

—

—

Berrechid ( N A M )

—

—

—

20

—

—

—

T o t a l P o p u l a t i o n in Places w i t h 20,000 +

4,647,000 (i.e., 3 0 % o f total p o p u l a t i o n )

C R I S I S OF D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N

249

a

The percentage increases were computed merely as a straight-line, rather than a geometric, annual rate of increase My concern was not to estimate the rate of in­ crement (particularly since the period includes a drop m population and then an in­ crease in those communities having had large numbers of foreigners before decol­ onization), but merely to present relative rates of net increase b I have not computed a rate of growth for Agadir because the town was essentially destroyed by an earthquake and rebuilt ' (NAM) next to a place name means that, despite its population size, the town does not have municipality administrative status It should be noted further that some communities that do have municipality status were not populous enough to appear in our list, although they appear on earlier lists of Moroccan cities compiled solely on the basis of administrative criteria (for example, Ifrane, al-Hoceima, Asilah, and Chechaouen) d I have not computed the growth rate because of the sharp drop in population be­ tween 1952 and 1960 due to the exodus of foreigners SOURCE Population figures for 1971 have been taken from preliminary returns of the Census of Population and Housing for 1971 Those for the largest twenty-five communities in any of the census years (going back to 1936) can be found in Ralph Thomhnson, "Les Relations entre les rangs des villes et leurs populations au Maroe 1936-1971," in As-Soukan, Vol 1 (June 1973) (Rabat Centre de Recherches et d'Etudes Demographiques) These were checked against figures for 1936, 1952, and 1960 that appear in Royaume du Maroc, Recensement demographique, Juin I960 Vol 1, Population legale du Maroc (Rabat Service Central des Statistiques, June 1961), par­ ticularly ρ 99

lations of urban prefectures and municipalities (plus other urbansized places) of unified Morocco for 1960 and 1971, with earlier figures included where readily available, while Figure 12 shows their geographic distribution. The major fact to be noted from Table 7 is that the gap between the growth rates of the fastest-growing cities and the ones growing most slowly narrowed considerably in the generation that spanned the colonial and postcolonial periods. 8 Between 1936 and 1952, when colonialism was the dominant entry in the urbanization equa­ tion, the range was extremely wide. Casablanca experienced an av­ erage annual rate of growth during that interval of 11 percent, Kenitra's average annual growth rate was 13 percent, while Oujda grew at an average rate of 8 percent annually. These contrasted with average annual growth rates of 0.8 percent and 1.5 percent, respectively, for Marrakech and Fez, and rates in the vicinity of 5 percent for Meknes and Rabat-Sale (mixed system participants). These gaps narrowed considerably during the eight-year period 8

Several authors in the collective volume, Villes et soaetes au Maghreb, have also noted this trend

FIGURE

12

IN M O R O C C O

T H E URBAN SYSTEM

CRISIS OF D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N

251

straddling decolonization, 1952-1960. Computing the net population change and averaging over the eight-year period (an illegitimate operation, see note a to Table 7), we find that the average annual growth rates ranged from highs of 6.9 percent (Rabat-Sale), 7.1 percent (Oujda), and 6.8 percent (Kenitra), to lows of 2.6 percent (Fez) and 1.6 percent (Marrakech). Although the same cities fall in the high and low portions of the distribution, the range of the distribution is substantially narrower. By the period between 1960 and 1971, the gap had virtually closed, with Rabat-Sale's average annual growth rate for the period representing the top (at 6.6 percent) and Marrakech's representing the bottom (with 3.4 percent). Most values fell around 4 to 5 percent. In general, those urban communities that previously experienced abnormally low rates of growth picked up, whereas those that experienced abnormally high rates of growth during the colonial period experienced declines after independence. To only a small extent was this shift attributable to the disappearance of foreigners from the "colonial" system cities, dramatic as that exodus was, for the trend of convergence has been most marked since 1961, by which time much of the population exchange of natives for foreigners had already occurred. This was the second factor that changed with independence, namely, the ethnic homogemzation of the urban population. It was a change that had enormous consequences for the internal structure of cities. In 1951, one-fifth of the population of Casablanca had been non-Moroccan; one out of every four Rbatis was a foreigner and, in the border town of Oujda, foreigners still constituted onethird of the population. It should be noted that in all these cases the 1951 percentages represented a decline from a high point even earlier, before massive Moroccan immigration from the countryside began to outpace European increase. Although Moroccan Muslim representation in cities had been growing even before independence, it was after 1956 that the real changes commenced. Within the first four years, Casablanca's population had increased to almost a million, of whom only 112,000 or 12 percent were foreigners. Rabat grew to a quarter of a million by 1960, with only 15 percent of her population (and virtually none of Sale's) foreign. The town of Oujda, so crucial to France's contacts with an Algeria under fire, experienced some outflow of the non-Moroccan population, which decreased to 28 percent This trend continued into the early 1960s and, by the census of

252

CRISIS OF D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N

1971, it was clear that foreigners constituted only a small minority of urbamtes in a few "cosmopolitan" centers. By that year, only 3 percent of Casablanca's population of over 1.5 million were foreigners; only 3.5 percent of Rabat's 368,000 residents held foreign passports (and scarcely 2 percent of the half million people living in Rabat and Sale combined); while less than 3.4 percent of Oujda's residents were foreign.9 After only fifteen years of independence, all Moroccan cities had reverted to their indigenous origins. Naturally, it was the cities in the former colonial system that changed the most. In these, the exodus of foreigners had left large areas vulnerable for "invasion and succession." But because the transition was gradual and the basic economic system was not really altered, the movement of Moroccans (particularly those who had supplanted foreigners in the best-paying government and private jobs) into the vacancies created proceeded in an orderly manner, with class distinctions gradually replacing the older system of caste It should be pointed out that "foreign education" and the ability to function in French were highly correlated with elevated rank in the new class system, so the transition was scarcely abrupt. The contrast with Algeria is illuminating. There, the prolonged and bloody struggle for independence had totally disrupted life in Algiers, where French residents were concentrated, even before independence. When the French government finally capitulated to these pressures and withdrew, there was a sudden and virtually complete flight of foreigners In the ensuing confusion, Algerian families moved almost at random into the vacated villas and apartments, squatting wherever they could gain a foothold. This led to an abrupt breakdown in the system of caste segregation and, at least temporarily, to the random intermixture of social classes, as well. Only gradually over the years, through rigid government control over housing and "administrative assignment" of residents to housing units according to a system of differential social and occupational rank, has spatial stratification been reconstituted in Algiers. 9

For 1951, see Gouvernement Chenfien, Service Central des Statistiques, Recensement general de la population en I95i-t952, Vol 2, Population non marocame Figures for I960 are available in Royaume du Maroc, Mimstere de FEconomie Nationale, Recensement demographtque, Jmn i960, Vol 1, Population legale du Maroc, 1961 81 The figures for 1971 can be found in Direction des Statistiques, Population legale du Maroc d'apris le recensement general dt la population et de I'habitat, 1971, 1971 5-6

CRISIS OF D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N

253

In marked contrast, Moroccan cities never lost their basic patterns of spatial stratification, although the criterion of access changed from "ethnicity/caste" to a simpler "ability and desire" to pay. Although this movement of a Westernized elite into the spacious quarters of the villes nouvelles freed some housing for Moroccans farther down on the class ladder, the preexisting housing shortage for Moroccans and the rate at which newcomers kept streaming into the cities assured that the exodus of foreigners could make only a small and temporary difference. Massive additions to the housing stock were needed—and in the investment programs instituted after independence, whether wisely or unwisely from the standpoint of future economic growth, these additions absorbed massive amounts of effort and resources. As we noted in the last chapter, the departure of Ecochard and then of many of his French colleagues did not immediately alter the approaches to urban planning and housing he had initiated. Although from 1957 on the Service de l'Urbanisme was directed by Moroccan architects, many Frenchmen remained in the unit, carrying out already completed master plans that had been designed for a twenty-year future. However, while the approach did not change, there was a new dedication to speed up the provision of housing and an enlarged budget with which to do so. From 1957 on, the "Circonscription de l'Urbamsme et de l'Habitat" (CUH) was allocated approximately 45 million dirhams per year, earmarked to provide low-cost housing (Dethier, 1973:221). Between 1956 and 1965, more than 32,000 presumably "lowcost" dwelling units, accommodating some 160,000 urban residents, were built, chiefly in Casablanca but in Rabat and other major cities as well. Although most were in the form of singlefamily and duplex attached cells (some on the Ecochard design), increasingly units were also provided in taller apartment buildings, even though this design was poorly adapted to Moroccan life.10 Most were located on lands owned or already expropriated by the state on the outskirts of the cities—adjacent to areas that had already been preempted by squatters and/or shacktowns (such as Youssoufia opposite Douar Doum or Tabnqat next to the bidon10 Some of the ingenious methods Moroccan residents have used to adapt apartment dwellings to a more satisfactory arrangement (including converting entrance foyers into a zriba [courtyard of traditional rural house] and screening balconies from view by curtains) are recounted in Colette Petonnet, "Espace, distance et dimension dans une societe musulmane," 1972

254

C R I S I S OF D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N

ville of the same name at Sale) Despite this location and the avowed (but by now lip-service) policy of relocating bidonville dwellers and subsidizing families with the greatest needs, the housing shortage was so extreme and the pressures on the Moroccamzed civil service so great that most of the units ended up being assigned to government functionaries or to others of more than modest means As the C U H confessed, "today [1964] one has to admit that the efforts of the state to follow a social trend [Dethier's translation but should probably read "a socially responsible trend"] affected only a privileged minority who had stablejobs if not administrative positions " 1 1 This is still the problem with state-subsidized housing in Morocco today As any planner knows, however, the most expensive and frustrating way to assist the poor with their housing is to try to build it for them First, all materials and labor have to be purchased and, in addition, the overhead costs of the bureaucracy during both the building and renting phases have to be borne by the state Even the wealthiest countries in the world have failed to make a sufficient amount of housing available through this method, even though their "poor" are only a relatively small percentage of the population and their existing housing stock is more plentiful Second, in poorer countries, where perhaps half of the urban population earns less than is necessary to live at a minimum standard and where even the middle class cannot afford the kind of housing being constructed as "public housing," it is natural that the latter will attempt to monopolize the new housing, even if it must use bribes or other methods of persuasion to obtain it (Often, in such countries, the poor whose housing has been subsidized need food even more than they need housing, and are all too willing to sublet or sell at a profit their "right" to the subsidized housing unit) And finally, fully constructed subsidized housing has a very high opportunity cost, since a few people receive high subsidies, while the vast majority are not helped at all By the early 1960s, direct construction began to be deemphasized and other approaches designed to spread the benefits more widely were introduced Some combinations of direct investment and self-help were tried, in which the government provided mfrastruc11 Morocco, Ministere des Travaux Publics, CUH, Nouvelies reflexions pour une politique d'urbamsme et d'habitat, 1964 1, as cited in Bethier, 1973 224

I

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ture and a single room on a tiny lot (smaller than Ecochard's 8 χ 8), and occupants were allowed to build a second room. Between 1962 and 1965 almost 9,000 units of this type were built (Dethier, 1973-224). In addition, since the bidonvilles clearly were not being replaced, efforts were directed toward regularizing their layouts, installing a few sanitary facilities, and even relocating the shacks themselves to newly subdivided miniscule plots While the state stopped short of "recognizing" the bidonvilles and according them legal status, it did begin to work in these areas, where almost onefourth of the urban population was living {ibid. :225). While Samir Amin (1970) has criticized these efforts for squan­ dering capital that otherwise might have been invested in statesponsored basic industrial development (and in theory he is cor­ rect), within the context of the existing Moroccan political situation and in the face of the enormous backlog of essential human needs that had accumulated during the colonial period, it is hard to con­ demn these efforts by dedicated and compassionate planners. Nor can we dismiss, as does Amin, the early efforts of the new state agency, "Promotion Nationale," which in the early 1960s under­ took the task of mobilizing the unemployed for capital im­ provements—not only in urban housing but in other projects in rural areas as well. While one could characterize some of the ac­ tivities undertaken as "make-work," similar to the WPA, in fact housing was produced (2,358 dwelling units in 1962 alone, accord­ ing to Dethier, 1973:226) and the multiple goals of adult education, training in skills, and constructive employment at admittedly sub­ sidized wages were partially achieved. Short of an entirely different economic structure, it is difficult to see how government funds could have been expended in ways that would have provided more for both the country and the population involved. By the mid 1960s, Morocco had become a "proving ground" for many alternate schemes for mass housing suggested by foreign planners, but the basic organization had not changed, nor had the approaches been more than modified. At the end of 1967 two changes took place that significantly altered this. First, the alloca­ tions for housing were significantly reduced, as state resources con­ tracted, and as agriculture, tourism, and education became the chief recipients of investments allocated through the 1968-1972 FiveYear Plan. Whereas urbanism and housing had been allocated some 50 million dirhams per year between 1956 and 1964, they were to

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receive less than 10 million dirhams per year according to the new plan New methods would have to be found if this smaller budget was not to be consumed by a few small projects Second, the Service de l'Urbanisme et de l'Habitat was transferred from the Ministry of Public Works to the Ministry of Interior, and totally reorganized (Dethier, 1973 233) This was an official acknowledgment that, despite all the efforts to provide housing and to improve the urban environment, the activities had thus far failed to deter the deterioration of the situation, new sets of priorities and programs were required In Dethier's words (ibid 234), To conceive the various elements of a new strategy, an interdisciplinary team of fifteen technicians was selected in 1969 in the "Direction de l'Urbanisme et de l'Habitat " Their task was to propose realistic means of action, taking into account the growing complexities of the needs, and the reduction of the financial resources of the state This team was the CERF the "Centre d'Expenmentation, de Recherche et de Formation," founded and directed by Alain Masson What differentiates the ideas of Masson from those of Prost and Ecochard is, first, the will to find general solutions to go beyond the concerns of their predecessors and arrive at a regional planning, if not a general planning, for the whole country One of the first decisions of this group was to abandon the direct construction of housing and to emphasize, instead, assistance for "auto-construction," that is, self-help housing Since these activities did not begin until the 1970s, however, we shall reserve to a final chapter a discussion of these most recent efforts to improve Moroccan cities, including Rabat 12 The "crisis of decolonization" of the first fifteen years of independence was weathered by the monarchy, which was able to mobilize sufficient support among the civil servants, upper bourgeoisie, army, and tribes to defeat and then suppress a socialist opposition centered chiefly in the cities, despite numerous predictions of imminent revolution 13 The developments that have been recounted m this chapter—the stagnation and involution of the econ12 Alain Masson has himself written a detailed account of these changes in his Urbanisation et habitat du grand nombre L'Approche marocame " 13 See John Waterbury, The Commander of the Faithful

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omy, the multiplication of public employment in lieu of creating industrial jobs, the continued exodus from the rural areas because land reform was neglected and because the population "exploded," the rapid growth in cities attributable both to in-migration and higher rates of natural increase, the indigenization of the urban hierarchy and especially of cities that had formerly contained high percentages of foreigners, the movement of Moroccans into the zones they vacated, and the tendency of the government to invest in capital improvements such as housing rather than in growth industries—all affected the agglomeration of Rabat-Sale perhaps more than any other area of Morocco It was almost as if the capital were a prism that absorbed the national trends, magnified, and then displayed them on a large screen as a demonstration lesson in the pitfalls of dependent urbanism Yet throughout this time Rabat retained its—there is no other word for it—charm The physical site remained outrageously beautiful, with the sea, river, and sky providing the blue, generous plantings and parks, and even the salt marshes grown wild, providing the emerald green, flowering trees and bushes giving red and yellow accents, and both the spacious modern quarters and the involuted medinas contributing white, beige, and brown tones to the calm spectrum The failure of the port, while a disaster from an economic point of view, cleared the waterway for small boats, swimmers, and fishermen, and the lack of heavy industries kept the air clean An agreeable climate graced the city, freshened in the summer by ocean breezes and moistened in the winter by the rains that kept the city well irrigated and green throughout the year Nor, despite the recent rural origin of at least half of the population, the inadequate jobs, the poor housing conditions of many, and the harsh struggle for survival, did Rabat become a seething, noisy, and poverty-stricken "Calcutta " The city remained remarkably clean, even in the worst bidonvilles, and the people retained their quiet dignity and discipline, making passage through even the most crowded suqs a pleasant experience Rabat remains one of the loveliest cities in the Arab world, despite the problems that continue to plague the city In the chapter that follows, where these problems are discussed, it would be well to bear in mind the compensations that grace the city, as well as the unresolved issues that face it

•9011* RABAT FROM CASTE TO CLASS

national trends in particular had a significant impact upon Rabat-Sale during the first decade and a half of decolonization: 1. Economic involution and an engorgement of the public and tertiary sectors of employment, as well as an increase in unemployment. 2. Rapid population growth in both cities, but particularly in Sale, with about half the increase attributable to net migration, the other half to natural increase. 3. Resulting from the above, an exacerbation of the housing shortages and a multiplication of minimal "solutions" to it, including more trames sanitaires and public projects, but also spreading bidonvilles and clandestine settlements. 4. Increased residential segregation of Moroccans by class, the upper and upper-middle classes taking advantage of the vacancies left by foreigners, but also moving into newer peripheral developments. This segregation was a translation, onto the spatial pattern of the city, of the widening gap between a small elite and a growing number of urban poor, perhaps no more and no poorer than before, taking the country as a whole, but now more visible and less excusable. 1. The failure of Rabat's industrial base to expand, and in this she was only a particular case of the more general phenomenon, is indicated most clearly by the fact that the number of industrial employees in the twin cities did not change between 1960 and 1971,1 although the agglomeration's total population nearly doubled m the interim. While it is possible that there was some lateral movement from handicrafts to factory production, or more likely into maintenance and repair trades, the industrial sector did not expand to absorb new workers, and most firms remained small. Indeed, an analysis of enterprises in the private sector in Rabat-Sale, also reported in "Analyse economique," revealed that the average firm in "manufacturing" employed 5 persons, in transport 4.2, in FOUR

1 According to studies reported in "Analyse e c o n o m i q u e , " Bulletin Economique et Social du Maroc (1970), 32 63

FROM CASTE TO CLASS

259

"transformation" 5.9, and in construction 12.5 (my computations fromBu/Zerin Economtque et Social du Maroc, 1970, Table 5:70). Only in the area of public utilities such as electricity, water, gas, and so on, could one say that large-scale operations dominated. Public employment, not manufacturing, picked up some of the slack. In 1960 public employees already constituted 37 percent of all workers. Some 22,000 Moroccans and 6,000 foreigners were government workers, out of a total active labor force of about 76,000. By 1970, public employees totaled 44,000 (including only 2,000 foreigners) out of an employed labor force of 110,000. Over the ten-year period, the labor force grew at an average of 3.75 percent per annum, while the public sector expanded at an average of 4.25 percent per annum (ibid., Table 4:69).2 By 1970, 40 percent of the employed labor force of Rabat and Sale was being paid by the government. Those newcomers to the labor force unable to squeeze into the bloating ranks of public employment were pushed more and more into the marginal tertiary sector or into unemployment/underemployment. Well over a third of the non-governmental labor force was engaged in commerce, at a scale so miniscule that the average size of firm was only 2.3 persons. If we add to these the workers engaged in service occupations, we find that half of the nongovernmental labor force of Rabat-Sale had "jobs" in the tertiary sector of petty trade and menial services (ibid., Table 5:70). Another large proportion was either unemployed or employed only part of the year. Basing its conclusions on the Enquete menagelogement and the Enquete demographtque conducted in 1970 by the Schema Directeur Bureau, the article on "Analyse economique" reported that only 72 percent of Rabat-Sale's active labor force had actually worked full time during the eight months preceding the survey. Another 12 percent had worked only part of the period, while a full 16 percent had had no job at all over the preceding eight-month period. In short, some 40,000 out of a potential employed labor force of 150,000 had no jobs or only occasional jobs for most of 1970 The army of "unemployed or quasi-employed" was almost as large as that employed by the swollen public sector Obviously, the latter repository had lost its elasticity and could no longer absorb the ex2

1960 data from the census, 2 308, 491, 505, 506, 1970 data from L'Enquete fichier patente, as analyzed by the Schema Directeur

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FROM CASTE TO CLASS

cesses from an involuting economy. To sum up the problems in the economic sphere, we must note the following. Rabat-Sale by 1970 had a combined population of over half a million, of whom some 150,000 were working or "seeking work." Of these, 44,000 were in the pay of the government, another 40,000 were unemployed or only intermittently employed, and some 66,000 were in the private sector3—at least half of them in marginal commerce or services. Economic troubles were not distributed randomly throughout the separate quarters of the urban agglomeration. In areas where the well-to-do lived, such as the Centre de Ville of the ville nouvelle, the Tour Hasan area, or near the administrative ministries, and the better residential zones to the south and west such as Orangeries, Agdal, Aviation, and Souissi, few were unemployed. These were the areas favored by the "high civil servants" and the upper bourgeoisie who were able to pay high rents or build villas Few workers in these areas were in commerce, as can be seen in Table 8. On the other hand, in the poorest quarters petty commerce was absorbing two out of every three workers in the private sector. Even these figures conceal some important variations, however. The situation in the two medinas was not nearly as desperate as in the bidonvilles and zones of clandestine construction, even though they appear similar in Table 8. The medina of Rabat in particular still contained a diverse and productively employed population, while the medina of Sale contained many artisans and even a few professionals and bureaucrats, as can be seen from Table 9. On the other hand, the problems of employment were severe in the peripheral quarters A sample survey was made in 1969 by a research team from the Centre d'Expenmentation de Recherche et de Formation (CERF) in a number of frames samtaires and areas of clandestine construction, for the purpose of investigating the related problems of housing and employment 4 The two trames 3

There is a typographical error in the BESM article, which gives this as 46,000 The original mimeographed report from which the article was derived gives the correct figure of 66,000 The BESM article is a summary of the mimeographed report of Schema Directeur de Rabat, Analyse economique (undated but circa 1971), but does not include the most interesting part of this latter report, which discusses the distribution of economic activities by quarters of the city and which gives occupational breakdowns for residents in different subareas of Rabat and Sale The section that follows is heavily dependent, therefore, upon this less accessible report 4 See either Morocco, Direction de l'Urbanisme et de l'Habitat, CERF, Quartiers sous equipes Rabat, Sale et Kenitra en 1969, or the almost identical document issued by the Institut National de Statistique et d'Economie Apphquee, Quelques quartiers sous-

261

F R O M C A S T E T O CLASS TABLE 8

DISTRIBUTION AMONG SECTORS OF WORKERS EMPLOYED IN PRIVATE FIRMS, BY ECONOMIC LEVEL OF QUARTER

Quarter

Industry

Percentage in Commerce

Services

Poor Quarters Takadoum Yacoub al-Mansour Akkan Rabat medina Sale medina

23 20 24 24 25

65 70 56 61 57

12 19 20 15 18

Rich Quarters Centre de Ville Tour Hasan/Administration Orangenes/Agdal/Aviation/Souissi

25 49 52

28 16 23

47 35 24

SOURCE Schema Directeur de Rabat, Analyse economique (mimeo) 23, for the poor quarters, Annexe 2, unpaged at the end, for the aristocratic quarters Note that these data are for the private sector, and therefore are not comparable to the data in Table 9 which include the public-sector employees TABLE 9

DISTRIBUTION OF ACTIVE LABOR FORCE BY OCCUPATION FOR RESIDENTS OF THE MEDINAS OF RABAT AND SALE

Occupational Groups

Medina ofRabat No %

Upper professionals, admin Office workers, bureaucrats Commerce, vendors Service workers Artisans/workers

971 1,277 1 804 1,749 2,470

10 13 18 5 18 25

Medina of Sale No % 810 1,255 1,660 2,267 5,993

6 9 12 16 42 5

SOURC Ε Ministere de l'Urbanisme et d'Habitat et de ['Environment, Delegation de Rabat, Notes sur les differents aspects des medinas de Rabat-Sale (Rabat, undated but based on a 1% survey of medina residents made in 1970, mimeographed) Percent­ ages do not add to 100 because miscellaneous is omitted

sanitaires included in the survey were Tabnqat in Sale, and Graa, an appendage to Yacoub al-Mansour. In these peripheral zones, only 15 to 16 percent of the household heads were working as artisans or at industrial jobs, despite the fact that Graa is near Rabat's industrial belt and Tabnqat is near the Jutiya industrial zone of Sale And con­ sidering that this category included construction workers, the par­ ticipation in the industrial sector was abominably low Petty trade, equipes de Rabat-Sale, Temara et Kemtra Unless otherwise noted, the page citations are to the CERF report

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F R O M CASTE T O CLASS

vending, and informal repair work were the chief outlets for labor. In each quarter, about one-fifth of the household heads were vendors, and another 15 to 20 percent worked at "small trades." Transport and services absorbed another 10 percent of the household heads. There were, as one might suspect, virtually no professionals, bureaucrats, or office workers living in these quarters (CERF, 1971, Table 5:38). Some sizable percentage of the household heads were unemployed. Although only 12 percent reported themselves to be out of work, the investigators suspected that many of the 15 percent with unspecified occupations were actually also without jobs, and that some of those giving agricultural work as an occupation were only seasonally employed (since the survey was made in the summer). They cite a study by the Ministry of Health that found an unemployment rate of 28.5 percent among household heads in the bidonvilles of Rabat, and another family study at Yacoub alMansour, which found one out of every five heads of households out of work (ibid.:45). Socio-economic status was slightly higher in the two clandestine subdivisions included in the survey. In these areas, the housing was solid (and fairly new), even though the site had not been authorized for construction and no building permits had been issued. Unemployment was only 8 percent, with another 13 percent with poorly specified jobs. Half of the work force was in transport, services, industry, and construction, and the areas even included a good number of government employees (ibid.: 38, Table 5) The marginal tertiary sector was not as heavily depended upon as in the bidonvilles surveyed. Even from the admittedly incomplete data presented in this section, it should be clear that by 1970 Rabat-Sale was suffering from the type of urban economic involution that we have come to consider "classical" in Third World cities (see Abu-Lughod and Hay, 1977-242-270). The combination of capital city, which by definition implied heavy emphasis on the service and administrative occupations, and the complete abortion of the movement toward industrialization left the city without a generative economic base. Only the recent turn to tourism 5 and production of luxury craft items for ex5 In line with the recommendations of the World Bank, Morocco turned enthusiastically to tourism as a source of foreign exchange and a means for employing her urban population For a country so rich in mineral and agricultural resources, this seems a false and unproductive direction For a scathing critique of the World

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263

port has sustained the industrial workers of the city, who still remain artisans rather than factory workers 2. Perhaps the economy could have expanded enough to absorb those workers who were already in the urban agglomeration at the time of independence, but it was not given a chance, since population increased too rapidly. While the move to the cities was nationwide, Rabat was particularly attractive to migrants because it was the seat of government. Not only did this mean that the new Moroccan bureaucrats had to move there, but it also meant that many poor migrants selected the city as their destination because they believed that they would stand a better chance of receiving government assistance there. By 1971 almost half of the residents of Rabat-Sale were migrants, some of them quite well-to-do (particularly the third who had come from other cities in Morocco, chiefly to join the upper ranks of the civil service), but most of them still seeking even a marginal footing in the urban environment. 6 The actual growth of the population between 1952 and 1971 was greater than the statistics show, for the figures give net growth after the exodus of the foreigners and Jews was subtracted and the new growth added in. Using this approach of "net growth," one calculates that the population of the agglomeration grew at about 6.1 percent per year between 1952 and 1960, and at a reduced rate of only 5.24 percent per year between I960 and 1971. Again, by this measure, Sale appeared to be growing faster than Rabat, since she lost no foreign residents. A more realistic method looks only at the growth of the Moroccan Muslim population; according to this measure, Rabat and Sale both grew at about 7 percent per year after independence, making the agglomeration the fastest growing urban area in the country. A 7 percent rate of growth causes a population to double every ten years, the Muslim population of Rabat-Sale did just that between 1960 and 1971. According to Moroccan scholars, the twin cities grew from migration by about 4 percent per year. Many of the migrants in recent years headed for Sale, because Rabat was already saturated and the peripheral quarters there were more expensive. These same Bank recommendations, see Fouad Chajai, L'Aide financiere d'obedtence amertcaine et son impact sur le secteur public au Maroc 6 These figures are derived from our own statistical analysis of the city's population, using raw data from the 1971 census See next chapter for details concerning source, methods, and results

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FROM CASTE TO CLASS

scholars claim that natural increase was relatively low, only 2 5 percent per year, but I am certain that this cannot be correct According to the Schema Directeur report on population, urban mortality had dropped to 13/1000 by 1970.7 The rural crude birth rate stood at 49/1000, while the urban rate was somewhat lower, about 45. 8 If we apply these figures to Rabat, we cannot escape the conclusion that the rate of natural increase in the city was at least 3 percent per year, a figure that is quite consistent with the overall growth and the estimate of migration. Although the quantitative results of migration and natural increase are the same, namely, more people, the two sources of growth have very different effects on the age and sex composition of the population. In general, growth from migration tends to swell the working-age groups, thus increasing the demand for jobs In various studies made among migrants in Rabat and Sale, it has been found that the most frequently cited age at which migrants came to the city was between 10 and 20, that is, when individuals were ready to enter the labor market Migration in Morocco also tends to increase the proportion of females in the city, a situation that diverges quite drastically from that in other parts of the Arab world, where males are more likely to migrate Migration of females and migration during the young adult years help to stimulate growth from natural increase, since the age groups of maximum fertility are inflated, particularly by persons from rural areas who may carry with them values favoring high birth rates. Population growth from natural increase, on the other hand, tends to swell the ranks of the very young, creating a bulge in the age pyramid at the very bottom. Increase from this source stimulates the need for adequate housing, while reducing the financial ability to pay for it. Although single migrants, all working, may double up in minimal quarters, pooling their incomes to pay the rent, families with young children are less likely to have multiple wage earners but more likely to require larger quarters. Thus, while migration increases the number of job seekers, natural increase swells the ranks of dependents and therefore stimulates the need for decent family housing. We have already seen thatjobs failed to keep pace with the number of job seekers; as will become clear in the 7 See Direction de l'Urbanisme et de l'Habitat, Schema Directeur, Analyse demographique, 1971, mimeo 8 Royaume du Maroc, Premier Mimstre, Secretariat d'Etat au Plan , Direction de la Statistique, CERED, La Fecondite marocame

FROM CASTE TO CLASS

265

next section, housing also failed, perhaps even more tragically, to keep up with the expanded needs for it. 3. The average size of household in Rabat-Sale is slightly under five persons. Thus, a population of roughly half a million would require a minimum housing stock of 100,000 dwelling units. If, be­ tween 1960 and 1971, the population grew at the rate of 7 percent per year, then in order to keep up with additions to the population (without trying to reduce any deficits or replace any structures), approximately 7,000 new dwelling units were required annually by about 1970. Was housing being added to Rabat-Sale's stock at any­ where near that rate during the 1960s? The answer is clearly no, at least in terms of "legal" housing, that is, housing for which a per­ mit to construct was obtained and the building required to conform to standards of construction and zoning regulations. In the entire country of Morocco in 1969, only 12,000 "authori­ zations" to construct residential units were issued at all, according to the official document, La Situation economtque du Maroc en 197^ (Morocco, Direction de la Statistique, 1965 [sic] 51) In that same year, only 827 dwelling units were "legally" constructed in Rabat, and that was not an exceptionally low year. Indeed, during the en­ tire period between 1961 and 1971, fewer than 10,000 legally au­ thorized dwelling units were built in Rabat, of which some 2,000 (20 percent) were luxury villas, and almost 5,200 were units in apartment houses, many of them designed for the well-to-do De­ spite all the talk about "building houses for the people," only 2,800 units were added to Rabat's supply of so-called low-cost economy housing (chiefly in Takadoum, Yacoub al-Mansour, Youssoufia, and Draa) during the ten years in question, of which three-quarters were in place by 1966.9 During the decade of the 1960s, economy housing was increas­ ingly displaced to Sale, confirming her role as Rabat's "backyard." Some 2,248 dwelling units of the "logements economiques" type were built in Sale between 1961 and 1971, and these accounted for 87 percent of all legal construction in the city. During the entire pe9

See the mimeographed report prepared by the Schema Directeur de Rabat in May 1972, entitled Habitat 1961-1971 Table A shows "Mouvement de la Construc­ tion de 1961 a 1971" for Rabat, and Table Β presents similar information for Sale From the year-by-year figures for Rabat, it is evident that villa construction for the well-to-do went on at a steady pace while the "legal" additions for the poor had been modest and sporadic, except in 1963 when the Yacoub al-Mansour addition was built, and 1966 when Youssoufia and Draa went up

266

FROM CASTE TO CLASS

nod, only 143 villas (5 percent of all construction) and only 228 units in apartment houses (8 percent) were built in Sale (ibid..Table B). A bar chart a few pages after Table Β indicates that the areas in Sale in which construction was greatest were Tabriqat and, to a lesser extent, Bittana, which accords well with the distribution given above. In Rabat, the major locations for villas and apartments were Sidi Makhlouf, Agdal, and Aviation, whereas Takadoum and Yacoub al-Mansour absorbed most of the "economical" housing. The locations hint at which classes were being provided for by the new housing, but we lack detailed information on the dwelling units themselves that could confirm our suspicions For 1971, how­ ever, we do have a breakdown of the units by number of rooms, a sensitive indicator, since most of Rabat-Sale's poor families live in one or two-room units. Of the 1,333 dwelling units constructed in Rabat in that year, one-third had five or more rooms, and fully half had at least four rooms. This indicates how much new "legal" con­ struction was oriented toward a minority with money The small amount of construction in Sale was, by contrast, intended for per­ sons of more modest means Almost half of the 300 units built with permits in Sale in 1971 had only three rooms, and virtually all had between two and four rooms (For data on legal construction in all cities of Morocco in 1971, see Morocco, Direction de la Statistique, Annuaire statistique du Maroc 1971, undated but probably 1972:88-89, Tables 15 and 16) Clearly, the amount of legal construction was only the tip of an iceberg whose full dimensions can only be guessed. If legal con­ struction was minimal, then illegal construction must have been filling the gap between demand and supply Illegal construction was of two major types, bidonvilles, where both the insecurity of tenure and the provisional character of the structures created prob­ lems, and clandestine subdivisions "en dur," where solid housing was being built on land that had been declared non edificandi and which therefore lacked proper title (In actual fact, areas themselves contained both, and units even moved from one category to another, with intermediate variations ) While it is impossible to determine the exact number of "illegal" units built and the dates of their construction, it is possible to esti­ mate the proportion of population in both Rabat and Sale living in areas of different types, based on the sample survey of households and housing conducted by the Schema Directeur of Rabat in 1970 (see both Analyse prehmmaire, Rabat, undated but 1970, mimeo.,

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and Aspect economique de I'enquete menage-logement, Rabat, June 1972, mimeo.). Table 10 shows the differential distribution of population by "housing" type area. TABLE 10. DISTRIBUTION OF THE POPULATION OF RABAT AND SALE IN HOUSING AREAS OF DIFFERENT TYPES, SAMPLE STUDY 1970

Type of Quarter Nonproblematic Modern centers Villas of modern type Total upper Mixed zones Economic housing Collective housing Total middle

Percent of Population in Type of Quarter Total Rabat Sale Agglomeration

20 10 25 11

5 9 3

0 7 4 46

Total Nonproblematic Problem Housing Clandestine subdivisions Medinas Bidonvilles Total low

0 3

8 12

7 20 9 11

66

34

36

14

50

11 23 16

22 46 18

6 13 15

14

86

50

NOTE: This was based on a sample survey and therefore does not conform exactly to the findings of the 1971 census. My computations from the latter source indicate, for example, that almost 18 percent of the population lived in bidonvilles, and onefourth lived in the medinas. The Schema Directeur study underestimated the population of Sale, which may account for these differences. SOURCE· Direction de l'Urbanisme et de l'Habitat, Schema Directeur de Rabat, Analyse prehminaire, Rabat, undated but 1971, mimeo : Section III

Over the preceding decade, the areas defined as "problematic" in the table had been growing the fastest, while those considered "standard" had been growing at only modest rates. Rates of growth could not be computed for Sale's quarters, since the base data from 1960 were not available. However, the Schema Directeur study was able to compute differential growth rates for various quarters in Rabat that clearly measure the proletarianization of the city. 10 10 This valuable information is presented in a report issued by Ministere de l'Urbanisme, de l'Habitat et de l'Environment, Delegation de Rabat, Les Quartters de Rabat-Sale evolution, situation, see esp. pp. 1-2 but passim.

268

FROM CASTE TO CLASS

Between 1960 and 1970, the ville nouvelle quarters scarcely grew in terms of total population, although, as we noted earlier, they were turned over to the Moroccan elite. Orangeries, the Tour Hasan area, and Upper Agdal all had net growth rates of 1 percent per year or less over the decade. Other areas grew only modestly, at annual rates of 3 to 4 percent; these included the Centre de Ville, Aviation, Souissi (all upper or middle-class zones), and Akkan (largely because it was already oversaturated). The working-class zones of Agdal West and Ocean grew somewhat faster, chiefly through more intensive use, the population of the former increasing at roughly 5 percent per year, and the latter growing at an average of 8 percent. The poorest areas on the periphery of the city experienced the most rapid "development." In Rabat alone there were 77,000 people living in bidonvilles by 1970 and, if we add to these the residents in the new clandestine subdivisions, the total rises to over 100,000. Youssoufia had increased at the annual rate of 12 percent, Takadoum at 13 percent (5.75 percent in the legal "lotissements economiques" but 18 percent per year in the adjacent clandestine quarters!), Douar Doum at 7.25 percent per year, and the clandestine settlements of Hajja and Maadid at an annual average of at least 10 percent. Of the proletarian quarters, only the medina did not experience a net increase, but only because it was already saturated, and because the departure of the Jewish population had reduced the base population by perhaps 8,000 out of 45,000 or 50,000.11 4. The data suggest that the class pyramid of Rabat was becoming more broadly based during this first stage of decolonization. A small Moroccan elite had moved into the places vacated by the 11

Although the source cited above states that the population of Rabat's medina had not grown between 1960 and 1970, another document issued by the same ministry. Notes sur les differents aspects des medmas de Rabat-Sale (undated but about the same time), indicates that it must have Part 2 (unpaginated) of this report alleges that between 1960 and 1970, density in the medina of Rabat increased from 552 persons per hectare to 561 persons per hectare, indicating some slight net increase of population Total population, however, is given as 42,000, which would mean a population decrease The information on the medina of Sale is more consistent That medina did grow, since density rose from 475 persons per hectare in 1960 to 565 per hectare in 1970, something we know to be true It should be pointed out that all of these figures are tentative The study of the medmas was based on a 1 percent sample, without a known sampling frame My data, based on the returns of the 1971 census and presented in the following chapter, are more reliable, these indicate a higher population for the medina of Rabat than estimated by either of the studies reported here

FROM C A S T E TO CLASS

269

foreign caste and was expanding at a rate less than the increase in 12 the total population, while a very large "protoproletanat" (the term is Τ G McGee's) was multiplying at the bottom of the class hierarchy at rates that far exceeded the population increase for the agglomeration as a whole This protoproletanat was settling chiefly on the periphery of Rabat (both at the western extremity in Yacoub al-Mansour and the southeastern edge near the river to encircle the quarter of Aviation) or, increasingly, outside the walls of Sale That town was more and more becoming a "low-caste" periphery to the core centered in Rabat's ville nouvelle Throughout the metropolitan area, segregation by economic class was supplanting the tnmodal segregation by caste that had been the dominant pattern during the colonial era Only in the medinas of Rabat and Sale were there residuals of the precolonial pattern of class mixture or segregation on a very small-grained scale While the segregation in the other quarters was not absolute, and each type of quarter contained a range of incomes, in both the "best" and the "worst" quarters that range was quite narrow The Enquete Menage-Logement, conducted in 1970 by the Schema Directeur of Rabat, included data that offer striking con­ firmation of many of these allegations Tables 11 and 12 have been derived from the data collected in this survey, reorganized and re­ computed As is clear from these tables, almost half of the resident households in low-quality areas made less than 200 dirhams a month (There are approximately five dirhams to a dollar ) Some 60 percent of the residents in moderate-quality areas had incomes be­ tween 200 and 600 dirhams a month In high-quality areas, by con­ trast, 77 percent of the residents had household incomes in excess of 600 dirhams a month Some further evidence of this growing gap between housing for the rich and powerful and housing for the poor and powerless comes from a national sample survey of "consummation et les depenses des menages au Maroc" conducted by the government in 13 1970-1971 Special tabulations for Rabat-Sale alone are not avail­ able, but the national figures, cross-tabulating income with occupa­ tion and occupation with expenditures for housing, are quite 12 It is difficult to prove this, since they also replaced foreigners, whose distribu­ tion we do not have for the two time points 13 See especially Premier Mimstre Secretariat d'Etat au Plan Division des Statistiques, La Consummation et les defenses des menages au Maroc, Avril 1970-Avril 1971 Vol 1 Premiers resultats a I'ichelon national, and Vol 3 L'Habitation

270

FROM CASTE T O CLASS

TABLE 11. PERCENTAGE OF HOUSEHOLDS IN RESIDENTIAL AREAS OF VARIOUS QUALITY BY MONTHLY INCOME LEVEL OF HOUSEHOLD, 1970

Household Income per Month 0-200 dirhams 200-400 dirhams 400-600 dirhams 600 or more

Household Income per Month 0-200 dirhams 200^00 dirhams 400-600 dirhams 600-1000 dirhams 1000 or more

Household Income per Month 0-200 dirhams 200-400 dirhams 400-600 dirhams 600-1000 dirhams 1000 or more

Low Quality Housing Types Clandestine Quarters Med mas Bidon villes Rabat Sale Rabat Sal'e Rabat Sati 52 39 7 2

93 7 0 0

34 35 14 17

32 28 20 20

47 47 4 2

20 36 25 19

Medium Que\lity Housing Types "Economy Traditional Housing" Mixed Zones Collectives Rabat Sale Rabat Sal'e Rabat Sale 16 36 21 16 11

11 38 43 8 0

High Quality Villas Rabat Sale 5 4 7 19 65

10 15 33 40 2

15 38 34 11 2

9 74 13 4 0

5 9 23 37 26

0 0 0 0 0

Housing Quarters Modem Central Rabat 6 5 10 19 60

NOTE: There are approximately 5 dirhams to a dollar SOURCE: Schema Directeur de Rabat, Aspect economique de I'enquete menage-logement (Rabat, June 1972, mimeo, unpaged first part of this report).

suggestive. According to this survey, the occupational group with the highest total monthly expenditure was "cadres administratifs superieurs," which would include managers of firms as well as high government officials. The average monthly expenditure per household in this group was 2,307 dirhams, double that of the next highest group, office employees. Expenditures of high administrative officers were, on the average, almost eight times greater than those of artisans and four times higher than vendors, industrial workers, transport workers, and service workers. (See summary figures

271

F R O M ( ASTE TO CLASS TABLE 12

PERCENTAGE OF HOUSEHOLDS IN RABAT-SALE LIVING IN QUARTERS AT DIFFERENT

LEVELS OF HOUSING QUALITY, BY MONTHLY INCOME OF HOUSEHOLD, 1970

Household Income Class Monthly 0-200 dirhams 200-400 dirhams 400-600 dirhams 600-1000 dirhams 1000 plus dirhams Total

Percentage m Each Income Class and Cumulative Percentage Low Quality Housing Moderate Quality High Quality Housing Cumulative Cumulative Percent Cumulative in Class Percent Percent Percent Percent Percent 45.8 32.8 11 5 10.0 0 100

45.8 78.6 90 1 100.1 100.1

124 33 3 27.6 176 8.9 100

12.4 45 9 73.5 91.1 100.0

6.3 a 5.7 11.0 21.3 55.7 100

6.3" 12.0 230 44.3 100.0

a

Although I do not know how the data were collected, 1 would imagine that this particular "fluke" was due to the inclusion of servants living in quarters provided by the employer in these elegant zones. I would have analyzed and classified them differently. SOURCE· My computations from raw data contained in Aspect economique de 1'enquete menagelogement. Quality categories same as in Table 11.

based on the consumption survey in Annuaire statistique du Maroc /97/:39.) The income gap was large. The gap in housing expeditures was even greater, due to the tendency of the highest-paid groups to spend large proportions of their income on housing. On the average, households headed by high administrative officers allocated 25 percent of all their expenditures for housing, as compared with 30 percent for food. As would be expected from Engels' law, the poorer groups devoted a larger proportion of their disposable income to food (50 percent or higher for vendors, industrial workers, workers in transportation and services, and artisans), leaving them only 19 to 21 percent of their much lower incomes for housing (Volume I of the Consummation survey, Table 5.3:37). Put most simply, the average high administrator spent almost 600 dirhams a month to house his family; the average artisan spent less than 60 dirhams. We have no way to judge whether this gap, so clear in 1970, between the highest and lowest-paid urban groups was greater or less than it had been before. Earlier figures would be necessary to make a comparison. All we can say is that the class gap was large—almost as large as it had been during the colonial era, when Frenchmen stood on one side of the divide and most Moroccans stood on the other. Now Moroccans were on both sides. To what extent are these class differences reflected in the ecological structure of the city? To what extent has the "dual city," so

272

FROM CASTE TO CLASS

self-consciously created by the colonial planners, been perpetuated into the era of independence, even after the foreign residents left? As we shall see in the analysis that follows, Rabat-Sale in 1971 was still a sharply fragmented urban area, the divisions dramatically visible along lines that had been laid down by Prost and further concretized by Ecochard. Although the foreigners were mostly gone, the old remnants of ethnicity and caste had left strong stigmata on specific quarters of the city. Even small pockets of non-Moroccans and non-Muslims were sufficient to demarcate and identify the zones of highest status in the metropolis, serving as phantom indicators to the new basis for social stratification, namely, socioeconomic class. In this transformation from caste to class, zones that were commodiously built and equipped to accommodate a foreign ruling caste were inherited by an indigenous upper and middle class, furthermore, entire suburbs were built up on the "Westernized" model, into which this class expanded. At the opposite extreme, the zones in which the poorest Moroccans live have grown more and more extensive, more and more homogeneous, from a class standpoint. The isolation of the wealthy from the poor—unthinkable in the medina of the past—has become increasingly accentuated in the city of today And yet the city is no longer an apartheid community, something basic has changed since the colonial period The barriers between zones are now bndgeable, at least theoretically, which they were not when the basis for segregation was nationality and religion. As Moroccan society moves from the phase of decolonization to a more uniformly developing and indigenized society, transitional zones should appear that will mediate between the extremes and help bridge the social gaps. This last transformation, however, had not made much progress in Rabat-Sale by 1971. If we compare that city to Cairo, either through visual impressions or more rigorous statistical analysis, this becomes quite clear In 1947 Cairo exhibited about as much segregation along "ethmc/caste/class" lines as did Rabat-Sale in 1971. Cairo in 1947, like Rabat-Sale in 1971, had extremely elegant quarters such as Garden City, Zamahk, and Hehopohs, which had previously been the domain of the British, French, Swiss, and Belgians, but which upper-class Egyptians had by then taken over. These zones were still pampered, with manicured public parks, carefully tended trees and plantings, compulsive street sweeping,

FROM CASTE TO CLASS

273

and full services. Shops were modern and carried a full array of luxury imported items demanded by the indigenous elite. Buildings were well maintained, and apartments and villas were stuffed with velvet chairs, crystal chandeliers, every element of conspicuous consumption. On the other hand, the city also had Bulaq and Bab al-Shar'iya, some of the most insalubrious slums in the world, and out in the cemeteries there were tens of thousands of Cairenes living in tombs or crudely fashioned mudbnck houses One thinks easily of the contrast between the ostentatious villas of Souissi, hidden behind their high walls and accessible only by private drives, and the bidonvilles of Doum or the Chella, or of the contrast between the arcaded shopping street of Mohammad V and the Suq Talata outside Sale, or of the sharp line that, as recently as 1971, divided the activities of the medina from the ville nouvelle. The parallels between the two cases are instructive. By 1947 Egypt had already gained her independence, and the size of her foreign population had been drastically reduced. However, she was still a monarchy, and the landed aristocracy, by then in government service and commercial ventures, still dominated the economy. There was a wide income gap between this ruling elite and the increasingly impoverished masses, many of whom had migrated to Cairo in the early 1940s but had experienced great difficulty finding an economic footing in the metropolis. Cairo's ecological structure at that time was marked by very sharp divisions that coincided with the lines of the "dual city" that had been established by the end of the nineteenth century. After the Egyptian revolution in 1952, and particularly after 1956, when the residual foreign population left, when many industries and businesses were nationalized, when land reforms were intensified, and when new policies were introduced to narrow the income gap, the ecological structure of Cairo began to change By 1960, the sharp contrast between the best and worst areas of the city had been considerably muted, and there were transitional belts and zones of graduated status where once there had been abrupt transitions The spatial structure of Cairo had altered in ways that sensitively reflected changes occurring in its social structure. (See AbuLughod, 1971, esp. Part III.) None of these changes had occurred in Morocco by 1971 Time has naturally led to some greater blending of the disparate parts of the metropolis. By the late 1970s, in particular, the commercial zone of the ville nouvelle closest to the medina had undergone a

274

FROM CASTE T O CLASS

decline as foreign-type department stores gave way to street vending. Some quarters of the ville nouvelle had grown a bit shabbier, and some parts of the Qasbah of the Udaya had been upgraded. Middle-income and low-income housing were better blended in Yacoub al-Mansour. But still, Rabat-Sale was a metropolis of very marked and vivid contrasts—a reflection of its social structure which had yet to "democratize." In the following chapter we analyze the ecological structure of the metropolis in 1971, using very detailed geographic data from the census of that year. The method we developed to study the city is an objective one, and the conclusions we reach follow directly from the statistical operations; they are not merely subjective judgments. The major conclusion to be supported in the next chapter is unequivocal. The "caste city" of the colonial era has been transformed into the "class city" of independence, but the social divisions between quarters remained so discontinuous and extreme that one is tempted to characterize the urban structure of Rabat-Sale in 1971 as "caste-like."

THE FACTORIAL ECOLOGY OF RABAT-SALE: METHODS AND STATISTICAL RESULTS

FACTORIAL ecology was used to 10vestlgate the socIal and spatIal structure of Rabat-Sale as of1971 ThIs method analyzes the statistICal 1OterrelatIOnships among selected sOCIal 1OdICators of lIfe 10 the CIty, and then uses the mathematICal structure of those relatIOnshIps to develop a set of Images (parslmomous descnptIOns) of the CIty'S geographIC orgamzatIOn ThIs method was refined, follow1Og leads ImplICIt 10 SOCIal Area AnalysIs, 10 the early 1960s by three 10vestIgators work1Og sImultaneously and 10dependently (Frank Sweetser, who studIed Hels1OkI, Bnan Berry, who studIed North Amencan CIties, and Janet Abu-Lughod, studY10g CaIro) The vanatIOns 10 theIr approaches were so slIght that results were comparable The preCIse method applIed to Rabat-Sale replIcates the one used 10 CaIro, although the ncher set of vanables avaIlable from the Moroccan census and an Improved set of detaIled statIstical procedures YIelded even more meamngful results The steps 10 the method may be summanzed (and sImplIfied) as follows 1 Raw data on selected charactenstICs of 10dlvlduals and households are obtamed and tabulated for each census enumeratIon dlStnct 10 the CIty 2 In conformIty both wIth theoretical hypotheses and pnor empmcal find1Ogs, socIal 1Odlcators are desIgned and then computed for each of the census dlstncts IndICators vary 10 senSltlvity and range TheIr selectIOn depends ultimately upon the eXIstence of data that can be cross-tabulated by small census umts In CaIro tabulatIOns were avaIlable for only a very lImIted set of 1OdICators, for the present study the cooperatIon and aSSIstance of the Moroccan DIrectIOn des Statlstlques made possIble the computatIOn of a large and nch array of socIal 1OdICators 3 Each census enumeratIOn dlstnct (hereafter called a "census tract") IS treated as one "observatIOn unit", frequency dlstnbutIOns of the SOCIal 1Odlcators for the entIre set of observatIon umts are exammed to determ10e WhICh ones approxImate normal dlstnbutIon

276

FACTORIAL ECOLOGY

Variables showing extreme J or t skewing are log-normalized (that is, values are converted to a logarithmic scale to straighten out the 1 slope). 4. Scatter diagrams are prepared to show the relationship be­ tween values for each pair of indicators. These are examined to de­ termine the degree to which the relationship between variables is linear or curvilinear. Linearity, of course, enhances interpretation of zero-order correlation coefficients and strengthens the legitimacy of employing such measures of relationship. Variables consistently showing no or only curvilinear relations are eliminated. 5 Zero-order correlation coefficients are computed between each and every social indicator to construct a matrix of correlation co­ efficients. 6. This matrix of correlation coefficients is subjected to principal components factor analysis, whereby individual factors are succes­ sively extracted to meet the criterion of extracting the maximum variance from the correlation matrix and successive residual ma­ trices. 7. Communahties (entries for the diagonal which are different from 1.00) are obtained through iterated estimation and eigenvalues computed Factors having eigenvalues much below 1.00 are gen­ erally considered too weak to be retained. The percentage of total original variance in the correlation matrix accounted for by each successive factor is computed. 8 The resulting factor matrix (showing the "weights" of each variable on each of the factors, which may be interpreted roughly as the correlation between each variable and the vector line in n-space of the factor) is examined to test for mterpretability. Factor weights of the variables are graphed by pairs of factors to determine whether rotation might improve the simplicity, clarity, and mter­ pretability of the solution 9 Varimax rotation is performed This process maximizes the separation of variables on the different factors while still retaining the orthogonality m η-space between each and every factor vector 10 Factor score coefficients are computed that specify the 1 In the present study, five indicators were log-normalized after careful investiga­ tion In each case it was determined that the transformation could be defended on theoretical grounds, and that failure to log-normalize would overweight the vari­ ables when the inverse of the correlation matrix was computed (Since the inverse matrix is used to weight variables for a final composite factor score, it is necessary to avoid artificial inflation due to skewing )

FACTORIAL ECOLOGY

277

weights to be assigned to the values of each census tract on each indicator. These weighted values are later cumulated to arrive at a standardized score for each census tract on each of the factors (see step 12 below). 11. All social indicator values are standardized (Z-score trans­ formed), so that values for census tracts on each indicator are ex­ pressed in terms of standard-deviation units against the mean value for all census tracts. 12. The standardized Ζ scores for each census tract on all indi­ cators are weighted by means of the factor score coefficients (via a beta matrix), yielding, as the final product of the factorial ecology, a matrix of standardized factor scores for each census tract on each factor. 13. The final step of a factorial ecology is to transcribe these sets of standardized factor scores on a census tract map of the city. This shows the geographic distribution of the factor values One map is prepared for each factor. By definition, different factors will exhibit somewhat different spatial distributions in the city since factors have been established as orthogonal by the method. Data and Universe Basic data for the present study were made available by the Service Central des Statistiques from the Moroccan Census of Housing and Population of 1971. Data gathered by a complete de jure enumera­ tion had been coded and transcribed onto two sets of cards (one for each person enumerated, the other for each household surveyed). Later these data records were transferred to magnetic tapes. A pre­ liminary compilation of a 1/10 household subuniverse was com­ pleted by 1974, and it is this sample for the Rabat-Sale area that provided the basic data for the present analysis The metropolitan area of Rabat-Sale had been geographically subdivided for census purposes into enumeration districts, each an­ ticipated to contain a population of between 1,200 and 1,500 per­ sons As it turned out, however, the range of population per tract was somewhat wider than intended Even after I eliminated tracts for which sample size was too small to be reliable, and combined very small tracts with contiguous and similar tracts wherever pos­ sible, there was a wide range in tract size. In the systematic 1/10 sample, even after the above operations, sample populations varied from a low of several dozen to a high of several hundred. Neverthe­ less, the mean tract population of the sample was 100 (equivalent to

278

FACTORIAL ECOLOGY

approximately 1,000 in the universe), and the overwhelming majority of tracts had populations ranging between 80 and 120 (roughly equivalent to 800-1,200 in the universe). Although results are partially subverted by this unanticipated and unavoidable variation in the size of the units, the findings are by no means vitiated. Indeed, most factorial ecologies have been done using data units even more variable in size than those available for Rabat-Sale. Attrition Tabulations from the 1/10 household sample for Rabat, Sale, Tuwarqa, Bouznika, and Skirat, prepared by the Service des Statistiques, then, constituted the raw material for this analysis. These tables gave information on the total number of persons and households, and presented breakdowns by age, sex, birthplace, literacy, occupation, employment, marital status, and household composition, as well as data on the characteristics of the dwelling units, such as construction material, utilities, tenure, and so on for each of the 560 census tracts within the metropolitan area of Rabat-Sale, including its satellite communities Before analysis was undertaken, the number of census tracts was reduced to 536, since we omitted the satellite towns and all tracts outside the limits of Rabat-Sale In addition, we combined a few tracts whose sampled populations were too small to be reliable, and we were forced to omit a few others whose locations could not be found on the census base maps. 2 There was a final and unavoidable loss of four additional census tracts After all social indicators had been computed, arrays and frequencies were examined Very extreme or impossible values were singled out to determine whether data in the original character record required corrections. In most cases, difficulties were rectified and the census tracts could be retained after making obvious ad2

In the entire 1/10 sample, the total population in the 560 tracts was 54,639, roughly equivalent to a universe of 546,390 Very little of this population was lost, despite the attrition of the 24 census tracts noted above, since either population was retained and merely added to adjacent tracts, or tracts that were omitted entirely had been selected in the first place because of their very small sample populations Of the total sample population omitted, 812 (equivalent roughly to 8,120) lived in the separate suburban satellites of Bouznika and Skirat Only 60 of the sample population (about 600 in the universe) lived in the 8 tracts dropped because of small sample size and therefore instability Of these, 2 tracts had sample populations of 26 each, 2 had sample populations of 2 persons each, and the remaining 4 tracts had 1 person each In total, then, analysis was conducted for a sample population of 53,767

FACTORIAL ECOLOGY

279

justments for internal consistency. In only four cases were the orig­ inal data so suspect that the decision was reached to eliminate them. Tracts 4015, 4016, 0110 and 0086, with a combined sample popula­ tion of 368, were dropped, leaving a final Ν of 532 census tracts containing a sampled population of 53,399. This, it will be ob­ served, constitutes 98 percent of the total population in the original sample. There is no reason to suspect that the unavoidable attrition of about 2 percent of the sample exercised any systematic bias or sig­ nificant effect on the results. The fact that the initial data provided represented a 10 percent sample of all households, instead of the en­ tire enumerated universe, is a more serious deficiency. However, we have confidence in the reliability of the sample. The stability of the relationships found and the large number of data units give added reason to believe that the results are unbiased and reliable. Variables Used The data provided by the census office permitted the computation of 32 theoretically defensible social indicators. However, five of these proved to be either uninterpretable or insensitive (that is, they showed little variation across census tracts), and were therefore dropped from the analysis. Table 13 presents a listing of the twenty-seven variables retained for the factor analysis, gives the computational formula for each of them, and presents the city-wide value (derived from the weighted average of 532 usable units), and also the unweighted average, from which standard deviations and Ζ scores were later derived. A number of very important observations can be made from the data presented in Table 13. These can be logically grouped under several headings which, in composite, reveal much about the nature of Rabat's situation. Comparisons can be made not only to RabatSale during earlier periods, but to other cities in the Arab world. Where figures are available for Cairo these will be presented for comparative purposes RELIGION A N D NATIONALITY

As can be seen, non-Muslims and foreigners, despite their impor­ tance in the city during the first half of the twentieth century, con­ stituted only a minor proportion of the population of Rabat-Sale by 1971 Some 97 percent of the population was Muslim, and 98 per­ cent had been born in Morocco. Only 4 percent of the adult (age 15

280

FACTORIAL TABLE

13.

ECOLOGY

T H E VARIABLES E M P L O Y E D IN THE FACTORIAL E C O L O G Y

Rabat-Sale Code

Verbal

Computation

Name

Description

Formula

Sex ratio, all ages Sex ratio, migrationprone ages only Fertility ratio % females never married (15+) % males never married (15+) % females ever married, currently divorced % females 15+ who can read and write % males 15+ who can read and write % households headed by women % population in households who are not members of nuclear family of head % population who are Moroccan Muslims % literate in language other than Arabic % born abroad

total males ^ 1 total females males 15^9 x ^ females 15-49

1. SEX 2. SRM

3. FER 4. FNM 5. M N M 6. DIV

7. FLI

8. MLI 9. FHH 10. O T H

11. M U S 12. LNA

13. BA

14. BRS 15. RUR

16. PPR

17. PPH 18. U N E M

% born in RabatSale Prefecture % Moroccan-born population having migrated from rural areas in Morocco Persons per room ratio Average persons per household % unemployed males (15 + )

Population Totala

Mean for Census

532 Tracts

92.98

95.59

94.28

98.50

608.20

608.47

26.69

25.97

40.83

40.00

6.75

6.41

32.45

33.26

males 15+ minus illiterates ^ males 15+ total households-male headed i n n total households persons not head, spouse, or child of head X 100 total population

59.53

60.51

18.52

18.39

17.12

17.43

total Moroccan Muslims ^ total population literate in foreign language only (15 + ) ^ population 15 + population born outside Morocco 1 x 100 total population born Rabat-Sale ^ 1()Q total population persons born in rural areas of Morocco x JQQ total born in Morocco

96.71

95.03 b

4.13

5.05 b

1.97

3.15 b

children under 5 x ^ females 15-49 females celibate or fianced x JQQ females 15 years plus males celibate or fianced x males 15 years plus females 15+ currently divorced ^ females 15+ who were ever married females 15+ minus illiterates y females 15+

total population total number of rooms used for habitation total population number of households unemployed males 15 + ^ males unemployed plus males actively occupied (15+)

51.40

50.14

31.98

31.34

2.19

2.26

4.°0

4.92

11.97

11.03

FACTORIAL

281

ECOLOGY

T A B L E 13 (cont ) Rabat-Sale Code

Verbal

Computation

Name

Description

Formula

% females 15+ employed

females actively occupied

19 FEMP

20 TMAN

21 BC

22 1AH

23 MS

24 BID

25 OWN

26 WCD

27 ELL

a

% male labor force in technical or managerial occupations % male labor force in blue collar occupations % household heads who art not in the labor force % of dwelling units constructed of cement and stone % of dwelling units in bidonville structures % of dwelling units occupied by owners % of dwelling units having WC attached to sewer/drain % of dwelling units served by electricity

1Λ

1211

13 35

^

32 25

31 54

ΛηΓι

20 13

20 00

78 12

80 69 b

17 65

16 05"

30 64

29 31

79 13

81 73

66 45

69 87

Ληη

number of d u s bidonville number of households

inri

number of d u s owned ^ .„„ number of households

number of d u s with electricity χ number of households

ι ( χ )

Census Tracts 19 98

number of d u s in buildings made of cement/stone number of households

number of d u s with WC attached to drain number of households

Mean for ^32

Total» 19 19

females 15 + males 15+ in tech. + man , Λ „ —i—τ^τ i—~Λ— * 1 0 ° malesactively 13+ unemployed plus occupied males 15+ in blue collar w males 15+ unemployed plus actively occupied inactive household heads number of households

Population

.

m

The total for Rabat-Sale has been derived by weighting the index for each of the 532 census tracts

included in the study by its population or, where relevant, the number of dwelling units in each tract Therefore, this figure will be slightly different from the one derived from total population because 1 twenty-four tracts have been omitted from our analysis, 2 the rates are derived from the 1/10 sample survey The differences are not likely to be significant, however, for the reasons presented earlier b

These variables were later transformed (log-normalized)

plus) population was literate only in a language other than Arabic, chiefly French or Hebrew. Rabat-Sale had become, by 1971, more homogeneously Muslim and native-born than practically any other cosmopolitan metropolis of the Arab world It is certainly more homogeneous than Cairo will ever be, for Egypt has a sizable minority of native Christians (Copts) The comparable minority in Morocco had been the Moroccan Jewish population, but by 1971

282

FACTORIAL ECOLOGY

Moroccan Jews constituted less than 1 percent of the population of Rabat-Sale MIGRATION STATUS

Reflecting the rapidity with which Rabat-Sale's population had increased in recent years, a remarkably high percentage of the community's residents were born outside the metropolitan area, largely in other parts of Morocco, both urban and rural. In 1971 only slightly more than half of the residents had been born within the prefecture of Rabat-Sale This is considerably lower than the percentage of Cairo residents born in the Cairo region. (The comparable ratio in Cairo had fluctuated between lows of 58 percent in 1927 and 62 percent in 1960 to highs of 64-65 percent in 1917 and again in 1947.) By 1971 almost one-third of the population of Rabat-Sale consisted of migrants who had come from rural parts of Morocco, while an additional 17 percent had migrated from other cities of Morocco This placed a heavy burden both upon the physical facilities and the social fabric of the city To absorb a migrant population virtually equal to the native-born is, indeed, an enormous task. Furthermore, it should be borne in mind that the true proportion of migrants absorbed was probably higher than the statistics indicate, since a fairly substantial proportion of Rabat-Sale's "native-born" population consisted, in reality, of children born in the city to migrant parents. If our observations on the rurahzation of Cairo under the impact of heavy migration had validity there (Abu-Lughod, 1961), they should have even greater significance in Rabat-Sale. In a fundamental way, migrants have been shaping the nature of urban life in Rabat, not merely adjusting to it. Migration to Rabat-Sale has followed a somewhat deviant pattern Strangely enough, females outnumber males in the city, not only in the overall figures for all ages, but even in the ages between 15 and 49, that is, the age group most likely to be inflated by migrants. In most rapidly growing cities of the Middle East and North Africa, where migration accounts for a substantial proportion of the growth, the sex ratios are generally quite unbalanced in favor of males. The cities contain large numbers of men who left their villages before marrying, or who have left their wives (and possibly children as well) in their villages of origin. For example, the sex ratio in the migration-prone years (15-49 years of age) was well over 100 for Cairo in 1960, and even higher at the time of the

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1947 census It is difficult to understand the anomalous, or at least unexpected, situation in Rabat-Sale Is the "female imbalance" in the city a statistical error 7 Does it reflect a deviant tendency for Moroccan females to migrate to the city, more than their counterparts in other Arab countries' Does it represent some other trend or factor not isolated by our research73 FAMILY ORGANIZATION

Despite this unusual and "suspect" balance between the sexes, and indeed a slight preponderance of females, a fairly sizable proportion of Rabat-Sale's population does not seem to be integrated into family groups of the traditional type Males and females, in general, appear to marry somewhat later than is typical in Arab Muslim countries The percentage of females over fifteen who had not yet married in Rabat-Sale in 1971 was almost twice as high as the comparable proportion in Cairo in 1960, indicating a more advanced average age at marriage in Rabat Males similarly seem to marry somewhat later than their Cairo counterparts, since about twofifths of the males fifteen years of age or older were still single in Rabat-Sale in 1971 4 Family instability also seems greater in Rabat-Sale than in Cairo In Rabat-Sale some 6 percent of the ever-married females were listed as divorced at the time of the census In Cairo, which is notonous for its high rate of divorce, the comparable percentage in 1960 was 4 An additional measure of family instability in RabatSale appears to be the fairly high proportion of households headed by females (single women living alone, divorced or widowed women living with dependent children and without a male head of household) Although this may be an artifact of the reporting process, it is important to note that almost one out of every five households m Rabat-Sale was identified as being headed by a woman Comparable figures are not available from other Arab cities, but it is our impression that the proportion elsewhere is extremely low One wonders how much credence can be given to this figure s 3

The data at hand do not permit us to investigate this, but further research is certainly called for Cross-tabulations of sex ratios by age and nationality categories, at the minimum, might help to identify the source of this imbalance 4 Our decision to treat affianced individuals as unmarried in Rabat-Sale may have depressed the values of this variable in an undefensible manner 5 Morocco may be a deviant case in the Arab world, evidence from Youssef (1974) and Maher (1976) suggests this possibility Earlier historical documents refer to the instability of conjugal ties among the Berbers

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A final indicator of the somewhat atypical organization of families in Rabat-Sale is the relatively high (17) percent of individuals who live in households where they are neither the head, spouse, or child of head. While some of these are undoubtedly other relatives of the household head (such as widowed mothers, single brothers or sisters, cousins, and so on), the very high percentage suggests that roomers, boarders, and other unrelated sharers of dwelling units must also be prevalent in a minority of Rabat-Sale households. Despite all these indications of atypical household composition, the fertility ratio in the city is quite high. There are approximately 608 children under five years of age for every 1,000 females in the child-bearing ages between 15 and 49. This indicates both a high birth rate and an impressive rate of child survival, all the more remarkable given the later age at marriage and the frequency of divorce. LITERACY A N D LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION

Of the population fifteen years of age and older, almost one-third (32 percent) of the women and about 60 percent of the men are able to read and write, according to their own testimony. This is almost as high as the literacy rates reported in Cairo in 1960, and since the latter were for persons over five years of age (which should increase or inflate the literacy rate due to recent expansions in universal education), it appears that the population of Rabat-Sale, despite its recent rural origins, is at least as literate as its counterpart in Cairo a decade ago. The discrepancy between the female and male literacy rates is to be expected While it is large, the gap between the two rates in Rabat-Sale is narrower than is typically found in other Arab Muslim countries. This indicates again the somewhat more independent position of Moroccan women, who evidently have not been as excluded from or overlooked in the educational system. Perhaps reflecting the somewhat greater self-reliance of women in Rabat-Sale, as contrasted with women m other Arab Muslim cities, almost one-fifth of the females fifteen years of age and older were employed, although largely in service jobs. (In 1960, only about 6 or 7 percent of Cairo adult females were reported employed.) On the other hand, males appeared to face substantial difficulties in finding employment. Of those men fifteen years of age and older who were in the labor force (either actively employed or

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seeking work), some 12 percent were classified as without jobs at the time of the census enumeration. While it is extremely difficult to make reliable comparisons between countries on the variable of unemployment (because of differences in definitions of labor force participation and of types of unemployment), the rate for RabatSale appears to be higher than that of Cairo males in 1947, which was a difficult economic period. It is certainly higher than desirable. Furthermore, there is the distressing fact that about 20 percent of all heads of households (including and especially female heads) are not in the labor force at all, that is, are listed as "inactive." Whether this figure represents true dependency, workers who through discouragement have withdrawn from the labor force, or whether it can be accounted for by old age and retirement cannot be determined from our data. It is, however, a condition that warrants closer study The occupational distribution of the labor force offers some rough measure of the class structure of Rabat-Sale Some 12 percent of the male labor force was engaged in what might be termed high-status well-paid occupations, that is, technical and managerial positions Another third was working in skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled blue-collar occupations. The remainder, with the exception of a miniscule 3 percent in farming, must be classified as engaged in the tertiary sector. While this latter category also includes white-collar clerical and sales workers who may earn modest incomes, it consists, in the main, of persons working in extremely marginal types of commerce and service from which they derive very marginal incomes. Certainly, finding a job and making a living constitute important problems for a large proportion of Rabat-Sale's population HOUSING CHARACTERISTICS

The average size of household in Rabat-Sale is quite large. Although there were a surprisingly large number of single-person households in the city, and a very large proportion of the dwelling units consisted of only one or two rooms, the average number of persons sharing a dwelling unit was almost five. The result of this combination of large average household size and small average size of dwelling was an occupancy density of about 2.2 persons per room for the city as a whole 6 This ratio is approximately the same 6

It should be pointed out here, however, that whereas in American and European housing censuses, kitchens and other nonresidential rooms are included in the room

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FACTORIAL ECOLOGY

as that experienced in Cairo in 1947, although densities subsequently increased drastically in that city (Moroccan and Egyptian occupancy rates are computed in the same way, and therefore are comparable ) Most of the households in Rabat-Sale (78 percent) occupied dwellings made of masonry or stone, 79 percent of the dwelling units had access to a water closet connected to an effluent drain or sewer, and two-thirds of all dwelling units were served by electricity Looked at in one way, this is a remarkable achievement, especially when one takes into consideration the rapid rate at which the city was growing and therefore the heavy pressures on the housing supply The bidonville problem was formidable, however, despite efforts to replace and/or supplement these so-called "temporary structures" through government construction At least 18 percent of the population was living in a dwelling unit classified as impermanent, and this is probably an underestimate, since enumeration was less complete in these districts than elsewhere in the twin cities Bidonville living was not an unmixed disaster, however, since residence in such a structure at least enhanced the opportunity to become an "owner," albeit of somewhat disputed title Rabat-Sale, in general, is a community of multifamily and rented units Indeed, only 30 percent of the dwelling units were owner-occupied in 1971 A disproportionate number of these owner-occupied dwellings were bidonville structures, the rest were found in the middle- and upper-income villa quarters on the suburban fringe of the metropolitan area Although these are the city-wide characteristics of Rabat-Sale, as derived from the 1971 census, we know from our earlier analyses that these variables are differentially distributed within the urban region Some subareas of the city contain only temporary structures, others have permanent structures but no utilities, while still others have only high-quality housing And as we have already seen, economic groups are segregated from one another into different parts of the urban region While it would be possible to map each of these variables separately, the results would be confusing and difficult to interpret Since many of the variables are interrelated, factor analysis can be used as a more systematic and parcount, rooms of this type are excluded from the Moroccan analysis, artificially elevating person per room densities Occupancy rates are not comparable, in any case

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simonious way to display the data, to reduce them to an mterpretable dimension The Intercorrelatwns among the Social Indicators Some Hypotheses The method of factorial ecology allows one to explore the social organization of a community by analyzing the statistical mtercorrelations and spatial distribution of social characteristics (For a more extended discussion of this, see J Abu-Lughod, 1969) Cities in societies exhibiting particular "social structures" will demonstrate predictable types of "factorial structures " There are several dimensions that appear rather consistently in studies of cities from widely varied societies, however, even though which variables measure these dimensions will vary from culture area to culture area One factor that appears in every factorial ecology may be termed socio-economic status Variables that indicate class position—such as education, occupation, and income—tend to cluster together, and rankings on these items reveal the relative status or prestige of various residential zones in a city Second, in highly industrialized countries that have already completed the demographic transition, variables measuring family cycle and size (size of family, fertility ratios, and so on) in various parts of the city are similarly distributed, and the pattern of their geographic distribution is relatively independent of the spatial patterning of differential status On the other hand, in countries where the demographic transition has begun and where norms of smaller family size are well established in the upper classes but have just begun to diffuse down the class structure, the relationship between socioeconomic status and family organization is generally quite tight The factorial separation between measures of status and family is seldom as marked as at either the pre- or post-transition stage In Rabat-Sale, we predicted that fertility and socio-economic status would tend to vary together within the city but, because birth rates have not yet begun to decline, this association would still be weak A third commonly found factor is ethnicity, as measured by any relevant variables, including religion, race, nationality, and/or subcultural identification Here, theory suggests that the more "castelike" the social structure, the less separation one should expect between vectors of socio-economic status and ethnicity Caste societies are, by definition, those in which particular ascribed char-

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FACTORIAL ECOLOGY

actenstics (race, nationality, or any other socially significant inherited characteristic) predetermine one's life chances or position in the class hierarchy. Except in American cities in the deep South, where blacks and whites have traditionally maintained a caste-like relationship, ethnicity has been found distinct from class in U.S. cities, as measured in factorial ecologies. On the other hand, in colonial settler countries organized on the principle of caste and practicing residential apartheid (such as South Africa), one would predict ethnicity (in this instance, race) and class to be so tightly linked that separating these two factors would be impossible As countries gradually move away from caste, for example in Morocco as decolonization proceeds, one would predict that this tight connection will loosen and eventually disappear, since social mobility will undermine the rigid link between ascribed and achieved status Rabat-Sale, because its colonial past is so recent, was expected to still show a tight correlation between ethnic and socio-economic variables, although one would certainly predict these correlations to be reduced as decolonization proceeds A fourth factor that has occasionally been found is migrant status. It is obvious that various subareas of a city are not equally receptive to urban newcomers "Ports of entry" or "reception centers" have been identified in all cities, to which newcomers are differentially drawn, whether due to chain migration, to reputation, or to the availability of services and facilities particularly needed by migrants. One would therefore anticipate that urban subareas will be differentiated according to migration status. Whether this will constitute a separate vector in a factorial ecology, or whether these variables will coalesce with those measuring socio-economic status or ethnicity will, of course, depend upon the nature of the specific society and city being studied. Where immigration from abroad is the chief source of newcomers, a close association should be found between variables measuring ethnicity and those measuring migrant status. And if this immigration from abroad is into a caste-like structure (with foreigners either very low in social status, such as was true in American cities during the nineteenth century, or very high, as was the case in early twentiethcentury Morocco), then one would expect variables measuring class and those measuring immigration to be highly correlated With respect to internal (mostly rural to urban) migration, one would usually anticipate a negative relationship between migrant status and socio-economic status, since migrants, particularly those

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289

from rural areas, usually have somewhat less education and fewer industrial and technical skills than persons raised in urban areas. In a number of Third World countries, however, this may not necessarily be the case. Selective migration may, in fact, attract superior persons from the rural areas. The question is one that can only be answered empirically. In the case of Morocco, our prediction was that migrant status might appear as a separate vector in the factorial ecology, relatively independent of both ethnicity and class. Where population is growing from migration as rapidly as it is in Rabat-Sale, and where many city-born residents occupy a generally low status because of the confounding effects of ethnicity and caste, the availability of housing and even the expansion of housing (as in the case of suburbs and bidonvilles) should channel newcomers into specific residential sections of the city These districts, however, may be at various levels of socio-economic status, corresponding to variations in the class levels of migrants. This should be particularly true in Rabat. Since it serves as the capital, it attracts not only lower-status rural migrants, but highly placed recruits to the national bureaucracy, as well. Finally, from our analysis of Cairo we predicted that a vector measuring "male dominance" might appear in Rabat-Sale, although given the generally low sex ratios in the city it might be difficult to interpret. In Cairo, because migrants were predominantly young, single, and male, and because female-headed households and females living alone were extremely rare, subareas of the city containing disproportionate numbers of males were easily identified as places where male migrants had congregated, combining job locations and residences. These zones were found chiefly in commercial and industrial districts. In Rabat we were not certain that this would be the case, although a preliminary "experimental" factor analysis suggested that "male dominance" would appear as a separate factor.7 As it turned out, districts in Rabat that were heav7 I performed this experimental factor analysis on Rabat-Sale, using the same truncated list of variables that had been available for the Cairo study The factorial solutions for Cairo in 1960 and Rabat-Sale in 1971 were remarkably parallel In each city, variables measuring socio-economic status, family type, and ethnicity factored together on the first of three factors Indeed, in the Rabat analysis using only nine variables, the first factor accounted for a remarkable 63 percent of all the variance, indicating that the society was at an even lower level of "scale" (as defined by Social Area Analysis) than Egypt In both cities, the second factor was "male dominance,"

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FACTORIAL ECOLOGY

ily male were almost always the site of some institution (such as the university or an army camp), making the factor of dubious value.

The foregoing remarks summarize the guiding hypotheses that underlay our selection of the variables to be included in the factor analysis, and that served as predictions to be tested by the data Once factor analysis begins, however, these hypotheses can exercise no influence over the results. Because of this we claim that factor analysis is an excellent means not only of summarizing parsimoniously the spatial patterns of cities, but also of testing hypotheses about urban social structure Before proceeding to the factorial solution, let us first examine the correlation coefficient matrix which shows the zero-order rs between each and every social indicator It should be borne in mind that the units of observation in this study are census tracts, rather than individuals. The variables being intercorrelated are the calculated summary rates, ratios, and percentages for each census tract treated as a unit. Caution should therefore be exercised in drawing inferences from the correlations or making interpretations in nonecological terms. Table 14 is the correlation coefficient matrix derived from 27 variables and 532 observation units (census tracts). Communahties estimated from the factor analysis have been included in lieu of the usual 1.00, which would represent the correlation of a variable with itself As can be seen from Table 14, there appears to be a number of clusters consisting of variables that are highly intercorrelated with one another but relatively independent of other clusters On the other hand, a few variables appear to have uniformly low correlations with other items, indicating either that they operate fairly independently, or that they are related, if at all, in a curvilinear manner (for example, divorced females). We might examine some of the clustered items to get a preliminary glimpse of what factor analysis is likely to reveal, as well as to answer certain substantive questions raised in the preceding section. First, with respect to the issue of male dominance, we find that unbalanced sex ratios in general are highly correlated with unbalanced sex ratios in the migration-prone ages Apparently, certain indicating that despite Rabat's low sex ratio, certain areas did contain disproportionate numbers of unattached males

TMAN BC IAH MS BID OWN WCD ELL

MUS LNA BA BRS RUR PPR PPH UNEM FEMP

FNM MNM DIV FLI MLI FHH OTH

70 75 78 63 70 71 62 24 54 56 43 51 70 77 46 69 81

46 70 60 68 61 18 83 74 57 29

SRM FER

nalu.es

Key

SEX

66

TABLE 14

ϊ

ί

10 - 2 0 25 15-28 40 -58 -40 39

Κ

θ

ΰ

ί

5

Ϊ

θ

^

ί

5

§

^

15 - 12 - 0 4 - 0 1 - 2 0 - 0 1 - 0 4 - 0 0 - 0 0 - 14 16 - 11 - 0 3 04 - 0 6 03 05 - 2 1 04 - 19 30 - 16 - 5 2 - 3 8 - 16 - 2 9 11 34 - 4 5 - 4 1 42 04 - 4 4 -00 63 47 - 0 6 23 - 2 2 37 11 27 - 0 9 32 38 05 18 13 03 - 2 5 01 02 - 0 2 28 16 00 02 03 - 0 0 28 - 6 2 73 71 - 18 - 56 76 - 0 3 34 - 4 3 59 52 - 12 - 50 -07 10 - 0 3 - 0 5 - 0 4 11 - 0 2 -04 17 14 - 12 - 13 34 -75 -76 32 80 - 2 8 - 4 1 -39 -33 -45

5

:

ε

- 0 4 - 18 -06 -28 54 32 -41 07 -27 -09 - 0 1 - 13 -69 -21 - 57 - 0 2 -02 -22 -23 04 56 41 -63 -33 -66 -37 22 29 41 02 49

§

ϊ

04 - 0 2 02 - 0 2 08 - 4 3 37 - 16 25 05 14 04 56 -34 41 -25 07 10 26 01 30 - 4 8 58 -33 59 -35 17 - 3 1 17 - 2 9 31 - 5 2 16 - 3 8 -25

^ -03 02 -36 38 21 06 63 52 -06 20 -54 59 64 -20 -40 -57 -29 -34 51

ί 01 -02 28 -38 -24 01 -56 -58 13 -22 33 -44 -45 17 31 43 04 18 -32 -48

-

§

-00 -05 - 14 29 16 -07 44 52 -05 22 - 16 29 22 -01 -37 - 37 10 -22 16 19 -33 -01

3

-06 -02 - 17 01 16 11 01 -05 64 04 -07 -00 00 15 - 11 - 10 - 16 04 -06 04 10

« 03 04 24 -32 -22 05 -50 -58 03 -23 18 -28 -24 -06 46 35 -07 17 -22 -26 36 -01 -77

5

ZERO-ORDER CORRELATION COEFFICIENTS BETWEEN EACH AND EVERY VARIABLE, CENSUS TRACTS OF RABAT-SALE,

-ω

&

Ώ

04 00 - 0 5 -01 -04 -04 19 - 19 - 3 4 -23 29 45 - 13 19 32 -01 -06 -02 -40 47 64 -42 73 56 02 -01 - 16 18 30 22 - 19 - 2 6 -31 29 42 -26 24 35 06 - 0 3 01 31 - 3 6 - 52 22 - 3 9 - 4 6 04 07 07 25 - 16 - 2 3 -23 19 29 -22 21 39 30 - 3 4 - 4 9 03 -00 03 -52 70 76 57 - 7 6 - 8 1 -49 -60 72

θ

1971

292

FACTORIAL ECOLOGY

sections of the city are selectively attractive to males, particularly young and unmarried males. (The correlation between the percentage of unmarried males in a census tract and the ratio of males to females in the migration-prone ages between 15 and 49 is +.40.) The tracts in which unmarried women are concentrated are not the same as those that have high proportions of unmarried males. The correlation between these two variables is, indeed, a — 28. Obviously, the two variables tap different realities. The high proportion of unmarried females in certain districts of the city does not seem to be due to migration, but to higher socioeconomic status and greater education, both of which affect age at marriage, and therefore the proportion at any one time who have not yet married. That this is the reasonable interpretation is attested by the fact that the percentage of females not yet married correlates + 63 with the percentage of females who can read or write, a class variable. On the other hand, the concentration of unmarried males in certain districts is related more to migration than high status. That at least some of the single males who cause unbalanced sex ratios in certain parts of the city are migrants is suggested by the fact that some tracts with heavily unbalanced sex ratios are also zones where a large proportion of the residents have migrated to Rabat-Sale from the Moroccan countryside. The correlations, while not high (indicating that other factors are probably also at work), are in the expected direction. Thus, the correlation between sex ratio at all ages and percentage born in rural Morocco is + 14, and that between sex ratio in the migration-prone years and rural birth is + 16, whereas the correlations between the two types of sex ratios and the percentage of population born in Rabat-Sale are, respectively, -.14 a n d - . 2 1 Second, a particularly large cluster of intercorrelated variables can be identified that link ethnicity to a variety of measures of socio-economic status. Indeed, we can construct a submatrix (after eliminating variables that do not cluster with this core set) in which all intercorrelations are extremely high (Table 15). As can be seen from this table, with the sole exception of the percentage of females never married (which is linked more strongly to literacy than to ethnicity), there is entailment between measures of ethnicity and measures of class. The situation can be summarized as follows Districts inhabited exclusively by Muslims are districts in which males and especially females tend to be illiterate, where hous-

293

FACTORIAL ECOLOGY TABLE 15

MATRIX OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS AND ETHNICITY VARIABLES SHOWING

ZERO-ORDER CORRELATION COEFFICIENTS, RABAT-SALE CENSUS TRACTS, 1971

FNM FLIMLl S-E S-E S-E Eth Eth Eth S-E S-E S-E

Females never married Females literate Males literate Muslims Language not Arabic Born abroad Blue collar work Tech-managerial Persons per room

MUS

LNA

BA

41 37 1 00 63 47 - 22 71 73 1 00 76 - 6 2 58 100 - 42 52 1 00 - 7 5 - 7 5 1 00 80 1 00

BC -38 -56 - 58 33 - 44 -45 1 00

TMAN 38 63 52 -54 59 64 -48 100

PPR - 41 -69 - 57 56 - 63 -66 43 - 57 1 00

ing units are occupied at high densities (PPR), and where employed males are likely to occupy lower-paid and subservient positions in the occupational hierarchy. At the opposite extreme, in those districts in which non-Muslim foreigners make up a noticeable (if numerically small) proportion of the population, and where there live literate persons who cannot function in Arabic, the population in general is literate, tends to be employed in well-paid technical and managerial jobs, and enjoys commodious housing that it occupies at low persons-per-room densities. In short, a caste-like structure still remains evident, despite the marked drop in the numerical size and economic power of the foreign population. An indigenous upper class is now sharing, and indeed segregating itself, into zones that were formerly the exclusive domain of the now decimated colonial caste. Several other clusters, less obvious to the naked eye before factor analysis, are also suggested by the correlation matrix. A variety of indicators measuring demographic and household composition characteristics appear to intercorrelate at modest levels, but the sizes of the coefficients are smaller and the directions less consistent than in the clusters demarcating male dominance or caste. Similarly, all measures of housing quality intercorrelate, but this cluster is linked in inconsistent ways to social class and ethnicity. The only unexpected finding within the cluster is the positive association between bidonville residence and owner occupancy. This creates an interesting anomaly. In most societies, home ownership varies directly with socio-economic status; in Rabat-Sale, on the contrary, home ownership is inversely correlated with socio-economic status because of the large number of bidonville dwellers who " o w n " their own shacks.

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FACTORIAL ECOLOGY

The final cluster of variables in the correlation matrix can be tentatively identified as "migrant status," which appears to be linked to low socio-economic status, to housing deficiencies, and to certain fertility and household composition characteristics. The three variables designed to tap migrant status are: percentage of foreign born, percentage born in Rabat-Sale, and percentage of Moroccans born in rural areas of Morocco. While the correlations among these three measures are significant and in the predicted directions, they are not so high that the variables can simply be dismissed as redundant measures of the same reality. Table 16 presents the submatnx TABLE 16

CORRELATION COEFFICIENTS BETWEEN MIGRANT STATUS VARIABLES AND

SELECTED HIGHLY RELATED SOCIO-ECONOMIC VARIABLES, RABAT-SALE, 1971

% born Rabat-Sale % born rural Morocco

Born Rural

Born Abroad

-45

ELL TMAN

PPR

BID

- 12

22

-06

01

-20

-50

41

46

-52

-40

FLI

MLI

-39

- 18

-33

-56

showing the intercorrelations among the three migrant-status measures, and the correlations between the two measures of internal migration and selected other variables. Clearly, whereas zones in which migrants from rural Morocco are concentrated are also zones of low literacy, low status occupations, high density, low electrical service, and high concentration of bidonville-type structures, the zones in which native-born citizens of Rabat-Sale are concentrated are not necessarily characterized by the opposite. There are concentrations of nonmigrants in many areas of the city and at a variety of levels of status, although enough of the nativeborn are concentrated at lower literacy, job, and housing deficiency levels that the relationship overall is a modest but still negative one. These were the preliminary conclusions suggested by the correlation coefficients themselves. Factor analysis clearly seemed warranted, for the essential purpose of that method is to identify underlying vectors (forces or more general factors) that are consistent with the types of intercorrelations found when the variables are examined individually, and which can account, in a somewhat more parsimonious manner, for the full range of variance within the matrix of zero-order correlations. Where individual correlations are all high, one posits a basic underlying general factor and a virtually

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unidimensional structure for the variables. Where individual correlations are all low, one assumes that the data cannot be reduced to a more parsimonious model, since each variable apparently represents a unique dimension. In neither of these two extreme cases is factor analysis particularly useful, for in the first case of unidimensionahty, each variable taps the dimension about as well as any other, whereas in the second case, where there are as many factors as there are variables, the variables are the factors. Factor analysis is chiefly useful when: a. there is reason to believe that a set of variables taps more than one dimension, andfc. clusters of interrelated variables appear, within which coefficients are high, but between which there seems to be relative independence. Under these conditions, there is reason to believe that the data can be more parsimoniously described by a number of factors smaller than the full array of variables Whether this seems to be an epistemologlcally defensible operation depends upon how one views a "variable." I consider all measurable variables as mere and imperfect indicators to a "reality" that lies behind, and that can never be observed directly. Each measure, then, is an indirect calibration and suffers from its own inaccuracy and bias. Several variables that "triangulate" toward a social reality are better than a single variable, no matter how unbiased and accurate. I therefore have no difficulty believing in factors. They are as real (or as hypothetical) as any other more directly measurable variable, and are probably superior to the individual variables in being somewhat less unstable and subject to sampling errors than are the variables that have gone into their construction. A further caveat should be mentioned. Factor analysis as a method has aroused (at least among statisticians) quite heated controversy, with its proponents often claiming greater power for it than the method can really sustain, and with opponents accusing it of being no more than a capricious operation by which an investigator manipulates the data to prove a particular point Neither of these polemical positions is correct. On the one hand, factor analysis is no all-powerful deus ex machina for putting into order data that have no intrinsic order, nor is it capable of translating accidentally assembled items into systematic and meaningful form It is true that its mathematical procedures can be applied to any data set of continuous variables, but the results will be neither parsimonious nor logically interpretable unless the data have been assembled in a noncapncious manner. On the other hand, one must

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acknowledge that the type of solution obtained is heavily influenced by the number and variety of indicators used; it is even influenced to some extent by the actual way that indicators are computed (although more stability in structure is achieved than would a priori be expected, even when a wide variety of substitute measures are employed). But given an honest attempt to include a range of items to tap dimensions of reality hypothesized by the investigator, to achieve an adequate balance among these items, and to select more than one item for each posited dimension, it is possible for an investigator to obtain results that, while not "true" in some reified sense, are indeed useful for his purposes. The method, when undertaken cautiously and with both theory to guide the selection of indicators and a clear sense of the limitations of interpretation and inference, is relatively objective and precise, even in its rotational stage With these preliminary cautions out of the way, let us turn to the factor solution itself. The Factor Structure Principal components factor analysis was performed on the correlation coefficient matrix of twenty-seven variables. Six factors were successively extracted, virtually exhausting the variance. Each factor had a high eigenvalue, even the sixth and final factor had an eigenvalue of .9, indicating the strength of the solution. Table 17 presents the eigenvalues and the amount of variance accounted for by the six factors. Table 17 tells us that the mathematical solution is powerful, but it does not tell us whether it is particularly useful or interpretable. For this we must look to the differential projections of the variables on each factor. Do they constitute a logical set? Do the variables separate sufficiently onto different factors? Can we identify and name TABLE 17

Factor

I II III IV V VI

EIGENVALUES AND VARIANCE ACCOUNTED FOR BY THE SIX FACTORS

Eigenvalue

8 27461 2 76862 1 95023 1 53618 1 12377 89270

Percent of Variance Accounted for by Each Successive Factor

Cumulative Percent of Variance Accounted for

50 0 16 7 11 8 93 68 54

50 0 667 78 5 87 8 94 6 100 0

F A C T O R I A L EC O L O G Y

297

the "hidden" dimension or vector that underlies each set of variables? These questions can only be answered by examining the differential projections of the variables upon each of the six orthogonal factors, as shown in Table 18 The variables have been grouped and labeled in accordance with our hypotheses which, as can be seen, are not entirely sustained by the factor solution. True, literacy, ethnicity, and socio-economic measures relating to labor force and housing quality all load heavily on the first factor, but many of these variables also have heavy projections on Factor II. Factor II can be identified tentatively as a housing and neighborhood physical amenities vector, but ethnicity and migrant status variables are also mixed in Factor III taps something in the realm of demographic composition, since measures of family composition and sex ratios are equally represented. Factor IV is more clearly a vector measuring the presence of excess males and unmarried persons. Factor V is relatively uninterpretable, although it also appears to measure something in the realm of family composition, having heavy positive loadings for single males and females and a heavy negative loading for female-headed households. Factor VI is clearly related to migrant status, since the two variables with the heaviest (and only really significant) loadings are persons born in Rabat-Sale and persons having migrated to the city from rural areas within Morocco. In short, the six factors reveal some order among the variables, but the structure is still unclear and far from simple.8 Rotation is a technique designed to increase the simplicity of the factor structure and to enhance the interpretability of the factors themselves. Each factor may be thought of as a hypothetical vector (or line) having a direction that is defined as a dimension in n-space. The "loadings" of each variable on that vector may be thought of as the closeness of the variable to the vector (or the correlation of the variable with the vector). The "exact" location of the vector is, therefore, not fixed but is set experimentally to fulfill certain specifications. Clearly, the slope of the vector can be changed, and 8 The term "simple structure" is a technical one based upon the pioneering work of the developer of factor analysis, L L Thurstone An elegant factor solution demonstrates simple structure Simple structure exists when each and every variable loads heavily on only one factor, and where different groups of variables cluster exclusively on separate factors Absolute simple structure is probably unobtainable in the real world, solutions are judged as better or worse, then, in terms of how well they approximate simple structure

298

FACTORIAL ECOLOGY TABLE 18

FACTOR STRUCTURE (AND PATTERN) MATRIX SHOWING FACTOR

WEIGHTS GROUPED BY LOGICAL CATEGORIES, PRINC IPAL FACTOR SOLUTION BEFORE ROTATION, RABAT-SALE, 1971

Variables by Cahgoms Ethnicity BA LNA MUS Literacy FLI MLI Occupation TMAN BC FEMP IAH UNEM Housing quality PPR MS BID OWN WCD ELL Family composition FERT DIV OTH FNM PPH FHH MNM SEX SRM Migration BRS RUR

I 75 74 -63 91 81 67 -60 61

— -36 - 76 59 -65 - 51 61 77

-56

— 32 60

— — 38

— — — -60

Factor Weights of Variables on Factors V II IV III -45 -33 45

— — (-27)

— -32

— — (25) 51

- 55 (-28) 48 47

— — — — 59

— — —

VI

— — —

— — —

— — —

— — —

— —

— —

— —

— —

— — —

— — —

— — —

48

(-25)

— — — — —

-41

—

—

—

— — — — — —

— — — — — —

32

— — — — —

— — —

48 59 35 51

- 41 40

— —

(28)

(-26)

— (-26)

— - 59

—

-31

56 71

51

-33

(-28)

(26)

— (-27)

— — (-26)

—

41

— — — —

— — — — — — — — 31

— — — — — — -49 49

NOTE Values of less than ± 25 are shown as — It is conventional to treat values this low as part of the scoring process but not as part of the test for simple structure Values between 25 and 30 are shown in parentheses A less rigid test would exclude values of this marginal magnitude

1A( T O R I A L E( O L O G Y

299

when it is changed, the projections of the variables on it will change in value Orthogonal rotation is a systematic technique for modifying the slopes of pairs of vectors so that they remain at right angles to one another but intersect the variables at slightly different locations 9 In a vanmax rotation, the computer is told to experiment with combinations of slopes and to position the vectors in such a way that they remain orthogonal to one another, but that the weights of important variables (those with high loadings on separate vectors) are at their maximum, consistent with the not quite compatible goal of separating the variables into simple structure This is neither a capricious nor an illegitimate process It is merely a process designed to maximize whatever simple structure is inherent in the distribution of variables It cannot "create" simple structure, nor can it be judgmentally manipulated without specific consequences that follow inevitably and that therefore show up in the results The six factors were subjected to vanmax orthogonal rotation, a process that yielded particularly clear and interpretable results Table 19 shows the revised factor loadings after rotation Not only is the structure considerably simpler, but the identification of meaningful and useful factors is greatly facilitated Factor I is clearly a socio-economic factor in which ethnicity and status are inextricably entwined The three variables measuring ethnicity are all heavily loaded on Factor I, and indeed it is impossible to separate ethnicity from the variables of socio-economic status, which suggests strongly that our interpretation of the geographic pattern of Rabat-Sale as essentially still on the casteapartheid model is a reasonable one Among the significant items measuring socio-economic status are both male and female literacy rates This is definitely consistent with our findings for other Arab countries, where the rate of female literacy indicates in particularly sensitive fashion not merely status but "degree of modernity " Literacy rates are "style of life" measures as much as they are indicators of economic power All items relating to labor force participation and occupational rank also load heavily on Factor I, with unemployment and bluecollar work negatively associated with the factor, and high status 9 Rotations can also be performed to reduce or increase the angle between pairs of vectors, these are called oblique rotations This strategy would have been more effective in testing our hypotheses about caste but would have made mapping and the interpretation of the spatial pattern more difficult

300

FACTORIAL ECOLOGY TABLE 19 FACTOR LOADINGS AFTER VARIMAX ROTATION, RABAT-SALE,

Variables BA LNA MUS FLI PPR TMAN FEMP PPH MLI FER BC UNEM BID MS WCD ELL OWN SRM SEX MNM FNM OTH FHH IAH DIV BRS RUR

1971

I

II

III

Factors IV

V

VI

Ethnicity

88 83 -82

14 21 -09

00 00 -05

11 15 04

-02 -04 -06

-08 02 -00

Socioeconomic Status

7/ - 70 68 61 - 52 47 - 41 -40 -40

41 -27 15 10 16 56 -09 -33 - 18

-06 - 08 -00 -03 -28 03 11 01 05

38 - 25 22 31 05 38 - 57 -30 10

-05 - 12 -03 07 - 35 - 12 -24 18 09

12 -02 07 - 12 16 10 -02 -01 03

13 12 14 25 20

- 87 84 83 82 -59

01 -02 -00 -02 01

- 12 05 08 29 -06

01 -04 -01 -02 01

- 11 03 02 13 00

03 00 06 32 07 03 01 01

-02 -01 14 21 22 -00 01 -07

94 70 43 -28 01 -- 14 03 -09

-00 -02 66 61 42 02 02 17

-08 -11 12 - 10 09 87 68 28

-09 -07 17 21 - 10 -00 16 -06

36 37

02 -35

-- 1 3 11

-04 - 16

10 -03

77 - 70

Cluster Name

Housing

Male Dominance Family 1

Family 2 Migration

NOTE Values over 35 have been italicized for emphasis

(technical and managerial) occupations and employed females positively associated with it. One might look more closely at the variable, "females employed," since it appears to measure two very different phenomena and should therefore be interpreted cautiously. Upper-status "foreign type" quarters exhibit high rates of female employment not only because educated women may be working, but also because the high incomes of families in these zones allow them to employ female domestic servants who live in the household. High female employment, then, is a composite measure of upper-income life style and modern roles for educated women—but the employed

FACTORIAL ECOLOGY

301

females in these districts may not be the ones who are educated and "liberated." Here certainly is a limitation to our understanding that is directly linked to our use of ecological correlations Only individual correlations can tell us whether the women who are working are educated and following modern life styles or whether the women who are working are lower-class uneducated domestic servants receiving housing as part of their wages. The negative loading of the persons-per-room ratio on Factor I is to be expected, given the usual relationship between income and housing occupancy, and therefore requires no further comment. Two other variables, however, must be examined more closely, namely, the average household size (PPH) and the fertility ratio, both of which are negatively associated with high caste. It would appear that lower fertility and smaller family size are associated ecologically with high income and literacy, which, if ethnicity were not involved also, would clearly signal that the demographic transition has begun in Rabat-Sale, starting with the groups having the highest levels of education and feminine employment—strong predictors elsewhere. While the factorial solution is not inconsistent with this hypothesis, the nature of our data and the heavy entailment of ethnicity variables within the same factor do not allow us to do more than suggest this as a possibility. That low fertility and small household size are not merely functions of household composition characteristics (which might inflate the ratio of adult women in a district in relation to the young children) is evidenced by the fact that compositional variables—such as the presence of "others" in the household, the prevalence of single adults, or an unusually large number of women in a district due to the presence of a female-specific institution of some sort—do not load heavily on Factor I, but rather on Factor IV which, significantly, is also related to fertility. We might suggest tentatively that some of the ecological variance in the fertility ratio is "explained" by socio-economic status, whereas the remainder is probably attributable to household composition Again, our inferences are limited by the nature of our data. Only direct investigation of the relationship between income and education, on the one hand, and birth rates, on the other, can reveal whether our conclusion is valid. We might summarize here the results for this first factor. Subareas in Rabat-Sale that rank high on Factor I, according to the standardized factor scores computed from the factor analytic solution, are those in which upper-income and educated Moroccans live

302

FACTORIAL ECOLOGY

in close proximity to foreigners, and in which relatively small households occupy commodious dwellings whose care is partially entrusted to female servants. Few of the men in these districts are without jobs, and most work in well-paid occupations requiring skills and modern knowledge. Some of the women also hold jobs, perhaps because they tend to marry somewhat later, perhaps because they tend to bear somewhat fewer children. Interestingly enough, these districts contain not only foreigners from abroad but a disproportionate number of Moroccans who have migrated from other cities in the country. 10 Conversely, tracts that rank lowest on Factor I contain a population that is exclusively Muslim and Moroccan, is poorly educated, runs a high risk of being unemployed and, when employed, works at blue-collar jobs at best, at marginal commerce at worst. Men and women marry early and families tend to be large. Housing is overcrowded, more likely to be owned and/or in a bidonville, and is somewhat less likely to be served by utilities. Tracts ranking lowest on Factor I contain many persons born in Rabat-Sale, but also many who have moved to the city from rural Morocco. Factor II is clearly a specific dimension of housing quality. The lowest-ranking tracts on this factor are the bidonvilles, and especially those that lack urban utilities such as sewerage systems, drains, and electricity. Marginal economic position is associated to some extent with this level of housing, but poor people are not confined to areas of marginal housing. They are also to be found in zones that have buildings made of masonry and stone, that have sanitary installations and electricity, that is, in the public projects and trames samtaires toward the outskirts of the built-up area. Tracts ranking high on Factor II are therefore not necessarily the wealthiest or most exclusive districts of the city. Tracts ranking highest are those primarily where "problem housing" is absent, not where housing is the most elegant. In short, Factors I and II tap somewhat different aspects of reality and are not merely substitutes for one another. Factor III is the simplest to interpret. It is the factor we labeled 10 While the factor loadings are not very high, it is extremely significant that the two internal migration variables, which are generally of opposite signs, both load in the same direction on Factor I, indicating that upper status relates negatively both to having been bom in Rabat-Sale and to having migrated to the city from a rural area Put another way, residents of upper-class zones are more likely to have migrated from abroad or from another Moroccan city Having been born in Rabat-Sale is in itself no guarantee of status

FAC T O R I A L E C O L O G Y

303

"male dominance" in our study of Cairo, and it is clearly found as an independent factor in Rabat-Sale as well. High scores on this factor identify subareas in the city which, for one reason or another, are used selectively by younger males, primarily unmarried. It does not appear that all males who have concentrated in these zones of Rabat-Sale are migrants from the countryside; they may also be students, industrial workers, soldiers, or any other subgroup in the population living in all-male quarters. Perhaps some of the tracts ranking high on Factor III contain funduqs in the medina that have been converted to working-class dormitories. Factors IV and V clearly denote two aspects of family life that differentiate zones within the city. Factor IV identifies quarters according to such demographic features as typical age at marriage, level of fertility, and degree of literacy. Tracts ranking highest on this factor are those in which males and females are quite educated, where both sexes tend to postpone marriage, where households contain roomers or are made up of unrelated persons sharing a dwelling, and where the ratio of children to women in the middle years of life is quite low, perhaps because at least some of the women are unmarried and working. We might label this factor "nonfamilism " Factor V, on the other hand, is more specific. It obviously measures the degree of female dependency, since the four variables with heaviest loading's are. the percentage of female-headed households, the percentage of household heads who are not in labor force (which had correlated highly with female-headed households), small family size (PPH), and the proportion of ever-married women who are divorced. Evidently there are certain areas in the city that are particularly receptive and attractive to women who are widowed or divorced, or who in some way manage to be supported without working. Some may be zones of prostitution but, as we shall see, this cannot be the complete explanation for the distributional pattern, which is quite diffuse Factor VI is perhaps the simplest and easiest to interpret Highest-ranking tracts are those where the population consists largely of traditional urbanites, whereas the lowest-ranking tracts are those that serve as reception centers and socialization schools for new migrants. Interpretation and Final Steps The ecological structure of Rabat-Sale can be broken down analytically into these six basic dimensions of social differentiation. The

304

FACTORIAL ECOLOGY

dimensions can be separated statistically into orthogonal factors by means of factor analysis. But, in reality, within each subdistnct of Rabat-Sale the six dimensions intersect and combine in special ways that "define" its quality of life. It is this definition which is of prime interest, and thus we must return to the city itself, using the factor analytic results as a basis for classifying subareas within the city and for developing an overall image of the spatial pattern of the city. The procedure for converting the factor analytic results into a scoring system for individual census tracts is relatively simple. First, each of the variables is standardized, that is, the real computed value of each census tract on each of the variables is expressed in standard deviation units above and below the mean (= to 0) Thus, a census tract in which the percentage of men working in bluecollar jobs is exactly 31.5 (that is, the same as the mean for all census tracts) would be given a standardized score on that variable of 0. Since the standard deviation from the mean of all tracts on that variable is 16, a census tract in which the percentage of blue-collar workers was 47.5 would be given a standardized score o f + 1.0 (that is, one S. D. above the mean), while a tract having only 15.5 percent of its labor force in blue-collar employment would be scored —1.0. To compute the factor scores of each tract, one multiplies this matrix of standardized scores for each tract on each variable by a matrix of factor score coefficients, which is essentially a matrix giving the weights to be assigned to each variable on each factor in accordance with the factor loadings of the variable on each factor. The result of this multiplication is a final factor score matrix, giving in standardized form (units of standard deviation) the relative rank of each census tract on each factor. The final step in the analysis is to plot these factor scores on maps of the metropolitan region and to group contiguous tracts into subareas within which variation is minimal, and between which variation is marked. Each factor is mapped separately and zones of relative homogeneity according to the factor are constructed. Maps of the factors can also be superimposed on one another to derive social areas of the city in which not only are relative ranks on each factor comparable, but the same combinations of factor ranks obtain. Thus, not only can we describe in parsimonious fashion the distribution of social characteristics in the city, but we can begin to delimit relatively homogeneous "planning areas" within the city for which programs can be designed to suit needs.

THE SPATIAL ORGANIZATION OF RABAT-SALE IN 1971 IN THE preceding chapter we argued that in 1971 Rabat-Sale still ex­ hibited a caste-like social structure, despite fifteen years of decol­ onization. Our argument was based on the statistical evidence from the factor analytic solution itself. The principal factor extracted from the 27 χ 27 variable correlation matrix was the one we have called social caste. All variables of ethnicity and socio-economic status had heavy loadings on this factor, suggesting that the two criteria for social placement were spatially inseparable. The fact that this vector accounted for about half of the total variance to be ex­ plained indicates that ethnicity and class, combined, were the chief criteria according to which population was differentially distrib­ uted within the metropolitan area. Since the logic of factorial ecol­ ogy is that residential segregation (at a scale no smaller than the census enumeration district) is essential if a variable is to make a significant contribution to the solution, it would be redundant to point out that these caste-like groupings were therefore relatively segregated from one another in the urban region. However, the statistical solution does not in itself tell us the scale at which the caste-like groupings were segregated, nor does it tell us whether there were gentle gradients in the geographic distribu­ tion of areas of varying degrees of class/caste or sharp and unmediated breaks between adjacent areas containing population groups of markedly different social status. In the colonial city, the latter was the case, with the sharpest line dividing the medina from the ville nouvelle. In our earlier discussions we referred to this as an "apartheid model." To what extent had these barriers broken down by 1971? Only an analysis of the geographic patterns of the census tract scores on Factor I can answer this crucial question. Figures 13, 14, and 15 tell most of the story. To the practiced eye they reveal that Rabat-Sale is a city still sharply divided along caste-like lines, is still "apartheid-like" in its ecological pattern, although this is truer of Rabat proper than of Sale, and is truer of the newer areas of Sale

306

SPATIAL ORGANIZATION, 1 9 7 1

than of her medina. Since it takes a while to develop a practiced eye, I shall give a rather detailed explanation and interpretation of this series of maps, after which the reader will be prepared to make his own analysis of the remaining series Figure 13 shows the city of Rabat alone, divided into the census enumeration districts according to which data from the 1971 census were collected. Each of the tracts has been shaded one of six different tones, depending upon its factor score (measured in standard deviation units around the mean) 1 The six categories were designed to take advantage of natural breaking points in the array of scores as well as to divide the ranked tracts into strata of approximately equal size. Areas shaded darkest on the map contain populations of low income and largely illiterate Moroccan Muslims who suffer from high rates of unemployment or work at blue-collar or marginal commerce-service "jobs," who marry young and raise their large families in small and overcrowded dwellings The white areas on the map, in contrast, house Moroccans of highest educational and socio-economic status, together with foreigners, this population tends to marry at a later age, to have smaller families, and to occupy larger apartments and villas at low persons-per-room ratios The geographic pattern of Factor I scores is roughly sectoral, as we have come to expect concerning socio-economic status in any city (Hoyt, 1939), with the explanation for the specific location of the sectors to be sought in history and topography Rabat may be thought of as triangular in shape, wedged between the Atlantic coast to the west and the serpentine course of the Bou Regreg, whose mouth joins the ocean at the northern apex of the triangle, the site of the medina and its qasbah. Three sectors radiate out from this point a central sector of high status, flanked by two peripheral sectors of low status Note the sharp lines of division that separate the sectors These lines coincide with major roads and the rail line on the western side, and with marked topographical changes on the eastern side They also coincide with the original plan of apartheid, as it was reluctantly modified by the subversive sitings of Rabat's earliest bidonvilles, the Douar Dabbagh toward the outskirts of the 1 The sole exception is the area designated as 'medina," which shows only the averaged score for the fifty-eight census districts contained in it, this was because the Office of the Census was unable to provide me with a map showing the specific location of each tract so that more detailed mapping could be done

FIGURE

13

R A B A T , M O R O C C O . F A C T O R I, " C A S T E "

308

SPATIAL ORGANIZATION, 1 9 7 I

city along the ocean-front sector, and Douar Doum toward the outskirts along the riverine sector. The central sector has as its core the original ville nouvelle designed by Prost, which serves as the central business district for the entire agglomeration as well as the locus for "modern" hotels, embassies, many government buildings, and numerous apartment houses and villas on the European style. Because it is one of the oldest sections of the "European Quarter," portions are already declining, particularly toward the northeast, where the houses were never impressive. (This section had served chiefly as "the new Millah" for Jews moving outside the walled city.) The ville nouvelle is still marked by a sharp boundary with the medina, one that would appear even more distinct if we had been able to map the internal divisions of the latter area, since the upper areas were traditionally more desirable than the lower ones adjacent to the Andalusian wall. To the west of the Centre de Ville is Orangeries, and the "white island" to the southwest is the Agdal, a zone of villas near the university. Due south of the center is, of course, the Mechouar or palace compound, still surrounded by walls and still occupied by the Tuwarqa, whose generally low levels of literacy and occupation create this shadowed anomaly in the midst of a sector otherwise entirely above average. South of the Mechouar are, in addition to the Hilton Hotel, both army installations and an administrative zone adjacent to the old airport of Rabat, now private. This zone of moderately high status, which also encompasses the middle-class district of Aviation to the east of the major highway, is succeeded, toward the periphery, by the most elegant residential quarter of Rabat, Souissi, named after the former pasha of the medina who, it will be recalled, owned most of the land between the Tour Hasan and the open country. A topographic map would show that this central sector occupies the highest land The terrain slopes gently toward the Atlantic on one side and pitches sharply downward on the other to the saline marshes of the Bou Regreg River. Obviously, high land and not ocean shore is the preferred location in Rabat—indeed, this appears to be the topographic principle according to which its ecology is organized. Climate, winds, humidity, and cultural preferences have all played a part in yielding this pattern. Winters in Rabat are cool and damp Since central heating is recent and hardly universal, the aversion to water is evidently linked to protection from the cold. Indeed, older buildings near the ocean are built with no windows

SPATIAL ORGANIZATION, 1 9 7 1

309

on the seaward side, and the medinas of both Rabat and Sale are insulated by cemeteries from the mist rolling off the sea. Summers, on the other hand, are mild and always freshened by a breeze. The high lands capture this breeze without the humidity that clings to the coast. There are, therefore, good and sufficient reasons why the central sector should have been preempted by the wealthy. However, the decisions of Lyautey and Prost were crucial in sealing this fate. In Casablanca, the most elegant French quarters stretched along the southern shore, indicating that the choice was not foreclosed; but once the ville nouvelle was located, its sectoral expansion was inevitable. The sectors adjacent to water were both ceded to the poor. The linear strip along the Atlantic coast, a coastline of great beauty, which beyond the city limits harbors summer resort beaches, contains most of the working-class and poorer populations of the city, insulated from the central sector by the highway to Casablanca. Most notable is the decided gradient from the center to the periphery Moderate status still characterizes the residents of the exEuropean quarter of Ocean, but status declines gradually through Qabibat and Akkan, and then dips sharply to the most outlying residents of Yacoub al-Mansour From there the city shades off into rural land farmed by the Udaya jaysh tribe—land that the city now seeks to expropriate to permit its expansion The third sector of Rabat, also of low socio-economic status, radiates from the lowlands at the river's mouth to take in the slopes and peaks of the hilly terrain near the Bou Regreg. The pattern is broken, however, and the declining gradient so noticeable in the western sector is not found here. Rather, the rugged terrain and the sporadic history of this relatively neglected zone account for the discontinuities. On the north is a sparsely settled quarter just below the Tour Hasan which contains institutional structures, the old royal stables now converted to garages, and a motley assortment of marginal inhabitants. This zone is just across the river from the strip of lowest-status settlement at the periphery of Sale, to which it is functionally linked The other two dark patches farther south are densely populated quarters—a checkerboard arrangement of public housing projects such as Youssoufia and Takadoum, bidonvilles too numerous to mention, and clandestine subdivisions such as Maadid and Hajja—which expanded from the foothold of Douar Doum, mostly consigned to the inhospitable escarpments of Rabat's central plateau as it drops toward the riverbed. These zones

310

SPATIAL ORGANIZATION, 1 9 7 1

are gradually encroaching on the middle-class districts adjacent to them (Cite Marbella and Aviation Civile), and are so close to the border of Souissi that one can stare across a barbed wire from the lowest-status zone in the city to the highest. It is here that competition between the expanding needs and power of the "new middle class" of government officials and the older preemptions of the poor is most intense. In contrast to the highly legible and rigidly segregated ecological structure of Rabat, the region of Sale on the opposite bank of the river demonstrates a more diffuse and complex structure, as one can see from Figure 14. The first point to be stressed is that Sale now constitutes a low-status sectoral appendage to Rabat, since no enumeration districts in Sale had Factor I scores of even half a standard deviation above the mean for the entire metropolitan area. (In contrast, practically all of the central sector of Rabat, with the exception of the Mechouar, had Factor I scores of more than .5 standard deviations above the mean.) The medina of Sale occupies a position of middle status relative to its region, containing a population only slightly below the mean. 2 And despite popular stereotypes which suggest that Sale's medina hosts a resident population considerably "lower" in social status than Rabat's, the two medinas are remarkably equivalent, as measured by their Factor I scores. The major difference between the medinas is their relationship to their hinterlands. Rabat's medina contrasts sharply with the "better" zones that surround it; Sale's medina does not. Northeast of Sale's medina, in a sector that stretches along the Atlantic from the cemetery to the Qasbah of the Gnawi and the tomb of Sidi Musa, is a bidonville-type settlement in considerable disarray, its insalubrious character enhanced m no way by the slaughterhouse located in this zone. But the major sector of lowest status is found in the vast area east of the medina, on the outskirts of the built-up area. The area shaded black toward the center of this "belt of misery" is Tabnqat, and the zone to its south contains the Suq al-Talata and its adjacent area of trame samtaire and bidonville. As we have seen, these zones have been among the fastest growing in the postindependence penod, despite the existence of nuclei of 2

For this analysis we have averaged the scores for the fifty-five census tracts in the medina, to make possible a comparison between the medinas of Rabat and Sale

SPATIAL O R G A N I Z A T I O N ,

FIGURE 14

I97I

311

SALE, MOROCCO. FACTOR I, "CASTE"

settlements that date back to the 1930s and 1940s. If Sale has become a lower-class suburb of Rabat, its medina is further surrounded by a ring of even lower-class suburbs. The map is slightly deceptive, since what appears to be a central sector of somewhat higher status between the two linear suburban slums is actually agricultural land within which the narrow strip of the Jutiya industrial district is inserted. The vast sector, therefore, is primarily undeveloped land. The major exception is the small section called the "Triangle" just southwest of the city walls between the medina and the river. It was here that Sale's tiny "European quarter," such as it was, was located. Chiefly a military camp, the small extramural ville nouvelle also housed a number of French administrators whose responsibility it was to oversee control over the less than pacified, sullen (the term is theirs) town of Sale. With the exodus of the foreigners, this section was Moroccanized, but by a class considerably below that which took over the ville nouvelle

312

SPATIAL

ORGANIZATION,

1971

of Rabat. This lower middle class has been expanding, both into a small "modernized" wedge of the medina (as we shall see from the next map), as well as moving to the southwest to occupy the plateau of Biftana, now a rapidly developing quarter of apartment houses and villas occupied by civil servants who cannot afford comparable housing in higher-status Rabat. The generally illegible ecological structure of Sale is not an accident of statistics. It reflects something very real about the city, deriving both from its "premodern" system of very small-scale residential differentiation, and from the fact that the city was protected from colonial designs of apartheid and, therefore, had no caste system to be absorbed or maintained. The clearest illustration of this is to be found in the medina itself. Figure 15 shows the distribution of Factor I scores within the medina. What is most striking are the marked contrasts in factor scores and the wide range of variation (although all within the lowest four categories) that exists within the small circumscribed area of the medina. O n socio-economic status, the tracts vary without any obvious gradient; a high-status

F I G U R E 15

SALE M E D I N A . F A C T O R I, " C A S T E "

SPATIAL O R G A N I Z A T I O N ,

I97I

313

tract is just as likely to abut a low-status tract as one of intermediate status. As will become clear from comparable maps of the medina for the other factors, this condition is not confined to the dimension of status, but extends to other variables as well. It is true that a few subareas stand out as slightly higher in status than the remainder, chiefly the central zone that abuts the extramural "Triangle" and the extreme northern corner of the walled city. In the former are located the only "modern" apartment buildings, warehouses, and shops in the medina of Sale Examining earlier maps of Sale that show the location of gardens and open land in the medina before French colonization (see Mauret, 1954:33), one finds that both of these areas were undeveloped in 1915, and therefore could absorb different and presumably "better" types of residential structures. This, however, cannot be the complete explanation, since other open areas in the southern and western extremes of the medina were evidently developed at the same time, but for populations of extremely marginal status. The major conclusion to be drawn from Figure 15 (and others in the same series) is that, whatever the principle of ecological segregation within Sale's medina, either it is not being captured by the types of measures we have been using (which are perhaps more relevant to the study of "modern" urban communities), or these principles operate at a scale even smaller than the tiny enumeration districts used by census takers. The analysis of the medina of Sale—by its very failure—offers valuable support for the theory of social area analysis which posits that ecological differentiation according to measures of class, family status, ethnic identity, and migration status is, in itself, a symptom of "modernization." The failure of this differentiation to surface in the medina of Sale, although it shows up with dramatic clarity in Rabat, is a difference that would have been predicted from the theory. Factor II, it will be recalled, measures the distribution of problem housing, that is, housing that is not built from permanent materials, is unserved by sewers or electricity, and is, surprisingly enough, owner-occupied. In the map series that follows, districts in which such problem housing is absent are shown in white; progressively darker tones signal the increased prevalence of problem dwelling units. The zones shaded black consist entirely of bidonvilles (although some bidonvilles also exist as subareas within mixed tracts which therefore appear lighter). Figures 16, 17, and 18 show the dis-

FIGURE 16

RABAT, MOROCCO. FACTOR II, PROBLEM HOUSING

F I G U R E 17

SALE, M O R O C C O . FACTOR II, PROBLEM HOUSING

18

SALE MEDINA. FACTOR II, PROBLEM HOUSING

FIGURE

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tnbution of problem housing in, respectively, the city of Rabat, the city of Sale, and the medina of Sale. For anyone familiar with the agglomeration, these maps hold no surprises In Rabat, the locations of the Chella and Doum bidonvilles are readily spotted in the eastern sector, and the remnants of Douar Dabbagh are easily found in the western sector. Beyond these "urban" fringe settlements are zones of the rural fringe, in which the absence of urban utilities and the presence of thatched nuwalas result in low scores on Factor II. The same observations can be made with respect to the region of Sale, where the bidonvilles of Tabnqat and Douar Jdid show up in black and the rural fringe appears in a dark tone. Finally, Figure 18 demonstrates conclusively that the medinas—overcrowded and "proletananized" as they may be—contain few impermanent structures and not many houses that are unserviced by basic utilities. A simple comparison between the maps of socio-economic status/caste and those of problem housing reveals that these two factors do indeed measure somewhat different aspects of reality. The zones having the very highest Factor II scores are those that have been completely constructed by the government, for only in these public housing projects are all the units built of permanent materials, serviced by utilities, and rented to their occupants. On the other hand, even the wealthiest districts still contain some makeshift or marginal dwelling units (as well as owner-occupied villas), and these tend to depress their overall scores on this factor. It should also be noted that bidonvilles are not always zones of lowest socio-economic status. This confirms what at least some scholars have contended, namely, that the apparent similarity of architecture in "squatter settlements" masks a wide range of economic vanation within them. Many bidonville structures contain working class rather than lumpenproletariat residents; on the other hand, very poor persons are often found concentrated in zones of public housing where the physical standard of the dwelling is higher. One of the issues that has intrigued students of Moroccan urbamsm for some time has been the relationship between poverty and migrant status on the one hand and bidonville residence on the other. It is possible to explore this question by examining Figures 19, 20, and 21, which show the distribution of Factor VI (migration) scores in Rabat, Sale, and Sale's medina, and by comparing these patterns to those of Factors I (socio-economic status) and II

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(problem housing). Areas of the city that contain very high proportions of people who were born in Rabat-Sale (and conversely, few migrants from rural areas of Morocco) appear in white on these maps, whereas the degree of darkness depicts increased proportions of migrants, both those coming from rural areas and those coming from other cities in Morocco. Comparing this series of maps with Figures 13, 14, and 15 reveals clearly the bimodal socio-economic status of Rabat's migrants Toward the bottom of the class pyramid are rural-born, unskilled, and uneducated migrants who have gravitated (or been pushed) to the southeastern quadrant of Rabat (particularly into the bidonville of Douar Doum, the government-sponsored housing projects nearby, and the areas of clandestine settlement adjacent to them). These same kinds of migrants have been relegated to the periphery east of Sale's medina, where they occupy both trames samtaires and bidonvilles. Contrary to expectations (or at least accepted dogma among Rabat's planners), rural migrants have not taken over the traditional medinas. Many residents of Rabat's medina have been born in the city, and even Sale, which some scholars claim "saved" Rabat by absorbing migrants who otherwise would have destroyed its "urbane character," is remarkably free of migrants. Migrants dominate not only specific peripheral low-income quarters but virtually all sectors of highest socio-economic status as well, giving evidence to the bimodahty. Within Rabat, high proportions of migrants are found in the colonial city and the elegant suburbs of Agdal and Souissi—indicating that well-educated upward mobile bureaucrats and professionals have been drawn to Rabat from other parts of the country. These are supplemented by the students enrolled in Muhammad V University (between the Mechouar and the Agdal), by foreigners who live almost exclusively in the wealthier quarters, and by live-in domestic servants, largely of rural origin, who care for the needs of this elite. Where migrants are absent is as important in the ecology of the city as where they are found. We have already noted that the medinas contain many people who were born locally. The same is true for most outlying agricultural zones, except where there is the confounding presence of an institution such as an army camp. There is, furthermore, an important sector in Rabat in which the native-born have congregated, regardless of socio-economic status, namely, the westernmost portion. Since the population in this sector ranges from middle to lowest class, it is clear that rural origin

FIGURE 20

SALE, MOROCCO. FACTOR VI, MIGRATION STATUS

FACTOR 6

SALE MOROCCO

FIGURE 21

SALE MEDINA. FACTOR VI, MIGRATION STATUS

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cannot be the only cause of low income, illiteracy, and high fertility among today's residents of Rabat-Sale. Those whom we have called "traditional urbanites" (Abu-Lughod 1969a) have few social and demographic characteristics to distinguish them from recent migrants. Considering the neglect of social services during the colonial period and the fact that Rabat-Sale grew from only 43,000 inhabitants in 1913 to over half a million in 1971, few differences between these two populations should be expected. It must be borne in mind that most members of the so-called "locally born" population are second-generation urbanites at best. Some of the implications of our findings might be spelled out at this point. In the field of community studies it is common practice for social scientists to investigate particular subareas of the city and then explain the relationships they find by referring to larger-scale variables. A number of investigators of North African bidonvilles, for example, have concluded that squatter settlements are chiefly ports of entry for new migrants, these studies stress the roles that ethnicity and place-of-ongin play in sorting population and in organizing social life (for example, Montagne, 1952). Other scholars have refuted this view, stressing instead that bidonvilles serve as areas of second or third settlement for urbanites fleeing more crowded central zones, these studies stress the nonmargmal character of bidonville dwellers. Our analysis shows that the bidonvilles in the eastern sector of Rabat are inhabited chiefly by migrants, while those in the western sector contain a population native to the city. What are now needed are studies that make systematic comparisons between migrant and nonmigrant bidonvilles. Second, generalizations are continually made about "migrant adjustment" to the city, but upper-income educated migrants are almost always ignored in these inquiries. In rapidly growing capitals of the Third World, however, it is important to study the way that nonlocal government officials "interact" with the city and, holding constant socio-economic status, to compare their life styles with those of the locally rooted bourgeoisie. By using the factorial ecology maps as a basis for selecting subareas for sampling, Moroccan scholars can begin to design experimental research projects to clarify the independent effects of migrant status, housing, and socio-economic status in the city. Space does not permit a full discussion of the distribution patterns of the third, fourth, and fifth factors—each measuring a different aspect of the family organization of the city (see Figures

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22-30). In passing, however, we might note that zones high on Factor III, male dominance, are found both at the center—in the medinas, especially in the business districts—and at the agricultural periphery, indicating that the interpretation of this factor, as we feared, remains unclear. Factor IV, which we have called "atypical household composition," is distributed rather ldiosyncratically and appears to be related to the location of institutionalized populations rather than to any intrinsic ecological principle of segregation. And finally, districts scoring high on Factor V (that is, those including many divorced females, working women, and female heads of households) are found scattered throughout all parts of the metropolis, except areas of the rural fringe, which contain a nonurbanized population. Although each of these factors raises intriguing questions for future research, none is particularly germane to our present analysis of the physical pattern of the city For this purpose, class, land use, and migration have been the critical factors. The Social Areas of Rabat-Sale Superimposing the maps of separate factors upon one another allows us to differentiate five basic types of urban quarters and to identify specific zones in Rabat and Sale that exemplify these "syndromes" of physical and social space. In the analysis that follows we depend chiefly on the maps for Factors I, II, and VI, since these are of prime relevance for urban planners. (Government agencies engaged in designing social programs relevant to families will want to use the three family status factors in similar fashion, in order to target special family needs.) The basic bifurcation in Rabat-Sale is still between upper-class/ caste districts and all others. The former are all located in the central plateau sector of Rabat, surrounding the palace. There are significant variations among them, however. For example, the Centre de Ville apparently houses the locally born elite, whereas migrant elites favor Agdal, Souissi, the area around the university, and the Cite Militaire (now Marbella). These areas each cater to different kinds of family types. A portion of Agdal near the university and the colonial center are especially attractive to unattached males, while unattached females or female heads of households are found in Orangeries (possibly in the Cite Hubus enclave). The remaining parts of Agdal as well as all of Souissi cater exclusively to family groups, while Aviation Civile, Cite Marbella and one subarea of Agdal contain disproportionate numbers of atypically constituted

FIGURE 22

RABAT, MOROCCO. FACTOR III, MALE DOMINANCE

F I G U R E 23

SALE, M O R O C C O . FACTOR III, M A L E D O M I N A N C E

SALE MEDINA. FACTOR III, MALE DOMINANCE

F I G U R E 24

RABAT, MOROCCO. FACTOR IV,

HOUSEHOLD COMPOSITION

FIGURE 25

ATYPICAL

F I G U R E 26

SALE, M O R O C C O . FACTOR I V , A T Y P I C A L H O U S E H O L D C O M P O S I T I O N

FIGURE 28

RABAT, MOROCCO. FACTOR V, FEMALE DEPENDENCE

•

•

; ; :

I :

5.CO

! .:

IE

- -.8

F I G U R E 29

SALE, M O R O C C O . FACTOR V , FEMALE D E P E N D E N C E

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households There are also notable gradations by social rank within these upper-class areas Souissi ranks highest, followed by Agdal and the Centre de Ville, and then by Orangeries, Aviation Civile, and Cite Marbella In all, the elite areas consume an enormous amount of the city's land while housing only a small proportion of its residents—a heritage from the zoning laws of the French which required large minimum lot sizes and discouraged apartment houses in these districts. Sharp edges rather than gentle gradients set off these elite quarters from the rest of the urban region. Notably absent are transitional zones that might accommodate an intermediate class We are led inevitably to the conclusion that the ecological structure of Rabat-Sale remained highly segregated by 1971, retaining to a remarkable degree the pattern of the "divided city" created by colonial domination Zones of lower-middle and working-class persons involved in the "modern" sector of the economy are small in area, and house only a minority of Rabat-Sale's population. They are found near the medinas in districts previously occupied by less affluent foreigners. Locally born labor "aristocracies" occupy the inlying zones of Ocean and Qabibat in the western sector of Rabat and the train station quarter outside the medina of Sale. Migrants of comparable class have taken over the "Triangle" quarter southwest of the Sale medina, and parts of Akkan in Rabat. Less able to defend their "turf" from aspirants and less able to "sift and sort" themselves into more specialized quarters on the basis of family type and so on, their districts gradually merge into adjacent ones and have low "imageability " The medinas of Rabat and Sale constitute a third urban type. Ranking only slightly below the metropolitan average on Factor I (mean scores —.45 and —.33, respectively) and enjoying housing built to urban standards (mean Factor II scores are +.45 and + 39, respectively), the medinas have resisted degradation to a remarkable degree, despite problem spots such as the funduqs. While they contain many newcomers to city life (remember that half of the population of the metropolis comes from outside), Factor VI scores are only slightly above the norm for the city (+.35 and +.55, respectively). Because these areas offer some means of support (either by legitimate or illegitimate means), they contain more than their share of divorced women and female heads of households (Factor V average scores of +.42 and +.47). On these four factors the two

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medinas are remarkably similar They differ only slightly on the other two factors, with Rabat's medina hosting many more single males than Sale's (average Factor III scores were + 45 and — 11), and also containing slightly more atypically constituted households than Sale's (average Factor IV scores were + 27 and + 15, respectively) The fourth and fifth types of urban subareas are found at the outer periphery of both Rabat and Sale Type Four can be labelled the true rural fringe, a zone not yet absorbed into the metropolis except in terms of providing truck garden products, milk, and other items to urban consumers Such outlying areas are poor, contain rural kinds of housing and settlements (nuwalas organized into circular douars), and have populations disproportionately masculine, due in part to the selective outmigration of females and in part to the seasonal presence of migrant laborers The easternmost outskirts of Sale and the southern and southwestern periphery of Rabat fall into this category These zones are always at risk, subject to a capricious fate, as decision makers in the city allow them to remain or take them over for one urban use or another Since 1971 these areas have been the major sites of new housing developments outside Sale (the Hayy Salam project, for example), and the city has been viewing covetously the vast lands of the Udaya jaysh between Rabat and Tamarra The fifth and final type is definitely urban, although of a variety uncommon in the west but increasingly typical in Third World cities Because it covers large portions of outlying Rabat and still vaster areas in Sale's hinterland, because at least one-third of the metropolis' population lives in it, and because it has been so inadequately conceptualized in the literature, we must take a closer look at the complexly organized areas of proletarian settlement that ring the more conventional city What shall we call them' The term "squatter settlement" will not do, since most land is occupied with the compliance of the owners (whether private, public, or hubus), indeed the residents often pay rent for their tiny plots Illegal settlements may be a more descriptive term, since house construction has taken place without benefit of building permits, and is often in zones expressly forbidden for residential use And yet, there are parts that are clearly legal in the sense that occupancy rights have been "regularized" by government action—whether by additional public construction or by the

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installation of utilities and the establishment of communal facilities such as schools and clinics. Clandestine subdivisions and/or clandestine permanent structures are terms that apply to some, the former term denoting zones that have been preempted for housing, even though a legal subdivision plan has not been accepted; the latter term referring to zones in which existing laws prohibit the creation of permanent structures but tolerate temporary ones. In the past these laws, in fact, tended to perpetuate the bidonvilles, even after their residents had the wherewithal and motivation to convert jerry-built shacks into permanent homes. The present decision by the government to ignore enforcement of these laws has led to remarkable transformations in many of the subareas. "Bidonville" is a structure-specific term that refers to collections of dwellings made out of debris and scavengered materials. The term comes from btdon—French for a tin can, that is, the empty oil containers that were in such generous supply in North Africa during the Second World War and that provided roofing material for so many selfbuilt shacks. Now the materials used for roofs are corrugated sheets and must be bought, but the derogatory French term has stuck. The lack of a single term to encompass all these structural and legal variations suggests that, if they have something in common, we have not yet captured it. Some scholars have sought a unifying socio-economic concept, referring to these districts as "marginal" and to their residents as marginalized (Nagiri, M., "Les Formes d'habitat sous-integrees—essai methodologique," mimeographed paper dated Fall 1973), others, particularly the scholars attached to CERF, have used the term "sous equipe," which characterizes neither the people nor their houses but refers to their common lack of communal urban services. It seems to me that these two approaches come close to the concept needed. I would like to suggest that an economic distinction within the housing market is what creates the major characteristic these districts have in common. They represent residuals from the conventional housing market, consumers who cannot (or will not) "demand" dwellings in the profit-making market of "housing as a capital good produced for exchange." Instead, the families who have settled in these zones, either because they lack sufficient funds to demand "exchange value" housing or because they view housing in the rural sense of pure use value, are excluded from the capitalist market. (I do not wish to imply that these units are not exchanged, rented, sold at profit, or do not have other charac-

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tenstics of capitalism, I wish merely to identify these consumers as "not yet worthy of attention" from the large-scale business of construction because the profits they offer are too small and the gains too uncertain ) This simple distinction allows us to explain both why self-help, either in whole or in part, has always been an accepted method for building or upgrading dwellings in these areas, and also why the city government, under the Moroccans as well as the French, has tolerated their spread, even as it has paid lip-service to condemning the conditions of life in them The class structure of Rabat-Sale relegates at least a third of the population to this "extra-market" form of housing Therefore, until the economic structure of the city is altered to integrate this group, to pay it a "living wage" that would permit it to enter the capitalist market for housing, the only alternatives are to subsidize the uninterested private market with public funds Direct construction of housing does this in an expensive way, indirect assistance, by providing objects of "collective consumption" (the term is Castells') such as streets, sewers, water taps, and so on, as well as technical assistance to make more effective use of the contributed labor of the poor (self-subsidy), does so in a more efficient and less expensive way Since 1971, policies have altered and, following the recommendations in the proposed Master Plan for Rabat-Sale, many changes have been introduced into the politically unified Prefecture Although it is still too early to tell whether these new programs, being carried out on an impressive scale, will significantly ameliorate life for the poor, we can try to evaluate the ideology behind the plan and some of its early results

•9CV1PLANNING THE FUTURE

in 1 9 7 1 was in a state of bottled-up compression. Contained within a shell too small to accommodate her needs, she was on the verge of anarchic explosion. The surplus land that had been expropriated in connection with the 1952 Ecochard plan was virtually exhausted. The dire shortage in capital improvement funds did not even permit the extension of utilities to the areas that were already urbanized (albeit clandestinely), much less to new areas beyond, even though the laws specified that new areas of settlement could not be built upon until basic utility lines had been extended. This shortage of buildable land led, in conjunction with the general rise in prices, to an enormous inflation in land prices around the city. 1 The price of a lot was pushed farther and farther beyond the reach of even the lower middle class. So intense, indeed, was the competition for land that middle-income people had begun to "buy into" the bidonvilles in order to find a place to live. The clandestine subdivisions were the fastest growing quarters of the metropolis, increasing at 18 percent per year. RABAT

The growing shortage of housing for the poorest third of the population was imposing terrible hardships, particularly on newcomers to the city who could no longer squeeze into the saturated medinas, and now had to compete with more established residents for space in the expanding peripheral "under equipped" quarters. This shortage had been exacerbated by the Plan of 1 9 6 8 - 1 9 7 2 , which had essentially declared a moratorium on urban residential construction by the state in favor of rural development schemes. 2 While these programs were essential and were intended to staunch some of the flow of population to the cities, in fact they had little 1 D u r i n g the 1970s Rabat experienced the largest inflationary spiral of any M o r o c can city. Between 1973 and 1975, the cost of living in the largest cities o f M o r o c c o increased by 31 percent, but in each year Rabat led the list. See pp. 91-92 of La Situation economique du Maroc en 1975. 2 See Alain Masson, "Urbanisation et habitat du grand n o m b r e , " for a discussion of the relationship between the national plans and the question of housing in Morocco. See especially p. 106 for the effect of the 1968 retrenchment.

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impact upon rural-to-urban migration. Rabat's population continued to grow at close to 7 percent per year. Population growth and economic stagnation were the underlying causes of the crisis of the 1970s. From a total population in 1971 of some 15 million, Morocco had grown to almost 17.5 million by mid-decade. Competent projections estimated that by 1981 there would be more than 21 million Moroccans. Even with the hopedfor downturn in the birth rate, the population was expected to double in the twenty-two years between 1975 and 1997, and was anticipated to reach almost 37 million by the year 2000.3 In short, the 1970s marked only the first stage in a long process of anticipated growth. Rabat's share of this larger population was also predicted to increase. By 1975, the Prefecture of Rabat-Sale was estimated to contain almost three-quarters of a million inhabitants, of whom 635,000 were living in the urbanized sections of the district (Direction de la Statistique, La Situation economique du Maroc en 7975:101). The concluding volume of the Schema Directeur study predicted that by 1982 Rabat-Sale would have tipped the million mark, almost doubling in population in the eleven years following the census of 1971.4 By then it would occupy three to four times as much space as it did in 1970. Never before has Rabat been so sorely challenged. Whereas in 1970 she was called upon to absorb an annual increment of some 30,000 additional inhabitants, by 1980 the annual increment was anticipated to be 60,000 (Mechanismes actuels et evolution spontanee, 1972:8). The sheer scale of needs was shattering the structure of the city as it had evolved to 1971. Perhaps not since Lyautey rode triumphantly into his newly chosen capital, filled with schemes for building an exemplary modern city that would dwarf the gem-like medina he so admired, was the city perched so precariously between the continuities that had shaped her past and the willed elements that would create her future. It was at this moment of increasing crisis for the city that Morocco initiated an entirely revised approach to spatial planning, theoretically beginning at the national and regional levels and mov3

See Premier Mimstre, Secretariat d'Etat . - . , Direction de la Statistique, CERED, Projections de la population marocame (1975:6, 8, 11), a careful projection on the basis of age and sex, including anticipated shifts in mortality and fertility. 4 Ministere de l'Urbanisme, de l'Habitat et de l'Environment, Delegation de Rabat, Mechanismes actuels et evolution spontanee.

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ing down to the cities and smaller rural places of the country New also was the attempt to integrate these various levels of spatial planning with the development goals and allocations established in the national economic plan The 1973-1977 Five-Year Plan for economic sectors was to be actualized through the regional and community plans, taking urban planning out of the exclusive hands of architects and making it part of a comprehensive scheme of social and economic development. The idea was ambitious For the first time it recognized that the solution to the "urban problem" in Morocco rested with the overall economy, that it was impossible to solve housing and planning problems within a city by means of land use plans and public housing alone Only a transformation of the entire economy—one that could give productive employment to the population being displaced from agriculture and could share the wealth of the country more equitably—would create sufficient impetus to avert urban disaster. Not only were the ideas ambitious, but the mechanisms established to translate them into action were baroquely elaborate. We shall first describe the new system of Amenagement du Territoire established in the 1970s and then move to an evaluation of the economic plan within which its activities were to be coordinated. At the head of the new apparatus was the regional planning instrument, "Schema de structure et d'onentation" or SSO. Morocco was subdivided into seven regions, each of which was to have a schema or guiding document that would lay out the major directions of long-term economic goals for the region, explore the options of development open to the region, and establish a program of prion ties, with budget estimates of the funds needed from various ministries and from local sources These requirements would then be integrated with the national economic plan for investments. The dahir of June 16, 1971, created the seven regions and called for the organization of regional consultative assemblies within each of the regions, which were supposed to work with the national economic planners to coordinate the national goals and budgets with local goals and priorities (Masson, 1974:108-111). Rabat was the first region in the country to begin to plan within this framework. In fact, even before the law on urban and rural planning was passed (see Direction de l'Urbanisme et de l'Habitat, Projet de dahir portant lot-cadre de Vamenagement urbain et rural, dated August 20, 1970 for the earliest proposal), the Centre

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d'Expenmentation, de Recherche et de Formation (CERF) was already conducting preliminary surveys in various quarters of Rabat and Sale that would assist the planners in their efforts first to diagnose and then to ameliorate conditions in "problem" areas of the city. In addition, although the enabling law for planning was not enacted until 1973, Rabat's Schema Directeur apparatus had already been set up to serve as a pilot project It began to work in the opening months of 1971 to draw up long-range projections, options, and plans for the city The Schema Directeur, like the SSO at the regional level, was intended to serve as a long-range policy document to guide future development of the city, not only of its equipment and land use but of its economic base as well (Masson, 1974:113, Projet de dahir portant lot-cadre de Vamenagement urbain et rural, 1970:3-4). However, despite lip service to economic planning and the proposed integration with national plans for development, the physical aspects of the Schema Directeur inevitably overshadowed the economic. The Rabat documents (see the entire set produced by the Bureau of the Schema Directeur and then the Delegation between 1971-1972) contain little that would not be found in a conventional master plan. One finds the obligatory plan for circulation, a proposal for a new urban center (to be located on open land beyond the Agdal), a plan for the distribution of schools, post offices, and other public services, and detailed (but advisory) site plans for the proposed progressive improvement and integration of substandard peripheral quarters. This emphasis upon conventional planning approaches is not surprising, considering the fact that the staff of the Schema Directeur consisted of only a few social scientists newly added among the numerous architects who had always dominated the Direction de l'Urbanisme et de l'Habitat. Furthermore, since the national economic plan, within which the urban plan was to fit, had not yet been drawn up, attention to the city's economic base was confined to "stating the problem" rather than proposing any detailed solutions to it. While there were no plans, then, for expanding the economic base of the city, there was a bizarre effort to take into account the class structure of the city when planning for future needs. Projections were made of the number of households expected within each class, of the probable levels of income available to each class, and of their potential economic resources either for renting or pur-

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chasing land and housing on credit. On the basis of these, estimates were made of the amount of land that would be required to house each class at invidiously different levels of density, and of the number of dwelling units that each class would require at the appropriate standards. The plan realistically proposed different policies for different classes, from progressive improvements in bidonville settlements to credits for working and middle-class groups to zoning for the upper classes. Despite this realism, I have used the word bizarre to characterize the thrust of the Schema Directeur documents. Despite the lipservice paid to the need for a thorough transformation of the economy in order to give jobs and livelihoods to people at the bottom, the plan assumed a relatively constant class structure and, like the French-made plans of earlier periods, systematically set about to allocate large expanses of land to the separate classes—that is, to perpetuate their spatial segregation. It appeared that just as Ecochard had concretized the caste city of colonialism, the new Schema Directeur was about to concretize its successor, the fragmented class city after independence. It was quite correct to take the class structure as a given, for the economic plan within which the spatial plan was to fit proved not likely to alter that. The Five-Year Plan of 1973-1977 extended many of the ideas that had been included in the World Bankgenerated Plan of 1968-1972, with the addition of the new regional divisions. Both plans assumed that private enterprise would be the primary motor of economic development in production and consumption, and that the role of government was to facilitate the work of the private sector. As in the earlier plan, there was to be little direct government investment in housing and urban plant. The allocations to housing had been 2 percent of the earlier plan and now, with the addition of regional developments, they were still only 4 percent (Chajai, 1976:156-157). Emphasis was to be placed upon "autoconstruction" for the poorest residents, who were also expected to pay, over an extended period of time, for the public services that the government would install in their quarters. For those of slightly better means, credits were to be extended so that they could bid in the private housing market. And finally, "echoing Nixon's speech of September 15, 1970, before Congress on American foreign aid during the decade 19701980, the Plan extolled 'the development of e x p o r t s ' . . . " (Chajai,

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1976:160). The authors of the plan, according to Chajai, included in "exports" not only the sale of primary products (chiefly phosphates, for, in the meantime, Morocco had become an importer rather than exporter of grains) and handicrafts, but also the "export" of laborers to Europe and the stimulation of tourism, which would bring foreign currencies into the country through "invisible" exchange. Direct investments in industrial development remained only a minor item, as they had in the earlier plans. In what way was such a plan likely drastically to alter the class structure of Morocco—to alter it in such a way that the various groups in Rabat would have their life chances affected' Very little, I am afraid. For Rabat, the chief effect was to supplement the sponge of government employment by traditional crafts, reoriented toward the luxury export market, and by an expansion of the service sector to cater to tourists Yet the high cost of living in Rabat means that her handicrafts are not really competitive with those produced in other parts of the country, and Rabat is not likely to attract the level of tourism that either the beaches of Agadir or the historic centers of Fez and Marrakech can draw Neither of these thrusts in the new economic plan can create the economic base Rabat so desperately needs Despite the irrelevance of the national economic plan for Rabat's needs, and despite the rather conventional approach implicit in the new Schema Directeur, Rabat and Sale have been changing dramatically during the 1970s One of the most important elements of this change is the new attitude of tolerance toward the bidonvilles, which has unleashed an incredible amount of energy on the periphery of the cities According to one informant,5 in 1968 changes began to take place in these zones that previously had been rigidly policed to prevent permanent structures from being built and that, on occasion, had actually been set on fire by the authorities in an effort to clear them The official whose job it was to prevent the conversion of temporary shacks into permanent buildings (en dur) began to look the other way, and clandestine conversions, which had always taken place, began to multiply Although the law remained "on the books" that building permits could not be issued for such conversions, the decision not to enforce the law had an immediate and salubrious effect Behind the corrugated tin walls, which were retained to keep appearances of impermanence, self5

Personal communication, Muhammad Guessous, March 10, 1972

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built block houses, crudely mortared with cement, then cement coated, then whitewashed, began to take shape This conversion process spread rapidly, especially in Hajja, which, within the brief span of about four years, was almost entirely transformed from bidonville to "new medina " When I observed this quarter in 1972 this transformation was still going on Everyone was busy—men, women, and small children—constructing a house behind the tin screens Streets were wide, alignments excellent, and housing at middle-class standards had already appeared on the mam streets There were permanent mosques in place, and entire commercial streets had developed, housing tailors, grocers, sweet shops, food markets, and a building supplies store (of course) There was even a pool parlor with table soccer, clearly the local hangout. It had a television set, although the area was still unserviced by electricity, the proprietor had hooked up his own generator Across the street from this social center was a very prosperous-looking grocery store which contained the only telephone in town. Along the periphery of Hajja, which, in the main, is built on very gently sloping terrain, remained bidonvilles clustered near the entrance to "the town" or on the steeper slopes nearer to the river. Many of these have since been converted to permanent homes. Across a ravine from Hajja was the "town" of Maadid, which by 1972 had already been transformed from bidonville to a permanent settlement of cement blocks and red brick. And down the road was Doum, just starting on the same process I have been back to Rabat annually since 1972, each time marveling at the progress that had been made in the interim and at the resourcefulness and energy of the people who have taken economic development and urban planning into their own hands. Out of the rubble to which rejection and illegality condemned them, they have been building cities not unlike the medinas that their ancestors built without benefit of schemas directeurs. The new plan seeks to encourage a spread of this activity—a step which, if it does not kill the bloom of initiative by too much interference, bodes well for the future of Rabat. Supplementing these self-help activities have been large-scale construction projects that have also been added to the city during the 1970s. In place of one of the last bidonvilles at Yacoub alMansour (which is widely acknowledged to have been a victim of official arson), new housing for the middle class has been going up And on the opposite side of the river the gigantic development of

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Hayy Salam was under construction by 1977, again designed largely for the middle class, although surrounding an earlier trame sanitaire. These projects have inadvertently broken through some of the rigid lines of segregation that formerly relegated the poor to the outskirts. The competition for scarce space has had the unintended consequence of temporarily juxtaposing the poor, middle class, and wealthy in the suburban quarters into which the city is rapidly expanding. Herein lies the present struggle for the city. The elite seeks to create its own ville nouvelle on the periphery, complete with new city center and spacious residential quarters. It hopes to use zoning to separate the classes, a goal implicit in the new city plan. In order to assemble the land for this new city, it will have to displace some of the poor. The first group to feel the impact of this displacement is, of course, the jaysh tribe that controls the open land between Rabat and Tamarra—land that the city has already slated for the construction of housing for civil servants One wonders how long the residents of the bidonvilles, the trames sanitaires, and even the clandestine subdivisions will be able to resist the pressures of expansion from the center. How long will they be able to hold onto the sites which, while once peripheral and therefore unimportant and valueless, are now in the middle ring of the projected metropolis? We anticipate a struggle over turf in the city as the classes, thus far kept apart by a spatial segregation that was a legacy from the colonial era, now come into increasing competition with one another for the scarce resource of urban land. Significantly, such struggles over resources were not uncommon during the era of French rule, and were often the stimulus for the nationalist movement. 'Alal al-Fasi reminisces about one of his first activities in the nationalist struggle: In 1920 the French administration attempted to seize the water supply of Wadi Fass [Fez] spring. . . . There were historical and legal records to prove that every house in the city was entitled to their share of the water flow passing through it. The French move had been designed with a view to granting the water concession to a number of French companies. The inhabitants of the city regarded the plan as a flagrant violation of established rights and a spoliation of their property. Widespread demonstrations were held in front of the municipal offices and I made an inflam-

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matory speech inside the municipal building which was enthusiastically applauded by the assembled crowds. Later Haj al-Hassan Abu 'Ayad and I prepared a memorandum . . . demanding withdrawal of the scheme and emphasizing the people's right to enjoy their freedoms. . . . Popular gatherings were also held . . . protesting the administration plaa The movement was successful and the public works department was forced to withdraw its plan. 6 The conflict was between the privileges of the few and the rights of the many to equity and a fair share of resources. This issue still remains. One of the arenas within which it is likely to be fought is Rabat, a city now in fragments, and one whose future unification depends upon enforcing principles of equity and sharing. Today, once again, Rabat is a chantier de construction. I would not like to risk false predictions, lest time prove me wrong—as it did M. Rabbet who witnessed the city as it stood on the threshhold of its previous phase I believe that the city must now move in either of two directions In one direction lies increased inequality, dependent urbanization, and economic stagnation, in the other lies unification of the shattered fragments of the city and the building of an urban society on the basis of mutual concern and common purpose The desirable choice is obvious Will it be selected' 6

In The Independence Movements in Arab North Africa 117-118

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Index 'Abbasids, 36, 40-42, 48, 49 'Abd al-Άζϊζ, Mawlay, 108-109, 135, 191n 'Abd al-Hafiz, Mawlay, 135-36 'Abd al-Haqq Fannish, 80-81 Abdallah, Ibrahim, 245 'Abd-Allah, Sidi, 69 'Abd al-Mu'mm, 3, 36, 54, 55 'Abd al-Rahman, Mawlay, 91, 95, 100, 114; foreign trade under, 85-87, 89 'Abid al-Bukhari, 77, 78, 83, 91, 116n, 125 Abu al-'Abbas Ahmad ibn 'Abd-Allah, 81 Abu al-Fid5, 54 Abu Inan, madrasa of 59 Abu-Lughod, Janet, 275, 287, 320 Abun-Nasr, Jamil M., 44 Abu Ya'qub Yusuf, 55 Abu Yusuf Ya'qub, see Ya'qub alMansur Adam, Andre, 96n, 11 In 'Adwat al-Andalus (Fez), 41 'Adwat al-Qarawiyin (Fez), 42 Agadir, 82n, 146, 151, 248, 337 Agdal, 129, 160, 168, 199, 233, 268, 308, 328; baths of, 129; eighteenthcentury construction in, 83, employment in, 260-61; makhzan officials in, 214; planned for European expansion, 233; villas and apartments built, 266 Aghlabids, 16, 35, 36, 41 agriculture: crop failure in 1825, 89; crop failure in 1866, 102; development of, after World War II, 241; expansion of colonial, 202-203, 208; government investment in, 255; in and around Rabat-Sale, 65, 106107, 118, 119, 197; production drop 1958-1964, 246; seasonal, in Morocco, 26-27; workers in RabatSale, 217, 219. See also grain

Ahl Sus, see jaysh tribes; Udayajaysh tribe Akkan (Darb), 211-13, 229, 309, 328; labor force of, 261; makhzan officials in, 214; population growth rate of, 268 Alarcos, battle of, 52, 54, 56 Alawites: origin of dynasty, 72-73 Aleppo, 13, 31 Alexandria, 31-32; as "model" for Ribaf al-Fath, 56; landing of British troops in, 131 Alfonso VIII, 56 Algeciras, 1906 Conference of, 105, 109-10, 133, 137, 164 Algeria: Andalusian influence m, 24; effect on trade of French invasion, 88, 98, European population in, 15455n; foreign investment after World War II, 241-42, French colonization of, 103; French invasion of, 17; incorporation into Ottoman empire, 23, 60; independence struggle of, 18, 235, 245, 252; invaded by Vandals and Visigoths, 14; Lyautey criticizes colonial urban planning in, 143; municipal governance in, 175; nomadic invasions in, 23, Romans in, 20 Algiers: breakdown of caste system in, 252; commercial ties with Sala, 71; comparative chronology of, 34-39, 43-44, 48-51; corsair activity based in, 70; cultural diversity of, 32, settlement of Moors in, 17, 62 Alhambra, 40, 59 Almohads (al-Muwahhidun), 36, 47, 49, 52-59, 61; defeat of Almoravids by, 54; Maghrib united under, 50 Almoravids (al-Murabitiin), 11, 25, 42, 46-49 al-ΆΙύ (the Heights), 114-15, 119, 121, 125. See also Bab al-'Alii

358

INDEX

A m e n a g e m e n t du Territoire, 334-35 Amin, Samir, 241 n, 243n, 244-46, 255 a m i n al-mustafad, 128, 176, 177, 179-80 ' A m r lbn al-'As, 30, 35, 39 Andalusians, 24, 37, 61, 71, 77; relations w i t h Hornacheros, 66-69; replaced by a r m y in qa?bah, 77; settlement of, in Ribat, 4. See also M o o r s ; Moriscos Anfa (Casablanca), 10, 79n, 96 A n g l o - M o r o c c a n T r e a t y of 1856, 95, 96 animal h u s b a n d r y , 27, 106-107, 119, 163 apartheid, urban, 212, 229, 305; applicability of term, 216; barriers become bridgeable, 272; colonial policy of, 175; c o m p a r i s o n w i t h South Africa, 181; defined, x v n , exceptions to, 212-14, 221; Lyautey institutes, 142-44; m a d e possible b y system o f governance, 181-95; political inequality m, 151, structure of, 146-47. See also caste system; class structure aqueducts, 128-29 Arabian Peninsula, 10, 11, 15, 18 Arabic language, 10, 12; adoption of, in M a g h r i b , 29, 44 Arabs, 11, 30, 31, 35; conquest of M o r o c c o by, 28-29 Arab world, 9, 12, 19; c o n f r o n t a t i o n w i t h Europe, 10, 11; early urbanization in, 12-13; " w a y s of life" in, 25-29 architecture: Syrian/Andalusian style of, 40, 48, 61; of Rabat, 52; of Sala, 59 a r m y : percentage of labor force in, 217; reconstitution of, by Isma'il, 77. See also 'Abid al-Bukhari; j a y s h tribes artisan production, 89, 240, 337; decline of, 102, 103, 106-107 artisans, 102-103, 107, 108, 219-220 Arzila, 77 'asabiya (social solidarity), 16, 45-46 'Ashir, 43 associations syndicales, 168, 187-89. See also land Atlantic O c e a n : as b o u n d a r y of Arab world, 9; corsair activity in, 70-71 Atlas mountains, 21

Aubin, Eugene, 107-109 A v e n u e D a r al-Makhzan ( n o w M u h a m m a d V), 197 A v e n u e de Casablanca, 200 A v e n u e de la Gare, 200 A v e n u e des Orangeries, 200 A v e n u e Marie Feuillet, 200 A v e n u e Tamarra, 116, 200, 211, 213 Aviation (quarter of), 230, 231, 269, 308, 310, 321, 328; e m p l o y m e n t in, 260-61; population g r o w t h of, 268; villas and apartments built in, 266 ' A w a d , Hasan, 208n Ayache, Albert, 224n 'Ayn 'Ati'q, 128 ' A y n Ghabula, 54, 58, 129 al-'Ayyachi, Sidi, 68-69 A z e m m o u r , 194 Azrou, 248 B a b al-'Alu, 116, 160, 198, 200 B a b al-Bahr (Sea Gate), 115, 122, 123 al-Bab al-Fawqiya ( U p p e r Gate), 125 Bab al-Had (Gate of Sunday market), 65, 115, 116, 122, 160 B a b al-Hadid (Gate of Iron), 115 See also Bab al-Za'ir B5b al-Marsa, 120 Bab al-Ma§alla ( O r a t o r y Gate), 117 B a b al-Qabibat, 116 B a b al-Rahba, 122-24 Bab a l - R u w a h (Gate of Wind), 115, 116 Bab al-Shalla (also k n o w n as Bab Sidi ' A h Balrahi), 115, 123 B a b al-Shar'-iya (m Cairo), 273 al-Bab al-Tahtiya (Lower Gate), 125 Bab al-Tibin (Straw Gate), 115, 121, 122, 157, 199 B a b al-Za'ir, 56, 117 B a b j a z a y r i (quarter of Tunis), 36 Bab Marrakish (also called Bab alM a j a z and B a b al-'Adir al-Birrabi),

116 B a b S u w a y q a (quarter of Tunis), 36 B a b T a m a s n a , 116 babuche (slippers), 107. See also shoemakers B a b y l o n (in Egypt), 35, 37, 38 badawiya (nomadic), 67

INDEX

Baghdad, 31, 40 al-Baidaq, 54 banking companies in Rabat, 202n Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas, 109 Banu 'Ashara, 45 Banu Hilal, 23, 36, 43-46 Banu Marin, see Mannids Banu Sulaym, 36, 43-44, 46 al-Barbarrosa, Khayr al-Din, 60 Bargach, 231 Barghwa(a, 53 Basra, 31 Bedouins, see nomads Beirut, 31 Bern Mellal, 248 Benyoussef, Amor, 243n Berber Dahir of 1930, 222 Berbers, 11, 20, 28, confederations m Morocco, 44-45, 127 See also Sanhaja, Zanata, Barghwata, etc Berkane, 248 Bernard, Stephane, 235 Berrechid, 248 Berry, Brian, 275 bidonvilles, 330-331, causes of, 160, 233, 330-331, improvements to, 255, 337-38, in Casablanca, 222, in RabatSale by location, 313-16, in Sale, 232n, 233, 258, 310, owner occupancy of, 286, 291, 302, policies toward, 212, 226, 331, 337, 339, population and growth, 200-201, 211, 212n, 266-68, 281, socio­ economic characteristics of residents in, 270, 316, unemployment in, 262 See also clandestine subdivisions, trames samtaires Bittana, 5, 232, 266, 312 blad al-makhzan (land controlled by central authority), 66n, 99 blad al-siba (land of "dissidence"), 66n, 99-100, 204 Bouaouid, 231 Bougie, 44 Boulevard al-'Alu, 198 Boulevard du 4eme Zouaves (Casablanca), 147, 169-70 Boulevard Galhem-Joffre, 157, 197, 200 Bou Regreg, Republic of the, 69

359

Bou Regreg River, 306, 308, 309, as social/political boundary, 6, 44, 127, 232, effects of earthquake on harbor, 79 bourgeoisie —Moroccan 96, 97, 98-103, exemptions from central authority, 99-100, favors Casablanca over Rabat, 97-98 —European 151, collaborates with Moroccan bourgeoisie, 98 —See also class structure, merchants Bouznika, 278 Bovill, Ε W , 11 Braudel, Fernand, 13-14, 60 bridges between Rabat and Sale, 56-58, 68, 208, 231-32 Broadley, A Μ 132 Brown, Kenneth L , 45, 71-72, 79, 82, 86-87, 89, 108, 126, 128, 129, 200n al-Buhayra, 125 building permits, 185, illegal settlements without, 329, restrictions imposed by Service des Beaux-Arts, 182-83 building regulations, 147, 187, imposed by Office of Municipal Services, 183, in villes nouvelles, 213 See also voine, reglement de Bulaq (Cairo), 273 Bulhet, Richard W , 16 Bulujian lbn Zin, 36, 43 BuQarun, 125 Bureau of Native Affairs in Morocco, 176 Burj Jadid (Roetenburg Fort, also Fort Herve), 114 Burj Sidi Makluf, 65 bus service, 196n Buwayba, 115, 118 Byzantium, Byzantines, 13, 15, 35, 3941 Caille, Jacques, 38, 65, 73, 79, 83 Cairo, 32, 60, comparative chronology of, 34-43, 49-51, ethmc/caste/class divisions in, 272-73, factorial ecology of, 275, 282-86, 289, 303 caravan routes, see trade routes

360

INDEX

Carthage, 13, 20, 35 Casablanca, 133, 206, 235, as center of colonial enterprise, 150-51, 225-26, 240, as industrial center, 34, 224, budget expenditures in, 193-94, colonial urban planning in, 146, 147, 155, 169-70, 188, 225-27, competition with port of Rabat, 90, 91, 96-100, demographic composition of, 153-54, 251-52, foreigners in, 96-100, French invasion of, 110, 132-33, housing projects in, 222-23, 253, joint administration established, 176, land speculation in, 106, 147, 167, location of wealthy quarters, 309, Moroccan bourgeoisie in, 98-100, population and growth of, 152-53, 221, 248-51, port of, and foreign trade, 5, 33, 79n, 83, 90, 91, 96-97, 200, 202, proletarianization of labor force in, 219, urbanization of, 96-99 Casimere, Η de la, 144, 146, 166-70, 176, 182-83, 189, 190, 193n caste system, 229, 236, absent from Sale, 312, characteristics of, in Rabat, 220, creation of, and alternatives concerning, 214-15, 224, defined, 216, 287-88, in India, 216, instituted in Moroccan cities, 151, postcolomal continuities of, 305, supplanted by class segregation, 268-74 See also Factor I Castells, Manuel, 331 cemeteries, 121, 309, of Άΐύ, 75, of the Chella, 20, 35, 38, 59-60, 115, 117 Centre de Ville, 268, 308, 317, 321, 328, employment in, 260-61, makhzan officials in, 214 Centre d'Experimentation, de Recherche et de Formation (CERF), 256, 260, 262, 330, surveys conducted by, 335 Ceuta, 19, 100-101 chef des services mumcipaux, 184, 189, powers of, 179-81, 186 Chella, 58, 230, 273, 316, cemetery of, 35, 38, 59-60, 115, 117, gardens of, 118-19, nomads settle in, 84, water supply of, 129

Chene, Μ R , 210n Chenfien, see Shanfian government Circonscnption de l'Urbanisme et de l'Habitat, 253-54 Cite Habous (Casablanca), 213, 214, 221-22 Cite Marbella, 310,321, 328 Cite Mihtaire (Marbella), 321 city, cities as "way of life," 25-26, desiderata for, 118, essential ingredients in creation of, 156 clandestine subdivisions, 266-68, 309, 317, 330-31, anticipated struggle for land, 339, growth rate of, 332, income of households in, 270 class structure —of Morocco 24, 151, in seventeenth century, 67, nineteenth-century restructuring of, 89, realignment in, 102-103, 107-108, replaces caste system, 252 —of Rabat-Sale 172-73, 220, 272, built into urban planning, 335-37, reflected in urban ecology, 266, 272-74, 299, 305, relation to occupational distribution, 281, 285, 291, relation to population growth, 268-69, segrega­ tion according to, 229, 258, 293, 321, 328-31, struggle for land within, 339 —See also apartheid, urban, caste system, socio-economic status climate, influence on city pattern of, 308-309 collective land, see land tenure collective or communal colonial city, see ville nouvelle of Rabat colonization legacy of, after independence, 239-44, 252-54, Lyautey's ideology of, 142, of Arab countries, 17-18, strategies of conquest, 131-33, 137-38 See also Protectorate, French commerce, in Rabat-Sale, 217-20, 25962, in eighteenth century, 75 commercial districts of Rabat-Sale, 157 See also suq, Suwayqa Congres International de l'Urbanisme, 161

INDEX Constantinople, 15, 60, 140 Coon, Carleton, S , 25 Copts, 281 Cordoba, 41, 45, 61 cordon sanitaire, 145, 147 corsair activity, 3, 4, 17, 31, 61, 67, 68, as economic base of Ribat, 69-73, 75, crews and outfitting, 64, decline of, 88, government control of, 76, 77, 80 cotton, 101, 106, 107 courts jurisdiction of French over property, 164, 165, 169, 174, 188 See also shari'a Couzinet, Paul, 150n, 196 crusades, 17, 31, 49-50 customs duties, 101 customs house, 4-5 dahir (zahir), see legislation Damascus, 31 Dar al-Makhzan, 116, 125, 127, 129 Dar al-Makhzan (street), 199, 200 Dar al-§ina'a (in Sala), 82 debts, Moroccan, 120, as prelude to colonization, 18, 95, 103, 108-109, increased by French Protectorate, 191 See also indemnity, French service of the Moroccan debt debts of Tunisia and Egypt, 103-104 decolonization, 239-41, 256-57, economic planning, 244-47, economic problems, 241-43, homogenization of population, 239, 251-52, population pressures during, 243, urban planning, 253-55 Decroux, Paul, 175-76, 178-79 Dethier, Jean, 150n, 21 On, 222, 223, 226-27, 254-56 Deverdun, Gaston, 47 Direction de l'Urbanisme et de l'Habitat, 334-35 Direction des Statistiques, 275 divorce rate in Rabat-Sale, 280, 283, 291, 298, 300, 303 domainal land, see land tenure domainal domestic servants, 212, 220, 221, 300302 Douar Dabbagh, 173, 200, 211, 213,

361

221, 230, 306, 316, relocation plan for, 223, 227-29 Douar Doum, 173, 200, 213, 221, 253, 273, 308, 309, 316, 317, conversion into permanent settlement, 338, population growth rate, 268, rehousing project, 229-31 Douar Jdid (Sale), 21 In, 233 Douar Onk Ejjmel, 233 Douar Smaala, 211n, 233 Doum Jdid, 231 Draa, low-cost housing in, 265 Drummond-Hay, John, 88, 101, 118 Durkheim, Emile, 46 Durneu, Xavier, 101, 127 earthquake of 1755, 79 Ebla, Kingdom of, 13 Ecochard, Michel, 200, 201, 222, 253, 256, 272, 332, 336, attempt to deflect migration, 225, attempt to improve industrial system, 225-26, ousted by business interests, 233, plans housing, 223-24, 226-29, 231-32, 255 economy of Morocco —precolomal dependence upon Europe, 32, 33, 95, 101-102, nineteenth-century transformations of, 85-86 —colonial changes during Protectorate, 201-204, growth after World War 11, 241 —postcolomal 252, assets of, 244, effects of colonial partition, 240, investment in housing, 255, planning, 244-46, planning ideology (1968-1977), 336-37, problems compounded by population growth, 243, regional planning, 334, stagnation of, 242, 256, withdrawl of foreign aid, 246 —See also debts, industry, trade education enrollment according to nationality and sex, 220, government investment in, 255, unequal distribution of, 194 Egypt, 15, 24, 43, 50, colonization of, 18, 103-104, 131-32, independence of, 18, invasion by French, 17,

362

INDEX

Egypt (cont ) revolution, 273, trade boom in 1860s, 101 See also Cairo employment —in Morocco increase in public-sector jobs, 246 —in Rabat in government, 259-60, in industry, 258-59, 262-63, in tertiary sector, 258-63, percentage employers and employees, 218-220 —See also labor force, unemployment England, see Great Britain Entente Cordiale of 1904, 104, 109 epidemics, 84, 128 Essaouira, see Mogador ethnicity correlated with class, 305, increasing homogeneity of, 251, in factorial ecology, 279-82, 287-89, 292-94, 297-99, 300-303 Europeans in Morocco concentration in cities, 6, 126n, 153-54, 206, 251-52, divestment after independence, 242, emigration, 236, 239, 243, immigration, 5, 6, 110, 153, 172, 173, investments of, 202, labor force of, 172-73, land ownership, 104-105, 110, 147, 162, 165, 173, 203, land speculation, 110, 147, merchants, see merchants, European, occupation in Rabat-Sale, 216-18, population, see population of Morocco, population in Rabat-Sate, 5, 82, 154, 160, 208209, 251-52, 279, tax payment, 192 See also economy of Morocco, housing, land, Protectorate, French Experimental Gardens (Jardin d'essais), 197 export-import companies, 202 exports advocated by 1973-1977 plan, 337, contraction of demand for, in 1865, 102, effect of French invasion of Algeria on, 88-89, of agricultural products, 102, 202-203, of minerals, 202, of unprocessed goods, 240, restrictions lifted in 1828, 90 See also grain, leather, phosphates, trade, wool Factor I ("caste"), 296-302, 306-313, 316, 321, 328

Factor II (problem housing), 296-98, 300, 302, 313, 316-17, 321, 328 Factor III (male dominance) 296-98, 300, 302-303, 320-21, 329 Factor IV (atypical household), 296-98, 300, 301, 303, 320-21, 328, 329 Factor V (female dependence), 296-98, 300, 303, 320-21, 328 Factor VI (migration status), 296-98, 300, 303, 316, 321, 328 factorial ecology, method of, 274-79, 287, 290, 294-97, 303-304 family organization in Rabat-Sale, 280, 283-84, 287, 291, 297-98, 300-301, 306 Fanon, Frantz, 131 al-Fisi, 'Alal, 235, 339-40 Fatimids, 31, 36, 38, 42-43, 49 Fedalla, 126, 200 Fertile Crescent, 11, 26 fertility rates in Morocco, 205 fertility ratios in Rabat-Sale, 280, 284, 287, 291, 294, 298-303 Fez (Fas), 32, 138, 206, as part of traditional urban system, 232, bourgeoisie of, 98-99, budget of (1921), 193-94, comparisons of Rabat with, 3, 151, competition over water supply of, 339-40, growth rate of, 152-53, 248-51, hospitals in, 194-95, land expropriation m, 166, Lyautey's visit to, 141, plans for ville nouvelle of, 146-47, 155, precolomal history of, 17, 24, 34-35, 41-42, 52, 54, 59, 62, 91-92, strategic location of, 31-32, 41, tourism in, 337, under French Protectorate, 133, 135 Fezjadid, 91 finances of Rabat-Sale households by occupation, 271 Fine Arts Service, see Service des Beaux-Arts fishing, 217, 219 fish market, 122, 198 Fkih Ben Salah, 248 Florence, influence of upon Prost, 145 foreigners, see Europeans in Morocco France as colonial power, 17-18, as contender for Egypt, 103-104, as contender for Morocco, 104, 109,

INDEX colonizes Algeria, 103, colonizes Tunisia, 103-104, 132, imports Moroccan wool, 90 French colomalization and military action in Morocco, 80, 95, 98, 110, 131-33, military bases in Morocco, 241, refugees to Morocco, 222, scholarship on Moroccan cities, 86, service of Moroccan debt, 109, 120, trade concessions and accords, 81, 85 See also Protectorate, French, Europeans, trade, debts funduqs, 21 On, 328 Fustit, 31, 35, 36, 38, 49 Galheni, General, 140, Boulevard, 157, 197 Garden City (Cairo), 272 gas service, 196n gates of Rabat, 115-18, 120-25, 127n, 157 See also separate entries, taxation Ghana, Kingdom of, 25 Gharb plain, 44, migration from to Rabat-Sale, 208-209 al-Gharnati, 57 Gibraltar (Jabal Tariq), 11 Giralda tower (Seville), 57 Goss, 106 government, see municipal governance. Protectorate, French, Shanfian government Graa, labor force of, 261-62 gram, 85, 122, export prohibited, 89, export restrictions lifted, 90, 96, imported after famine of 1825, 89 Granada, Kingdom of, 17, 58, 61-62 Great Britain, 17-18, conquest of Egypt, 103-104, 131-32, contends for Morocco, 104, 109, 1856 "accords" with Morocco, 85, influence over colonial partition, 135, loan of, to Morocco, 101, trade of, in Ribat, 82 Greece, 17 Greek civilization, urbanization by, 13 Guehz (district of Marrakech), 167 Guessous, Muhammad, 337n guilds, 129 hadara, hadariya (settled place, urban), 5, 29, 41, 52, 67

363

hadiya (gift), 75, 127 See also taxation Hafsids, 37, 59 Hajja, 231, 268, 309, 338 al-Hakam, 39 Hammond, Mason, 15 handicrafts, see, artisan production harratin, 77 Harrison, John, 72 Hasan 1, 103, 108, 129, 191n, attempts to limit proteges, 104 Hasan 11, 245 Hasan mosque, 57, 65, 117, 168, 182 See also Tour Hasan Hayy Salim (Sale), 329, 339 health services, 161, for Europeans, 144-45, inequality of, 194-95 See also hospitals Heliopohs (Cairo), 272 Hisham, Mawlay, 84 Hornacheros, 4, 63, 64, 71, relation to Andalusians, 66-69 hospitals, 194-95, 197 housing average size of household, 280, 285, 291, 298, 302, 303, budget allocations for, 245, 255-56, combinations of investment and selfhelp, 254-55, construction "authorizations," 265, controlled by Beaux-Arts, 144-45n, conversion of buildings into apartments, 210n, correlations with quality of, 266, 267, 269, 281, 286, 291, 293-94, 297, 298, 300-303, 306, 316-17, 238-39, Ecochard's module for low-cost, 226-27, "illegal" construction of, 266, "legal" quarters, 211, occupancy density, 280, 285, 291-94, 298, 300303, 306, problems of subsidized, 254, projects in Rabat-Sale, 227-33, 253-54, 258, 265-66, 316-17, 329, 339, regulations for Europeans and Moroccans, 186-87, self-help recommended by CERF, 256, shortage of, in Casablanca, 222-23, shortage of, in Morocco, 245, shortage of, in Rabat-Sale, 162, 201, 209-13, 223, 258, 265-66, 332 See also bidonvilles, building permits, clandestine subdivisions, trames samtaires, villes nouvelles

364

INDEX

hubus land, see land tenure hubus al-Hufra (quarter), 125 huma, see quarters of Rabat

Istiqlal party, 192, 222 Italy, Italians in North Africa, 24, role in Mediterranean trade, 31

Ibn Hawqal, 44, 52 Ibn Khaldun, 16, 43, 47, theory of social change, 45-46, 48 Ibn Tashfin, 53 Ibn Tulun, 35, 36, 41 Ibn Tiimart, 54-55 Ibn Υ asm, 'Abd-Allah, 47 Icosium, 35, 38, 39 Idns II, 41 Idns ibn 'Abd-Allah I, 41 Ifnqiya, 35, 41, 42, conquered by Almohads, 36, under Haf§ids, 59 immatriculation system, 164, 169n, 170, 189 See also Torrens Act imports, 106, 240, customs duties on, 110, 120, effects of invasion of Algeria on, 89, undermine locally produced goods, 102-103 See also sugar, tea, textiles, trade income distribution, see socio-economic status indemnity of 1860 to Spam, 101, 104, British loan covers, 101, paid off, 108 independence movements in Morocco, 135, 222, 225, 235 India, caste system of, 216 industrial development of Morocco colonial, 224, 241, postcolomal, 24246, 255, 337 See also manufacturing Institut Pasteur, 197 industry in Rabat, 102, 200, 228, 257, during Protectorate, 200-201, labor force composition of, 217-19, postcolomal stagnation of, 258-59, 262-63 investment, foreign colonial, 241-42, postcolomal, 242 Islam, 10, 28-29, conflict of, with Christian Europe, 17-31, expansion of, 11, 15-16, 23, 25, 31, in identity of Arab World, 12, in the Maghrib, 9, in the Mashnq, 19, in Spain, 61-62 Islamic city, theory of, 51n Isma'il, Mawlay, 25, 76-77 Israel, emigration of Moroccan Jews to, 205

al-Jadida, see Mazagan Jama' al-Kabir, 123 Jawhar, 42 jaysh land, see land tenure jaysh jaysh (army) tribes, 77, 116n, 126, 127, planned displacement of, 339 See also 'Abid al-Bukhari, Udaya jaysh tribe Jazirat al-Maghnb (Island of the West), 20-21 Jerada, 248 Jews, 24, 308, emigration of, 239, 243, 268, m Casablanca, 154, in Oujda, 154, in Rabat-Sale, 123, 154, 177, 178, 199, 209, 210, 281-82, in villes nouvelles, 212, migration to coastal cities, 153, 206, occupations of, 21619, population during Protectorate, 204-205, segregated quarters assigned, 84, 124, 125 See also merchants Moroccan, Millah Jutiya (industrial district of Sale), 261, 311 al-Jutiya (street of Rabat), 122 al-Juza', 121, 198 al-Kasin, 68 Kasr el-Kebir, 248 Kemtra (Port Lyautey), 153, 200, 206, 225, expenditure and percent Muslim, 194, expropriation of land, 167, in colonial hierarchy, 151, planned by Prost, 146, population and growth rate, 153-54, 248-51 Kerr, Robert, 132-33, 183n Khadija, 231 al-KharrazIn, 123 Khemisset, 248 Khemfra, 248 Khounbga, 248 Knight, Melvin, 138n, 162n, 169n, 191, 195n, 203n Kora, 223 Labonne, Eric, 223 labor force —in Morocco, 171-72, 203, 240, 255, as

INDEX

central to Ecochard's plan, 226, 228, emigration of, 337, exploited by Protectorate, 224, growth of proletarian, 102, 203 —in Rabat-Sal6, 214, 216-20, 259-63, occupational status of, 281, 284-85, 291, 293, 294, 297-303 —See also employment, unemployment land —area ot Rabat, 333, of ville nouvelle and medina, 160 —distribution according to class, 242, 336 —expropriation, 151, 164, 170, by means of syndicates, 188-90, for "public purpose," 184-85, for Yacoub al-Mansour, 228, from nomadic groups, 28, in Bittana and Tabriqat, 232, leading to migration, 162, mechanisms of, 184-88, of communal land, 202-203, of domainal land, 166-67, of hubus land, 166-67, police power enforces, 188, state powers above law, 167-70 —inflation in nineteenth century, 89, in 1971, 332 - n o n edificandi, 157, 182, 228, 229, 266 —ownership, 166, 167, 174, 242, French legislation affecting, 147, of Europeans in Morocco, 110, 170-71, of Europeans in Rabat, 162, of Moroccans in Morocco, 170-71, of Moroccans in Rabat-Sale, 106 —policy Ecochard vs French antagonists, 233 See also legislation —registration, see immatriculation system —speculation, 99, 102, in Casablanca, 106, 110, 147, 167 —tenure, 28, collective or communal, 163, 164, 167-69, domainal, 163, 164, 167, hubus, 129, 163, 164, 167, 174, 192, 211, 221, 329,jaysh, 163, 164, mulk, 163-65, 189, policies regarding Europeans, 102, 104-105, system of, 163-64 Laouna, Jdid, 231 Laprade, Μ A , 160, 221 Larache, 13, 71, 77, 80, 88, population

365

of, 152-53, 248, settlement of Udaya in, 92 Laroui, Abdallah, 23 Larrach, 231 laws, see legislation leather, 5, 88, 102n, 107, 122-23 legal codes Islamic (shari'a), 174, Napoleonic, 163, 174 See also shari'a legislation, French urban, 146, 147, 151, 221, 223, dahir of April 16, 1914, 184-88, on buildings and streets, 173, 183-88, on land registration/ expropriation, 147, 164, 166n, 16870, 187, 189n, on land redistribution through syndicates, 188-89, on municipal governance, 177-79 See also municipal governance Leo Afncanus (Leon I'Africain), 32, 58, 79 Levi-Provencal, Evanste, 54, 150 Libya, 18, 20, 24 linen, 5, 107 literacy in Rabat-Sale, 284, 291-94, 297, 298, 300-303 Livres Fonciers, 164-65 Lixus, see Larache Lotissement, Tazi, see Tazi subdivision Lyautey, Louis Hubert, 147, 150, 162, 181, 190, 196n, 199, 201, 202, 214, 221, 224, and land expropriation, 166n, 168, 170, arranges topographical survey, 164-65, background and character, 139-41, campaign of 1907 in Morocco, 133, ideology of urban planning, 131, 142-44, 151, 157, influence on longrange city expansion, 309, philosophy of colonization, 142, powers as Resident General, 136-37, 179, relations with Prost, 145-46, selects Rabat as capital, 5, 135, 13839, view of colonial administration of Algeria, 137, of Tunisia, 178, view of joint municipal governance, 178-79 Maadid, 231, 309, conversion to permanent settlement, 338, population rate of growth, 268 McEvedy, Colin, 15 McGee, Τ G , 269

366

INDEX

Maclean, Sir Harry, 108 Madrid Convention of 1880, 137, 164, effects on land ownership in Morocco, 104-105 Maghrib (the West) conquered by Almoravids, 48, invaded by Banu Hilal, 44, relations with the Mashriq, 39-41,48, 50, scope of, 15, 19 Mahdiya (early name for Rabat), 54-55 Mahdiya (Morocco), see al-Mamora Mahdiya (Tunisia), 42-43, 50 makhzan (central government) French colonial control of, 178n, 180n, precolonial relations with Rabat, 69, 73, 75, 96, relations with domainal and hubus lands, 163, 166n, residence in Rabat of officials of, 214 See also blad al-makhzan, Sharifian government, Sultan Maknasat al-Zaytun, 76 See also Meknes male dominance, 302-303, 321 See also Factor III Mali, Kingdom of, 25 Mahkism, 36, 43 Mamluks, 37, 59-60, 78 al-Mamora (now Mahdiya), 17, 71, 77 manufacturing, indigenous decline in, 102, 103, 106-107 See also artisan production marabout (murabif), religious/military leader, 67 Marche Central, 121 Mane Feuillet Hospital, 197 Mannids, 37, 58-60, cemetery of, 20 See also Chella markets, see suq Marrakech, 32, 52, as Almohad capital, 47, 49, 54-55, 58, as Almoravid capital, 47-48, as part of traditional urban system, 232, budget of 1921, 193-94, founding of, 47, hospitals in, 194-95, Kutubiya tower of, 23, 57, land expropriation in, 166, population and growth rate of, 153, 248-53, settlement of Udaya in, 92, strategic location of, 31-32, tourism in, 337, ville nouvelle planned, 146, 155 See also Gueliz marriage percentage of married adults in

Rabat-Sali, 280, 283, 291-93, 297-98, 300 marriage age in Rabat-Sale, 283, 302303, 306 Mashra' al-Ramla, 77 Mashriq (the East), 15, 59, colonization in, 18, historical relations with Maghrib, 23, 30, 39-41, 48, 50, scope of, 19, "ways of life" in, 26 Masson, Alain, 256, 332, 334-35 Mauret, Ε , 185n, 201 n, 209-210, 227n, 231, 233 Mazagan (al-Jadida), 79, 152-53, 176, 194, 248 Mecca, 31 Mechouar, 308, 310, walls of, 116n Medina, 31 medma of Rabat, 3, 160, 306, 316-17, as an urban type, 328-29, compared with medina of Sale, 269, 309-10, household incomes in, 270, labor force of, 260-61, land area of, 64-65, population of, 267-68, proletarianization of, 210n, settled by Monscos, 63 medina of Sale, 316, as an urban type, 328-29, compared with medina of Rabat, 269, 309-10, ecological variation in, 312-13, household incomes in, 270, labor force of, 26061 Mediterranean described by Braudel, 13-14, early settlement in, 13, from fifteenth to seventeenth century, 60, power relations in, 14-20, 30, 32, trade routes of, shift to Atlantic, 6061, unity and division of, 11-14 Meknes, 27, 83, 206, as capital under Isma'fl, 76-77, Beaux-Arts architectural restrictions on, 182, budget of 1921 in, 194, destruction by earthquake, 79, hospitals in, 19495, land expropriation in, 166, Maknasat al-Zaytun, 76, population of, 152-53, 248-49, under French rule, 133, ville nouvelle planned, 146, 155 Mehlla, 19, 100 Memphis, 34, 35, 38, 39 merchants

INDEX —European consuls as, 76, 82, extraterritorial exemptions of, 98100, locations of, in Rabat, 120, 198, ordered to Essaouira, 82, penetration of Moroccan trade by (1660s), 67, 72, (1700s), 4, (1800s) 33, 80-81, 85-87, preference for Casablanca by, 96, trade concessions granted to, 81, 85, 95 See also protege system, trade —Moroccan 108, as proteges, 99, Christian and Jewish ordered to Essaouira, 82, location of, in Rabat, 198, Slawis m Rabat, 82 Mercier, L, 111-30passim, 176 Mesopotamian valley, 13 Miege, Jean-Louis, 33, 85, 86, 89, 99, 102 migrants, 28, 124, 230, 288 migrants in Rabat-Sale, 282-83, 288-94, 302, 317, m bidonvilles, 316-17, 320, in factorial ecology, 288-94, 297, 298, 300, 303, in medinas, 316-17, percentage of, 280, 282, socioeconomic status and housing of, 31620, 328-29 See also Factor VI (migration status) migration causes of, 162, of Jews to coastal cities, 153, to Rabat, 161-62, tribal, 28 —rural/urban 102, 203-206, 208-209, 221, 242-43, 247, 282, 288-89, 317, 332-34, Ecochard's attempt to deflect, 224-25 —urban/urban 98, 282, 289, 302, 317 millah (Jewish quarter), 218n, established, 84, in Rabat, 115n, 123, 124-25, 127, 199, 210-211 See also Jews Mogador (Essaouira), 206, 248, 1921 budget of, 194, caravan trade focused upon, 89, 98, French administration of, 176, port of, 33, 73, 80, 81-82, 90, population of, 152-53 Mohammediya, 225, 227, 248 monopolies, governmental precolonial, 95, colonial, 138 Montagne, Robert, 32, 210n, 212, 230n, 320 Moors, 24, expulsion of, from Spain, 17, 62-64, refounding of Rabat by,

367

24 See also Andalusians, Monscos Monscos, 62, expulsion of, from Spain, 63-64, settlement of, in Rabat, 64 See also Andalusians, Moors Morocco, 14, 18, 20-25, absorption into European trade system, 80-81, 85-87, economy of, see economy of Morocco, European rivalry for possession of, 104, 109, French invasion of, )31-33, political cleavages in seventeenth century, 6667, sovereignty of under French, 137, topography of, 21, "ways of life" in, 26-29 See also colonization, decolonization, Maghrib, Protectorate, French Mosque of Mawlay Sulayman, 122 mosques of Rabat-Sale, 5, 54, 57, 121, 129 See also separate entries mufti, functions of, 129 Muhammad IV, 86, 100-101, 103 Muhammad V, 235-36, 245 Muhammad V University, 317 Muhammad al-Hajj, 69 Muhammad 'Ah, 95 Muhammad ibn 'Abd-Allah, 80, 84, 85, 88, construction in Ribat under, 83, makes Ribaf a secondary capital, 78 Muhammad ibn Ta'ib, 92 Muhammad ibn Tumart, 49 muhtasib (inspector of the markets), 127, 129, 177, French scholarship on, 176, limited powers of, 179-81 Mu'iz al-Din Allah, 42, street in Cairo, 122 mulk land, see land tenure mulk municipal budget/finances, 190, 192, 193-94, 332 municipal governance budgeting of under French system, 180, controls on city planning, 182-85, joint commission established, 177, joint commission fails, 177-78, Municipal Commission established, 179, traditions of, in Moroccan cities, 17576, zoning controls of, 187 See also chef des services municipaux Muslims —Andalusian, 17, settlement of, in Ribit, 6, 64, 67-69, 71

368

INDEX

Muslims (cont ) —Moroccan general population of, 204-206, 239, 243, 263-64, in villes nouvelles, 212-14, occupations of, in Rabat-Sale, 216-19, 1921 percentages of, in Casablanca, Oujda, Rabat, and Sale, 153-54, 1971 percentage of, in Rabat-Sale, 279, percentage of, correlated with budgets, 193-94, population in Rabat-Sale (1952), 20911, spatial distribution of, in RabatSale, 306 al-Mustan$ir, 36, 43 Nagin, Mohamed, 21 In, 233, 330 Nador, 248 Nakhla Mosque, 124 al-Nas.in, Ahmad lbn Khalid, 58, 79, 83, 88, 92 nazir, functions of, 129 New Sala (Slajadid) 64, 68-69, 92 Nile Valley, 11, 13 nomadism as a "way of life," 25-26, in Morocco, 26-29, 106 nomads composing Muslim armies, 30, dynasties originating among, 29, incursions on Rabat by, 84, 118, in lbn Khaldun's theory of social change, 45-46, invasions into Tunisia and Algeria, 23, Saharan route of, 11, settle into Chella, 84, social organization of, 28, 46 Normans (of Sicily), 48, 50 nuwala (portable reed hut), 121, 211n, 316, 329 Ocean (quarter of), 160, 199, 211, 309, 328, mixed population of, 212-14, population and growth rate of, 268 Office Chenfien de l'Habitat, 222-23 Office of Municipal Services, functions of, 183-84, 187 See also chefdes services mumcipaux, municipal governance Orangeries (quarter of), 211, 308, 321, 328, employment in, 260-61, makhzan officials in, 214, population and growth rate of, 268 Ottomans, 16, 17, 23, 37, 60

Oued Zem, 248 Ouezzane, 248 Oujda, 206, budget of 1921 in, 194, French capture of, 98, major land route through, 32, population and ethnic composition of, 153-54, 24851 palace complexes of Rabat, 83, 115, 157, 210, 308, 310 Palace of Justice (Rabat), 199 Palestine, 18, 19, 49 pasha, 184, functions of, 176, 186, 190, limited powers of, 179-81, 183 See also qa'id peasants absorbed into labor force, 203, erosion of livelihood, 102-103 See also agriculture Pelletier, Pierre, 157n, 170, 191 Persia, 15, 18, 35 Petitjean (district), 199 Philip III of Spain, 63 Phoenicians, 9, 13, 23, 34, 35 phosphates, 174, 194, 202, 241, 242, 337, French control over, 137 pirates, piracy, see corsair activity plague of 1799, 84 Plans, National Economic for Morocco Plan for 1960-1964, 244, Plan for 1968-1972, 255, 332, 336, Plan for 1973-1977, 334, 336-37 See also economy of Morocco, planning police force, 127 population of Morocco, 204-205, 239, growth after 1948, 243, growth due to drop in mortality, 229, growth due to natural increase, 204-206, 209, increasing ethnic homogeneity, 25152, projected (1971-2000), 333, urban, 152-53, 247-51 population of Rabat-Sale composition of, in the seventeenth century, 64, distribution according to class, 305, 308-310, 328, growth rate by city quarter, 268, homogeneity of, 281, in 1799, 84, in circa 1900, 114, m 18341921, 152-53, in 1926-51, 208-209, in 1936-1971, 248-51, in 1952-1971, 263-64, in 1970-1982, 333, relation of

INDEX growth to migration, 320 Port Lyautey, see Kenitra port of Rabat, 4, 33, 111, 200, 257, decline of shipping, 119-20, effects of earthquake on, 79, foreign trade in 17th century, 73, in 18th century, 7983, in 19th century, 90, losses to Casablanca, 91, 96-97, taxes imposed on goods, 76 See also corsair activity, economy of Morocco, trade ports, 174, separate systems in colonial zones, 240 See also separate entries Portugal, 10, 17 Post Office building, 199 pottery, 102η, 107 Promotion Nationale, 255 Prost, Henri, 131, 135η, 146, 177n, 180, 182, 199, 201, 213, 214, 221, 223, 224, 229, 256, 272, 308, analysis of migration influx, 161, background and character, 145-46, execution of plan of, 197, failure of plan of, 162, influence on urban expansion, 309, legal innovations of, 168, 188, miscalculation in plan for Rabat, 160, neglect of population growth, 209, 210n, obstacles to urban apartheid, 198, plan of Rabat, 157, plans for villes nouvelles, 146, 155, responsibility of, 146, working methods of, 162n Protectorate, French administrative zone of, 157, allocation of resources, 173, 192, 194-95, attitude toward colonization, 130, civil servants, 151, established, 10, 133, 135, military control over "native quarters," 144, parallel administration established, 174-76, 179-81, partition of Morocco with Spanish, 24, policy of urban planning, 144-45, 147, 150n, 175, 222, powers of governance, 136-37, terminated, 235 Protectorate, Spanish, 10, 24, 240-41 protege system, 87, 98-99, 104, 105 Punic wars, 14, 35, 37 Qabibat, 114, 119, 200, 213, 229, 309, 328

369

qadi (judge), 129, 176 al-Qahira, see Cairo qa'id (governor), 77, 118, functions of, 117, 126-28 Qasbah Amir Tashfin (also called Qasr Bam-Targa), 53 Qasbah of the Gnawi (at Sale), 77, 310 Qasbah of the Udaya, 4, 48, 52, 56, 114, 121, 124, 214,274,306, resettlement of, by Udaya, 91-92, settled by Hornacheros, 63, 67, seventeenth century political conflicts over, 67-69, troops quartered in, 73, 75, united with New Sala, 68 al-Qata'a', 36, 41, 42 Qayrawan, 31, 32, 39, 41, 43 Qishla, 75, 121 quarters (huma) of Rabat, 120-25 See also separate entries Rabat (Ribat al-Fath) as capital 3, 5, 34, 135, 138-39, 151, 201, changes after independence, 235-36, 258, 262-63, essential characteristics of, 3, 73-74, 257, layout of, 4, 6^-65, 114-25, 257, meaning of name, 3, 56, prospects for the future, 339-40, social areas in, 321, 328-30 —history of Ribat as a royal capital, 75, 78, 83, 127, comparative chronology of, 34-39, 44-45, 49-51, conflicts in seventeenth century, 6670, cultural connection with Spain, 61, defense of, 118-19, 127, founding of, 4, 24, 49, 50, 55-56, invasion by Mannids, 58-59, refounding of, 4, 6, 17, 24, 60-61, 63-64, religious/ educational institutions of, 129-30, shifts to nonproductive economy, 106, under Almohads, 55, under Almoravids, 53 Rabat and Sale, relations between, 4, 6, 53, 126, 231-33, 310-11, political conflicts, 6, 67-69, reflect urban hierarchy split, 208 Rabbi, Ρ F , 197-200, 340 al-Rahba, quarter of, 123 railways, 137, 174, 197, 202, 228, built between Casablanca and Rabat, 191,

370

INDEX

railways (cont) separate systems in colonial zones, 240 Rankin, Reginald, 105n, 114, 120 al-Rashid, Mawlay, 72-73, 75, 76 Rawd al-Qirtis, 47 Reconquista, 17, 58, 61 Resident General, powers of, 136, 180 resources, European exploitation of, 174, 224 nba{ (fortified monastery), 3, 46-48, 5253 Riba{ al-Fath, see Rabat Ridjil al-SGff, 122 Rif mountains, 21, 240 roads, 174, 190, 202, between Rabat and Casablanca, 199-200, 225, built in Morocco 1914-1930, 191, separate systems in colonial zones, 240 See also streets Roetenburg Fort (Burj Jadid, Fort Herve), 114, 197 Rome, Romans, 13, 14, 20, 35, urban traditions of, 40-41 rotation in factor analysis, 297-300 Rue des Consuls, 4, 120, 123-25, 198, 199 al-Sababitiyin (market of the shoemakers), 122 See also shoemakers Sablayrolles, Louis, 168n, 176, 184, 189n, 194n Safi, 176, 1921 budget of, 194, population, 248 Sahara, 20-21 See also trade routes trans-Saharan Sala, history of, 17, 52, 59, 70, as royal residence, 52, bombardment by French, 80, constructions under Ya'qub al Mansur, 56-57. eighteenthcentury trade in, 5, founding of, 36, 44-45, Muhammad lbn 'Abd Allah's efforts to control, 80-81, prospers under Marimds, 59, rebellion after Isma'il's death, 78, rejection of exiles from, 64, under Almohads, 54, under Almoravids, 48 See also Sale Sala Colonia, 20, 35, founded by Romans, 38

Salah al-DIn al-Ayyubi (Saladin), 36, 49, 50 Sale, 3, 5-6, 111, 126, bidonvilles in, 116, 233, budget of 1921 in, 194, ecological differentiation inapplicable to, 312-13, ecological structure of, 310-11, 316, 328, economic transformations affecting, 86-87, foreigners not permitted residence in, 126n, incorporation into colonial system, 133, 232-33, low-cost housing in, 231-33, 309, population, 114n, 154, 208-209, 248-51, 258, port of, 5, 52, nationalist movement in, 225, walls of, 5, 126, water supply of, 129 See also medma of Sale, Rabat and Sale, relations between Sallee Rovers, 70 Samarra, 31 sanitation of Rabat, 128, 196n Sanjaha (Almoravids), 46-47 Sauvaget, Jean, 40 Schema de Structure et d'Onentation (SSO), 334-35 Schema Directeur (Master Plan) of Rabat, 147, 264, 265n, 269, 331, 33536 Sefrou, 194, 248 Seljuks, 39, 49 Service Central des Statistiques, 277, 278 Service de l'Urbamsme et de I'Habitat, 225, 228, 232, 233, 235, 253, transferred to Ministry of the Interior, 256, under Ecochard, 223 Service des Beaux-Arts, 144-45n, 183, coordinated by Prost, 146, established by Lyautey, 141, functions of, 182 Settat, 146, 194, 248 Seville, 23, 55, 61 sex ratios, 282-83, in Rabat-Sale, 28283, 289-92, 297-300, 303 Sfax, Tunisia, 50, 132 shari'a, 174, exemptions of European traders, 105, exemptions of Moroccan traders, 98 Shanfian government, 150, land possessed by, 167-68, relation to French Protectorate, 136-37, 174 See

INDEX also Protectorate, French, Sultan shoemakers, 107, 122-23 See also leather Sidi Bougettaya (Sale), 233 Sidi Kacem, 248 Sidi Mahraz, 43 Sidi Makhlouf, 266 Sidi Musa, tomb of (Sale), 77, 310 Sijilmasa, 21, 47 Skirat, 248 social class, see class structure social/economic mobility as solution to caste system, 215, in postcolomal Morocco, 242, 244 social structure of Morocco, changes after independence, 242-44 socio-economic status in Rabat-Sale, 292-94, 297, 299, 300-301, income by housing type, 269-71, in factorial ecology, 287-89, spatial distribution of, 306-21, 328-31 See also class structure of Rabat-Sale Souissi, 118, 273, 308, 310, 317, 321, 328, employment in, 260-61, planned for European expansion, 233, population of, 268 Sous (Sus), 82n, region of, 83 Sousse (Tunisia), 31, 50 South Africa apartheid laws in, xvn, 181, ethnicity and class inseparable in, 288 Spam, Spanish, 4, 17, 54, 55, 71, "accords" of 1859-1860 with Morocco, 85, Almoravids in, 48, as contender for Morocco, 104, 109, captives used in construction of Ribat, 56, colonial possessions of, 100-101, 135, community in Casablanca, 97, culture connection with Ribat, 61, decorative style of, in Rabat, 65-66, expulsion of Moors by, 4, 62-64, extension of Islam to, 16, historic ties with Morocco, 23-25, imposes indemnity on Morocco, 101, 104, indemnity paid to, 108, invades Tetouan, 101, strongholds of, on Moroccan coast, 17, 24, working class in Morocco, 24 Spanish Sahara, 19 spatial organization of Rabat-Sale, 306-

371

10, 316-31, factors influencing growth pattern, 308-309 steamships, 96-97 Stewart, Charles, 109, 163, 191, 193 street alignments, 147 street cleaning, 106n See also sanitation street paving, 106n, 116, 198-99, 200 street system of Moroccan cities French construction of as part of urban apartheid, 146-47, French development of, 191-92, French legislation concerning, 184-85 streets of al-Juza', 121 streets of Rabat, 121-25 passim, boulevards developed by French, 116, connection between medina and ville nouvelle, 157, established at founding, 56, in plan of seventeenth century, 65 See also separate entries Stutfield, Hugh, 114, 118-20 sugar, importation of, 85, 90, 106 Sulayman, Mawlay, 124, signs trade concessions, 84 Sullivan, Anthony, 172n Sultan, 127-28, 137, limited powers of, 96, 99-101, 104, 179 See also separate entries Sunna Mosque, 83, 114, 157, 199 suq, aswaq (market), inspection of, 127, 129 See also separate entries Suq al-Ghazal, 114, 124 Suq al-Talata, 273, 310 Suwayqa (small suq), 122-24, 127, 198 Sweetser, Frank, 275 syndicated building societies, see associations syndicales Syria, 18, 49, urban traditions of, 40 Tabnqat (Sale), 233, 253, 310, economy housing in, 232-33, 266, labor force of, 261-62 Tadouka, 231 Tafilalat, 21, 32, 42 Takadoum, 231, 309, economy housing in, 265, 266, labor force of, 261, population and growth rate of, 268 Tal'a (Sala), 56 Tamarra, 329, 339, fort of, 119 See also Avenue Tamarra Tangiers, 32, 77, 120, population and

372

INDEX

Tangiers (cont) growth rate of, 152, 153, 248 Taroudant, 47, 248 tax rate, postindependence rise in, 244 taxation, precolomal: ad valorem tax imposed by al-Rashid, 76; farida (special levies), 128, gate tax, 118, 128. See also amm al-mustafad, hadiya taxation, under French Protectorate: "benefits" tax, 188; French manipulation of, 174, 192; gate tax, 193. See also tertib tax Taza: budget of, 194; population, 248 Taza Gap, 21, 133; as major land route, 32, trade route interrupted in 1830, 88 Tazi subdivision, 213-14 tea, importation of, 85, 90, 106 Tenes, see Tunis tertib (tartib) tax· defined, 192, distribution of proceeds from, 19395, favors foreigners, 174, 193; regulation changes in, 202-203. See also taxation, under French Protectorate Tetouan, 100, invaded by Spanish, 101, Jews moved to millah of, 84; population of, 152-53, 248; settlement of Moors in, 17 textiles, 88, 103; declining Moroccan production of, 106, 107; importation of, 4, 85, 91, 102, 106 Thami, 231 Thurstone, L L., 297n Timbuctu, 11 Tmmel, 49, 54 Tlemcen, 32; Almoravids defeated at, 49; Man§uriya tower of, 23 topographical surveys, 111-14, 164-65 Torrens Act, 164, 189. See also immatriculation Touargas, see Tuwarqa Tour Hasan, 23, 200, 233, 308, 309, area of, 199, 260-61, 268. See also Hasan Mosque tourism, government investment in, 255, 262, 337 Toynbee, Arnold, 16

trade: as inseparable from piracy, 72, balance of payments, 95-96, 108, 240, 241-42; boom in agricultural prices (1860s), 102; decline of, in Ribat, 82; effects of 1825 famine on, 89-90, foreign, 72, 85, 87, 88, 95; open-door policy of, 109, 111; replaces piracy as economic base, 3-4 See also economy of Morocco; exports, imports, merchants trade agreements and concessions, 81, 95, 98-100, 104. See also economy of Morocco, merchants, European trade routes· disrupted by the French, 88-89, 98; in the Atlantic, 71, shift from Mediterranean to Atlantic, 6061, trans-Saharan, 10-11, 21, 25, 82n, tribal interference with, 78 trade system of Morocco, absorbed into European system, 80-81, 85-87, 102 trames sanitaires, 223, 232, 310, 317, 339; Ecochard's plans for, 226-27, labor force of, in Rabat-Sale, 260-62, land struggle anticipated in, 339 transhumance, see nomadism transport, 200, absence of wheeled vehicles, 190; wheeled vehicles introduced, 191. See also railways, roads Treaty of Fez, 135-36 Trenchant de Lunel, M., 141 "Triangle" (former European quarter in Sale), 311-13,328 Triangle Park (Rabat), 157, 168 Tripoli (Lebanon), 31 Tripoli (Libya), 11, 50 Tnpolitania, 43 Tunis, 11, 31, 32; as capital under Hafsids, 37, 59; comparative chronology of, 34-43, 48-51; corsair activity in, 70; settlement of Spanish Muslims in, 17, 62, Turkish regency extended to, 60 Tunisia, 11, 14, 20, 21; Andalusian influence in, 24; colonization of, 103, foreign investment in, 241-42, French invasion of, 18, 132; incorporation into Ottoman empire, 23;

INDEX incorporation into world market, 103; independence of, 18; links with Italy, 24, land ownership of Europeans in, 105n; municipal governance in, 175; nomadic invasions into, 23. See also Ifnqiya Tuwarqa, 114, 116, 125, 213, 308; household sample for, 278; makhzan officials in, 214, palace complex of, 115, 210, water supply of, 129 'Ubayd 'Abd-AUah al-Mahdi, 42 al-Ubira (quarter of), 121; policing of, 127 Udayajaysh tribe, 77, 119, 309, 329, 339, dispersal of, by Sultan, 92, housing of, 121, rebellion of, 91; stationed at Ribat, 83; subdued by loyal tribes, 83 Umayyads: caliphate at Cordoba, 16, 40-41, 45, 61, influences between Spam and Morocco of, 23 unemployment —in Morocco, increase after 1971, 247, 1961 program to relieve, 245 —in Rabat-Sale, 201, 259-60, 280-81, 291, 297, 299, 300, 302, 306 —See also employment; labor force Union Nationale des Forces Populaires, 245 United States ethnicity in, 288, foreign aid of, 336, military bases of, 241, zoning laws in, 187, 189 'Uqba lbn Nafi', 35, 39 urban apartheid, see apartheid, urban urban design· influences of Ribat, 48, 50, 61, 65 See also architecture urban legislation, see legislation, French urban urban planning in Morocco, 156, 183, 1%, 222-23, 231, 253; incorporated into economic development, 334; phases of, during Protectorate, 201, 221-22, 224; Prost's activities, 146, 155; successors of Ecochard, 233-35. See also villes nouvelles urban planning in Rabat: ideology of, 335-36; self-help encouraged, 338. See also housing; land; Prost; Schema

373

Directeur; ville nouvelle of Rabat urban system of Morocco, 11, 33, bifurcation of, 150-52, 204, 206-207, 247, 249, 251; Ecochard's conception of, 225, Lyautey's conception of, 138-39; regional economies at independence, 240 urbanization: alternation between coasts and inland, 30-31; during Protectorate, 206-207, 247-52; of North Africa, 30-34 al-Usa'a, 121 Vaillat, Leandre, 177n Vandals, 14, 35, 39 ville nouvelle of Rabat, described by Rabbe, 197, Moroccan residents of, 221; planned by Prost, 146, 147; relation to medina, 155, 157, streets paved in, 192 Villeme, Louis, 212-14, 231 villes nouvelles, 212-14; budget allocations for, 190; development of, 145-47; land expropriation for, 166, planned by Prost, 147 Vinogradov, Amal, 27 Visigoths, 14 voine, reglement de, 182, 183, 184-86, 188 walls of Rabat, 65, 75, 114-19, 157, 197; Almohad section of, 116; "Andalusian" wall, 115, 308 Waqqasa, 123, 124 water supply of Rabat, 54, 128-29, 196, aqueduct destroyed, 58 "ways of life" in Middle East, 25-29 Weber, Max, 118, 216 Weisberger, F , 117n, 128n Wharton, Edith, 146, 199 women: as household heads, 283, 29192, 297, 298, 300, 303; education of, 280, 284, 291, 300-301, employment of, 217, 220, 281, 284, 290, 298, 301303. See also family organization wool, 107; drop in demand for, 102, export of, 5, 85, export prohibited, 89, export restrictions lifted, 90, 96 World Bank, 262-63n, 336

374

INDEX

Yacoub al-Mansour (district, cite), see Ya'qub al-Mansur Ya'qub al-Mansur, Abu Yusuf, 43, 77, 83, 115, deathbed confessions, 52, founding of Ribat, 36, 55-57 Ya'qub al-Man§Gr (Cite de Yacoub alMansour), 157, 232, 269, 274, 309, construction of, under Ecochard, 227-29, labor force of, 261, low-cost housing in, 265, 266, recent construction project in, 338, relocation of Douar Dabbagh residents to, 223 Yazid, Mawlay, 83, 84 Youssoufia (city), 248 Youssoufia (district), 231, 253, 309,

low-cost housing in, 265, population of, 268 Yusuf, Mawlay, 136 Yusuf lbn Tashfin, 47

Za'ir, tribe of, 116n, 117, 119 Zamalik (Cairo), 272 Zammur, tribe of, 117n, 119 Zanata, 44 Zaytuniya (Tunis) mosque, 41, street, 122 Zerhoun, 79 Zidan Ahmad al-Mansur, Mawlay, 63, 64 Zinds, 43

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Abu-Lughod, Janet L Rabat, urban apartheid in Morocco. (Princeton studies on the Near East) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Rabat, Morocco—Social conditions. I. Title. II. Series. HN782.R33A28 964'.3 80-7508 ISBN 0-691-05315-4 ISBN 0-691-10098-5 (pbk.)