Fifteen volumes on the history of Morocco, and two on al-Andalus. Nothing is told here: here is what is actually known, and every claim carries its source — who wrote it, in what, when, and on which page. Where scholars disagree it says so, and where something is uncertain it says that too.
A source for every claim, no exceptions
What is disputed is marked as disputed
From the earliest inhabitants to Tamazight in the constitution
In the making
Not one volume of this is for sale and not one chapter is published. A chapter only opens once its sources have been consulted one by one — read, not merely found. What follows is the intended division, and that too may shift once the research is done.
The books
Book 1
The land and its earliest inhabitants
to ± 1000 BCE
Landscape, climate and archaeology: what the ground says about who lived here before anything was written down. It starts with the landscape itself, because the Atlas, the Rif, the Souss and the Sahara explain the rest of the series.
Book 2
Mauretania, Carthage and Rome
± 1000 BCE – 5th century
Phoenician and Punic contact along the coast, the kingdom of Mauretania, the Roman province of Mauretania Tingitana and the towns that go with it. It runs until the town stops being Roman rather than to a political date: that is what the excavations show.
Book 3
The first Islamic centuries and the making of Fez
7th – 10th century
The arrival of Islam, the early dynasties, and Fez from settlement to city. What happened to the older population belongs here too: this is not an empty country starting over.
Book 4
The Almoravids, the Sahara and Marrakesh
11th – 12th century
A movement that comes out of the south, the trans-Saharan trade that carries it, and the city that comes of it. The trade routes are not the backdrop here but the subject.
Book 5
The Almohads in the Maghreb and al-Andalus
12th – 13th century
An empire that covered both sides of the Strait. It points forward to the al-Andalus series instead of doing it over.
Book 6
The Marinids: Fez, learning and the city
13th – 15th century
Madrasas, architecture and urban growth. The volume where knowledge and teaching carry the story instead of battles.
Book 7
A century of breaks: coasts, ports and new powers
15th – 16th century
The late medieval and early modern period: Portuguese and Spanish footholds on the coast, regional powers inland, and the question of who holds the ports. The brief calls this volume “political and regional changes”; that is an empty title for a century in which the coast decides everything.
Book 8
The Saadians: Marrakesh, sugar and gold
16th – early 17th century
Trade, buildings and the battles the sources actually carry. What is said about the battle of Ksar el-Kebir and about the march on Songhai belongs here with its sources and with the doubt attached.
Book 9
The Alaouites, Meknes and the making of a state
17th – 18th century
State formation, diplomacy with Europe and the Atlantic world, and the building of Meknes.
Book 10
The nineteenth century: trade, reform and pressure from outside
1800 – 1912
Towns, trade treaties, attempts at reform, and the growing European presence that ends in the protectorate.
Book 11
Protectorate, resistance and independence
1912 – 1956
The French and the Spanish protectorate, the Rif, regional histories that do not fit one national story, and the road to 1956.
Book 12
Since 1956: society, cities and diaspora
1956 – now
Politics, urban growth, migration and the communities outside Morocco. The volume closest to the reader, and for that reason the one that asks for the most restraint: take nobody’s side, but show what is being argued over.
Book 13
Cities and places down the centuries
Thematic. Per city the whole timeline in one run, for the reader who comes in by a place rather than by a century.
Book 14
Regions, landscapes and routes
Thematic. Rif, Atlas, Souss, Atlantic coast, oases, Sahara and the routes between them. Here are the histories that drop out the moment you divide things up by dynasty.
Book 15
People, languages, knowledge and daily life
Thematic. Communities, languages, religion, craft, farming, architecture, science and ordinary life — the volume where the encyclopedia is about people instead of rulers.
Al-Andalus
Book 1
Al-Andalus: what it was and how it came to be
It begins with what “al-Andalus” means in the sources, how that differs by period and by author, and why it is not the same thing as today’s Andalusia. Then the Iberian history itself.
Book 2
Across the Strait: cities, learning and communities
Cities, scholars, architecture and the communities that lived there, and the connections with North Africa without turning al-Andalus into the prehistory of Morocco. Where volume 1 ends and volume 2 begins is not settled: that should come out of the research, not out of a convenient split.
One message as soon as a new part is out. No ads, and unsubscribing takes one click.
