Orit Ouaknine-Yekutieli, Thami al-Glaoui: Morocco’s Greatest Pasha, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2024, 264 pp., $108.07 (hardcover), ISBN 978-1399520676

Reviewed by Sadik Rddad
Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University, Fes, Morocco

Orit Ouaknine-Yekutieli’s book entitled Thami al-Glaoui: Morocco’s Greatest Pasha developed from the author’s fascination with the mysterious story of Thami al-Glaoui, the great qaʾid (tribal leader) of the Amazigh Glaoua tribe in southern Morocco’s Telouet region. It examines the (hi)story of al-Glaoui in its personal, local, and national frameworks, in connection with the broader context of global history. It has the merit of addressing the history of this influential local figure beyond a parochial local narrative and of exploring the history of Morocco as it was evolving in a broader context of international interdependencies and interconnectedness. “The biographical turn” that this book espouses earns its importance not in its focus on the life of al-Glaoui per se, but in his interactions with others, and in connecting the national and colonial narratives. The author builds on a vast number of biographical, historical, and political details to craft out a comprehensive and nuanced image of al-Glaoui’s remarkable presence in the contemporary history of Morocco.

The book emphasizes the intertextuality of the complex “text” of al-Glaoui’s life with broader narratives of influential national and foreign political figures, and the intersectionality between the local, national, and global macro-politics. Yekutieli aligns with a global history that rejects a parochial approach which has a penchant towards narrow “nation-state frameworks based on monographs of specific locales, and micro-histories,” and which is blind to broader networks of interdependencies. Drawing on the works of Saunier and Iriye 2009; Chartier 2011: 8; Beckert 2015; Conrad 2016: 5; Schayegh 2017; Ram 2020, she opts for a new orientation that transcends local and national borders, exploring a world in “which things, people, ideas, capital, commodities and institutions are in constant flux and exchange” (p. 13).

There are several reasons that made the archival material related to al-Glaoui mysterious and problematic. These include the mystery of the man himself and his life, the “sensitive” nature of the archives and their dispersal between Morocco and France, as well as the contradictory political judgements and impressions of the archivists. The purpose of this book is to shed light on the controversial saga of the al-Glaoui family as it was adapting the Qaidal system to the purposes of the French Protectorate and to the expansion of the territorial economic authority of the family. But rather than engaging directly and exclusively with the story of al-Glaoui, Yekutieli intelligently examines an accumulative set of stories told and retold about him to underscore the network of relationships he was engaged with. Using the metaphor of the palimpsest as deployed by Gerart Genette, stressing how “one text can become superimposed upon another, which it does not quite conceal but allows to show through,” she reveals how different tales about al-Glaoui lend themselves to a multiplicity of interpretations and positionalities, as they are more about the tellers than the grand qā’id himself. While the nationalists dismiss him together with the memory of the Qaidal System as a form of betrayal, corruption and brutal power, the official narrative celebrates his loyalty to the Makhzen and the monarchy, the derogatory line of thought and representation highlights the family’s low origins as “harratin”, the postcolonial judgment of historians such as Abdallah Laroui vilifies the old local elite collaborators with French colonialism as “a parasitic class”, and yet another narrative romanticized al-Glaoui as a charismatic figure, comparing him with the legendary eighth-century Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid, an epitome of spectacular bravery, generosity, and erudition (p. 49).

Broadening the scope of the “biographic turn,” this book goes beyond the life story of al-Glaoui to delve into the biographies of people from a wide range of positions and nations who wrote about him. These include the French Paul Schoen and Gustave Babin, the British Gavin Maxwell, the Moroccan Albert Berdugo and Abdessadeq El Glaoui, who represent three empires—the Sharifian (Moroccan), the French and the British. This perspective helps the author trace the global transition to the postcolonial era, allowing for a more comprehensive and multi-layered narrative of events.

One of the strengths of Yekutieli’s work is that it relies, in line with its main argument, on a multiplicity of sources ranging from books, newspaper articles, archival sources and online social media, to interviews. To appreciate “history from below,” to use the terms of the Subaltern Studies Group, the author interviewed “ordinary” Moroccan people in Morocco as well as in the diaspora. Yekutieli gives the story/history of al-Glaoui a posthumous afterlife.

Babin becomes a key figure in the process of weaving a comprehensive picture of al-Glaoui’s tale. Through his propagandistic writings and long-standing journalistic career, most notably his newspaper L’Ère Française (The French Era), Babin’s presence in Morocco, framed as part of the French “civilizing mission,” earned him the prestigious title of “the imperial storyteller.” Yekutieli argues that the vulnerable and powerful nature that characterized Babin as an “imperial storyteller” made him simultaneously useful and feared, vulnerable and feared. On the one hand, he lauded and justified the protectorate in Morocco; on the other hand, the creation of his own newspaper in Casablanca prompted him to launch his criticism against the malfunctioning of the protectorate, especially since France allowed al-Glaoui to enjoy expanding influence. Babin launched a fierce press campaign against al-Glaoui, accusing him of tyrannical rule in Marrakech and fraudulent financial gain. He dismissed him as an imposter and murderer whose own self-aggrandizement blinded into sacrificing French values. For Babin, Yekutieli’s book emphasizes, the French Protectorate in Morocco could have avoided moral and actual collapse by “immediate deposition of al-Glaoui” (p. 62). This move, Babin stressed, would certainly have saved both France and Morocco.

Significantly, the book reveals that the Babin/al-Glaoui conflict was negotiated over identity politics prevalent during the heyday of French colonialism. The encounter between two different cultures and communities in Morocco imposed a mixed context where identity was pivotal “in property rights, individual and legal status, self-imagining and power relations” (p. 84). The prevalent racist rhetoric in France, nurtured by the far right, involved Babin in identity politics based on racial hierarchies and the slogan that "Frenchness matters.” Babin caustically criticized al-Glaoui’s encroachment on Frenchness. His claim that he was as French as the French was a source of chaos and threat to French identity. Babin deplored that al-Glaoui managed to create a political lobby in Paris for his own interests. He sarcastically referred to them as “the Glaoua tribe on Oued Seine” (p. 86). This allowed the feudal leader to have an influence over events not only in Morocco, but also dangerously in France itself. Beyond France and Morocco, al-Glaoui enjoyed unprecedented popularity in imperial Europe prior to the Second World War. He was seen as “the Sultan of the Atlas” in British narratives and possibly as “the Prince of the South” in Germany. 

Thami al-Glaoui: Morocco’s Greatest Pasha provides invaluable insights on al-Glaoui’s antagonistic relationship with the monarchy and Moroccan nationalists; the rapprochement between the two political forces accelerated the course of the split with him. This split is discussed in line with the central argument of the book: “the intricate relationship between story and history” (p. 110). It showcases how a historical event, which really happened and whose protagonists are real, fans off into a myriad of stories that do not match and even contradict each other, leading to a thought-provoking multi-track historical narrative. Yekutieli takes the 1950 Mulud as a symbolic moment of (hi)story that marked the rupture between the Sultan and al-Glaoui, a split triggered by their conflicting attitudes to the nationalists. She uses the Japanese film Rashomon, which by sheer coincidence, came at the same time as the “preparations for the event were stepped up at the Sultan’s palace” (p. 110). Like the Mulud event, the film presents different accounts of the same dramatic event, stressing that the different versions and interpretations are not inventions, but rather all equally genuine. The “Rashmond effect” applies well to the various stories that unfolded following the Mulud event. In spite of the visible differences between the narratives related to the same event, they all agree that the root cause behind the expulsion of al-Glaoui from the palace was the controversy over the nationalists’ role in the Moroccan political scene. Al-Glaoui demanded that they should be outlawed while the Sultan thought that they should be tolerated.

The Independence of Morocco in 1956 reduced the number of powers struggling for power from four, the Sultan and his court, the nationalists, the French protectorate and Qaidism led by al-Glaoui, to two, namely the Sultan and the nationalists. Yekutieli’s book argues that while the fall of al-Glaoui reduced the danger that could come from the Amazigh dynasties, especially since the French increasingly advocated a divide-and-rule policy based on an Amazigh separatist discourse, it led to concerns about a potential bipolar power balance. The monarchy’s urgent need for pashas and qaʾids to counterbalance and check the growing aspirations of the nationalists did not, however, excuse the unforgivable role he played in the deposition of Sultan Mohammed V in 1953. The book suggests that this was the reason why a great proportion of the post-1950s historiography on al-Glaoui focuses on the last five years of his life.

The book devotes a whole chapter to al-Glaoui’s special relationship with the Moroccan Jews. Here again, story and history, myth and reality, dissolve into one another. Interestingly, the chapter uses the personal relationship with Moroccan Jewish journalist Albert Berdugo to explore the relationship between the Pasha and the Jews in general. It gives insightful reflections on the Moroccan Jewish community as they struggled “with issues of loyalty, and with the question of whether to stay in Morocco or leave” (p. 142). It brings to the fore a story that is completely different from that of the anti-Jewish perspective of Babin about the distinct historical, sociological, anthropological, and cultural aspects of the Glaoua family/Jewish encounter. The book provides an “archeology of Moroccan culture” in the 1950s: superstition, supernatural interferences, conspiracy, myth, and sainthood. The Pasha’s relation with the Jews is permeated by a protector-protégé pattern built on fear and respect, and is similar to the Jewish community’s ties with the monarchy. In both cases, the Jews were efficiently instrumental in trading, translation, secretarial services, and legal, business, and financial consultation and representation. This relation as it is narrated by Berdugo goes beyond the lives of the main actors as it is “eternalized” through storytelling and literary productions.

The book takes the reader from Berdugo’s pro-al-Glaoui (hi)story documenting the 1950s to Gavin Maxwell’s perspective of the critical 1960s. Its importance is manyfold: firstly, it revives interest in the controversial and multi-faceted life of al-Glaoui; secondly, it provides valuable information about Moroccan history for the anglophone readership; thirdly, it is an indispensable read for the of travelers; and finally, it constitutes important “reflections on fieldwork in Morocco” at a very sensitive period of the country. Yekutieli reads Maxwells’ Lords of the Atlas within a politics of forgetting and remembering that was typical of the decolonizing ideology of Moroccan historiography during the State-building phase. In line with this logic, al-Glaoui’s was present by force of its absence, as it was subject to historiographic amnesia and silencing. Official erasure of al-Glaoui’s chapter in the history of Morocco is substituted by narratives that thrived as side stories within other tales, but that were clearly influenced by the official narrative that dismissed him as a traitor and collaborator with the French. The book argues that both post-colonial and colonial discourses on al-Glaoui are essentially binary and politically motivated. Conversely, Maxwell’s story underscores the complexity and multi-dimensionality of the Pasha, moving away from the dichotomizing colonial and post-colonial approaches. 

Chapter 7 entitled “‘I am a Moroccan and a Berber’: al-Glaoui and Amazighness,” discusses the (hi)story of al-Glaoui within the debate over Amazigh identity rhetoric. Al-Glaoui’s identity politics, as articulated through his statement “I am neither an American nor British. I am a Moroccan and a Berber,” places his story within a cultural politics that further reinforces the complexity of his presence in the Moroccan historiographic trajectory. The telling or non-telling of al-Glaoui’s presence in contemporary history is seen within a systematic tendency to erase Amazigh symbolic figures from Moroccan historiography. “Collective amnesia” to Amazigh past is ideological, just as it is caused by a prevalent criticism of the qaʾidal system implemented by French colonizers, and represented by al-Glaoui. The author argues that the absence of al-Glaoui in the various lists of Amazigh historic figures, both ancient and contemporary, is less caused by his Amazighness than by “his debatable conduct, which is also potentially destructive for the Amazigh cause in Morocco.” 

Major changes in human rights conditions and in Morocco’s political life in the 1990s and the turn of the third millennium, transformed the reception of the legacy of al-Glaoui. The expansion of the scope of historical research in Morocco and the opening of a “Moroccan national archive, granting free access to documents relating to the history of Morocco” allowed for contestation and competition between contradictory memories and perspectives. This new orientation is manifest in literary production, including Mahi Binebine’s novel The Shadow of the Poet, 1997, which marks a new and more complex approach to the (hi)story of al-Glaoui. The Arabic translation of Babin’s Son Excellence in 1999 revives al-Glaoui’s one-dimensional image as total evil. This image is fully contradicted by al-Glaoui’s son whose book Le ralliement: Le Glaoui, mon père (The Rallying: Glaoui, My Father) celebrates the grandeur and splendor of al-Glaoui’s public image, highlighting his openness, liberalism, modernity, and his love of music, theatre and cinema. Over the last decades, the controversial and ever-changing image of al-Glaoui, which tells us more about the teller than about the protagonist, has made its way into social media, where comments on his legacy have ranged between condemnation of his misconduct and commendation of his contribution to restoring prestige to geographies that were relegated to the margin.

Orit Ouaknine-Yekutieli’s Thami al-Glaoui: Morocco’s Greatest Pasha is a must-read for both historians, scholars, and ordinary readers. It is an excellent addition to the bibliography on Moroccan contemporary history and cultural politics. It manages to demystify the historiographic and historic intriguing mysteries of the life al-Glaoui beyond a reductive simplistic perspective and within a complex broader context of local, national, global, colonial and postcolonial interactions. The book contributes an important set of biographic and historical pieces to complete the ever-growing and endless puzzle of al-Glaoui’s (hi)story. The open-ended posthumous controversy over his legacy will certainly be a productive site for more literary, cinema, and myth production.