In this podcast, the founder and director of the Chi Stage Project, Ayoub el Jamal, hosts the Tangier native and based singer and songwriter, Sarah Ariche, to speak about her life background, among other things. This podcast leads us through the alleys and walks of Sarah's life, background, influences, experiences, artistic career, among other things from her childhood to the present day.

We hope that you enjoy her stories and share it with your friends and entourage.

The Tangier ALC is inviting Dr. Alex Kolker, Associate Professor at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium for a talk at the American Legation Museum. Dr. Kolker was in Morocco for one year on a Fulbright Scholar grant to conduct research on how sea-level dynamics influence coastal processes and resiliency along the Moroccan coast.

"Coasts are naturally dynamic systems governed by many forces as the land, sea and atmosphere meet. More recently, human factors, ranging from local development to accelerating sea level rise and global climate change are further impacting these systems. This talk will provide an overview of coastal changes globally, the impacts of these changes along Morocco's coast, and strategies for a resilient coastal future."

This podcast was recorded by: Ayoub el Jamal

Edited by: Abdelbaar Mounadi Idrissi

Lawrence Peskin, a history professor at Morgan State University in Baltimore, is in Tangier to research the life of James Simpson, America’s first consul to Morocco (1797-1820). He is doing so as part of a larger book project that traces the development of the Early National American community in the Mediterranean region by studying the lives and networks of three consuls. In addition to Simpson, he is studying Robert Montgomery of Alicante, Spain and Thomas Appleton of Livorno, Italy.

In addition to the many sources in the library at TALIM, he has benefitted from the opportunity to be able to walk around Tangier and understand the local geography. In doing so he has struggled to identify the remains of the 18th and early 19th century town and, particularly, the various consular houses in which members of the roughly 150-member European community resided.

In the pod cast and in a more detailed blog post (http://legation.ipower.com/blog/?p=2085,) he discusses his efforts to find the location of the first American consular house (before the current American Legation) and Simpson’s country villa, “Mount Washington.”

Further Reading:

Luella J. Hall, The United States and Morocco 1776-1956 (NJ, 1971)

Frank Lambert, The Barbary Wars: American Independence in the Atlantic World (NY, 2005)

Richard B. Parker, Uncle Sam in Barbary (Florida, 2004)

Priscilla H. and Richard S. Roberts, Thomas Barclay (1728-1793):Consul in France, Diplomat in Barbary (PA 2008)

Johanna Sluiter is a PhD Candidate at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU where she is writing a dissertation on the Atelier des Bâtisseurs and the development of habitat in post-war architecture. She is currently an associate researcher at the École Normale Supérieure d’Architecture Belleville in Paris and a Chester Dale Fellow at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

In 1949, the Atelier des Bâtisseurs (ATBAT) founded their first overseas bureau in Tangiers, Morocco. Having split with their mentor, Le Corbusier, and garnered worldwide attention for their first building site, the Unité d’Habitation in Marseille, ATBAT sought to expand its practice beyond France by establishing ATBAT-Afrique,before embarking upon future plans for ATBAT-Orient and ATBAT-Amérique,to be installed in Beirut and New York, respectively. This initial work abroad would therefore serve as both a critical test and potential catalyst for the young multinational, multidisciplinary firm. It would demonstrate the ability (or lack thereof) of European-trained architects to respond to contexts defined by radically new cultures, climates, and clients than they had previously addressed or even considered, and would articulate their idea of ‘habitat’ – a comprehensive framework for universal building – in visual form. This podcast addresses methodological approaches and challenges in researching ATBAT’s theoretical and concrete developments of habitat in Morocco before tracing the afterlives of these projects in adjacent Algeria, far-flung Cambodia, and ultimately returning to the Parisian suburbs at the end of the decade.

Further Reading on ATBAT

- Vladimir Bodiansky, Charte de l'Habitat du cercle d'études architecturales (Paris: UNESCO, 1955).

- Alison and Peter Smithson, "Collective Housing in Morocco," Architectural Design 25 (January 1955): 2-8.

- Marion Tournon-Branly, "History of ATBAT and its Influence on French Architecture," Architectural Design 35 (January 1965): 20-24.

Further Reading on the Development of (Modern) Architecture in the Maghreb

- Tom Avermaete and Maristella Casciato, Casablanca, Chandigarh: A Report on Modernization (Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture; Zurich: Park Books, 2014).

- Jean-Louis Cohen, "The Moroccan Group and the Theme of Habitat," Rassegna 14.52 (1992): 58-67.

- Jean-Louis Cohen and Monique Eleb, Casablanca: Mythes et figures d'une aventure urbaine (Paris: Hazan, 1998).

- Jean-Louis Cohen, Nabila Oulebsir, Youcef Kanoun and Dominique Delaunay, Alger: paysage urbain et architecture, 1800-2000 (Paris: Éditions de l'Imprimeur, 2003).

- Samia Henni, Architecture of Counterrevolution: The French Army in Northern Algeria (Zurich: gta Verlag, 2017).

- Paul Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989).

On Monday, September 30 2019, James Miller spoke with TALIM Director John Davison about the joint Moroccan-American archaeological project at the site of ancient Sijilmasa and the publication of book, “The Last Civilized Place: Sijilmasa and Its Saharan Destiny” (University of Texas Press, 2015). “The Last Civilized Place,” written by Miller and Project Director Ronald Messier, recounts the story of the Project, its archaeological findings, and places Sijilmasa in the context of Moroccan and Islamic history, revealing the 1000-year history of the caravan center as a focus of trans-Saharan trade and focal point of dynastic change.

The conversation led to a wide variety of topics associated with Sijilmasa: its origins in the second century A.H. and the establishment of the Midrarid dynasty and their Sufri religious background, the significance of the surrounding irrigated oasis landscape of the Tafilalt, the unprotected nature of the site of Sijilmasa today and the threats to it posed by the growth of the adjacent modern town of Rissani. The relations Sijilmasa long held with ancient Ghana and successor states south of the Sahara were rooted in the element of trade for which Sijilmasa was known far and wide from its earliest days, namely gold. Gold, African gold, was Sijilmasa’s fame, and the city and its caravans and commercial reach were the result of its long-held monopoly on the trans-Saharan gold trade.

James Miller received his PhD in cultural geography from the University of Texas and taught in the Department of History and Geography at Clemson University (South Carolina, USA) for 28 years. Upon retiring from Clemson, Miller became the Executive Director of the Moroccan-American Commission for Educational & Cultural Exchange (MACECE – Fulbright Morocco) in 2009 and retired from that position in 2018. Miller was, 2007-2010, President of AIMS and since 2018 has been Vice President of the organization. He serves on the boards of TALIM and CorpsAfrica. Miller is the co-author of the geography textbook, A Question of Place (Wiley) and the monography The Last Civilized Place: Sijilmasa and Its Saharan Destiny (University of Texas Press), and the author of Imlil: A Modern Moroccan Geography (Westview). Miller was a political officer in the U.S. Foreign Service and, retired, lives in Skaneateles, New York.

This episode was recorded at the Moroccan-American Commission for Educational and Cultural Exchange (MACECE) in Rabat on September 18, 2019.

In this podcast, Emma Snowden, a PhD candidate at the University of Minnesota, discusses how medieval Almohad chronicles understood the role of the caliphate in the Iberian Peninsula. The swift takeover of North Africa and al-Andalus by the Almohads in the twelfth century has been referred to as a “revolution” by some scholars, a view that is often reflected in medieval texts from the caliphate. The Almohads sought to distinguish themselves from the preceding Almoravid dynasty in every respect, waging holy war against all those who opposed them, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

In this podcast, Emma suggests that chroniclers like Ibn Ṣāḥib al-Ṣalāt employed a kind of logic of resurrection, framing the Almohad conquest of al-Andalus as a sequence of corruption, destruction, and ultimate revival. A similar logic of resurrection can be identified in earlier Christian Iberian chronicles that dealt with the role of Maghribis and Muslims in Iberia. Emma considers the two historiographical traditions together, exploring the extent to which they suggest a shared literary-historical imagination in which the mutual ideological problem of competing Muslim and Christian claims to power over the same territory was conceptually resolved by presenting that space as a slate to be wiped clean by individual dynasties.

Emma is currently at work on her dissertation, “Bridging the Strait: The Shared History of Iberia and North Africa in Medieval Muslim and Christian Chronicles,” which explores how medieval writers narrated moments when North Africans controlled people and territory in Iberia, and vice versa. She was able to conduct research in Rabat and Tangier with the generous support of a short-term research grant from the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS). Emma recently published an article titled “Islam as the Source of All Wonders: Arab and Islamic Identity in al-Saraqusṭī’s Maqāmāt al-luzūmiyya” in the spring 2019 issue of La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Her article can be found at: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/729894 .

Bennison, Amira K. “Almohad Tawḥīd and its Implications for Religious Difference.” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 2, no. 2 (June 1, 2010): 195–216.

———. The Almoravid and Almohad Empires. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016.

Buresi, Pascal, and Hicham El Aallaoui. Governing the Empire: Provincial Administration in the Almohad Caliphate (1224-1269). Critical Edition, Translation, and Study of Manuscript 4752 of the Hasaniyya Library in Rabat Containing 77 Taqadim (“appointments”). Translated by Travis Bruce. Boston: Brill, 2013.

Fierro, Maribel. “Alfonso X ‘The Wise’: The Last Almohad Caliph?” Medieval Encounters 15, no. 2-4 (2009): 175–98.

Fromherz, Allen. “North Africa and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance: Christian Europe and the Almohad Islamic Empire.” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 20, no. 1 (2009): 43–59.

———. The Almohads: The Rise of an Islamic Empire. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2010.

Jones, Linda G. “The Preaching of the Almohads: Loyalty and Resistance across the Strait of Gibraltar.” Medieval Encounters 19, no. 1–2 (2013): 71–101.

Wolf, Kenneth Baxter, trans. Conquerors and Chroniclers of Early Medieval Spain. 2nd ed. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999.

Grâce au soutien du Musée de la Légation Américain, le festival Youmein a pu inviter le conteur et artiste pluridisciplinaire algérien Fayçal Belattar à participer à sa 5ème édition autour de la thématique du « Désir ». Dans cette conversation enregistré le 25 Juillet 2019, avec Zakaria Alilech, un des cofondateurs du festival, l’artiste parle de son parcours, son rapport avec le conte du point de vu artistique et historique, son acharnement à contribuer à sa preservation en tant qu’expression artistique à part entière, et son projet pour le festival Youmein.

Youmein est un festival de 48 heures qui invite des artistes de toutes disciplines à produire des créations à partir d’un thème préétabli en deux jours, en invitant aussi le public à découvrir et suivre les processus de création d’œuvres artistiques. Le festival s’achève avec l’exposition des projets, présentés en œuvres finies ou en work in progress, mais également les éventuelles collaborations nées des rencontres entre les artistes pendant les deux jours de résidence.

Au cours de cette résidence, la réflexion et l’écriture de Fayçal Belattar étaient portées sur une déviation consistant à déplacer la pulsion du corps présenté par l’orientalisme sur un autre support de représentation, il s’agissait de chercher de quelle manière on peut la reproduire dans un medium autre que pictural, en l’occurrence dans les arts de la parole (conte et récit), la musique et d’autres disciplines artistiques. Ce travail a abouti à une collaboration avec l’artiste peintre Vanesa Moreno intitulée « DÉSIRS ET CENDRES », à l’intervalle de deux mondes aux moyens d’expression différents mais en parfaite symbiose.

Le 23 Mai 2019 à 21h30 nous avons accueilli une conférence organisée par Business étiquette sous le thème: l’image de la femme dans l’Islam et la culture contemporaine. Mme Chamsdoha Al Boraki, experte en communication avance le questionnement suivant: la représentation que l’on se fait actuellement de la femme musulmane découle t’elle du texte fondateur de l’Islam, du Coran où est elle le résultat de la récupération culturelle? Elle souligne, « Il ne s’agit pas pour nous de changer les préceptes de l’Islam ou de faire une lecture sélective du texte coranique mais de relire le texte à la lumière des valeurs suprêmes de notre religion, celles de la justice, du Bien, de la miséricorde, de la Piété » Shamsdoha Al Boraki. L’ intervenante a fait fait une lecture académicienne qui ouvre le débat, le but était de restituer le rôle et le pouvoir de la femme dans la société son rôle de battante, de chef de famille , de politicienne... rôle qui a été restreint à la sphère familiale lors du décès du prophète.

This episode was recorded on August 23rd 2019, at the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies. In this podcast, we welcome David Balgley, Masters candidate in Arab Studies at Georgetown University, discussing his research project entitled: Land, Labor, and Youth Aspirations in the Gharb, Morocco.

In this podcast episode, David discusses some of the factors impacting the labor decisions of young people in the Gharb, including the ways in which gender, class, and access to productive capital create and constrain the opportunities for youth in the Moroccan countryside. In addition, he breaks down how young rural people negotiate the tension between maintaining social ties to their ancestral land with economic pressures to migrate. In this context, David explores how the privatization of collective land in the Gharb could stimulate new labor possibilities, livelihood shifts, and youth aspirations.

Further reading

Akesbi, Najib. 2012. “A new strategy for agriculture in Morocco: The Green Morocco Plan”. New Medit 11 (2): 12-23.

Balgley, David. 2019. “Assembling Land Access and Legibility.” In The Politics of Land, edited by Tim Bartley (117-142). Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited.

Bidwell, R. 1973. Morocco Under Colonial Rule: French Administration of Tribal Areas 1912-1956. London: Frank Cass and Co.

Bossenbroek, Lisa, Jan D. van der Ploeg, and Margreet Zwarteveen. 2015. “Broken dreams? Youth experiences of agrarian change in Morocco’s Saiss region”. Cah Agric 24(6): 342-348

Bouzidi, Zhour, Nicolas Faysse, Marcel Kuper, and Jean-Paul Billaud. 2015. “Les Projets Des Jeunes Ruraux : Des Stratégies Diversifiées Pour Accéder Au Foncier et Obtenir l’appui de l’État.” Alternatives Rurales, Hors Série Jeunes Ruraux: 13–24.

Faysse, Nicolas, Zhour Bouzidi, Zakaria Zadiri, Elhassane Abdellaoui, and Zoubir Chattou. 2015. “Les Jeunes Ruraux Aujourd’hui.” Alternatives Rurales, Hors Série Jeunes Ruraux: 4–12.

Giuliani, Alessandra, Sebastian Mengel, Courtney Paisley, Nicole Perkins, Ingrid Flink, Oliver Oliveros, and Mariana Wongtschowski. 2017. “Realities, Perceptions, Challenges and Aspirations of Rural Youth in Dryland Agriculture in the Midelt Province, Morocco”. Sustainability 9: 871-894.

Ghanem, Hafez. 2016. “Targeting Excluded Groups: Youth, Smallholder Farmers, and Women”. In The Arab Spring Five Years Later: Toward Greater Inclusiveness (107-135). Washington: Brookings Institution Press.

Mahdi, M. 2014. “The Future of Land Tenure in Morocco: A Land Grabbing Case.” New Medit 13 (4): 2-10.

Petit, Olivier, Marcel Kuper, and Fatah Ameur. 2018. “From worker to peasant and then to entrepreneur? Land reform and agrarian change in the Saiss (Morocco)”. World Development 105: 119-131.

Swearingen, Will D. 1987. Moroccan Mirages: Agrarian Dreams and Deceptions, 1912-1986. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

This episode was recorded on July 25th 2019, at the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies. In this podcast, we welcome Ari Schriber, PhD Candidate in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University, discussing his research project entitled: Moroccan Shari’a In The Age Of Colonialism

Ari Schriber is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (NELC) at Harvard University. He performed his dissertation fieldwork as a grantee of the American Institute of Maghrib Studies from 2018-2019. Likewise, he is a former Fulbright research grantee (2013-2014) and FLAS grantee (2012) in Morocco. He holds an AM (masters) in NELC from Harvard and a BA from the University of Virginia.

Further Reading (in English):

 Leon Buskens, “Islamic Commentaries and French Codes: The Confrontation and

Accommodation of Two Forms of Textualization of Family Law in Morocco” in The

Politics of ethnographic writing” ed. Henk Driessen, 65-100 (1993).

 Dale Eickelman, Knowledge and power in Morocco: the education of a twentieth-century

notable (1985).

 Jessica Marglin, Across legal lines: Jews and Muslims in modern Morocco (2016).

 Wael B. Hallaq, “Can the Shari’a Be Restored?,” in Islamic Law and the Challenges of

Modernity, ed.s Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Barbara Freyer Stowasser (2004).

 Katherine Hoffman, “Berber Law by French Means: Customary Courts in the Moroccan

Hinterlands, 1930-1956” in Comparative Studies in Society and History 52.4, 851-880

(2010).

 Geoffrey Porter, At the Pillar’s Base: Islam, Morocco, and Education in the Qarawiyin

Mosque, 1912-2000, PhD dissertation (2002).

 David Powers, Law, Society, and Culture in the Maghrib, 1300-1500 (2002).

 Etty Terem, Old Texts, New Practices: Islamic reform in modern Morocco (2014).

 Jonathan Wyrtzen, Making Morocco: colonial intervention and the politics of identity

(2015).