In the shadow of the sultan

"The world has been much preoccupied of late with culture, power, and politics in Islamic societies. Due to its astounding longevity, the Moroccan state in its premodern and modern forms invites scholarly scrutiny as well as reflection. Royal authority of one sort or another has been wielded by a succession of sultan-kings since the early ninth century, a phenomenon almost without equal in world history; needless to say, that authority has also been contested in myriad ways over those centuries. The twelve essays in this volume edited by Rahma Bourqia and Susan Gilson Miller tackle the problem of legitimacy by seeking out the "connections between state power and the individual." Not that the Moroccan monarchy has been neglected by political theorists - far from it, although the political economy model has generally prevailed.^

In contrast, however, to the political scientist's top-down approach, each essay isolates point of critical intersection between culture writ large and manifestations of political authority. Power as performed and symbolized during Morocco's long dynastic history has also excited the anthropologists, notably Clifford C. Geertz. In Geertz's scheme of things, the country's political life has been dominated by a "combustible"or "extravagant" charismatic authority articulated by the ideology of baraka and embodied by the figure of the saint or holy man; this type of authority, so the argument goes, renders the Morocco state intrinsically different from the Weberian model of the traditional but rational state. Not so, reply the volume's contributors.^

Historically political authority also resided in the notion of just rule, which a particular ruler might, or might not, personify; the laws and ethical norms giving expression to that notion existed above and beyond the office of sultan and were confirmed in popular perceptions, rituals, beliefs, and praxis. And since colonial scholarship continues to inform thinking on the Moroccan state - often wrongly conflated with Morocco's history - that literature is subjected to revision as well."--American Historical Review (Vol. 107, no. 3 - June 2002).