72 Paolo de Mas and Morocco

Paolo studied Social Geography under Willem Heinemeijer in Amsterdam. Heinemeijer stood at the foreground of research into migration and in his youth had ‘done’ Morocco hitchhiking. When in the mid-seventies the then Socialist minister for ‘Collaboration with the Developing World’ set aside billions for research into the effects of immigration in the home countries Heinemijer got the moneys meant for Morocco. Paolo de Mas was one of the promising students whom Heinemeijer trusted with the job. The two focus areas were the Rif in the north and the Souss region in the south. That was where the bulk of the Moroccan immigrants in the Netherlands came from. Paolo de Mas started his Moroccan adventure touring the country with a friend for a month to get ‘a feel for the place’. After that he settled into the research job in a village in the Rif near El Hoceima. Later he moved (of all the possible villages in the Souss region) to Sidi Ahmed Ou Moussa for more research on the impact of migration on rural communities. If I remember correctly the Social Democrat government was looking into the possibility if they could make it a policy to provide the ‘returning’ migrants with the infrastructure to help building a ‘better’ community at home. In the Netherlands the need for un-schooled labour had shrunk. They wanted to stem the tide of incoming migrants. If there was job opportunity at the place they came from there would be no need for immigration was the reasoning of politicians. Paolo de Mas remembered those years as him being an ‘elephant in the porcelain cupboard’. Meaning: probably doing more harm than good. I think that that was exactly what was wrong with the attitudes regarding ‘aid’ that were in ‘vogue’ at the time. At least it was not overtly greed driven... yet. By the time the research should have led to policy Thatcher had come into power in England and everything changed. However Paolo de Mas came away from his research job with a lasting love for Morocco in his heart.

What happened at the sanctuary of Sidi Bubkr?

After lunch everybody finally went to Iligh. From Sidi Ahmed Ou Moussa it is 6km to Iligh and halfway along the way in the middle of nowhere and in a bend of the road is the sanctuary of Sidi Bubkr. The Marabout is surrounded by a walled graveyard. Nobody seems to know who Sidi Bubkr was, but the Marabout marks an important land division and is mentioned in many old documents. It was also the site of a gruesome murder with far-reaching consequences. Thursday 1 December 1814 a man named Mahmud El Warari was stabbed near the Marabout ten times. His stomach was cut open and filled with stones. The assailants were send by Hashem the ruler of the House of Iligh. Like Hashem, Mahmud was a descendant of Sidi Ahmed Ou Mousa. They were related in more ways than one and they were political rivals. Their fiefdoms bordered on each other. But while Mahmud obeyed faithfully his overlord, Hashem also known as 'the Lion of the Tazerwalt'followed an independent course which got him into difficulties many times. It went so far that the fortress of Iligh was destroyed twice between 1810 and 1816 by the overlord. When Mahmud met his death he was crossing the 'border' at Sidi Bubkr while on the way to Iligh for the circumcision ceremony of the son of Hashem and the sister of Mahmud. The case came to court and there is a legal document about the case kept safe in the mosque of Toumanar although it was set afire and torn into pieces. 10 years later in 1825 the son of Mahmud wanted to retaliate a disgrace his wife had suffered when she visited Iligh for a wedding (there are 5 different versions of the same story). He shot Hashem under the famous Argan tree in the souk of Sidi Ahmed Ou Mousa during the yearly Moussem in honor of his ancestor the Sufi saint. The murder was part of both a vendetta and a long drawn out civil war. Paul Pascon gives an exhaustive description of the events in his study "La Maison d'Iligh'.

The girls of Sidi Ahmed Ou Mousa

After the visit to the Zaouia the Friends of Iligh were taken to a square that lies beyond the Soek. It has the municipal building and an extremely old Argan tree. Apparently it was already there when the Saint chose this spot to settle in. Or maybe it was because of this tree that he settled here. Who knows. Argan trees are everywhere in this region, but strangely enough not in this valley. The Argan fruit was ripening. The fruit looks like an olive, but when ripening it also has the same color. But at this stage it looks more like a mother's tit. Anyway along side the tree stood a large trailer. It was a driving school classroom. With the Medical Caravan it is one of the amenities Aisha has established in her role as political representative. The school was for girls and women to teach them the 3Rs and simple handicrafts. In front of the caravan was a market stall where the village women sold what they had made. A lot of the traditional handicrafts that women used to carry out have either disappeared or have been commercialized. And this is a way to give them something outside the duties at home and farm. The Friends of Iligh bought a lot of trinkets. At that moment lessons were finished in the trailer. Out came a group of teen girls. It quickly became evident what they had been taught: cutting and styling hair. At least three of them had sat model too and they didn't hide it. The next day I saw them again, but they still had not hidden their stylish 'coup'.

The graveyard of the Zaouia of Sidi Ahmed Ou Moussa

I was determined to take every sketching opportunity I could get. I had made only one sketch in Sidi Ahmed Ou Mousa thus far. If a whole chapter in the graphic story was going to be devoted to this Sufi saint I had to get to work. The village named after the saint is a small but rather prosperous place. It is also a governmental seat of some sort for the immediate region. There is a police post and a Caïd. As Paul Pascon already remarked that because of the saint settling on the spot it attracted people from all over and was therefore not connected to any particular tribe. Half way up the stairs to the Zaouia I was met by an old man leaning heavily on a stick hardly able to come down the steps. On one of the turning platforms of the stairs he stopped, turned east, leaned his elbows on the parapet and started to pray. I sat down and drew the scene. It said some important things. The old man was one of the elderly that find shelter on the last stage of life in the Zaouia. With the visiting group of o.a. unbelievers he didn't feel free to pray inside the building. His legs were so crippled by old age he could not kneel anymore and get up by himself. That's why he prayed standing up. If one of the strictest rules of Islam, how to pray, can be adapted to necessity than Islam is not strictly cast in concrete. Of course in all religions it is what believers/followers do with it and make of it. The graveyard in the background had a rather newish wall built around it, but the old crumbling walls hadn't been demolished. One can clearly see the devisions. I thought it reflected the expansion of the graveyard, but that isn't wholly true. The lowest part is strictly reserved for the Aboudmiaa family.

On the way to Sidi Ahmed Ou Moussa

The next day March 23 the Friends of Iligh went first to Sidi Ahmed Ou Mousa. We left in a caravan of at least three cars. Just like in Tiznit the day before there were a number of hangers-on whom nobody knew who they were. The 'Friends' were spread out over two cars and one little bus. The five people of the NIMAR had a big 4WD, Herman and Wies Opdeijn drove a hired Duster and we were in the little bus. Mohamed Ouhaou was also there and a colleague of his. We took the old road that goes from Tiznit to Tafroute. The Anti Atlas that runs from east to west sort of peters out towards the south when it gets close to the ocean. Stretching out from Agadir southwards is a great big flat basin. Where the basin meets the Anti Atlas the landscape changes abruptly. You notice it whatever road you take to Iligh. The road is straight and flat till suddenly it rises while twisting and turning. The vegetation also changes. In the basin flourish Savannah type plants. As soon as the road hits the mountains the plants change. It had rained copiously in the month of March and it was green and lush. Everywhere were flowers. Yellow linseed flowers were in bloom everywhere and the wheat was coming up. It was in stark contrast to the parched outlook the landscape had presented in September. Just before the market village of Tirmigh is the turn off for Sidi Ahmed Ou Mousa. From the turn off it is about 20km to Iligh. The first time Paul Pascon came this way he walked the distance and the road wasn't paved yet. In Sidi Ahmed Ou Mousa we were welcomed by Moulay Imam Aboudmiaa, the Mayor of the village and the two spiritual leaders of the Zaouia. Imam came in a brand new Peugeot sedan and was in the company of Bouchari the older half brother of Hamdi, but I didn't know that then. The group was taken up the steps towards the Zaouia for a guide tour. I stayed behind to sketch the butcher who had just skinned a goat. While I was sketching the head was discarded, the heart given to a cat and the intestines were taken out and the insides washed.

Chapter 3 The founder of the House of Iligh

Chapter 3 takes the reader through the first meeting of Bert Hogervorst with Aisha Aboudmiaa in Agadir. Aisha is the eldest daughter of the current 'Sant' of Iligh. She told Bert about her ancestor the Sufi saint Sidi Ahmed ou Moussa (1460-1563), her heritage and the stash of secret documents and books kept in the family's coffers. Once again back in Amsterdam Bert searches the internet for Sidi Ahmed Ou Moussa. She discovers that Sidi Ahmed was a real lout in his youth. With other urchins he terrorized the neighborhood. One fateful day he met an old man struggling under the weight of a bag of figs. He feels sorry for the old man and takes over his load. The act gave such satisfaction that he decided that helping people was much more fun than pestering people. After this epiphany he took his life and religious studies seriously. From then on wondrous stories abound about his piety, courage, patriotism, travels and magical powers. Some of his travels seem copies of those of Odysseus. He also worked miracles from a distance. That way he once changed the course of history. By magic he forced the Ottoman army on its way to invade Morocco to withdraw. The result was that Morocco stayed independent and never became a tax province of the Sultan in Istanbul. After his death his scant possessions were divided among his sons. They managed to transform the symbolic-religious capital into silver. Within three generations develops the House of Iligh into an economic and political power that challenges that of the Moroccan rulers. Now that Bert and Aisha have met will the gates of Iligh finally open? The sketch is of the keeper of the sanctuary and mausoleum of Sidi Ahmed Ou Mousa.

Thoughts on Sidi Ahmed Ou Moussa

In the weeks before Bert and I left for Iligh I had been thinking about what had made Iligh special. As I wrote before: Bert thought it special because its architecture has a Sub Saharan outlook. What else made it special? That it was an important hub in the Trans Saharan trade? Iligh of course was only one of a number of hubs in that part of Morocco. Maybe it was because of its legendary connection with Michiel De Ruyter and Queen Victoria? Or was this heap of melted adobe buildings with some restored casbahs special because Paul Pascon had directed his focus on it? Why wouldn't it be special because of that 16th century Sufi saint Sidi Ahmed Ou Moussa who settled there between the local Berbers? On the internet are a number of stories about the saint. Sidi Ahamed Ou Moussa was born in a village in the Anti Atlas somewhere between Ifrane and Iligh. Apparently he had been a good for nothing youth who was put on the straight and narrow after meeting and helping an old man who then expressed his thankfulness. He became a Sufi. According to the stories Sidi Ahmed Ou Moussa travelled around a lot and met with different adventures that were remarkably like what Odysseus encountered on his travels. In the end he settled in the valley where is now Iligh among people who were strange to him. His sainthood drew pelgrims and students. But that was not always appreciated by the original population. Sidi Ahmed Ou Moussa hadn't completely forgotten his past as an unruly youth and if necessary knew how to use his fists. It was his son Ali who was not content with spiritual authority and sought material power. He established the chiefdom. I did a quick search on the internet for other Sufi saints whose offspring started a secular dynasty and found only one: a small short lived kingdom in Konya at the time before Ottoman rule covered the whole of Turkey. In Morocco a lot of the powerful ruling dynasties were started by the offspring of men with religious fervor. But they weren't Sufi saints. I thought that made Iligh pretty special.

The Zaouia of Sidi Ahmed Ou Moussa

The history of Iligh had been illustrious. By the middle of the seventeenth century it had evolved from the Sufi saint Sidi Ahmed Ou Moussa who had settled there in the late sixteenth century to a rich and powerful chiefdom that stretched from Ifrane in the south to Agadir in the north . Around 1670 it had irked the Alawite rulers of Morocco sufficiently to have a force send out to them. Iligh was destroyed and its inhabitants were either taken as slaves, killed or fled into the mountains of the Anti Atlas. However fifty years later one of the descendants of the Sufi saint Sidi Ahmed Ou Moussa came back and build up the chiefdom from the ruins. From the middle of the eighteenth century till the very end of the nineteenth century Iligh was back as an important link in the chain of the trans Sahara trade.It had ambassadors to all the great powers of the time. With Britain in particular it did a lot of trade. Iligh's largest export product being Oistrich feathers. However changing geopolitics and evolving fashion wear brought Iligh down. By the time the French in 1912 took over Morocco as a protectorate Iligh's fortunes had already declined dramatically. But the pull of the Zaouia of Sidi Ahmed Ou Moussa is unabated. Every year in August tens of thousand of people gather around the sanctuary for the yearly Moussem or pelgrimage. When Bert, Heleen Toet and I visited in October 2016, it was a quiet midweek day. There was no Souk and most of the regular little shops and workshops were closed for siesta.