88 Michiel de Ruyter in Iligh

Michiel de Ruyter has written in his diaries about his visits to Iligh and his meetings with the ‘Sant’. But until now there are no documents found written by people in Iligh about his visits. Of course Iligh was destroyed a few decennia later. The strange thing is that there isn’t a memory either among the family Aboudmiaa of a Dutch trader selling them modern weaponry. Maybe the sounds of the name were just too foreign: El Soussie who wrote about Iligh in the nineteen fifties did mention him and gave him an unrecognizably scrambled name. Bert Hogervorst hasn’t figured out yet how he came by his information: from the biography of De Ruyter or by documents he got from the Aboudmiaa family and reportedly never gave back? Thinking about De Ruyter in Iligh I can see that the set up might be different from what he was used too, but I’m sure De Ruyter also saw similarities between Iligh and the Dutch Republic. Iligh was small but was making a name for itself in international trade in particular across the Sahara. It had mighty enemies that were eager to destroy it. It was wealthy and it had a liberal attitude towards others. Jews in particular had found refuge there. Not Jews from the Iberian Peninsula as in the Republic but Jews from nearby Ifrane. And as in the Low Countries the Jews had brought prosperity because of their connections. It was ‘The Golden Age’ in the Republic but the same can be said about Morocco. In the seventeenth century there wasn’t such a big difference between the standard of living and the level of development in Europe and the Islamic world. That only came to be in the nineteenth century with the industrial revolution in Europe.

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.

The meeting in Sidi Ahmed Ou Mousa

Next the Friends of Iligh repaired to the municipal building for a meeting during which different presentations would be given. As the 'Reunion' was financed by the Governate of Tiznit Aisha and Bert had to comply with certain demands from high up. One of them was that the Alderman for culture of Tiznit Ahmed Boumzegou would also give a presentation. Apparently he had done his phd on 'Iligh'. Boumzegou had not been particularly helpful when Aisha and Bert had ran up and down the stairs in the Governor's palace in search of support. They both had taken a dislike to him. However in the morning before we set off for Sidi Ahmed Ou Mousa word came that Boumzegou suddenly had to go to Rabat. In his stead came a man in a baseball cap. This man insisted that he gave the first presentation right after the introduction by Bert and by the Mayor. His talk was about documents from the archive of Iligh that had proven beyond doubt that Morocco's claim on Western Sahara the former Spanish colony was legit. The claim was never recognized by the international community. The take-over was engineered by General Franco just before his death and king Hassan II. The story goes that one day a helicopter landed in Iligh with people a.o. a minister who demanded of Houcine Aboudmiaa the then ruler of Iligh to hand over the relevant documents. It is unclear to me when this took place and how the authorities in Rabat knew the documents existed. Did Houcine tell them or did they know from El Soussy the historian who died in the mid sixties and who wrote extensively about 'Iligh' in Arabic (never translated). One thing is certain: the documents never came back.I didn't know all this when I made this sketch otherwise the usurper would have been prominent in the drawing. From left to right: Paul Dahan, Manoubi Abdelmjid the Mayor, Bert, Aisha in Hajib and on the phone, Abdullah El Mountassir, and the two Sufi dignitaries from the Zaouia: Moulay El Mahfoud and Moulay Houcine El Ourari.In the background a very large poster of king Mohammed VI.

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.

Bert and Aicha try Plan B

A week before the 'Reunion' of friends of Iligh would take place Bert and Aisha met again in Agadir. An impressive list of people who were coming to Iligh was ready. But there was nowhere to stay for them and it was still unsure if they would get to see anything. Iligh was still more like a warzone than a place of any importance. In the meantime Moulay Imam Aboudmiaa had suggested two locations in the neighborhood of Iligh where people could stay now that Iligh was out. But to stay in the neighboring 'auberges' would cost money and there wasn't any. Aisha suggested to pull political strings. She thought that the safeguarding of the heritage of her family was a matter of public interest. And there was a little matter of certain documents from Iligh having given proof to the legality of the annexation of Western Sahara by Morocco in 1975 or thereabouts. She also anted to cash in on that. Bert and Aisha moved to Tiznit the provincial capital to work the authorities there. For the next days they tried very hard to convince the politicians and civil servants of the prestige of footing the bill for the 'Reunion'.

Chapter 2 Before the closed gates of Iligh

In Chapter 2 the text writer of the graphic story, Bert Hogervorst takes center stage. Three times when visiting Iligh she stood in front of closed gates. Coming upon Iligh by chance for the first time she was struck by its imposing, exotic architecture standing seemingly in the middle of nowhere. The casbah's of Iligh were like no other casbahs. It reminded her of pictures she had seen of sub-saharan buildings. Back in Holland she started an internet search. The first thing she discovered was that in the South of Morocco along the edges of the Sahara desert there were ancient Jewish settlements. Turns out the Jews played a crucial role in the Trans Saharan trade. The oldest settlement was in Ifrane (Atlas Saghir). From there the Jews had spread and brought prosperity to the region. It seemed that the rise of Iligh as a karavanserai, goods depot and trading post in the first half of the 17th century coincided with a particularly cruel episode in the history of the Jewish people of Ifrane known as the Mass Suicide when a ruthless ruler forced Jews into killing themselves and each other. From 1620 till 1968 when the last Rabbi left the place, the fate of the Jewish community and that of the family of the 'Maison d'Iligh' was tightly connected. At the end of the 19th century Iligh boasted the largest Jewish population of any place in the South of Morocco. The drawing is of Bert in the Jewish cemetery of Ifrane while on a reconnaissance of Jewish settlements in southern Morocco. Will the gates of Iligh finally open for her and what will she discover once inside?

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 short life of Paul Pascon

Paul Pascon was born in 1932 in Fez. His family originally came from France but had lived for a couple of generations in Morocco. When Morocco became independent in 1956, he chose to become a Moroccan citizen. Pascon became an important sociologist embracing new methods of research and introducing them in Morocco. His work inspired a whole generation of Moroccan sociologists and historians with his post-colonial take on his studies about rural society. In 1965 he visited for the first time Iligh and the neighboring Zaouia of Sidi Ahmed Ou Moussa. Through his studies of old documents he was able to throw a new light on how pre-colonial society in that part of Morocco (Tazerwalt) worked. It was not a strictly tribal society but a society made up out of different groups formed around the descendants of the Sufi saint and its 'symbolic capital'. His studies of the society in the Tazerwalt was so sympathetic to the existing make up, history and population that his memory is still cherished. The sympathy was mutual. Also the participating students and other scientists participated in it. Unfortunately his life was clouded by misfortunes. During a camping trip his two sons disappeared never to be found again. Pascon himself died on a road trip in Mauritania in 1985. Not everybody believed it was an accident. Rumors abound.

Bert's story

Bert Hogervorst has her own story about how she got interested in Iligh. She writes: 2013 I was struck by the prominent presence of Jewish people in the history of Morocco. I find it fascinating. Not only in the big cities but also in the south of Morocco where I visit the Ferkla Oases with Peti. The local museum gives a very elaborate presentation of Jewish life in the past. More Jewish traces in the Valley of the Draa river. The connection is with caravans and trade. I see old photographs on the Internet thanks to local man Kacimi. 2014 I'm in south Morocco in the fall with Peti and others. With some difficulty we reach Ifrane and visit there the synagogue. Ifrane has a surprisingly old Jewish settlement. There is also a Jewish cemetery next to the Oued (river). Later I find a reference about Ifrane in a blog of a Jewish American. The settlement is pre-Islamic. On the same trip we visit the Mellah of Tahala. After much asking around we find a very kind and knowledgeable young man. There is a small cemetery. The Souk is well preserved and many more buildings. It is a small ghost-town. We are shown a register of the Jewish families that used to live here. The young man brings the Souk and the Jewish community to life with stories from when he was a kid and the stories from his father and great-parents. These five Jewish families came to Tahala from Ifrane. He tells about the loss and sadness in the small town of Tahala when the Jews left. Apparently it were the Rabbys that left first. According to him there was a library with documents. Where was this? He waves vaguely towards the mountains. Would he have meant Iligh, a place I hadn't heard of at the time?