Jihad and its Interpretation in Pre-Colonial Morocco: State-Society Relations during the French Conquest of Algeria

This work challenges colonial and post colonial assumptions about the nature of the pre-colonial Moroccan sultanate by reassessing the political concepts that regulated the relationship between the state and its mostly tribal subjects. Colonial interpretations of the sultanate portrayed it as chronically divided into territories obedient to the state and those dissident towards it. Yet by using previously under-exploited archival sources in Morocco and Europe, the author suggests that state-society warfare was not merely dissidence, but part of a constant process of political negotiation. Key to this negotiation was the idea that a sultan's legitimacy lay in his ability to wage jihad. Detailed analysis of state and society interpretations of jihad during the critical period of the French conquest of Algeria clearly shows this process at play and its growing importance as the likelihood of European aggression increased.


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