To this day al-Andalus, or medieval Muslim Spain, is an important symbol in Middle Eastern and North African cultural production. This paper considers what makes the Moroccan engagement with al-Andalus unique. By analyzing the representation and strategic uses of the historical figure Tariq ibn Ziyad (670-720), the Muslim conqueror of Iberia, in contemporary Moroccan narrative I demonstrate the role that a multilayered concept of conquest, and intertwined with that emigration, plays in constructions of Moroccan identity. I focus on two works: the novel Naissance à l’aube [1986; Birth at Dawn] by Francophone writer Driss Chraïbi (1926-2007) and the short story “Tariq alladhi lam yaftah al-Andalus” [1979; Tariq, the one who did not conquer al-Andalus] by Arabophone writer Mustafa al-Misnawi (b. 1953). A strong current within 20th and 21st-century discourses about al-Andalus is that of romanticizing narratives about the grandeur of the Muslim empire and the splendor of Arab cultural achievement. These narratives often promote pan-Arab or Islamist ideologies and/or attempt to compensate for the political setbacks and social issues of the post-colonial Arab world. However, there are also currents that counter these narratives of grandeur, and they are particularly strong in the Maghreb and specifically in Morocco. A key figure in narratives about the grandeur of al-Andalus is Tariq ibn Ziyad, portrayed as a hero who freed Iberians from Visigoth oppression and spread justice through Islam. The works by Chraïbi and al-Misnawi shatter such idealized visions of Tariq. Through a tongue-in-cheek portrait of Tariq as a ferocious Berber who practices a syncretic Islam, Chraïbi uses the imperial dynamics of al-Andalus to address the ongoing Arab-Berber power struggles of today and positions Tariq as a symbol of the Berber-Muslim-Arab elements of Moroccan hybridity. Although certain discourses about Moroccan migration to Spain invoke Tariq to figure a modern-day Muslim conquest, al-Misnawi’s short story focuses on unfulfilled conquest. By interweaving the historic Tariq and a modern-day impoverished Tariq who fails to ‘conquer al-Andalus,’ that is, to immigrate to Spain, the story points to the gap between triumphalist narratives of the conquest of al-Andalus and present day socio-economic realities in the Arabic-speaking world. I propose that the demystified Tariq produced in Morocco arises from the Maghrebian experience of Arab-Islamic conquest and the specifically Moroccan phenomenon of labor migration to Spain. By using al-Andalus to address Morocco’s post-colonial present, these works challenge dominant narratives about al-Andalus and Arab, Muslim, Maghrebi, and Moroccan identities.