In "The Moroccan Novel Written in Arabic," Abd al-Rah?m al-Sall?m observes: In its beginnings (1942-1965), the Moroccan novel was, strictly speaking, connected to autobiography ("al-Z?wiyah," "F? Tuf?la," "Innah? al-Hay?," "Sab‘at Abw?b")....The development of prose in Morocco had specific features that uncover the distinct levels of cross-pollination to be found in the creation of the novel and that of autobiography in Moroccan prose narrative. (105 translated from Arabic) The significance here is that, in contrast to the development of the novel in the Arab East, the earliest examples of modern narrative in Morocco are autobiographies. Al-Sall?m’s point of departure is al-Tuh?m? al-Wazz?n?’s "al-Z?wiyah: kayfa ahbabtu al-tasawwuf," a Sufi autobiography written in 1942, but, as is elucidated in "Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition," autobiographical writing has been existent in Arabic since the ninth century. The idea that there is a clear and definitive rupture between the premodern and modern autobiographical traditions, specifically in regard to Moroccan prose narrative, will be contested here. To that end, al-Wazz?n?’s "al-Z?wiyah" will be analyzed in terms of its similarity to the texts of earlier Moroccan authors, all of whom have penned their life stories using analogous figurative tropes and structures. The links between "al-Z?wiyah," unfailingly cited as Morocco’s first modern “novel” (despite the generic difference between novel and autobiography), and texts like Zarr?q’s fifteenth century "al-Kunn?sh f? ‘ilm ‘?sh," al-Y?s?’s seventeenth century "al-Fahrasa," and Ibn ‘Aj?ba’s nineteenth century "Fahrasa" can be seen in a number of fundamental areas within the texts. Of primary importance is the idea of a governing model, proposed by Karl J. Weintraub in “Autobiography and Historical Consciousness,” in which it is shown that early autobiographers patterned their lives on a number of different ideal figures, functionally similar to archetypes. The conception of the model would help supply a plot and shape to the narrated life. One of the rhetorical continuities we find between "al-Z?wiyah" and its predecessors is that they share the same governing model taken from a specifically Moroccan branch of Sufi thought. This and other rhetorical continuities within the texts’ structures will be explored with the aim of contributing to a more nuanced understanding of the historical development of modern Moroccan prose written in Arabic, pointing to its indigenous roots rather than viewing it as a strictly imported phenomenon.