Scholars have demonstrated that colonization brought about a change in the status of space in Morocco. As Jonathan Wyrtzen writes, “territory itself… gained a political salience it did not have before colonial intervention.” This paper dates the political salience of territory in Morocco to the decades prior to formal Spanish and French colonization, showing it to be a product of inter-religious encounter, rather than a European import. It does so by examining an account of two trips Sultan Hassan I (r. 1873-1894) took to the Sūs region, as recorded by the historian and state functionary, Aḥmad al-Nāṣirī (d. 1897). Most histories of territory frame its emergence within intermural European conflicts; some extend this struggle to include imperial Europe’s race for the globe. By contrast, al-Nāṣirī’s descriptions of these trips and his quotations from the Sultan’s letters allow us to see how Moroccan thinkers drew on the history of Islamic thought to aid in the territorialization process. Sultan Hassan I traveled to the Sūs in 1882 and again in 1885. In introducing the first trip, al-Nāṣirī explained that the Spanish were seeking to control ports in the Sūs after the Battle of Tetouan. In a letter heavily laced with Qur’anic allusions, the Sultan described his success at regaining control of the ports by reestablishing “state protocol [al-marāsim al-Makhzanīya].” Some years later, the situation had deteriorated. This time the British sought to create an infrastructure at the Port of Āssākā. In demonstrating the preeminence of the state to the local inhabitants, the Sultan invoked a Qur’anic verse which promises that “Any sign We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We replace with something better or similar” (2:106). With this verse, the Sultan rendered himself God’s representative in replacing an inferior infrastructure with a superior one. He continued to emphasize that the territory itself drew the diverse populations of the Sūs together; and he promised that any state building projects would take account of the needs of the local inhabitants. He positioned the race to territorialize Morocco within the frame of inter-religious competition. In these declarations, we can see the emergence of a territorial principle, in which space itself becomes the focus of state rule. While the presence of European powers was clearly important for the politicization of space in the Far Maghreb, this paper argues that the shift to territoriality was a product of inter-religious encounter.