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Fasis and Levantines in Tangier
Abstract by Dr. Sahar Bazzaz On Session 071  (Tangier, City of Circulation)

On Friday, October 11 at 2:00 pm

2013 Annual Meeting

Abstract
Since the late eighteenth century, Tangier’s importance as a site of internal Moroccan politics and economy grew. The city housed the office of the sultan’s representative to European ambassadors stationed there. Furthermore, since the establishment of regular steamship service in the port of Tangier in the nineteenth century, large volumes of goods from F?s? markets had begun moving through the city on the way to Europe, Suez and other ports of the eastern Mediterranean. These developments drew people from across the Moroccan sultanate and other parts of the Mediterranean to the thriving port city. My paper examines emerging networks of knowledge exchange in the late 19th century between Tangier, Fez, and the eastern Mediterranean and their role in the formulation and articulation of Morocco’s first constitutionalist movement in 1908. An alliance between expanding Moroccan Sufi brotherhoods and Levantine newsprint journalists stationed in Tangier helped define the parameters of this debate, while printed texts facilitated exchange of information and ideas to the broader Moroccan populace.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Morocco
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries