Ever since Abbas Jirari published his extensive study on the Moroccan zajal (Jirari 1970), this colloquial poetic form has been viewed as an exemplar of ‘authentic’ Moroccan culture. Despite its popularity and links to the Andalusian past, the zajal has largely been separated from what is considered ‘higher’, more ‘modern’ literature. It is ironic that, over the past thirty years, this notion of Moroccan authenticity has been challenged by contemporary Moroccan zajal poets themselves who seek legitimacy for the zajal as a more widely accepted poetic form to be considered alongside poetry composed in Standard Arabic, as well as other accepted literary languages (for example, French or English). As contemporary Moroccan zajal poets consciously strive for wider recognition within the broader literary realm, they articulate critical views on writing, publishing, and performance in the colloquial register. The contemporary Moroccan zajal provides an interesting intersection of oral and written literature that, while still existing in a Standard Language culture (Milroy 1998), provides an interesting perspective on writing and writing culture in Morocco. While it takes its name and inspiration from the medieval Andalusī zajal, the contemporary Moroccan zajal as it is understood in its written form today traces its beginnings to the 1970s and 1980s, really taking off in the 1990s and 2000s, which, it should be noted, corresponds roughly to the rise of broader language discussions in Morocco concerning language change and the use of Moroccan colloquial Arabic in writing (Miller 2014). Despite its somewhat marginalized status in the contemporary literary scene in Morocco, zajal poetry and criticism is very much a part of these linguistic and literary discussions. In this paper, I will examine the zajal from a historical, aesthetic, and ideological perspective in order to analyze and evaluate its place in the current debates that are occurring in Morocco regarding the use of Moroccan colloquial Arabic (darija) in writing. I consider the form’s history and literary critical works on it, as well as the views of several zajal poets and critics vis à vis the use of Moroccan dārija in writing. Jirārī, ’Abbās. 1970. Al-Zajal Fī-L-Maghrib: Qaṣīda. Rabat. Miller, Catherine. 2014. “Des Passeurs Individuels Au Mouvement Linguistique: Itinéraires de Quelques Traducteurs Au Maroc.” In Dire En Langue, Des Passeurs Au Quotidien, edited by Myriam Achour, Paris and Tunis: IRMC/Karthala. Milroy, Lesley. 1998. Authority in Language: Investigating Standard English. 3 edition. London England ; New York: Routledge.

Modern prose literature in Morocco encompasses a wide range of genres that raise the question of whether many of the contemporary forms of narrative generally considered novels in the Maghreb should, in fact, carry this genre signification. Instead, it may be possible to read many of these texts in terms of their continual contrapuntal engagement with the larger Arabic literary tradition, as texts marked by generic hybridity, apocryphal discourse, and intertextual significations. This type of reading holds the potential to disrupt dominant paradigms of literary evolution which view the Arabic novel as the result of the importation of a hegemonic form that caused the erasure of the indigenous genres that preceded it. In this spirit, this paper will offer a close analysis of Muhammad ibn Abdallah al-Muwaqqit’s (1893-1949) al-Rihlah al-Marrakushiyyah (1930). As one of the most prominent writers of the Moroccan nahda, al-Muwaqqit’s work merits considerable attention; the text itself is notable for its evocation of a number of traditional genres. Beyond the ‘rihla’ that gives the work its title, the tension between tradition and modernity is grafted onto Marrakech’s cityscape through a discourse that borrows heavily from classical works on both the ideal and the corrupt city. It is, moreover, Morocco’s most canonical authors from as far back as the fifteenth century that are given a new literary life in order to alternately voice the city’s virtue or dissolution in al-Muwaqqit’s text.

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.

The filmic and novelistic re-emergence of local and cosmopolitan journeys of Moroccan Jews signals a desire to come to terms with a silenced portion of the Moroccan past. Aomar Boum and Oren Kosansky rightly inquire into the conditions which made the Jewish “themes, plots, and characters [appear] significantly in Moroccan cinema.” (The “Jewish Question,” 224)While Boum and Kosansky inscribe this filmic re-emergence of the Moroccan Jews within the political dynamics of a state that was making “efforts to refashion” its image (224), Valerie Orlando conceptualizes this un-covering of Moroccan Jewry within the truth and reconciliation process engaged by the Moroccan state since 1999 (Screening Morocco, 66-70). These three scholars seem to agree that the Moroccan state had a role to play in the process of filmic returns of the Jews; however, in this paper, I foreground individual initiatives, such as Kamal Hachkar’s provocative documentary Tinghir-Jerusalem (2011) in order to demonstrate their powerful effect on voicing memory of both familiar and unfamiliar parts of Moroccanness. Where film is concerned, Tinghir-Jerusalem’s testimonial approach to memory diverges from the artistic re-imaginings adopted in Adieu Mères (2008), Marock (2005) and Where Are You Going, Moshe? (2009)The testimonial power of Tinghir-Jerusalem, mediated in Moroccan Arabic and Amazigh, breaks spatio-temporal boundaries and brings the Muslim and the Jew together in the shared space of their common, social memory. On the novelistic side, Hebrew notes (1990s), Bāb al-sha‘ba (2011), Le Captif de Mabrouka (2010) and The Farmer of Forgetfulness (2003), among other titles, revisit themes of departure, exile and return of the Jews into the Moroccan public sphere. What are the implications of these “memorial” processes on the refiguration of the heteroglossic nature of Moroccanness and the place of the Jewish presence in the collective imagination? What does it mean to watch a Jew speak Berber or Moroccan Arabic and reminisce about his/her land of childhood from exile? Do these literary portrayals re-actualize the Jewishness of Morocco? Ultimately, the notion of “Jewish returns” proves to be inaccurate, since these works demonstrate that the Jew has never left the most dynamic, intimate part of the Moroccan people’s life: their memory.