CM09: The Maghreb

Robin Yassin-Kassab has an enlightening sojourn in Morocco, Robert Irwin argues that the great historian Ibn Khaldun was a Sufi, Marcia Lynx Qualey is dazzled by the transformative power of Maghrebi poetry, Julia Melcher explores the absurd world of exiled western writers in Tangiers, Hicham Yezza stands up for the Berbers Rights Movement, Louis Proyect reads recent histories of the Maghrebi Jews, Jamal Bahmad deconstructs revolutionary films that predicted the ‘Arab Spring’, Anita Hunt tackles Mauritanian social norms, John Liechty attempts to get a US visa for his Moroccan wife, Barnaby Rogerson goes souk shopping, Suhel Ahmed watches the classic French-Moroccan film, A Prophet,  and Cécile Oumhani’s keeps a record of daily life during the Tunisian revolution.

Also in this issue: Extracts from a new novel by Lina Sergie Attar, a fresh short story by Aamer Hussein, Samia Rahman on Wadjda, the first film to come out of Saudi Arabia, Ziauddin Sardar on winning, Naziha Arebi’s photographs of Libya after the revolution, poems by George Szirtes and Sarra Hennigan, and our list of ten Moroccan oddities

In this issue

Dusklands by Robin Yassin-Kassab

Morocco’s Arabic name, ‘al-Maghreb’, emerges from the root gh-r-b, which denotes concepts including the west, distance, and ...

Mystical Ibn Khaldun by Robert Irwin

The fourteenth-century Maghrebi philosopher of history Wali al-Din ‘Abd al-Rahman Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) has been thought by many to ...

Diaries of a Revolution by Cecile Oumhani

Paris December 2010 Days are wrapped up in the cold darkness long after sunrise. I fumble around in the kitchen to get myself a cup of tea, as ...

Revolution in Maghrebi Cinema by Jamal Bahmad

Mainstream narratives of the Arab Spring have been both simplistic and influential. The coverage of the uprisings in the Maghreb and the Middle ...

An American in Morocco by John Liechty

When my Moroccan wife of a year needed a visa to enter the United States it seemed simple enough – a trip to the American Consulate in ...

Ten Moroccan Oddities

Morocco, the land of bougainvillea, snow-capped mountains, ochre pise’ walls, water sellers in hats with fuzzy red guy-ropes, sticky black ...