Reading reform beyond the state: Salwat al-Anfas, Islamic revival and Moroccan national history

In recent years, scholars of North Africa have shown increasing interest in the pre-Protectorate period of Moroccan history (1860-1912). Like their counterparts, who study the Ottoman lands to the east, scholars view the Moroccan nineteenth century as an era of reform and nascent nationalism. However, while historians of the Ottoman lands have increasingly attempted to step away from state-centred and 'trickle-down' views of the Tanzimat period, in Moroccan studies, a state-centred paradigm still dominates at the expense of cultural and intellectual histories of the era. This article turns the spotlight away from state-centred narratives of early Moroccan modernisation, anti-colonialism and nationalism by analysing Muhammad bin Ja'far al-Kattani's Salwat al-Anfas (1887). Salwat al-Anfas reveals a vision of pre-colonial Moroccan state and society in which power is multi-valent, diffuse and brokered by religio-political elites known as shurafa. By reading this text in tandem with extant narratives of the Moroccan encounter with European imperial expansion, this article seeks to stimulate discussion about the way scholars view the processes associated with the country's transition to modernity. Considered against the backdrop of the emergence of the authoritarian Moroccan monarchy after independence from France in 1956, the emancipatory implications of alternative historical narratives based on previously neglected sources come into greater focus.