Forgotten Saints ― History, Power, and Politics in the Making of Modern Morocco

In 1894, a young Muslim mystic named Muhammad al-Kattani abandoned his life of asceticism to preach Islamic revival and jihad against the French. Through his activism, he mobilized a socially diverse coalition of Moroccans who called for resistance against French colonization. In 1909, he met a violent death at the hands of these same Moroccan anti-colonialists. Today, al-Kattani's story has virtually disappeared from the narratives of the early Moroccan anti-colonialism and nationalism. Forgotten Saints uses a diverse collection of previously unknown primary sources to narrate the vivid story of al-Kattani and his virtual disappearance from accounts of modern Moroccan history. On a broader level, it offers alternative ways to understand the responses of Muslim societies to the challenges of globalization, European imperialism, and Western modernity while demonstrating that at the heart of anti-colonialism and nationalism lay a much deeper internal struggle over emerging forms of power and authority in the era of nation-state formation.

Sahar Bazzaz is Associate Professor of History at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts. She is also Associate in Comparative Cultural Studies at the Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University, and founding member of the Harvard-Olympia Summer Program in Comparative Cultural Studies.