Reform in Pre-Colonial Morocco. Circulation and Appropriation of Notions of Political Order (1900-1908)

In order to study reform in connection with processes of transfer or translation in the Arab Muslim world, the long 19th century with its attempts at defensive and authoritarian modernization offers a most fruitful case in point. The different forms of military, administrative and cultural reorganization introduced during that period occurred in a general climate of economic and political “opening up” of the region increasingly dominated by European powers and were heavily inspired by Western models. At the same time, the fact that reform was introduced in different places of the Arab Muslim world more or less simultaneously, offered opportunities for learning from the experiences and expertise accumulated elsewhere in the region. In this context, the mobility of the administrative, the military and the scholarly elites within the Ottoman Empire and beyond allowed for the circulation of new political concepts that were selectively adopting European ideas. At the same time they were linked to more traditional Islamic notions of legitimacy. Studying documents from the period devoted to the question of reform, this article looks at the multiple and multilayered forms of conceptual transfer and translation at the beginning of the 20th century.