FINDING ORDER IN THE MOROCCAN CITY: THE ḤUBUS OF THE GREAT MOSQUE OF TANGIER AS AN AGENT OF URBAN CHANGE

Abstract

Maghrib more than a century ago, scholars have specu lated about the North African city and what makes it different from the city of the West. Historians, sociolo gists, anthropologists, urban planners, geographers, architects, art historians, and even literary critics have searched for the paradigmatic Islamic city, debated about its essential character, and lamented how it has been transformed by modernity. The tentacles of this discussion are far-reaching and have thoroughly penetrated scholarship on urbanism in the region. A good example is the work of anthropologist Clifford Geertz, who used the topic of housing in Sefrou as the departure point for contemplating the evolution of the town from self-contained village to exploding mini-metropolis.1 While his writing about Sefrou could hardly be accused of being essentialist, Geertz's idea of Moroccan urbanity rests solidly on the notion that there existed in the past a classic medina that was quali tatively and quantitatively different from the urban pastiche we see today. The premodern Moroccan town in general seemed to possess attributes of tranquility, stability, and legibility of form that are missing from the contemporary cityscape. Implicit in his argument is the notion that an earlier, purer urban form exists as a normative ideal within the shell of the present town, or at least in the minds of its inhabitants, hidden from view by the ugliness spawned by modernity.2 The purpose of this discussion is not to revisit the concept of the Islamic city with the aim of either contesting or asserting its validity. It is assumed that modernity has had its way with the Moroccan medina, altering its putative protean form beyond recogni tion. A more compelling question, to my mind, con cerns the actual process of urban transformation and the mechanisms that propelled it. Presented with the vista of an exploded urban landscape, can one look backward in time and make change itself the object of inquiry? Clearly not an easy operation, it is one that requires the architect's critical eye as well as the historian's well-tuned ear. Along with looking at the city as it exists, it demands a large measure of histor ical imagination, aided by those texts (chronological, literary, and religious) that speak about the evolu tion of the built environment in its social and polit ical context. Maps and photographs are also impor tant, providing a visual record of sedimentary space. Using various kinds of documentation, our overarch ing aim is to try to reconstruct some of the complex processes that produced the Moroccan cityscape as we see it today. Asa Briggs noted in his classic study of the Victo rian city that cities are interesting not for their same ness but for the historical divergences that emerge out of the provincial cultures that fell victim to the rise of the nation-state. During the twentieth century, forces of centralization erased the local institutions that once provided the city with structure, continu ity, and individuality.3 We may ask a similar question about the Moroccan city. How did the integrity of the Moroccan city become eroded as it was drawn into the framework of the modern nation-state? What processes brought about the situation that we see today, so deftly described by Geertz in the case of Sefrou? To begin, it is important to take note of the social structures that once organized Moroccan urban life. Once they come into focus, it is easier to dispel the notion, long held by European scholars, that the pre modern Islamic city was a mere agglomeration lack ing the institutions and self-awareness of true urban entities like those of classical antiquity or medieval Europe.4 Tangier is a site that challenges this hypoth esis. Located on Morocco's northern coast, it became a point of contention in the nineteenth century, as colonial designs collided with native sensibilities, caus ing a rupture in both the built and the social environ ments. This rupture began with the penetration of the country by European commerce at mid-century and culminated in foreign occupation by France and Spain in 1912. In the course of the colonial take