Historical Dictionary of Morocco

Abstract

Historical Dictionary of Morocco. Second Edition. By Thomas K. Park and Aomar Bourn. Historical Dictionaries of Africa, No. 95. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2006. Pp. Ixxii, 675, 31 maps. $115.00. Midway through the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Kingdom of Morocco continues to attract the attention of serious students of North Africa. The Moroccan state, under the post-1999 leadership of King Mohamed VI, has embarked on a number of political and social reforms, such as long overdue enhancements to the status of women and the establishment of a widely noted Truth and Reconciliation Commission which has attempted to expose (and make amends for, if possible) the massive violations of human rights committed under the 1961-99 rule of King Hassan II, Mohamed VFs father and predecessor. In addition, the still-unresolved Western Sahara conflict has continued to distract Rabat, having maneuvered itself into an uncompromising and isolated position in 2003 when it strongly rejected a compromise internal autonomy plan for the territory formulated by former U.S. secretary of State James A. Baker III, and also ruled out a United Nations referendum of self-determination that the world body had been unsuccessfully trying to conduct since 1991. And looming over the entire picture was Morocco's glaring social and economic inequalities, thought by some to have been partly responsible for the Moroccan nationals who took part in the Casablanca terrorist attacks of May 2003 and the Madrid commuter railway bombings in March 2004 that killed nearly 200 people. With all these factors and more at work, Morocco deserves-indeed, demands-a thorough reference-oriented treatment, something that is performed (in the main effectively) by the second edition of Thomas K. Park's Historical Dictionary of Morocco, this time co-authored by Aomar Boum, a Moroccan who hails from the historic M'Hamid oasis in the south of the country and is a doctoral candidate at the University of Arizona in Tucson. In a review of Park's first edition of the dictionary (IJAHS Vol. 31 No. 2 [1998], 412-13), this reviewer took issue with a variety of characteristics of that volume, among which was the spotty coverage of postcolonial Morocco. Happily, the authors of this edition have produced a work that far surpasses the prior dictionary, as recent events and personages as well as the full gamut of economic, political, and social issues are given attention. Separate entries thoroughly discuss Moroccan elites, the arts, agriculture and industry, music and the news media, natural resources, the country's many respected universities, and religious issues, including Morocco's significant Jewish minority. Moreover, specific entries are devoted to leftist and Islamist movements, political parties in general (accompanied by the results of parliamentary elections since independence), and the structure of the state bureaucracy. Park and Bourn also give the reader biographical data of a wide variety of persons, not only from precolonial and colonial times, but also inside and outside the present governmental and commercial structure who are-for better or worse-prominent fixtures in modern Moroccan society. …