The Kuwaiti production series Fath al Andalous (The Conquest of Al Andalus) caused heated debates in Moroccan society this spring in Morocco during the holy month of Ramadan. The series was written by six Arab screenwriters, features 250 Arab actors, consists of 30 chapters and has a prime time of 6pm, one hour before the fasting break. The expectation was great because it was about the great national hero – especially among the Berber population – Tariq ibn Ziyad, the man who conquered Al Andalus from the year 711, and about Musa ibn Nusayr, governor of the Umayyad Caliphate and first Muslim Emir from Al Andalus. .
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But the dispute was not long in coming. Berber activist Rachid Bouhaddouz filed a complaint against the National Society of Radio Television (SNRT) first public broadcaster Al Oula. He called for the series to be stopped immediately because he interpreted that many Moroccans could take it as a historical reference. The activist told Efe news agency in April that the series denied “Ceuta’s Moroccan origins” by depicting the city’s governor at the time as a Spanish Goth. “Yulyan Ghomari was a Moroccan Mauro (Berber) of the Christian religion who ruled Ceuta at the time, and not a Spanish goth as he appears in the series.”
The Rabat Court of First Instance dismissed the lawsuit on April 22, arguing that it had no jurisdiction over the matter. This was hailed as a victory for “free speech” by some Moroccan official media. But the activist contacted by that newspaper continues to believe the series is the product of “an ideological labor of Arab nationalism in the Middle East.” “The Amazig Mauro (Berber) people and the Iberian Gothic people were underestimated in this series. And they were portrayed as barbarians, while the Mashariqa – the people of the East – are treated as Gentiles. There are Spanish Gothic documents that describe Tariq ibn Ziyad as king of the Mauros, while the series depicts him as a humble servant of Musa ibn Nusayr”.
Suhal Habaei as Tariq ibn Ziyad in the series.
The other major issue relates to the history of Ceuta. Or rather to the origins of its leader Julián, who in 707 “even the date is a matter of debate and there are those who postpone it for a few years”, surrendered the city to the troops of Tariq. Bouhaddouz asserts that Julián was a Christian Moroccan and that the inhabitants of Ceuta at the time were also Moroccans from the Ghumara tribe of northern Morocco. “The show only portrayed him as a gothic leader because his religion was Christian. But that only reflects the hatred of Arab nationalism for the history of the Moroccan Amazigh.”
The historian Eduardo Manzano, professor at CSIC and author of Conquistadores, Emirs y Califas. The Umayyads and the formation of al-Andalus (Crítica), explains by telephone from Spain that in reality very little is known about Julián. “It is known that he ruled Ceuta: that he could be Berber or Byzantine… What is clear is that in the accounts of the conquest he appears as an ally of the Visigoth king Rodrigo. And it controlled the passage of the Straits for the Visigoths”.
The controversy also reached Parliament. Addressing Communications Minister Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid, Moulay Mehdi Al Fatmi, a USFP MP, complained that a series bought “with public money” does not give importance to “Moroccan heritage”; He also complained that there was only one Moroccan actor in the series. To add insult to injury, the role of Tariq ibn Ziyad is being played by a Syrian actor, Suhail Jebai, while Moroccan actor Hisham Bahloul has had to settle for playing Shaddad, the leader of Tariq’s army.
Tariq: Algerian Berber or Moroccan Berber?
And to complete the series, the debate also opened up in Algeria, where many netizens argued that Tariq ibn Ziyad was actually born on Algerian soil and not in Morocco. While many Algerians are convinced that the character belonged to the Zenata Berber tribe, many other Moroccans believe he was actually part of the Nefzawa people of the Rif. Algerian journalist Nabil Hammaz claimed to Ennahar TV that the authorities intervened to clarify that the origin of this character in the story was Algerian and not Moroccan.
The governments of Morocco and Algeria, which have faced the issue of Western Sahara for years, have not commented on Fath Al Andalous. They left the controversy in the field of social networks and the media.
Eduardo Manzano points out that very little is actually known about Tariq ibn Ziyad. “There is speculation as to its Persian or Arabic origin. But most likely it was Berber.” According to Manzano, it is confirmed that Tariq was a Mawla, ie a client of Musa ibn Nusayr, the governor of the Umayyad Caliphate. “The Arabs use this clientelist relationship to integrate the indigenous population.”
The historian Eduardo Manzano Moreno SANTI BURGOS
For his part, the Kuwaiti director of the series, Mohamed Al Anzi, explained that there are many versions of the origins of the Conqueror of Al Andalus. “That’s why we decided not to go into it, because we want to show how the Islamic army lives together with the people in the region.” And he said it was impossible to confine Muslim leaders the size of a Tariq ibn Ziyad to the territories designated by France and the United Kingdom in 1916 under the Sykes-Picot Accords. “Tariq and the rest of our leaders are an inheritance of the nation of 1.5 billion Muslims and not of any state or territory,” he stressed.
Meanwhile, activist Rachid Bouhaddouz assured this newspaper that he, along with several journalists and “human rights defenders”, is founding an association called INCPAA: National Authority for the Control of National and Artistic Production. “So that the error does not occur again,” he argues.
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