― 211 ―

Fourteen
Muhammad El Merid: The Man Who Became Qaid
David Seddon
In 1921 the Spanish colonial rulers of northern Morocco were overwhelmed and
decisively defeated at the battle of Anual by Rifian tribesman under the
leadership of Abd al-Krim al-Khattabi. It was one of the greatest defeats a
European army suffered by a colonized people—the Spanish lost more than twenty
thousand men in this one battle.
The war in the Rif was one of the last episodes in the bloody conquest of
Morocco by Spain and France, who in 1912 divided Morocco between themselves
and established separate protectorate governments. The Spanish zone extended
from the Algerian frontier to Tangier along the Mediterranean coast and
consisted mostly of the mountainous Rif and Jabala districts. Most of Morocco
to the south came under the control of the French. Moroccans put up a fierce
struggle against both the French and Spanish colonial regimes. The Rif war was
one of the most glorious chapters in the history of Moroccan resistance. It
ended in 1925, when Abd al-Krim was finally defeated by the combined armies of
both France and Spain.
Unlike most Rifians, Muhammad El Merid, the subject of David Seddon's
contribution, was not tempted to join Krim's "Ripublik." His story is that of
a wily opportunist who, seeing the chance to exploit the ill-defined borders
between the French and Spanish jurisdictions, pulled off a spectacular land
grab at the expense of the rest of the Zaio community, among whom he lived,
and got the Spanish colonial authorities to underwrite his ambitions.
Individuals like El Merid certainly existed in goodly number not only in
Morocco but throughout the region. Human nature being what it is, there is
never a shortage of people willing to take advantage of misfortune. The
colonial situation in this sense was no different from any other. Colonial
regimes, despite their illegitimacy in the eyes of the local population,
brought not only suffering and oppression but also economic opportunities and
at times a more efficient, less corrupt government. Their seeming permanence
and the fact that they also claimed implicitly to be on the side of progress
led many Middle Easterners to try to make the best of a bad situation.

― 212 ―
Where individuals drew the line varied depending upon their personal character
and the particular context. From no compromise to opportunistic collaboration,
individuals organized their lives as best they could. Some whom we have seen
above, like Izz al-Din al-Qassam, portrayed by Abdullah Schleifer, refused to
make any concessions. Others, like the shaykh of al-Hamil and his daughter,
(about whom Julia Clancy-Smith has written), took pains to keep their autonomy
while cooperating with colonial authorities on some matters. Indeed, some
individuals could be by turns hero and collaborator (or indeed both at once),
174
 as both Edmund Burke's and Lisa Anderson's contributions show. El Merid's case
is a useful reminder that despite some nationalist retrospective
reconstructions of the colonial past not all individuals were heroes. —Ed.
Muhammad El Merid (El Merid means "the sickly") rose from humble origins to a
position of qaid (governor) of the qabila (tribe) of the Ulad in Zaio in
northeastern Morocco as a result of his collaboration with colonial authority.
His life story reveals how colonialism made it possible for an opportunistic
"nobody" to rise to a position of preeminence. The career of Muhammad El Merid,
"the man who became qaid ," involved him in a series of bitter disputes with his
own people, particularly with those among whom he lived as a young man. These
conflicts were to last even beyond his own lifetime, setting kinsman against
kinsman and neighbor against neighbor.
To render the career of Muhammad El Merid intelligible, one must situate it in
the complex and turbulent political context of early twentieth-century Morocco;
especially against the background of the rivalries between Spain, France, and
the Moroccan government in the northeastern frontier region, which provided the
opening for self-made men like El Merid. From the time of its attempted
reconquista of Morocco in the fifteenth century, Spain had gained control of a
number of strong points in northern Morocco, among them the port of Melilla. Not
until 1890, however, and largely in response to the European scramble for Africa
and French, British, and German colonial ambitions in Morocco, did Spain develop
imperialist dreams of its own in northeastern Morocco. These were opposed not
only by local tribesmen loyal to the Moroccan government but by French interests
based in colonial Algeria. While the government of Abd al-Aziz (1894–1908)
sought to support local patriotic forces, both the French and the Spanish tried
to find support among unscrupulous local Moroccan leaders. Since the status of
the northeast was not settled until the establishment of the French and Spanish
protectorates in 1912, the intervening years presented ample opportunities for
would-be Moroccan entrepreneurs to set up shop. One of the more successful was
Muhammad El Merid.

― 213 ―
Northeast Morocco at the turn of the century was a patchwork of tribes, some
reliant on cereal cultivation and small-scale agriculture, others dependent on
livestock production and transhumant pastoralism. One of the smallest of the
pastoral tribes was the Arabic-speaking Ulad Stut (Children of the Ogress),
inhabiting the Sebra Plain and the hills to the west of the Moulouya River. The
group of Ulad Stut called El Abbed occupied the southeastern part of the Sebra
Plain and comprised four major clans: Daanun, Ulad Ali, Ulad Messaoud, and
Juerba. They held land in common for grazing, although each of the four clans
had a roughly defined territory within which it claimed rights to cultivate a
little cereal and to pasture its sheep, goats, and a few camels. Some say that
El Merid came to El Abbed to work as a shepherd. A young man of humble
background, he crossed the Moulouya River from his home among the Ait Isnassen,
a large Berber-speaking tribe that inhabited the mountains between the Moulouya
and the colonial Algerian frontier. When Muhammad El Merid married Fatna Buabu
of the Juerba clan of Ulad Stut some time in the first five years of the present
175
century, he acquired a connection with the tribe. In the course of their
marriage, she bore him several sons. Despite their father's Ait Isnassen
origins, his offspring regarded themselves as Ulad Stut.
Muhammad El Merid was in his late teens or early twenties around 1902, when the
Abu Himara rebellion erupted, setting in motion a chain of events that was to
lead to the end of Moroccan independence and the establishment of the French and
Spanish protectorates in 1912. At first Abu Himara was a staunch opponent of
European imperialism as well as of the dynasty, which he accused of insufficient
zeal in warding off the imperialist threat. Later he shifted. By 1903, no longer
a direct threat to the throne, he moved to the region of Melilla, where without
renouncing his earlier mission he gradually became a local power broker. Both
Spain and France saw the rebellion of Abu Himara as an ideal opportunity to
extend their interests in northeast Morocco. In 1907, with the help of French
businessmen from Oran, Abu Himara established a munitions plant on the coast,
southeast of Melilla. Abu Himara's involvement in the politics of the Moroccan
northeast greatly exacerbated the tensions within the society and provoked much
social turbulence. Some local tribes supported him, and others opposed him,
while still others, like the Ulad Stut, were divided in their loyalties.
In 1907, no longer a serious threat to the Moroccan government and increasingly
a nuisance locally, the rebel leader sold the right to exploit the iron mines
west of Melilla and to construct a railway to transport the ore to Spanish
interests. Following a change of ruler in 1908, a combination of the sultan's
forces and growing local opposition obliged Abu Himara to leave the region.
Spanish troops captured his munitions

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factory and began to build a rail link between Melilla and the iron mines to the
west. Local tribesmen resisted these incursions, and a bitter struggle ensued,
as a result of which the Spanish army suffered more than 4,000 casualties. After
five months, however, superior Spanish organization and weaponry began to tell,
and the tribes sued for peace. Spanish garrisons were established throughout the
north of the region, including one at Selwan on the northernmost borders of Ulad
Stut territory. To maintain its control thereafter, Spain kept a regular force
of about 6,000 men and 210 officers in the region, together with a reserve of
some 3,000 men based at Nador, just south of Melilla.
Since their occupation of Moroccan territory had not been sanctioned by the
great powers who controlled international politics at the time, the Spanish
authorities dared not seek to administer it directly but instead sought to work
through local notables. They carefully deployed gifts and promises of personal
gain to win loyalty and support. Late in 1910, after the king of Spain visited
Melilla and reviewed the troops at Selwan, the governor of Melilla received
deputations of local notables from several tribal groups, including the Ulad
Stut, who signaled their general support for the Spanish presence.
In 1911, the Spanish governor of Melilla grew concerned about the possibility of
French incursions across the Moulouya from the area around Berkane, where the
French had established a military camp and a small European town as early as
1907–8. In May of 1911 the governor sent a force farther into the interior, up
176
the Moulouya River itself, to safeguard the newly pacified territory. A military
camp was set up at El Tumiat (later to be called Zaio) to the north of the Sebra
Plain. A guard post was built at the southernmost extremity of the Sebra
overlooking the river crossing Mechra Saf Saf. At the same time Spanish troops
were sent westward to control the mountain areas of the Rif. After a year of
fierce fighting and the death of a major leader of the resistance, Spain
officially declared in protectorate over northern Morocco in 1912.
The Ulad Stut offered virtually no resistance to the Spanish penetration of
their territory, and the Spanish had no fears of an uprising. However, the
ill-defined frontier to the east and south of the Moulouya River came to mark
the border between the Spanish and French zones of Morocco, though not without
continuing Spanish anxiety about French claims on northeastern Morocco. After
the division of Morocco into French and Spanish protectorates in 1912, El Abbed
and other groups of Moroccans in the border area around Sebra began to sell
their land to European settlers. The fact that some settlers were French further
alarmed the Spanish, who feared a creeping annexation by land-hungry Frenchmen
from Algeria. With their hands tied by the need to respect established
diplomatic forms governing relations between the French

― 215 ―
and Spanish zones, Spanish authorities cast about for a stratagem to keep French
speculators and would-be settlers at bay. Their chosen instrument was Muhammad
El Merid, who must already have been known to them as a potential collaborator.
With the colonial context setting the framework, the career of El Merid thus
revolved around protracted struggles over land in which it is not always easy to
follow the thread of causality. Precisely what happened is difficult to
determine, since family members, Spanish officials, and Moroccan cultivators of
the land have different versions. The subject remained controversial as late as
the 1970s.Disputes involving legal title to collectively held land are frequent
in the annals of colonial North Africa because of the sharp contrast between
capitalist notions of private property and the communal rights traditionally
held by Moroccan cultivators. Land disputes were further exacerbated by the
colonial context and the Franco-Spanish rivalry in northeastern Morocco. This
was notably the case in northeastern Morocco, where in order to prevent French
encroachment upon the Spanish side of the Moulouya River it was important for
the Spanish to preserve their rights to the Sebra Plain and to find a way of
contesting the legality of French land purchases in the region. Their success
was due in no small measure to the existence of unscrupulous individuals like
Muhammad El Merid, who were delighted to take advantage of the opportunities
presented to them.
Typically there are a number of conflicting accounts of how the El Abbed land
war began. According to one observer, El Merid
was a mokhazni ("native" soldier) with the French in Berkane at this time,
although his home was now with El Abbed. The Spanish heard of him and his
willingness to help them, and they invited him to discuss the matter. They
said that they would give him money to buy back the land; and this he did. In
1914, together with the Spanish authorities, he drew up a title, giving
177
 himself rights to half of the land concerned and a Spanish company rights to
the other half.
His sons, by contrast, paint a rather different picture of their father. They
claim that he married into the clan of El Abbed some time before 1910 and
acquired full rights to a large tract of land in the southern part of the Sebra
by purchase from other members of the group. This seems unlikely, as is shown in
a Spanish report found in the local colonial archives in Zaio dated 11 August
1932. According to its author,
the French wished to acquire these lands in our zone, and in order to prevent
this a false purchase was engineered and registered retrospectively in the
name of [Muhammad El Merid]. This avoided the danger that the land would pass
into the hands of the French, and matters would then have continued as before,
with each real owner continuing to work his

― 216 ―
land, for in fact [those occupying the land] . . . had not ceded their
property rights. But [El Merid] decided to make use of the registration in the
registry office to establish private title. It was this appropriation of the
land of . . . El Abbed as a whole that provided the basis of the [continuing]
conflict [between El Merid and the other members of El Abbed].
How to make sense of this confusing tangle? The record shows that in 1916
Muhammad El Merid registered ownership of a large tract of land in the southern
part of the Sebra, allegedly on behalf of the El Abbed community. On the basis
of this formal registration he was able to have the title transformed from the
French investors to himself in August 1916. Through a clever legal strategem,
the "collectively owned" land of El Abbed became the private property of El
Merid. The Spanish authorities clearly intended this end. They regarded El
Merid's registration as simply a way of preventing the alienation of
collectively held lands to the French. Once this particular danger had been
preempted, they expected that effective rights of cultivation and grazing would
revert to the members of El Abbed as before. But this was to reckon without El
Merid's cunning. In December of the same year, a further document was drawn up
on the basis of the land registry document, witnessed by twelve notables of the
Ulad Stut, and signed and authenticated by local "traditional" legal personnel.
By it, Muhammad El Merid acquired title to "that portion of the land in front of
Dar El Abbed."
Especially in areas where pastoralism was prevalent, collectively held tribal
land came under dramatically increased pressure from land speculators in the
early years of the Spanish protectorate. Spanish authorities must have vaguely
apprehended the dangers of this situation, for in 1912 they published a decree
forbidding the transfer of ownership of collective land between private
individuals. However, this decree was systematically ignored. A further decree
of 1914 set up a system of land registration whereby title to land could be
established or confirmed. Many Spaniards, having bought land illegally from
locals, now registered their new properties and thereby confirmed their legal
title to the land. Few Moroccans registered private title to land in the
colonial land registry. In 1916 a further decree confirmed that of 1912
178
regarding the inalienability of collective land by individuals, but since few of
the collectivities registered their common ownership, their rights to the land
in question were open to dispute under Spanish colonial law. Only a few
Moroccans, like Muhammad El Merid, took advantage of the possibilities inherent
in this transformation of property rights.
During 1916 further sales of land in the Sebra took place without the knowledge
of the Spanish authorities. This time the legal formalities were carried out in
Berkane in the French zone. In 1933 Spanish officials in Zaio who were trying to
unravel the mystery reported that

― 217 ―
when the Spanish authorities learned that the land . . . had been sold to
foreigners, the commandancia general of Melilla named Muhammad El Merid as
ukil [wakil , or legal representative] to start proceedings against the
purchasers, who represented French companies. After several meetings . . . he
managed to restore to our zone the lands sold without due authorization, and
the commandancia general of Melilla awarded the French purchasers, who had
lost the case, twenty thousand pesetas as compensation. This accomplished; the
representatives of the tribe took charge of the lands concerned and sold them
once again, this time to a Spanish company, according to the evidence of the
property register. This included a piece of land named Teniet el Khobs
Yaglula, and the transaction was carried out in 1918.
According to still other documents, the local inhabitants claimed that it had
been sold by the tribal "representatives" without their knowledge and that
Muhammad El Merid, who had supervised the sale, was guilty of fraud. Other
groups also contested the appropriation and sale of their collective land. To
these charges El Merid responded that the land was not collective but privately
owned land and that all he had done was to supervise a transfer of property from
French into Spanish hands.
In contrast to the relative ease of their takeover of the Sebra Plain near
Melilla, the Spanish attempt in the 1920s to impose their authority on the
tribes of the interior of the central Rif mountains ran into major difficulties.
A coalition of tribes under the leadership of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Krim initiated
armed resistance against them. Disregarding warnings of the danger, a Spanish
force under General Silvestre sought in 1921 to invade the heartland of the
powerful Aith Warayaghar tribe, where Abd al-Krim had set up his headquarters.
The result was a series of crushing Spanish defeats, notably at Dahar Ubarran
and at Anual, where Spanish forces were annihilated. By August the Spanish army
had been thrown back almost to the outskirts of Melilla, and the Spanish
settlers who had begun to colonize the eastern region left their land and fled
from Abd al-Krim's advancing tribesmen. It was one of the greatest defeats
inflicted upon a European army in the annals of colonial warfare. Despite the
proximity of the fighting, there is no evidence that these heroics rubbed off on
the Ulad Stut. The Sebra Plain remained quiet throughout 1920. Many even joined
the Spanish army to fight the Rifians (and earn a regular wage). Even after the
disaster at Anual in the summer of 1921, Muhammad El Merid was active in
assisting Spanish settlers to escape across the Moulouya River to the safety of
179
the French zone.
In February 1923 Abd al-Krim proclaimed himself the head of a Rifian "Ripublik,"
and it looked for a time like he might be able to wrest control of northeastern
Morocco from Spain. But Abd al-Krim's success

― 218 ―
brought France into the war and shifted the balance of the struggle. By 1925
Krim was defeated, and the Spanish were able to reestablish their rule over the
eastern region once again. News of Muhammad El Merid's efforts to assist the
Spanish in their hour of need had reached the colonial authorities back in Zaio.
With the prospect of continued fighting in the central Rif after the grueling
military campaign of 1921, Spanish officials had been desperate to maintain law
and order wherever possible through local intermediaries. Already familiar with
Muhammad El Merid as a result of his role in the Sebra land recuperation scheme,
the Spanish colonial administration in gratitude named him qaid of the qabila of
Ulad Stut. The fruits of collaboration were finally harvested.
With the end of the Rif war in 1925, the eastern region of the Spanish
protectorate was transferred to the civil administration of the Delegacion de
asuntos indigenas (Department of Native Affairs). According to the new system of
organization, the regional level was placed under the jurisdiction of an
official called the interventor territorial , while subregional administration
was the responsibility of the interventor comarcal . The subregional
circumscription, or comarcal , was divided into qabilas (tribal units), each
under an interventor local . The Spanish protectorate administration was
paralleled by "native" administration descending from qaid to shaykh and
muqaddam .
As the qaid of the qabila of Ulad Stut, Muhammad El Merid was the most powerful
and influential of indigenous Spanish protectorate officials in Zaio. While in
principle he was subordinate to the local Spanish officials, he was generally
able to exercise considerable autonomous authority within his qabila . In fact,
El Merid exercised effective day-to-day control over general administration and
justice in the tribe. He was responsible for law and order and could call upon a
small security force (makhazniya ) for this purpose if necessary. The position
of the qaid in the Spanish and French protectorates was very similar. The qaid
was said to have "great formal powers and even greater informal powers, and
legal authority was elusively located between [him] and the [European officials]
in such a way that power was often uncontrollable and unchecked."
Once installed as qaid of the Ulad Stut, El Merid was able to consolidate his
hold on the lands of the Sebra. He used his position to exact gifts and tribute
from fellow tribesmen and to place his sons and clients in positions of
authority. As he began to accumulate wealth, El Merid's newfound political
status enabled him to make favorable marriages for himself and for his children
and thus to enlarge his network of relations and supporters. By Fatna, his El
Abbed wife, he had four sons: Mukhtar, Buaza, Huma, and Ramdan. As befitted the
status of a member of the Moroccan rural elite, he married often. In addition to
his first wife, he married four women: one from the Ait Abu Yahi tribe, one

180
― 219 ―
from the Banu Awkil, one from the Ait Isnassen (his tribe of origin), and
another from El Abbed. In all he had seven sons and several daughters by his
various wives.
El Merid's rise to power was, as we have seen, by no means uncontroversial.
Indeed, by the usual criteria he had little to recommend himself. He was
uneducated and could neither read nor write; he spoke poor Spanish, and Arabic
with a Berber accent. He was, as many put it, walu (nobody). The Spanish
authorities had apparently considered making Muhammad El Merid qaid as early as
1917, but more than half of the qabila opposed him when this was proposed by the
Spanish authorities, and he was not appointed. Despite his success, he continued
to be regarded by many of the Arabic-speaking Ulad Stut as an Ait Isnassen
Berber interloper.
Among those particularly resentful of his power and authority were the members
of the El Abbed community into whom he had married, among whom he had lived, and
whose land, many felt, he had appropriated for himself. Some, like the Ulad Ali,
had particular cause to hate him. While qaid , El Merid had ordered the houses
of the Ulad Ali to be burned and the members of the clan expelled from the area.
Only after Morocco gained its independence in 1956 and El Merid was fired as
qaid did they return.
The affair began in May 1929 when several men from El Abbed decided to build
houses on their pastureland, as more and more pastoralists were doing at that
time. When El Merid caught wind of their intentions, he forbade them to do so,
stating that the land on which they planned to build belonged to him and that he
had written documents to prove it. The men protested to the Spanish authorities,
and after some argument El Merid agreed to cede them five hundred hectares,
while charging them for the cost of the survey involved. But an agreement was
never reached, nor was the land surveyed, for the "beneficiaries" contested both
his right to the land and the identification of the plots made within the
property for the families concerned. El Merid appointed a lawyer to defend his
rights to the land in the Sebra, and the dispute dragged on into 1930 and 1931.
The Spanish colonial authorities, concerned by the virulence with which the men
of El Abbed pursued their claims, supported the qaid . What was at stake is
revealed in a report by the local Spanish administrator dated September 1932. In
it, the interventor local argued that
it was not possible to divest the qaid of his formal rights, even if the
claimants were in principle in the right (for which there is no documentary
evidence), and it was not possible to give them what they asked for, unless
the qaid agreed to cede it to them or unless through some mistake of the
earlier ruling they were able to secure an annulment of the registration made

― 220 ―
in 1916. In the latter case, as the suit against the French was won precisely
on the basis of this title, should the title be found to be invalid, then the
French could renew their claims.
181
Like El Merid, the Spanish authorities were determined to uphold the title
established by the registration of 1916, however fraudulent its basis. However,
according to the same report, they did advise him to "be as generous as possible
and do everything possible to reach an agreement."
By this time El Merid was in his late forties, and his older sons were married.
His eldest son, Mukhtar (who was himself to marry seven times), had his first
son, Mbarek, in 1930. Although El Merid was now a grandfather, he had younger
wives himself. His fifth son, Abd al-Qadir, was born in 1934, to be followed
shortly afterwards by Hamid. His position as qaid was assured, and his family
was flourishing. It was a good time "to be generous," as he put it. In 1935, El
Merid agreed to cede some fifteen hundred hectares of land in the Sebra to the
aggrieved El Abbed families. In 1936 preparations were made to survey the
property in question and identify the different claims being made. However, on
17 July 1936, Spanish officers stationed in the military garrisons of Tetouan,
Ceuta, and Melilla rose in rebellion against the Republican government. The
Spanish civil war had begun. Because of this, the land was never surveyed, let
alone allocated. Many Moroccans, including the El Abbed claimants themselves,
soon became involved in the war. A 1969 survey determined that twenty-six of
forty-two heads of household interviewed in El Abbed had fought in Spain. Of the
fourteen who had seen on army service at all, eight had been too young.
El Merid's sons, like those of most of the rich families of Zaio, avoided
participating in the fighting. With hostility toward supporters of the Spanish
Republic in the region running high, there was always employment for a select
few as informers and spies. El Merid's son Buaza, who was especially hated by
the local population, was a member of the Moroccan Fascists during the war
years. The other sons managed to elude military service during the war and
remained in Zaio. They were among the first non-Spanish to construct houses
within the village of Zaio itself, although they also had houses in the
countryside. By the war's end, El Merid and his family had become part of the
local notability. The eldest son, Mukhtar, was made khalifa , or deputy, of his
father, while another son, Hamid, was given the position of shaykh.
The Spanish civil war and World War II brought a succession of hardships for
many in Spanish Morocco. The harvests of 1934, 1935, and 1936 were poor, and
that in 1937 was even worse. In 1938 a reasonable harvest was followed in 1939
by a very good one; but 1940, 1941, and 1942 were all years of poor harvests,
while 1945 was catastrophic. The cereal crop was negligible, and livestock
losses were terrible. Imported

― 221 ―
goods were very scarce because of the war. The cost of living nearly tripled
between 1936 and 1940 and doubled again over the next five years. The eastern
region was one of the hardest hit in the Spanish zone. Areas such as Zaio, where
livestock production remained important, suffered more than most. As their
indebtedness increased, the poor sought to obtain money for basic necessities
and were compelled to sell their lands. As some became impoverished, others
(merchants and officials in particular) grew rich at their expense.
The war years were marked by at least one additional development that impinged
182
upon the Ulad Stut. After years of inactivity, a joint Spanish and French
commission began work in 1942 on a plan for the irrigation of the Sebra Plain as
part of a larger irrigation scheme to include both banks of the Moulouya River.
A committee was appointed by the Spanish authorities to discuss the legal
problems associated with land-ownership in the new irrigation perimeter. Qaid El
Merid, whose nickname suggests that he had to contend with frequent illness, was
unwell and unable to participate in its deliberations. Certain groups of the
Ulad Stut, taking advantage of his absence, were able to engage a local judge
(qadi ) to help them establish legal title to collective properties in the Sebra
Plain. They had documents drawn up supporting their rights to land that they
claimed had formerly constituted their traditional grazing grounds. This was
unusual. Outside of Zaio most tribesmen had not sought to claim rights they
possessed under Spanish colonial law.
Certainly there were ample grounds for confusion about the status of
collectively held lands in eastern Morocco. Although a decree of June 1929 had
required the registration of collective lands, it had not been properly applied,
nor had the necessary investigation of claims to collective status been carried
out. Also not implemented were the additional decrees of October 1930 and July
1935, which had respectively further defined collective property and ordered the
registration of all collective lands. But in Zaio, with the prospect of
irrigation enhancing the value of land in the Sebra, those groups with
traditional collective rights in the plain had realized the importance of formal
registration; hence their efforts to draw up the appropriate documents to
support subsequent registration.
When he heard of the legal challenge to his control of the El Abbed lands, El
Merid decided to take the matter directly to the interventor comarcal . the qaid
claimed that this new attempt to define property rights was invalid and that the
activities of the local land commission were suspect. The interventor urged him
to be reasonable and to come to an agreement with the members of his qabila .
But the qaid refused to accept the documents presented to the local commission
as valid. He asserted that the members of the land commission had been bribed
and had

― 222 ―
given false information. The land, he stated, was owned by himself or by the
Spanish company to which individual members of the various groups concerned had
sold it. Emphasizing that his title to the land in question had been established
in 1916, El Merid demanded that the land be returned to him.
In the past, this maneuver might have worked. However, in the changed postwar
context of the Spanish protectorate, El Merid found himself in a greatly
weakened position. With the rise of nationalism, the Spanish authorities were
less vulnerable to attempts to play them off against French interests. In the
changed political climate they also relied less upon local Moroccan
collaborators and were more solicitous of the views of other groups. After years
of having his way locally, Muhammad El Merid was no longer indispensable.
In 1949, in response to a demand from his superior to define the limits of the
native collective according to the requirements of the law, a "Sebra collective"
183
was established by the interventor comarcal of Zaio. It looked as though El
merid's enemies had prevailed. But this would be to reckon without the
labyrinthine intricacies of the law and the lengthy history of litigation of
this issue; for despite the fact that El Merid lost that particular battle, he
still retained effective title to the lands in the southern Sebra in the
traditional grazing grounds of El Abbed. In 1950, the dispute over these lands
was still unresolved.
Muhammad El Merid remained qaid of the Ulad Stut in Zaio until Moroccan
independence in 1956, when he was replaced by a proven nationalist. Infirm and
ill, the old qaid survived until 1958. His sons and grandsons remain among the
most influential and wealthy members of the notability of Zaio to this day. The
fruits of collaboration have been shared by all the family of Muhammad El Merid.

A Note on Sources
Much of Muhammad El Merid's story is based upon oral histories and personal
recollections collected during my first period of fieldwork as an anthropologist
in northeast Morocco between 1968 and 1970. I have also consulted documents in
the local archives in Zaio and Nador relating to the Spanish colonial period. In
addition, a number of secondary sources, mainly in Spanish and French, were used
to provide background.
Suggestions for Further Reading
The author's book Moroccan Peasants: A Century of Change in the Eastern Rif,
1870–1970 , published by William Dawson of Folkestone, England, provides a
detailed

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analysis of economic and political change in the eastern Rif of northeast
Morocco over a period of about a hundred years, from the late nineteenth century
to the late 1960s. Other studies of the Rif from an anthropological of view
include David M. Hart's two-volume work The Aith Waryaghar of the Moroccan Rif:
An Ethnography and History , Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, no. 55
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1976); and Raymond Jamous, Honneur et
Baraka: Les structures sociales traditionelles dans le Rif (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1978). Hart's study examines the Rif rebellion of Abd al-Krim,
as do David Woolman's Rebels in the Rif (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969)
and the contemporary account by Walter B. Harris, France, Spain and the Rif
(London: Edward Arnold, 1927). Other attempts to provide local histories of the
early days of European penetration include Ross E. Dunn, Resistance in the
Desert (London: Croom Helm, and Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977).
For a general overview of precolonial (early twentieth-century) Morocco, see
Edmund Burke, III, Prelude to Protectorate in Morocco: Precolonial Protest and
Resistance, 1860–1912 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976).

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