The most notable gap—acknowledged by the author in the preface—is the lack of direct Saharan oral sources from before 1670. The text relies heavily on Arabic chronicles (Ibn Khaldun, Al-Bakri, Al-Idrisi) and European consular reports from Essaouira and Agadir. Consequently, the voices of the ordinary Sahrawi pastoralist or the enslaved salt-miner of Taghaza are heard only indirectly through elite filters. Le Maroc saharien des origines à 1670 is a vital corrective. In an era where the sovereignty of the Moroccan Sahara is a heated geopolitical issue (specifically regarding the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara), this book provides a deep, academic anchor to the Moroccan claim of historical continuity .

Whether one agrees with its political framing or not, the volume succeeds in its primary goal: It proves that long before the modern nation-state, the lands stretching from the High Atlas to the banks of the Draa were not an empty wilderness, but a vibrant, contested, and essential part of the Moroccan political imagination. For the French-reading scholar of Africa, this text is indispensable—a map not of sand, but of memory.

Moroccan Sahara, Saharan trade, Alaouite dynasty, Almoravids, Sijilmassa, Historiographie Marocaine.

This ambitious volume is not merely a political history; it is an archaeological, genealogical, and socio-economic excavation of the vast, arid territories that have long constituted Morocco’s deep south. By setting its terminus at 1670 (a pivotal year marking the height of the Alaouite dynasty’s early consolidation), the book offers a critical re-evaluation of a region often left in the margins of classical Islamic and European historiography. One of the book’s primary strengths is its deliberate avoidance of the anachronistic nation-state model. Written for a French-speaking academic audience, the text confronts the legacy of colonial cartography, which often drew lines between “useful” (coastal) Morocco and the “uncertain” Saharan hinterlands.