The “sovereignty of His Majesty the Sultan” was formalized for the first time by the Algeciras Conference (January-April 1906), which internationalized the Moroccan economy. Paradoxically, this recognition came at a time when the Moroccan state’s actual power had been reduced to a minimum as a result of European ambitions. Since the mid-19th century, France, England, and Spain had sought to bring the last independent state in North Africa under their influence, as part of a global imperial rivalry. Morocco’s economy was subject to competition from European companies, several military defeats had weakened its army, and war reparations had ruined the public treasury. The exact nature of Moroccan sovereignty in the 19th century, threatened by these pre-colonial enterprises, is a matter of debate among historians.

Morocco, the only country in North Africa to have escaped Ottoman rule, has not directly benefited from recent reinterpretations of the history of Ottoman sovereignty.¹ The historiographical debate concerning Morocco dates back further. It was shaped by the generation of historians who emerged in the country after independence and sought above all to refute colonial theories. Those theories claimed that the Makhzen – the sultan’s state – had exercised only superficial control over the country prior to the 1912 protectorate. Postcolonial research has focused on the relations between the sultan and the tribes, which were viewed as concrete embodiments of Moroccan sovereignty in the 19th century, before the establishment of the French and Spanish protectorates in 1912. However, scholars have placed less emphasis on theoretical reflection regarding the legal models or ideological frameworks surrounding this concept of sovereignty.

Contemporary sources such as French travelers or ambassadors often reduced the sultan’s sovereignty to spiritual guardianship over a country that, due to the autonomy of local (in this case, tribal) fiefdoms, resembled “our medieval societies”.² They more rarely emphasized the importance of the Sharifian genealogy of the sultans, which conferred upon them, through descent from the Prophet, a prestigious baraka (blessing). Historians and anthropologists nowadays agree on the intertwining of the sacred and royalty,³ but power was not limited to this religious aura. Sovereignty combined spiritual and temporal powers – which were, in fact, inseparable – and derived from Islamic law.

Sovereignty Grounded in Law (šarʿ): the Bayʿa

Moroccan authority followed the model of Muslim governance: sovereignty derived from God, who had entrusted, as the Moroccan historian al-Zayyānī (1734–1833) wrote, “the affairs of the Muslims” (amr al-muslimīn⁴) to a single person, the Commander of the Faithful (amīr al-muʾminīn), a title claimed by the sultans since the Saadian dynasty. This title, along with that of imām (leader of the community), most closely approximated the concept of sovereign. During a ceremony attended by the local elite, an oath of allegiance (bayʿa) was concluded as a legal contract.

The new sultan was charged with enforcing the Islamic legal order (šarʿ),⁵ in exchange for which his subjects promised him unconditional obedience. The absence of internal divisions (fitna) was thus guaranteed by the uniqueness and irrevocability of this power. The documents preserved by the sultans regarding the allegiance of the cities and tribes grounded this procedure in the Prophet’s precepts and justified this sovereignty by guaranteeing the interests of the country and its inhabitants.

The bayʿa and the official ideology championed by the ulema (religious scholars) and court historians highlighted the contractual nature of this power. In practice, local sources reveal reactive oaths of allegiance, solicited by the son or brother of the deceased sultan who had prevailed over his rivals through his personal qualities and the strength of his military support.

The 19th century saw two turning points. Under the influence of Nahḍa political thought in the Middle East, constitutional proposals spread among intellectual circles, for instance in Tangier. At the height of the crisis the country faced prior to the protectorate, in 1908, oaths of allegiance even imposed conditions on the new sultan, Moulay ʿAbd al-Ḥafīẓ, during a “conditional bayʿa” (mašrūṭa).

The other change was the territorialization of allegiance. Previously, Muslim subjects living in remote regions of Africa could pledge allegiance to the Sultan of Morocco on a symbolic basis, but when, in 1830, the inhabitants of Tlemcen, then under French occupation, sent a bayʿa to Sultan Moulay ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, this declaration of loyalty – which was also a call for help – sparked more debate than enthusiasm.⁶ At a time when imperialism was tightening border controls, the legal basis of power increasingly aligned with the actual conditions under which this power was exercised.

The Sultan’s Compromised Duties

European pressure, the presence of foreigners and merchants, and economic competition undermined the sultan’s exercise of sovereignty in two of his essential duties as Commander of the Faithful. The first was tax collection, which the sultans justified in the name of zakāt (almsgiving), one of the pillars of Islam. By increasing the debt burden on their state, the Europeans forced the sultans to create new unpopular taxes, notably a new fiscal system moving away from traditional Islamic taxes toward a universal tax (tartīb), in 1880 and then in 1901. Considered as mukūs (non-canonical taxes), they were rejected by an impoverished population and privileged elites alike.

Another essential duty was the waging of jihād: the Makhzen not only proved powerless against the French armies (defeat at Isly in 1844) or the Spanish (defeat at Tetouan in 1860) but was even forced to disarm tribes at the request of the Spanish. Criticism leveled at the Makhzen did not concern excessive despotism, but rather its inability to support the tribes, which were left to fight the foreign enemy alone.⁷ This explains why the northern tribes rallied behind rebel forces challenging the dynasty’s legitimacy, such as that of Zarhūnī, known as “the man with the donkey” (Bū Ḥmarā), in 1902.

Maintaining the Sultan’s Sovereignty?

Moroccan sovereignty was thus hindered in the exercise of its fundamental obligations by European imperialism. Moroccan actors were fully aware of this, as evidenced, for example, by their criticism of the regime of protégés. This system allowed Europeans to protect their Moroccan intermediaries by subjecting them to their consular jurisdiction, to the detriment of the sultan’s authority, thus extending to Morocco the system of capitulations in place in the Ottoman Empire. For the ulema, accepting protection was simply a breach of the bayʿa.⁸ The sin of breaking the oath made to the imām did not, however, prevent powerful supporters of the throne, such as the Ouezzane zawiya, a Sufi lodge, from obtaining French protection in 1884. Although its practical application was challenged by Europeans and Moroccan dissidents alike, the legal principle of Moroccan sovereignty endured despite successive crises. The European powers chose to rely on the legitimate throne to safeguard their interests, soon formalized by the protectorate treaties in 1912. By maintaining the sultan’s sovereignty, they contributed to his survival and to the consolidation of his territorial anchorage during the colonial period, following dynamics set in motion in the 19th century.⁹ This same combination of personal loyalty and territorial claims was central to the monarchy’s conception of national sovereignty, particularly in its claims to territories such as the Sahara, an issue that became crucial for the country after 1975.

1. E.g. Lâle Can, Aimee Genell, “On Empire and Exception. Genealogies of Sovereignty in the Ottoman World,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, vol. 40, no. 3, (2020), 468-473. ↩︎
2. Gabriel Charmes, Une ambassade au Maroc (Calmann Lévy, 1887). ↩︎
3. Zakaria Rhani, “Saints et rois : la genèse du politique au Maroc,” Anthropologica, 2008, vol. 50, no. 2 (2008), 375-388. ↩︎
4. Abū l-Qāsim al-Zayyānī, Al-Bustān al-ẓarīf fī dawlat Awlād Mawlāy al-Šarīf, ed. Rašīd al-Zāwiya, Rissani (Markaz al-Dirāsāt wa l-buḥūṯ al- ʿAlawiyya, 1992), 420. ↩︎
5. In the Moroccan context, šarʿwas the main source of the law, besides local jurisprudence or customs and Makhzen rules. ↩︎
6. Raḥma Bū Ruqiyya, Al-dawla wa l-sulṭa wa l-muǧtamaʿ, dirāsa fīl-ṯābit wa l-mutaḥawwil fī ʿalāqāt al-dawla bi l-qabāʾil fīl-Maġrib (Dār al-ṭalīʿa li l-ṭibāʿa wa l-našr, 1991), 28. ↩︎
7. Amira K. Bennison, Jihad and its Interpretations in Pre-Colonial Morocco. State-Society Relations during the French Conquest of Algeria (Routledge, 2002). ↩︎
8. Mohammed Kenbib, Les protégés. Contribution à l’histoire contemporaine du Maroc (Publications de la Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, 1996), 94. ↩︎
9. I have explored this topic in Un seul trône. Souveraineté et divisions coloniales au Nord du Maroc (CNRS Éditions, 2025). ↩︎