Gatekeepers of the Arab Past

The Beginning (Or End) of Moroccan History: Historiography, Translation, and Modernity in Ahmad B. Khalid Al-Nasiri and Clemente Cerdeira

“…Di-Capua has observed that the modern idea of history derives from an effort "to understand the past from the point of view of the final outcome of progress: that is, the future." 95 Cerdeira, in contrast, inverts this process: he understands the future from the point of view of the past. In Cerdeira's closing annotation to his translation of al-Nasiri, he evokes the Arab-Islamic notion of al-maktūb (literally, "it is written," and by extension, "it was meant to be"): "Some European friend of the sultan [ Abd al-Aziz], perhaps a Spaniard, told him of the impending disaster and of the inevitable fall of his Empire, which-even before ceasing to be his-would be divvyed up among the civilized Powers.…”

“…26 Instead, he asserts that instability and hybridity were the hallmarks of late 19th-century Arabic historiography. 27 Al-Nasiri's work illustrates this hybridity by using both religion and the nation-state as organizing principles. Although al-Nasiri's account of the war emphasizes the superior military technology and strategy that led to Spain's humiliating victory over the Moroccan army, it is still peppered with Qur anic citations and references to the warring parties as "the Christians and the Muslims."…”