Lords of the Atlas: The Rise and Fall of the House of Glaoua, 1893 - 1956

Set in the medieval city of Marrakesh and the majestic kasbahs of the High Atlas mountains, `Lords of the Atlas' tells the extraordinary story of the Madani and T'hami el Glaoui, warlord brothers who carved out a feudal fiefdom in southern Morocco in the early twentieth century. Quislings of the French colonial administration, they combined the aggression of gangland mobsters with the opulence of hereditary Indian princes, and ruled with a mixture of flamboyance and terror. On returning from the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, T'hami ordered the severed heads of his enemies to be mounted on his gates. Yet in 1956, when the French left Morocco, the Glaoua regime toppled like a pack of cards.A classic story of history, intrigue, mystery, and action. This is the classic account of the ruthless House of Glaoua, rulers of Morocco from 1893-1956, by the author of the international bestseller Ring of Bright Water. It is a story of brutal power and cultural beauty, of palaces with hundreds of rooms, and of heads piled high around cannons.The setting is the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, the border between the "civilized" coast and the nomadic tribes of the interior Sahara, a forbidding region of snow-capped peaks near the equator, some rising as high as 12,000 feet. Maxwell spent years researching this story, traveling by Land Rover and mule to reach the far-flung villages where the Glaoua got their start. In the foothills of these majestic summits, the brothers Madini and T'hami Glaoui, sons of an Ethiopian concubine and rulers of a salt-trading village, increasingly gained power as the infrastructure of the French occupation crumbled. As they came to rule the country, they built castles of sand, literally, which are slowly crumbling in the hills to this day.This is a tale of the intersection of the medieval and the modern, of ancient power principles and the complications of the global world. There is nothing quite like it. Contents Illustrations Maps, etc. Author’s Foreword Table of Principal Events 1 The Castle 2 The Cannon 3 Whose King is a Child 4 The Time and the Country 5 The Defeat of Abd El Aziz 6 Madani’s Sultan - Moulay Hafid 7 The Hostages 8 The Beginning of the Great Caid Era 9 The Golden Years 10 The Glaoui Empire Completed 11 The Image 12 Towards Independence 13 The First March of the Berber Warriors 14 The Deposition of Mohammed V 15 T’hami’s Hour 16 The Submission of T’hami 17 The Hand of Allah Appendix I. The Aftermath — Marrakesh in 1956 Appendix II. Walter Harris’s Description of his Dealings with Moulay Hafid after his Deposition Appendix III. Extract from With Mulai Hafid at Fez by Lawrence Harris (1909) Appendix IV. Comments on Son Excellence by Members of the Old Régime Select Bibliography Index