Tetouan needs barley, 1856

Mohammed Daoud

Students of Moroccan history owe a major debt of gratitude to Mohammed Daoud. Not only did he turn his incredible private library into a research library (albeit a difficult one to find) in his hometown of Tetouan, he also gave the world Tarikh Titwan, a twelve-volume comprehensive history of his city from the Almohads to the Hispano-Moroccan War of 1859-1860 (sometimes called the Tetouan War). 

The breadth of his project, completed over the course of nearly two decades, can be intimidating, but the sheer volume provides lots of possible jumping off points for researchers looking for new projects. Best of all perhaps, it also contains hundreds of reproduced primary sources, from local chroniclers to Spanish military correspondence to letters from the Sultan, Moulay Abderrahman, to makhzan officials.

In 1856, severe grain shortages hit Tetouan and the Jbela region. The qaid of Tetouan (al-Hajj Ahmed al-Haddad) wrote to the sultan informing him of the problem, and the sultan in turn sent a letter to the qaid of Essaouira (Mogador), ordering him to send two boats loaded with barley to Tetouan. Mohammed Daoud reproduces the letter in Tarikh Titwan, volume 9, p. 363. The Sultan repeatedly appeals to the Essaouira qaid's "blessings of generosity," while casually remarking that he "knows well the high price of barley" at the time. 

Dated 14 Safar 1273, the brief letter demonstrates a few things. First, it suggests the makhzan's capacity, however limited, to link distant parts of the empire. Without the Sultan's intervention, it is unlikely the governor of Essaouira would have sent barley to Tetouan. Second, it suggests, as Stacy Holden's recent work shows, the precolonial makhzan's concern with the security of food supply and its willingness to intervene and subsidize when necessary. 

Delacroix's painting of Moulay Abderrahman