Today, we're diving into the fascinating intersection of Morocco’s national identity and its critical role in the global food supply, particularly through its phosphate reserves. Situated at the western edge of the Arab world, Morocco holds about 70% of the world’s easily obtainable phosphates, making it a pivotal player in agricultural sustainability. As we explore the rich history and cultural significance of Morocco, we’ll also uncover the backstory of its national anthem, which reflects the nation’s spirit and resilience against colonialism. From the colonial past to the modern day, we’ll weave through the country’s struggles and triumphs, revealing how its anthem encapsulates not just pride, but a deep-rooted commitment to unity and identity. So, buckle up as we embark on this enlightening journey through Morocco’s landscapes, history, and the melody that binds its people together.

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19. https://2009-2017.state.gov/outofdate/bgn/morocco/47514.htm 
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21. Miller, Susan Gilson. (2013). A history of modern Morocco. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-62469-5. OCLC 855022840
22. https://web.archive.org/web/20160303104131/http://morocco.usembassy.gov/early.html 
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24. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Routledge_Handbook_of_the_History_of_Glo/l6BeBAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=alaouite+dynasty+succeeded+in+maintaining+the+independence+of+Morocco&pg=PA229&printsec=frontcover 
25. https://eudocs.lib.byu.edu/index.php/General_Treaty_Between_Her_Majesty_and_the_Sultan_of_Morocco 
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28. Katz, Jonathan Glustrom (2006). Murder in Marrakech: Émile Mauchamp and the French Colonial Adventure. Bloomington et Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. p. 358. ISBN 978-0-253-34815-9.
29. https://www.britannica.com/event/Agadir-Incident 
30. https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_History_of_the_Arab_Peoples/egbOb0mewz4C?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA323&printsec=frontcover 
31. https://thefunambulist.net/editorials/casablanca-1952-architects-and-the-colonial-counter-revolution 
32. https://books.google.com/books?id=mKpz_2CkoWEC&newbks=0&hl=en&source=newbks_fb 
33. https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1956/mar/03/fromthearchive 
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35. https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2018/12/83846/ali-squalli-morocco-national-anthem/ 
36. https://search.worldcat.org/title/794366388 
37. https://www.google.com/books/edition/West_Africa_Before_the_Europeans/Sh0hBQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 
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39. https://referenceworks.brill.com/display/entries/EJIO/SIM-0004780.xml 
40. https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2023/01/353472/independence-proclamation-the-ongoing-legacy-of-moroccan-nationalism 
41. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/morocco/1956-04-01/morocco-plans-independence 
42. https://www.nytimes.com/1955/11/17/archives/morocco-sultan-returns-in-triumph-from-exile-moroccan-sultan-hailed.html

Foreign hello and welcome to the Anthems Podcast. I'm Patrick and I'm here to tell you the story of a song that helps to tell the story of a nation.

Today we are taking a 2,582 mile trip that is 4,156 km and I am tired from a very long horseback ride last time, but I've got some extra money from selling the horse to people that love her. So we're gonna burn like $250 and emit roughly 259kg of carbon dioxide and get there in a coach seat on Norwegian airlines.

In all 25 previous trips between countries, I was unable to find an even kind of direct but modern technology has connected Helsinki and Marrakesh. That means that if you knew where Marrakesh is, then you just learned that this episode is about Morocco. Officially the Kingdom of Morocco.

We are in the country that the Arab world refers to as the Kingdom of the Sunset.

My guess is because it is the Arab nation that is physically furthest west and we are here because of the global food supply, specifically because all the plants need phosphorus to grow in the form of phosphates actually, and without the ability to farm many plants, it turns out that many of the humans will starve.

It also turns out that phosphate is very much a finite resource in a non geological time scale and that unlike something like a fossil fuel based source of energy, there are no alternatives to phosphorus because that's how evolution works. So what does that have to do with Morocco?

It just so happens that due to geography and time and the whims of geochemistry, that the Kingdom is sitting on just about 70% of the world's easily obtainable reserves of the stuff.

In the last episode's intro I said that a fed human is the best human and this stuff is critical for feeding humans when there are billions of us that we need to keep fed.

Needing phosphate and only phosphate as one of the components to make modern agricultural work makes Morocco a very important place and is an excellent reason to tell you about the Cherifeean anthem.

Again, I am diving feet first into a country that I started off almost completely ignorant of, and that is turning out to be one of the defining features of my show. With Morocco.

I knew the French had something to do with what happened there that is in fact a colonialism spoiler, and that Casablanca is set there despite being filmed entirely in the US State of California. It's a pretty good movie though, if you like movies like that.

And I'm pretty sure that if Sam was an actual piano player in an American expats bar in Morocco. He would have played this anthem there more than one time. So let's hear it.

My first impression is that the song feels very much like a proclamation, immediately feels right as a national anthem, and it's another one that I really enjoy. As usual, I listened to dozens of versions of this before making the decision to play this one.

My final choice was made almost entirely based on the audio quality this time because there were actually a bunch of versions that were really good. Usually there are a variety of renditions I like, but not many that capture the music and lyrics well.

But this anthem bucked the trend on that and it came down to production.

I was going to transition into where the World Are we bit with some distinctly Moroccan activities and talk about those, but I was looking at some sources and I discovered that Moroccan people like in descending order of popularity, travel, sports, exercise, socializing, reading, computers, tech, cooking and etc. Which means they are just as boring as the rest of us because people are basically the same wherever you find us.

And I really think people are basically the same as we were a millennia ago. We just got cooler toys now. But finding sameness in the countries I learn about is a relief in many ways. So where is this one anyway?

Morocco is a pretty easy place for me to locate now that we've spent a few episodes on African countries. This time we head to the place where Europe and Africa are like 35 minute ferry ride away from each other. The Strait of Gibraltar.

More on that in a moment though. Once you're through the strait we get a rather arbitrary feeling.

310ish miles of Mediterranean coast before the edge of the country and from there most of the rest of the east and south are bordered by Algeria.

The western border of the country is North Atlantic Ocean, and the rest of the southern border is disputed territory or country or something of Western Sahara. We will clarify that in a Future episode.

The 37 million or so inhabitants live in a Mediterranean summer or hot desert climate year round, and the country is just a bit smaller than all of Central America and also just a bit smaller than its partner Spain on the other side of the strait. It's an interesting continental intersection, so it gets to be the geology thing this episode.

The sedimentation patterns under the Mediterranean Sea show that on geological timescales we get consistent but periodic closures of the strait and large swaths of the sea dry up.

Scientists are pretty sure that the next time it happens it will take less than a thousand years for Complete evaporation to occur again, though that's much longer than the timescale we're dealing with. We're concerned with human timescales that are short.

And it's time to figure out where we're going to enter into the narrative and start to build the story. As a country in Africa, Morocco has a human history that goes back pretty much all of the way of human history.

But I digress. That same year in Morocco, a 33 hour car ride from where Newton lived in England, saw the rise of the Alawite dynasty.

It got started with Sharif IBN Ali, an Arab emir of a part of the region and a man that claimed to be a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad himself through a grandson.

From here we're going to time jump ahead a bit because despite the fact that there was a well established culture and government in Morocco before the Europeans arrived, this is still part of the series on the fall of colonialism. We're going to get properly going here at the very end of the Napoleonic wars when France had a growing interest in Northern Africa.

Twelve years later, there was yet another challenge to independence by the British that resulted in a treaty that made additional concessions, but did open the country to further foreign trade.

So the meddling continued and as you might guess, the instability increased right up to the turn of the century, with fully half of the country's expenses going to war debt. This led to a slew of local wars to try to abscond the Sultanate.

That gave France the reason that it needed to do what they did in Laos and stabilize the situation.

An angry mob formed and they beat a doctor named Emile Mosham to death outside of his office, despite the poor guy only being guilty of being a French dude. So the city of Uja was invaded in the east and Casablanca was bombarded before being invaded after a different customs dispute.

Again, no one that lived in these countries was asked how they feel about this stuff. And they were again not consulted when Spain was given portions of northern and southern Morocco as buffers for its own colonial claims.

The treaties that were signed of course maintained the facade of Moroccan sovereignty. But in practice, the Sultan was a meaningless figurehead and the French administration ruled the country and did all of the government stuff.

Again, almost entirely a project of exploitation for the French, focusing especially on the region's phosphate reserves. Before we get to the part where the French get out and let the people rule themselves, first we will talk about a composer.

I thought maybe we were turning the corner on people with scant historical footprints, alas, because Leo Morgan is basically a ghost and I know mostly nothing else about the man besides what I just told you, which is less frustrating than it was for me at the beginning of this show.

Here, though, we do have some confusion that makes me question the originality of the composition and the actual composer thereof, but we will get there in a bit.

I've spent so many minutes combing the publicly available archives of the early 20th century French military to find even a shred more of information to fill out about this guy's life, but I have got nothing Regular people problems. I guess we will talk about his legacy a bit more, at least after we check in with the poet and then get Morocco out of colonialism.

So let's get Morocco independent so we can talk about writing those lyrics.

It is an interesting country to me because there is a revolutionary spirit, but it's also very conservative and preserved the power of the Sultan after independence. Having the movement end in a royal line remaining in charge is less of a surprise in Morocco than in a situation like they had in Italy's revolution.

For interesting and complicated reasons, I can't afford the space to explore here, so just keep the final outcome in the back of our minds for context.

A side note that certainly has a contributing factor that my level of analysis cannot possibly address is the creation of Israel leading to the emigration of something like 160,000 people from Morocco over to Israel is something like 2% of the population at time and virtually every Jewish person in the country. The final blows to the Protectorate though were really political ones and France largely did it to themselves.

And two years later there was a united demand for his return and increasing violence in the country that led to the return of Muhammad V to the throne and the beginning of negotiations. The next few years have come to be called the revolution of the King and the people.

And basically Moroccans just made it crystal clear that the French had lost any semblance of control and they were all set with them being there.

Sultan Hassan II decided he wanted the players to have a song that they could sing to show their national pride during the anthem presidency presentation.

That means we get another poetry contest where the work Manbita al Al Rar was chosen by the Sultan himself, although he also modified the lyrics a little bit in a way that I was not able to discover.

Musically speaking, we have another tune that checks off many a box on my anthem list. Leo gives us a march like structure with an uplifting tone, a moderate 44 tempo, and I'm reasonably sure it's in the key of F minor.

But I have seen it in a couple of different ones because that's how music works. The melody has a majestic feeling to it and it's based on a diatonic major progression using a classical 1, 4, 5.

All that works together to give us an anthem that really sounds nice and musically fits the part. It is, of course, a song that's heavy on Western influence due to colonialism and the composer being a French guy.

But Leo does include Arabic melodic phrasing in the music. He managed to create something that is decidedly Moroccan in character.

Like most anthems, there are versions of it to satisfy basically any setting or instrumentation. The accompanying lyrics consist of two stanzas followed by a refrain. They are consistent in rhyme scheme as well as rhythm.

It's an easy to memorize and easy to chant song that makes it a suitable ceremonial and military purpose driven tune. It's also quite simple in form despite rich contextual meaning.

So I don't really have a great deal to talk about that doesn't delve directly into the content. As such, we'll get right into the read through and onto the discussion. Note that the anthem was originally written in Arabic.

I am going to be reading it in English. Birthplace of the free, rising place of lights, forum of glory and protector of honor. May you forever be its form and its protector.

May you live among the homelands and as an address for grandeur, filling every heart, conveyed by every tongue. With the soul, with the body, your youth rises to answer your call. In my mouth and in my blood your love is stirred up as light and fire.

My brothers come, striving for greatness, making the world witness that we here perpetually live with the motto Allah, Homeland, King. One thing that's immediately apparent is the purpose driven nature of Hussaini's writing.

A skillful poet writing a song for national anthem contest for a constitutional monarchy knows to include national pride and identity, loyalty, duty as well as direct praise for the monarch and the divine. This is one of those anthems that loses a lot of the depth in the translation to English, especially given the contextual nature of Arabic.

Suffice to say I read a few more translations than usual to try and piece this together. The poem opens with dual lines praising Morocco as the birthplace of freedom and as a place of rising lights.

Some translations use origin instead of birthplace and rising place is sometimes used instead of sun, sunrise or radiance.

A land with deeply rooted concepts of freedom that were brought through the historical struggle of independent spirit against the yoke of colonialism. The second line is representative of the country as a font of knowledge, culture and faith, making it out as a beacon of enlightenment.

Husani talks about the country as a forum of glory, so like a meeting ground or gathering place of pride and nobility, reinforcing the commitment to defend the dignity and values of the citizens. Then we get a short prayer like invocation for continued strength and resilience.

Very appropriate in an anthem for a country that's at the western edge of the Islamic world. Then he speaks directly to the listeners of longevity and prosperity, emphasizing the country's endurance.

The line lil ula uwan in the Arabic that I butchered translates as a symbol of greatness. It caught my attention because the poet is equating just being Moroccan as a status that should one should be proud of.

Anthems are nationalist things. The first verse ends with an exhortation that implies a deep emotional and spiritual connection to the land and it will be spoken of for generations.

I'll note that I've seen the word jinan translated as paradise and garden as well as heart, because again, Arabic is contextual in many ways. The second verse is not directed to the country, but to the people of the country.

Starting off with a call to sacrifice and loyalty to the nation, body and soul are a pledge full of devotion and echo themes of martyrdom. Such themes are central to a lot of Islamic writing and Morocco is like 99% Muslim, mostly Sunni.

Actually follow that with a direct appeal for the youth of the nation, for loyalty, duty and responsibility to the homeland. And the people of Morocco are imbued by the poet with a passionate devotion to the country.

The imagery of speech and blood and light symbolize inherent love for the country, driven by hope, while guided by the resilient struggle that has shaped the people.

We hear a rallying cry to the common goal of the country, with the translation choice of striving implying that this requires hard work and determination. It was a common word in most of the versions I read.

The verse closes with a very anthem appropriate idea of a deservedly proud nation that would like some recognition. Now, because the Moroccans live in Morocco, the song makes a declaration of belonging that reinforces the national identity.

It's well written stuff as far as anthems are concerned.

And as far as I'm concerned, the anthem ends with the national motto of Morocco, representing the spiritual foundation, national unity and of course the monarchy. They are the pillars of the nation and emblematic of what they stand for.

Overall, it's a pretty good bit of writing and it succinctly ties together themes of national pride, identity, loyalty, duty, the divine and the monarch. It's suited to the country because it ties together classical Arabic literary tradition with modern themes of nationalism.

This time we return to having mostly unknown people involved in actually crafting the song. But there was a story to be found in how it happened.

Unfortunately, we are forced to take a shallowest of dives into a country that has a very long story. So please read more about it on your own. But as always, I have learned much and I hope that you did too. On to the credits.

The writing, recording and production for the show are done by me and I wrote and played the theme music. The music was used with my permission. Unless otherwise noted, the anthems I play are public domain.

Some other equivalently free license a thing I got permission the player have at least made a good faith effort to get permission to play. I did reach out to the person that posted the audio of this and as of this recording I have not heard back.

But I'm pretty sure that this is an anthem that just anyone is allowed to use.

But I don't make posts about the show. I'm really just there for information for the show from people who live in the countries that I'm talking about.

But you might see my name there if you're a Redditor.

So potentially hello, My advertising budget is limited, so I am asking you to help me get the episodes onto whatever platform you can with the hashtag anthemspod. Think Instagram, Mastot, Bluesky, Twitter, or any of the other stuff you young folk are on now that I don't know about yet.

It would be super cool if you shared this content with others and perhaps it will somehow lead to Morocco discovering that they have far more phosphate than we thought, which would be very good actually.

Maybe you're going to have surgery in a couple of weeks and it will turn out that your doctor also loves history and starts listening too. But even if all that happens is that you listen to one more, then I sincerely thank you for your time. See you somewhere different sometime soon.