El-Mejdoub: Exalted poet of a time of crisis

By Mouna Hachim

Earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear accident, revolutions, wars ... in the midst of the upheaval of the world, it took no more for the millennial movements to sound, as in every time of crisis, the trumpets of the apocalypse.

Too bad if this end of the world is constantly announced since the first Egyptian dynasty, at the end of the fourth millennium BC, there will always be this neo-primitive fear (of eating, breathing, moving around ...), the resurgence of eschatological and religious discourse, when it is not the scientists who meddle with these new calculations established on the end of the cycle of the Mayan calendar ...

We have the choice for our part: to dive into the heart of gloomy news, on a planetary scale, or refuse to be undermined by desolation to go and meet the wisdoms of yesteryear.

Our journey and state of mind naturally leads us to the discovery of a popular mystic and bard, fascinating in more ways. This is the Mejdoub. Its name, belonging to the mystical vocabulary, designates an ecstatic character, reached by the Jedba, a sort of rapture, literally meaning "attraction" (towards God). In the 16th century, in a general context marked by the Iberian occupation of several Moroccan coastal towns, by the Ottoman threat and by epidemics, the most striking social consequence was the flowering of all kinds of mystics and ecstatic people. A phenomenon mentioned by historian Ahmed ben Khalid Naciri in his "Kitab al-Istiqça" as being "one of the significant events of this time".

After witnessing the fall of Granada, the Muslims were not long in suffering persecutions, forced conversions and the wrath of the deportation decrees proclaimed by the Catholic Monarchs. In the wake of this Reconquista, extensions are made in particular in Morocco where the coastal towns have gradually fallen since 1415 with Sebta, Qsar Sghir in 1458, followed by Anfa, Asilah, Tangier, Mellilia (in 1497 by the Spaniards who thus mark the beginning of their colonial expansions in the southern shore of the Mediterranean with the captures of Oran, Bougie, Bône, Bizerte ...), Agadir, Mazagan, Safi, Aguz, Azemmour in 1513 ...

To top it off, the country is plagued by successive periods of famines and epidemics, many of them plague, experienced as a divine plague in the collective imagination of humanity. Let us first retain a few cases mentioned sporadically in Fez in 1509 or in the Souss in 1512. A serious period of drought was also recorded on the Atlantic coasts in 1517, followed in 1521 by a terrible famine, joined to a general epidemic of plague. , described in Portuguese sources from the direct testimony of chronicler Bernardo Rodriguez.

With its funeral procession of defenseless victims, its demographic consequences are dramatic depending on the region. Some do not hesitate to deplore human losses of the order of 70%, as well as a clear decline in sedentarization, to the point that some towns of Chaouia and Doukkala became depopulated, before being abandoned by the populations and to sink definitively into oblivion, as is the case for Madinat-el-Gharbiya or Tamarrakecht… During this century, other epidemics reappeared, particularly that of 1557-8, arrival from Algeria, probably from Turkey ...

At the end of these tragic events, the brotherhoods are organized as much on the social level to come to the aid of the affected populations as on the political level in order to encourage the coming to power of the Saadians champions of the fight against the Portuguese occupation in name of holy war, just as all kinds of mystics and enlightened people flourish.

Despite this emergence of Mejdoubs, the Mejdoub par excellence remains Sheikh Abou-Zayd Abd-er-Rahmane ben Ayyad Sanhaji Faraji Doukkali, better known under the name of Sidi Abd-er-Rahmane El-Mej-doub. The life of Mejdoub is often confused with the legend. According to his various biographies, he is originally from Tit (near Azemmour), capital of Doukkala (of the Amazigh-origin fraction of the Sanhaja), born in Meknes where his father had settled.

There, he received his initiation from Sheikh Omar Khattab Zerhouni who granted him the title of Mejdoub and sent him on a mission in Gharb where he became the spiritual master of Abu-l-Mahassin Youssef El-Fassi in Ksar Kebir, au great displeasure of the powerful family of Fassi-Fihri. Thus attracting the wrath of notabilities and religious authorities, he ended up leaving the city for Oulad Bouziri where he created his zaouïa and lived until his death in 1569, before his remains were later transported to Meknes where they were today finds its mausoleum, object of a posthumous consecration.

Sidi Abd-er-Rahmane Mejdoub is said to have left a son in Bouziri, known as Sidi Mohamed Sbaâ and an important brotherhood whose members, called Oulad El-Mejdoub, resident

mainly among the Masmouda of Gharb and Mount Sarsar. But as the author of famous quatrains with mystical accents, characterized by their acerbic criticism of society and power, it is above all his poetry that continues to challenge posterity ... World of wisdom, humility, detachment from material goods, his free words, disconnected from social conventions in their delight, disturb a certain orthodoxy and a rigid intellectualism. In this "apocalyptic Maghreb of the 16th century" in the words of Jeanne Scelles-Millie, author of a monograph dedicated to him, the Mejdoub assimilated to a cursed poet remains by his personality, his commitment and his words of striking modernity. .

“El Mejdoub, writes Abdellatif Laâbi in the review Souffle, is also one of those heroes that each Maghreb country claims and who, by the instability of their life, their wandering at the chance of powers, abuses or simply out of a taste for he adventure and knowledge have given each portion of the Maghreb land a legacy that it retains as a constituent part of its heritage. A personality like that of Mejdoub, clearly demonstrates a linguistic, psychological and cultural community of which the Maghreb peoples are aware and which is certainly essential when we approach these problems with the necessary critical sense, with the spirit of re-founding colonial human sciences ” . Character "deeply rooted in the Moroccan soil, in its social ramifications, in his mental environment", in the words of AL Premare, several works are devoted to him, collections, monographs, university theses, film, play by Taïeb Seddiki in the genre of Bsat, called "Diwan Sidi Abderrahman Mejdoub" ...

Despite this obvious interest, our wish, yesterday and today, is to give all the place they deserve not only to the character of the Mejdoub but to our inexhaustible Maghreb heritage in its entirety, through education and media, thereby cultivating the spirit and inspiring a vast field of creations ...