In tribute to Lalla Zakia Zouanat, may Allah receive her into His mercy, anthropologist, specialist in Moroccan Sufi heritage and author of The Kingdom of the Saints, whose work opened the way.
There is a way of telling the history of Morocco that can be read in its very soil: that of the men of God who, century after century, made this country what an old word still calls it, the land of saints and righteous men.
With the blessed authorisation of our cheikh Sidi Mouad al-Qâdiri Boutchich, today we open the map of the Kingdom of the Saints.
One hundred and twenty-three figures are placed on it at the exact spot where they lived, taught, and were then buried. From the ribâts of the Souss to the zaouïas of the Tafilalet, from Fez to Tlemcen, from Marrakesh to the mountains of the Atlas. They span nearly thirteen centuries, from the eighth century to the present day.
But this map does not merely locate. It can be travelled through time. A slider leads from the year 791 to today, and empires rise and recede as one moves forward: Idrisids, Almoravids, Almohads, Marinids, Saadians, Alaouites. At each date, the map shows who was living then, and traces what earlier generations had already left behind them.
At a single glance one sees what books recount over many pages: sainthood in Morocco is not a collection of isolated tombs. It is a fabric, dense and continuous, passed from master to disciple without interruption for thirteen centuries. From the Idrisid founders to the Alaouite builders, the chain has never been broken.
Each entry carries what the sources establish, and nothing else: the life, the reported sayings, the mark left behind. The work draws on the great collections of the Moroccan tradition. Where the source is silent, we are silent too.
This is a work that is beginning, not one that is ending. Other figures will come to be inscribed in it, other sources will speak.
Discover the map: boutchichiya.fr/royaume-des-saints
