الكتب العربية و الكنز المغربي : العقيد بيرسيفال كيرك و مولاي إسماعيل 1682-1683

Abstract EN

Nabil Matar Emphasises that north African people give a great deal of importance to the act of seeking knowledge, which has become institutionalised by Moroccan jurists and sultans ever since the early modern era.

Matar views Ahmed al-Mansour al-Dhahabi as a model for seeking knowledge through his admiration for and attachment to books, manuscripts and libraries as he did not only show interest in buying books to enrich his library, but also insisted on retrieving the Arabic books that were pillaged by the Spaniards after the expulsion of Muslims from al-Andalus , an insistence on which his son, sultan Moulay Zaidan, kept being proud of.

in this important article, Matar focuses on sultan Ismail's keenness on retrieving an old manuscript from the English colonel Percival kirk in tangiers as it contained a map with accurate information about a buried treasure.

kirk maneuvered the treasure story to formulate a special strategy to neutralize the dangers bessetting the English fortress of tangiers.

he was keen on using the treasure story to consolidate ties with Ismail for fear of besieging the English colony in morocco.

after discovering the fictitious nature of the alleged treasure, sultan Moulay Ismail shifted his focus to the recovery of the library of Moulay Zaydan from Christian Europe, as revealed by the embassy of Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab al-Ghassani , in which the Moroccan sultan explicitly demanded the exchange of Christian captives for original Arabic Islamic books.

this was the first time in early modern history that a powerful king from Muslim north Africa wanted to send back European captives in return for stolen Islamic writings.