A Morocco Anthology - Book Review of a Volume of Moroccan Travel Writing

Here is a piece from the National that reviews a recent publication on travel writing about Morocco, A Morocco Anthology, which is edited by Martin Rose .
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Book review: A Morocco Anthology: Travel Writing through the Centuries

 by Lucy Scholes

Ali Bey el Abbassi was a Spaniard from Barcelona, born in 1767, who claimed he was a descendant of the Abbasid caliphs. He made his name as an explorer and spy in the Islamic world, ­travelling and behaving in every way as a Muslim, who visited Morocco between 1803 and 1805. Although he was apparently ultimately denied Muslim burial when he passed away in Damascus in 1818 because a cross was found on his person.

On 23rd June, 1803, he crossed the Strait of Gibraltar – a mere fourteen miles, ­Martin Rose, A Morocco Anthology’s editor, points out, but in every other way a gulf between two completely different worlds.

El Abbassi sailed into Tangier, “the gateway” of Morocco for Europeans in the era before air travel. Rose describes it as a “strange and perhaps unique place,” one that for 23 years in the late seventeenth century was actually in the possession of the English crown, having been part of Catherine of Braganza’s dowry when she married the English monarch Charles II in 1661.
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