The image of Salé in French travels to Morocco between 1844 and 1925, by Asiya Warda

“The subject of the study draws its importance from the fact that it is based on the books of French travelers of various occupations and sensibilities”

Rabat – “The image of Salé in French travels to Morocco between 1844 and 1925” is the title of a new book by contemporary history researcher Asiya Warda, which has just been published by the Moroccan Association of Travel Researchers and Dar Rakaz in Jordan.

The study is based on 19 French voyages from the 19th century, and on 24 others dating back to the first quarter of the 20th century, without neglecting other voyages that the researcher considered useful for understanding and of which the authors did not visit Salty, but contained important information about the city.

“The subject of the study draws its importance from the fact that it is based on the books of French travelers of various occupations and sensibilities, who visited Morocco during the 19th century and early 20th century, and is went to Salé and noted about it a set of valuable observations which reflected the point of view of the Other on the city”, indicates the author in the preface of the work, quoted in a press release from the Association .

The importance of the study lies in the fact that it presents the perceptions and observations of these travelers on the monuments of the city and its inhabitants, while trying to interpret the epithets and qualifiers used in their description of the city, through what they noted about the scenes experienced and the representations they made of them, adds the same source.

According to the author, the nature of the occupations of these travelers, their academic training and their religious and political sensibilities, had something to do with the remarks and notes noted about Salé, in the sense that “the perceptions of the doctor were different from those of the diplomat, the merchant, the scientist, the priest or the journalist”.

In this book, Asiya Warda has attempted to trace the civilization of the city of Salé and its events through these travelers, while submitting their writings to analysis, careful examination and comparison, before coming out with results and conclusions.