This meeting, organized by the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM), in partnership with Lions Club Morocco, in the presence of personalities from the worlds of culture, publishing, media and scientific research, was an opportunity to present this work of MAP, which was received with great interest, curiosity and benevolence by the audience.
This 600-page book, published in 2021, offers a valuable insight into the history of contemporary Morocco through the prism of MAP’s news articles. It addresses a multitude of themes, including political pluralism as an irreversible choice of the Moroccan state, economic openness, water management, the Green Morocco Plan, the new professions promoted by the Emergence Plan, the fundamental role of the Commandery of the Faithful, cultural diversity and the Kingdom’s international policy.
Accompanied by a selection of photographs, the publication looks back at the high points and pivotal periods in the Kingdom’s history, which the Agency’s journalists have both witnessed and reported on.
Speaking on this occasion, Hachimi Idrissi said he was pleased to present this work in a magical place full of history and memory before a knowledgeable audience, recalling that this historic building has played a key role in strengthening relations between Morocco and the United States.
MAP Director General said that this book presents a specific reading of the history of Morocco, extending from the late 50s of the last century to the year 2020, through the news articles of the Agency and the pens of its journalists who are the historians of everyday life.
“This publication has institutionalized this work of historical documentation of everyday life and presented to the public a panoramic view on the evolution of the political, social and cultural landscape of Morocco, which may be of interest to researchers and historians,” he said, noting that the purpose of this colossal work is to restore the contemporary history of Morocco day by day, without any commentary, through real facts.
The book offers readers a database grouped in a single publication, to present to future generations a new scientific and well documented reading of the contemporary history of Morocco, he said.
“This book gives a result that amazes people by its density, but also by the fact that it offers a panoptic vision on a state that is being built, a democracy that is deepening, a society that is opening up, and a nation that shows in a brilliant way the fact that it belongs to a very great civilization,” said Hachimi Idrissi, in a statement to M24, the continuous news channel of MAP, adding: “only civilized countries, sure of their history and identity can engage in exercises of this type and write their histories with verifiable facts on which there is a consensus, but whose analysis and interpretation is free”.
MAP Director General noted that this publication has the merit of being a corpus offered to historians, history professionals and academics to make a history of it with a scientific approach.
For his part, director of Virgule Editions, Hamid Abbou, stressed that this meeting is an opportunity to discuss the plan of this publication and how to tell the story of Morocco from MAP news articles, describing as “very interesting” this book, since it has reported the contemporary history of the Kingdom in all objectivity.
Director of the American Legation, Jennifer Rasamimanana, said she was delighted to welcome a great man like MAP Director General, who comes to present an excellent book telling the history of Morocco, through the Agency’s news articles.
This event was also an opportunity for MAP Director General to present his collection of poetry entitled “Erratic anthology”, published in 2022 by Virgule Editions, and to read some of his poems to the delight of the public, namely “the law of unlove”, “the sublime hypocrite”, “the small path” and “XL”.
On this occasion, the writer and journalist Khalil Hachimi Idrissi signed and dedicated the book “MAP, a certain history of Morocco 1959-2020” and his collection of poems.
