SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The disputed Western Sahara is one of many cases where the colonial borders drawn across Africa did not translate into a coherent postcolonial state. Although dozens of legal and historical studies have already analyzed the 1975 International Court of Justice ruling on the Western Sahara, this article brings a highly relevant and previously neglected document into dialogue with the court proceedings. Hidāyat man ḥārā fī amr al-Naṣāra (“Guidance for Whomever is Confused Regarding the Christians”) was a legal ruling on territorial defense written in 1885 by a central figure in Morocco’s nationalist narrative: Saharan scholar and resistance leader al-Shaikh Mā al-ʻAynayn (1831-1910). Although Morocco held Mā alʻAynayn up as proof of its “immemorial possession” of the disputed Western Sahara, the case did not consult Mā al-ʻAynayn’s own thought or literature to see how he represented and interpreted historical events as they unfolded. Hidāyat man ḥārā fī amr al-Naṣāra offers new insight into how Saharan figures negotiated authority and legitimacy on the eve of colonization – especially internal debates regarding whether to contract peace with European settlers or forcibly expel them. The fatwa’s concepts of territory and sovereignty are compared to the historical narratives presented at the International Court of Justice in 1975.