A violent controversy over the origins of Tarik Ibn Ziyad has sparked a real war on social networks. Academician and historian Wissam Sharir puts an end to doubts, supporting historical evidence.
The Fath El Andalous soap opera continues to make a lot of ink flow on social networks. And it is neither the performance of the actors, nor the staging of the Kuwaiti director Mohamed El Anzi which is disputed there, but rather the Moroccan origins of the conqueror Tarik Ibn Zyad. The Algerians once once more wanted to make cultural reappropriation by claiming the fact that this historical figure is from this land which was not yet Algeria, at that distant time. So, is Tarik Ibn Ziyad Moroccan or Algerian?
In an interview for Le360, Wissam Shahir, head of the African studies department at the University of Letters and Human Sciences of Oujda puts an end to this debate deemed sterile and brought up to date following the broadcast since the beginning of the Ramadan of this series, broadcast on Kuwait TV, MBC1 and Al Aoula.
“It has become a habit of our Algerian neighbor to falsify the history of Moroccan personalities. The Algerians suffer from a complex of history,” he explains straight away.
This historian states that there are in all three hypotheses on the proven origin of Tarik Ibn Ziyad. One of the versions, that of the historian Mohammed Bnou Moussa Arrazi Al Andaloussi, maintains that Tarik Ibn Ziyad is of Persian origin. “But we know that this historian’s book has been hijacked and therefore this thesis is rejected,” said Wissam Sharir.
The second hypothesis, the one mentioned by Ibn Khaldoun, maintains that Tarik Ibn Zyad is Arab.
Other historians, and there are many of them, defend a third hypothesis, that of the Amazigh origin of this famous military leader, and even avoid mentioning the speech he made in Andalusia.
The historian Ibn Odari, would have said that Tarik Ibn Ziyad was Amazigh, of a father converted to Islam during the first conquest in North Africa and who settled in our regions. Here is a first proof that Tarik Ibn Zyad is indeed Moroccan.
Another proof, the second, is the physical description provided by the Andalusian historian Abdelmalek Ibn Habib when he recalls that he was very tall, and with a strong build. “These are indeed physical characteristics that we find especially among the inhabitants of northern Morocco”, recalls this interlocutor.
Finally, the third proof of the Moroccanness of Tarik Ibn Ziyad is the fact that the Umayyads, and at their head Zouhair Ibn Kaiss Al Balaoui, had a policy of appointing locals to leadership positions. “We know that Tarik Ibn Zyad has been appointed wali of Tangier. This might not have been the case if he was not Moroccan”, concludes Wissam Sharir.
This should clear up once and for all the confusion regarding the truly Moroccan origins of this great conqueror, who died in 720 AD in Damascus, in present-day Syria.
