Maghrebi Adventures

Eighteen months ago I began planning for my first sabbatical as a professor. My original plans were to spend several months in Jordan refreshing my Arabic and immersing myself in Arabic. About a year ago, as tensions between Israel and Iran began ratcheting up, the prospects for studying in Jordan looked shaky and I pivoted to studying in Morocco. Throughout my education and professional career, the focus of my studies has been focused around the Mashriq, or the eastern portion of the Arabic-speaking world (Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and the Gulf countries), and the study of the Maghreb (Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria) has been neglected. While I visited Tunisia in 2022 and Morocco in 2024, my knowledge of the country is still pretty limited and I’m really excited for the upcoming seven and a half weeks I’ll be spending in the region studying Arabic and Medieval Islamic history in Morocco and Spain.