You
have reached the End of the Pirate Trip. Hopefully, this brief expedition
along the Moroccan coast has taught you a bit about the centuries of maritime
conflict which involed Christian and Muslim powers, both in Mediterreanean
and the Atlantic. This 'race for control' accounted for much of the wealth
ad cultural complexity of the regions involved in the battles.
You
should also have learned that until Leo Africanus, Europeans knew relatively
little about the Moroccan interior- an
ignorance that was all the more shocking given their precise knowledge
of the country's coast.
To
conclude this trip, let me quote from Stanley Fisher's work The
Barbary Legend:
"The fact that Christian writers focused only
on the maritime aspects of the history of Barbaria with little regard
to the facts of the interior or to the culture led to the creation of
a most inaccurate myth- the belief that the North African country side
was plagued with misery, anarchy and death, whereas it actually was
the heart not only of the coastal regions but also of the entire mediterreanean
region" (Fisher, p72)
Leo's
text provided breakthrough knowledge which would take centuries to reverse
this pre-conceived notion on Muslim culture and economic systems.
To
learn more about the interior lands of Morocco, take the Caravan
and Atlas trips.
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