Germain Mouette is a French man who was sailing to the Americas when he was captured by the Salé pirates. During his eleven years of captivity in Morocco, Mouette learned a lot about the country, publishing a detailed map of the Kingdom in one of his chronicles.
David Laskar is the legendary saint of Ighi, a small village near Marrakech. While little is known about his life in Morocco, the rabbi is venerated by both Jews and Muslims.
David Levy Yulee is known in the United States as the first Jew to serve as senator. But in Morocco, he is the descendent of a renowned Jewish family that gained respect within the Moroccan Jewish community and served the royal court during the 18th century.
Rabbi Eliyahu HaCohen lived and died in Casablanca, where he was buried. While few people know about his story, many recall the transfer of his grave, which was located in the ancient medina. Today, this saint lays in the Ben M’sik cemetery, where Jewish pilgrims come visit his grave yearly.
In the 1930s, the United States commissioned a sculptor to build a marble frieze for the Supreme Court that depicted 18 lawgivers. The list included Prophet Mohammed, whose sculpture was seen as controversial by the Muslim community in the United States.
Discussions about Islam and Muslims were part of the United States’ history since the the country’s founding. America’s Founding Fathers were the first to accept the religion and declare that they «have no enmity against it».
Rabbi Raphael Moshe El Baz was the saint of Sefrou, a city where he was born and raised after his family left Spain for Morocco. In the city, he liked several fields, excelling in poetry, science and mathematics.
Rabbi Isthak Ben Walid held several positions within the Jewish community in Tetouan. For years his miracles marked the inhabitants of the city, especially those who believed in the powers of his miraculous cane.
Robert Purvis was one of the most committed American abolitionists in the nineteenth century. The activist drew strength from the story of his grandmother, a Moroccan woman who was enslaved and transported to the United States at the age of twelve.
In 1977, France became the first and only country to lead a third-party military intervention into the Western Sahara conflict. The military operation was conducted on behalf of Mauritania, which was targeted by the Front’s guerilla forces.