Synopsis
This is the classic account of the ruthless House of Glaoua, rulers of Morocco from 1893-1956, by the author of the international bestseller Ring of Bright Water. It is a story of brutal power and cultural beauty, of palaces with hundreds of rooms, and of heads piled high around cannons.The setting is the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, the border between the "civilized" coast and the nomadic tribes of the interior Sahara, a forbidding region of snow-capped peaks near the equator, some rising as high as 12,000 feet. Maxwell spent years researching this story, traveling by Land Rover and mule to reach the far-flung villages where the Glaoua got their start.In the foothills of these majestic summits, the brothers Madini and T'hami Glaoui, sons of an Ethiopian concubine and rulers of a salt-trading village, increasingly gained power as the infrastructure of the French occupation crumbled. As they came to rule the country, they built castles of sand, literally, which are slowly crumbling in the hills to this day.This is a tale of the intersection of the medieval and the modern, of ancient power principles and the complications of the global world. There is nothing quite like it.
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From the Back Cover
Lords of the Atlas is a classic story of Morocco and the rise and spectacular fall of the House of Glaoua. Madini and T'hami El Glaoui, sons of a Moroccan Caid by an Ethiopian concubine, rose meteorically to power in the almost medieval state of Morocco at the end of the nineteenth Century. This is the epic story of the more than fifty years in which they governed the country in barbaric, ostentatious splendor, until their spectacular downfall in 1956. Out of the intriguing and dramatic lives of Madair and T'hami, Gavin Maxwell has fashioned an epic story set against the superb background of Marrakesh and the pinnacled castles of the High Atlas, still magnificent as crumbling ruins. A dramatic history of intrigue, action, and exotic places, and illustrated with over one hundred color illustrations and photographs, Lords of the Atlas is a stunning look at the rise and fall of one of the twentieth century's most fascinating rulers. (8 X 9 3/4, 276 pages, color photos, b&w photos, map, illustrations)
About the Author
Gavin Maxwell was born in 1914, educated at Stowe and Oxford and served in the Scots Guard during the Second World War. Invalided out in 1944 he bought the Island of Soay and set up his Basking Shark fishery there - the subject of his first book, Harpoon at a Venture, (1952). Other books include A Reed Shaken by the Wind (1958), an account of the Marsh Arabs of Iraq, The House of Elrig (1956), an autobiography of his childhood, and his world famous West Highland books about otters: Ring of Bright Water (1960), The Rocks Remain (1963) and Raven Seek Thy Brother (1969). He died in 1969.
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Lords of the Atlas: Rise and Fall of the House of Glaoua, 1893-1956 (Century travellers)
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