Ahmed Toufiq 

Ahmed Toufiq is the Minister of Religious Endowment and Islamic Affairs for Morocco. Trained as both a historian and philologist, he is the author of works on premodern Moroccan history and the editor of significant source texts in religion and history. Abu Musa’s Women Neighbors: A Historical Novel from Morocco was the first of his novels to be translated into English. 

Jonas Elbousty: How did you come to translate the work of Ahmed Toufiq? Could you describe the circumstances of your first meeting or initial contact with him? 

Roger Allen: Our late lamented colleague, Halim Barakat, the Lebanese novelist, then teaching at Georgetown University, held a conference at which I talked about Moroccan fiction. Unbeknownst to me, he also invited Ahmed Toufiq to the conference. It was there that we met for the first time. I had spoken about his novel, Jarat Abi Musa, and I found myself sitting on a stage with Ahmed beside me as I spoke about his novel. We got together afterward, and when I next went to Morocco to conduct research on Moroccan fiction, we met several times, and he took me to some of his favorite restaurants.

He made a point of introducing me to his daughter, Maria, who had been studying Russian and was completing a doctoral degree at Hassan II University in Casablanca on translation; her primary text for analysis was my translation into English of Jarat Abi Musa. I became a member of her dissertation committee and attended the defense. Later I gave a lecture on translation in Arabic at the University of Muhammadiyah where she was a professor. In gratitude for my work with his daughter, he did me the great honor of presenting me with a copy of his facsimile edition of Muhammad al-Juzuli’s Dala’il al-Khayrat, the Moroccan Sufi saint, a gift that, I gather, is normally given to visiting royalty by the king of Morocco.

While I have not been back to Morocco now for several years, we have still maintained contact through email (via his secretary, Souad). I have now published five translations of his works, three novels and two volumes of his childhood autobiography, Waalid wa-ma walad.

Elbousty: Could you provide readers with an overview of Ahmed Taoufiq’s background, including his intellectual, literary, and institutional roles?

Allen: He was born in 1943 in a small village on the southern slope of the Atlas Mountains. We can learn a great deal about his childhood and teenage years from his two-volume autobiography (mentioned above), that I have translated into English as Father and What He Fathered (Dararab, 2023). He attended the local kuttab (Qur’an school), but, when his father learned about a new French school in a neighboring town, he sent Ahmed there. His teenage years were spent in Marrakesh, where he lived with a family of his relatives and attended school.

He studied history at the Faculty of Letters, University of Rabat, where he obtained a bachelor's degree in 1968 and a doctoral degree in 1979, focusing on the history of Moroccan society in rural regions. After teaching for a number of years, he was appointed director of the National Library in Rabat in 1995, a post that he held until 2002 when he became the Minister of Islamic Affairs and Endowments in the Moroccan government, a post that he still holds.

In addition to his published studies on premodern Moroccan history, he is also the author of a number of works of fiction that invoke periods and scenes from the Moroccan past. In 1989 he was awarded a literary prize in Morocco for his novel Shujayrat Hinna’ wa-Qamar (my translation reverses the title’s terms: Moon and Henna Tree, University of Texas Press, 2013). Set in the Atlas Mountains that Toufiq knows so well, it traces the rise and fall of Hmmu, a local chief who, aided by his corrupt adviser, Ibn az-Zara, campaigns to acquire additional territory to his domains. 

It was actually the second of his novels that I translated. The first was Jarat Abi Musa, 1997 (Abu Musa’s Women Neighbors, PostApollo Press, 2006), set in the fourteenth century and named for the Sufi saint whose shrine is to be found in the city of Salė on the opposite side of the river from Rabat. More recently I have translated Jiran Abi l-`Abbas (Abu l-Abbas’s Neighbors, Dararab, 2023), another novel devoted to the life of a major figure in Moroccan Sufism, Abu l-`Abbas al-Sabti (Sidi Bel Abbas). Born in Sabta (Ceuta), he is the patron saint of Marrakesh and is memorialized in a large zawiya in the city.

Elbousty: What aspects of his writing first drew your attention as a translator? 

Allen: For many years I had concentrated on novels written in the eastern part of the Arabic-speaking world—especially Egypt, and even more specifically, Naguib Mahfouz. It was a deliberate decision in my part—in the 1990s, as I recollect—to focus my attention on novels from the Maghreb and especially Morocco. I attended a conference in Tangier organized by my dear friend Salma Khadra Jayyusi, at which I met many wonderful writers and colleagues: Muhammad Barrada, Muhammad Shukri, and Abdalfattah Kilito, among others. I started translating the works of BenSalim Himmich, and, as noted above, I met Ahmed Toufiq in Washington and subsequently in Morocco. I have always been interested in historical fiction (I have recently translated a second of Jurji Zaidan’s historical novels), and both Himmich and Toufiq make use of history in their fictional works.

Elbousty: In comparison to other authors you have translated, what distinguishes Ahmed Toufiq’s work stylistically and thematically? 

Allen: Ahmed Toufiq is a historian by training but also a philologist dealing with a variety of texts concerning Islam, Sufism, and Moroccan premodern culture and history. As already noted, he also has in-depth knowledge of the mountainous regions of the country and the long history of the Amazigh peoples who were forced into the Atlas regions by the invading Muslim armies in the late seventh century. 

As I was searching for interestingly different narratives as part of my focus on Moroccan fiction (noted above), those thematic features of Toufiq’s novels immediately appealed to me, and I thought that their translation would be an interesting introduction to the Maghreb for readers of English (it still being the case, at least in my experience, that patterns of translation and readership to this day reflect previous tendencies fostered by the history of Western imperialism). When those features are combined with his immaculate fusha-based style, the resulting narratives offer fascinating insight into premodern Morocco and its place in the heritage of contemporary society.

When those features are combined with Toufiq's immaculate fusha-based style, the resulting narratives offer fascinating insight into premodern Morocco and its place in the heritage of contemporary society.

Elbousty: How does his engagement with Sufi thought shape his literary voice? 

Allen: Ahmed Toufiq is a huge presence in Moroccan society. He has been minister of religious affairs for a very long time, and, in addition to that, he is regularly seen on television reciting the Qur’an and is the leader of a prominent Sufi order. Two of the novels that I have already mentioned are devoted to the careers, beliefs, and communities of Sufi figures, the most recent—Abu l-Abbas as-Sabti—being the patron saint of his favorite city, Marrakesh, the one to which he came as a teenager to complete his secondary education. The prevalence of Sufi ideas in his fiction and its characters is well reflected on his own website and the Getty Images page, both of which contain pictures of him in his Sufi clothes and tarbush.

Elbousty: What is your general approach to translating Sufi literature? 

Allen: I do not choose a particular or different strategy when it comes to translating texts from Arabic into English, no matter the period involved, the style of the author in question, or the historical and religious motivations of the author. Translation is the process of “transfer” from one language, culture, and civilization to another, one that is undertaken at a particular period in time—the present. Translation is never anything less than a challenge, in that it presupposes a propound knowledge of both source- and target-languages, and, in the case of historical fiction, a previous knowledge of the basic historical materials involved and/or a willingness to undertake the necessary historical research in order to become familiar with the period and topics being discussed within the novel.

Texts that refer to Sufism will often include references to imagery and reflections that are beyond the realm of the present and (so-called) real. While that will almost certainly involve the translator in a process of reflecting in the language of the translation the different levels of discourse that are inevitably involved, I would suggest that, once that is taken into account, the translation process is no different from that of rendering into a second language the most realistic of narratives.

Elbousty: What strategies do you use to preserve the tone and rhythm of the original text? 

Allen: The German philosopher-translator Friedrich Schleiermacher once coined the divide between “domesticating the text” and “foreignizing the reader” as being the two poles in translation strategy. I have always adhered firmly to the latter term, believing that the purpose of translation is not to present the reader with the familiar but rather to confront them with difference and even difficulty. In translating Arabic texts (mostly fictional), I follow that pattern, adhering as closely as possible to the tone and rhythm of the original, even to the point of occasionally stretching the English language beyond its current norms. When needed (in some of the novels that I have translated), I have resorted to endnotes in order to elucidate some features that may be obscure, and I always add a translator’s afterword at the end of the text. I do not like forewords or footnotes, both of which, in my view, interfere with the reading (and confrontation) process.

Schleiermacher once coined the divide between “domesticating the text” and “foreignizing the reader” as being the two poles in translation strategy. I have always adhered firmly to the latter term.

Elbousty: How does translating a living author differ from working with historical texts?

Allen: As I’ve already mentioned, I don’t differentiate the translation process on the basis of the kind of text; for me at least, the process is one and the same (the verb for “translation” is “transfer”). Obviously, most novels, particularly those by contemporary writers, will include conversation within their texts, something that will require a different set of rules for English as well as the original Arabic (“I’ve,” “don’t,” etc. instead of “I have,” “do not” for a discursive passage of description or reflection).

Elbousty: To what extent is Ahmed Toufiq involved in the translation process? Does he provide feedback or guidance on specific passages? 

Allen: No. Dr. Toufiq has never wished to involve himself in any aspect of the translation process. He always writes to express his gratitude when a novel is published in translation. The closest we have ever come to a joint activity occurred when I brought groups of UPenn alumni on a tour of Morocco. On the first occasion, Dr. Toufiq gave a lecture in English at our hotel in Rabat; on a second visit, he was delighted to come down to his favorite city, Marrakesh, and to do a joint reading with me of the Arabic and English versions of Jarat Abi Musa.

Elbousty: What do you hope readers gain from encountering his work in translation? 

Allen: As noted earlier, patterns of translation from Arabic into Western languages have for some time tended to reflect previous patterns of interest and colonial involvement in the different regions of the Arabic-speaking world. More recently (and especially since my own retirement in 2011), that tendency has been less visible, and Moroccan fiction has certainly been the beneficiary of that change (along with several other regions, most notably the nations of the Persian Gulf). I have now translated some nine Moroccan novels into English (most recently, for example, working with a Moroccan colleague on two novels by Azzeddine Tazi).

Ahmed Toufiq’s fictional works are major contributions to the continuing and expanding tradition of Moroccan fiction. It is my hope that readers of English translations of his work will enjoy encountering aspects of traditional life and culture in both rural and mountainous regions and in the country’s major cities. The addition of the Sufi dimension to some of his works is an interesting reflection of his own status in the country and of the continuing centrality of religious belief in the daily lives of his countrymen.