Before the summer the British Council presented a lecture by Prof Nabil Matar, on Morocco in the War of the Spanish Succession. Nabil was (see Naval Warfare and Mannequins) particularly interesting on the way in which Moulay Ismail used his leverage to play off one side against the other – and on the role which … More Gibraltar, Ceuta and King Boabdil V

Britons have many geographical misconceptions about North Africa. The first is the ‘horizontal fallacy,’ the blithe assumption that North Africa is an east-west line of states stretching from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, along the Mediterranean coast. Most journalistic commentators on what they would probably call ‘the Middle East’ or ‘the Arab World’ could … More No three foot high giraffe