A Woman Traveller in the Moorish Sanctum

Lahoucine Aammari

A Woman Traveller in the Moorish Sanctum

Číslo: 1/2017
Periodikum: Prague Journal of English Studies

Klíčová slova: Travel Writing; Emily Keene; Shareef of Wazzan; the Moors; Oriental desire; ambivalence; identity

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Anotace: Emily Keene’s My Life Story (1911) is a unique travel account as it is written by an

Englishwoman, which puts the travelogue in the ambit of female travel narratives.
She married a Moorish notable, Sidi Al-Hadj Abd al-Salam, the Shareef of Wazzan,
spending, hence, more than four decades amongst the Moors in pre-protectorate
Morocco or the “Land of the Furthest West”. For more than four decades, Keene
managed to live on the cusp of two starkly diff erent cultures, civilizations, religions and
societies. Keene was fascinated by the atavistic Moroccan customs and the metaphysical
world of the Moors.  e man she married epitomized these purely aspired elements.
Keene was mesmerized and enchanted by the Moors, their culture and traditions,
but at the same time she adhered to her own culture, moving, hence, between two
acutely diff erent identities. As an Englishwoman in the Moorish sanctum, Keene
was virtually seen by most of the Moors as a Christian from “Bilad al-Nassara” or an
“Abode of Disbelief ”.