Word: sidi
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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After complaining to French officials in Corsica that his assigned quarters of 37 hotel bedrooms had bad plumbing, leaky roofs, and cramped his style of living, Morocco's exiled former Sultan Sidi Mohammed Ben Youssef persuaded his keepers to move him into 50 rooms in the island's flossiest hotel. The Sultan's ménage: 14 concubines, two wives, two sons, two daughters, three servants...
...Sidi Mohammed ben Moulay Arafa, hand-picked Sultan of Morocco, docilely performed an unpleasant duty which his unruly old predecessor had resisted for years. He signed a dahir (decree), dictated by the French, which transferred some of the royal powers to a half-Moorish, half-French administrative council. The dahir was a hard blow at French Morocco's hot-tempered independence movement...
Like many another wealthy Moor, French Morocco's deposed Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Youssef had enjoyed himself in two worlds. He liked fine automobiles, often wore European dress, sent his sons to French schools. But he also took full advantage of a standard Moslem privilege-plenty of women. He had two wives and 41 concubines, none of whom (according to a close friend) was long neglected...
...Ishmael, ancestor of all Arabs. One ram, the most important of all, is ceremoniously knifed by the Sultan, who is regarded by the Arabs and Berbers of French Morocco as their spiritual and temporal sovereign. On Aid el Kebir last week, the knife was wielded not by Sidi Mohammed ben Youssef (who had reigned since he succeeded his father in 1927), but by a new Sultan, Sidi Mohammed ben Moulay Arafa. Ben Youssef had made the mistake of antagonizing the French, and was unceremoniously banished from the land...
Ungrateful Stooge. The French have no patience with the nationalist pretensions of 71-year-old Sidi Mohammed el-Amin. Unlike the Sultan of Morocco, who is a genuine descendant of the Prophet, the Bey is a semiliterate ex-Turkish functionary whom the French in 1943 hand-picked as their stooge. For him now to oppose proffered French "reforms" as insufficient they regard as rank ingratitude. Last week, no longer finicky about U.N. reaction, France's Cabinet dispatched a "stern and clear" ultimatum to the Bey: capitulate or suffer unspecified consequences, possibly deposition from his million-dollar job. Within...