Abdallah Laroui (; born 7 November 1933) is a Morocco philosopher, historian, and novelist. Besides some works in French, his philosophical project has been written mostly in Arabic. He is among the most read and discussed Arab and Moroccan philosophers.[Jean Jacques Waardenburg, Islam: historical, social, and political perspectives, Walter de Gruyter, 2002, p.145-147][Youssef M. Choueiri, Arab history and the nation-state: a study in modern Arab historiography, Routledge, 1989, p.165]
Biography
Laroui was born in 1933 in
Azemmour. His mother died when he was two. He studied at the
kuttab before entering the public primary school at seven, where he studied from 1941 to 1945. In 1945, he obtained a grant to study at the College Sidi Mohammed in Marrakesh, where he stayed five years. Afterwards he studied at Lycée Lyautey in Casablanca from 1949 to 1951 and at Lycée Gouraud in Rabat from 1951 to 1953. He obtained his baccalauréat in 1953, and then studied history and economics, at the
Sciences Po in Paris, where he studied under and
Raymond Aron. In 1958, he obtained a
Diplôme d'études supérieures. After receiving his
agrégation in Islamic studies in June 1963, he was appointed as an assistant professor of history at the Mohammed V University in Rabat. In 1976, he defended his
Habilitation with a thesis titled "
Les Origines sociales et culturelles du nationalisme marocain, 1830–1912" (Social and Cultural Origins of Moroccan Nationalism, 1830–1912) and published it in 1977.
Laroui taught at the University Mohammed V until 2000. He has written five novels (o.a. L'Exil (Sindbad-Actes Sud, 1998)).
[Salim Jay, Dictionnaire des écrivains marocains, Eddif, 2005, pp 243-244]
Historian Albert Hourani describes him as a significant Arab thinker of the post-1967 era.[Albert Hourani. "A Disturbance of Spirits (since 1967." In A History of the Arab Peoples. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belnap Press of Harvard University Press, 1991.] Laroui's philosophy was guided by a Marxism reading of Historicism and a commitment to radical critique of culture, language, and tradition.[A. Laroui, La crise des intellectuels arabes (Paris, 1974), English trans. The crisis of the Arab intellectual (Berkeley, 1976); and L’idéologie arabe contemporaire, new edn (Paris, 1977).]
Awards and honors
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In 2000, he was awarded the Premi Internacional Catalunya (Catalonia International Prize).
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In 2017, he was awarded the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for "Cultural Personality of the Year",
Partial bibliography
See also
External links
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. Lecture by Abdallah Laroui, Fulbright 50th Anniversary Distinguished Fellow, (Lecture delivered at the Middle East Studies Association annual meeting in Providence, RI).
