Abdallah Laroui is known and recognized by all Moroccans who have an undeniable respect for his academic and intellectual career. He is one of the most important and famous historians and intellectuals, not only in Morocco, but also in the Arab world as a whole.
Born in 1933 in Azemmour, into a large family that was so powerful that one of the city’s districts bears its name (Derb Laroui). Despite his 80 years of age, he has not lost any of his activity and passion for writing and thinking.
Laroui studied at primary and secondary level in Azemmour and Marrakech before joining the famous Ben Youssef High School in Rabat. He then went to Paris to pursue his studies at the Sorbonne, where he obtained his doctorate in 1976, after having presented his thesis on “The social and cultural origins of Moroccan patriotism: from 1830 to 1912”.
Laroui had a left-wing tendencies at the beginning. He was Mehdi Benbarka’s companion for some time and contributed to the drafting of the report on revolutionary choice submitted to the party’s second congress. He also ran for legislative elections on behalf of the National Union of Popular Forces, before turning away from politics and devoting himself to writing and research.
From 1964, Laroui began publishing under the pseudonym Abdallah Arrafidi. He has published studies on ideological and historical criticism of ideas and systems, with a focus on the historical perspective.
He is the author of “Contemporary Arab Ideology”, “Arabs and Historical Thinking”, “History of Morocco”, “The Concept of Ideology”, “The Concept of Freedom”, “The Concept of State”, “The Concept of History” and “The Concept of Reason”, as well as the series “Morning Thoughts”, not to mention the books “Morocco and Hassan II: Testimony” and “Concepts Review”, published in 2018.
Laroui has also written novels. The most famous are “Awraq”, “al-Ghurba”, “Al yatim” and “Ghila”.
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