An amazing research work, it is a historical novel that takes backdrop an unknown period and oh so exciting though of great sadness: the slave trade during the reign of the Empire of the Sultans and Chérifien it there has long been ...
In Gnawa, we follow Samba, a young Bambara from a notable family Joliba shores of Timbuktu (now Mali) in his adventures that took him to the Kingdom of Morocco (now Morocco).
A happy childhood and early adolescence tinged with a natural curiosity, he followed his friends on the banks of the river to be able to scan off of young nymphs ebony. One day, when new wanderings, the young Samba trampled something hard, a cowrie, the most valuable shell. His rush to the object of his desires more and steered it further, until its destruction ... Samba had just entered the vile condition of slavery, the slave captured by Tuareg, he was sold to a sheikh who took him under his wing, introduced him to Islam and helped him to learn a trade: the wickerwork
A firman of the Grand Sultan, ended any hope of emancipation, since Samba, and all the other slaves, were recruited into the Black Guard, at a time when Morocco was exposed to Iberian and Ottoman lusts.
Paradoxically, this slave-soldier status, after many tribulations, allowed Samba to find its way, its emancipation and salvation in the ritual of trance music, those of the former slaves gnaouas.
Through this novel, Said Laqabi we discover or rediscover the Muslim and Jewish lillas, ancestral practices that allowed slaves to be ennobled, hoisted, the time of night, to the rank of absolute masters, a feature of union between humans and spirits
Like history in general? The history of Morocco? mysticism or just Gnaouas! Ruez you on it, you will not regret it! The pen is Laqabi of incomparable eloquence, she takes you and transport you to a trance and linguistic spring with an enriched vocabulary
