Since antiquity, Morocco has always been one of the most desirable countries that provoke enthusiastic travellers from all parts of the globe. Westerns, in their turn, paid much interest in the splendid cultural difference that the country offers. For most of Western travellers who flocked to, their journeys were translated into travel accounts where the cultural engagement is meant to be a mirror that reflects their Western visions of what the Other Moroccan means for them. In spite of its cultural singularity, the country appears similar to the Orientalized picture drawn on Orient within most Western travel accounts. Therefore, this paper revolves around the assumption that Morocco is culturally constructed on the same orientalist basis where it is introduced to Western audience as a haven of exoticness and romance. In fact, this study mainly investigates how deep exoticism and romanticism are effectively turned into modes of representations within a number of most notable pre-contemporary Western travel accounts on Morocco. Eventually, it offers a retrospective reading for the sake of assessing the extent to which Moroccan cultural difference is sentenced to an Orientalist manipulation within these travel memoirs.

Morocco, travel writing, cultural otherness, Orientalism, exoticism, romanticism.

[1] Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London, Routledge: 1978), p.01.

[2] Lindsay J. Bosch, Debra N. Mancoff, Icons of Beauty: Art, Culture, and the Image of Women (United States, Green Wood: 2009), P.596.

[3] Rachid Agliz , Morocco as an Exotic and Oriental Space in European and American Writings ( Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Special Issue on Literature No.3 October, 2015), p. 30.

[4] Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London, Routledge: 1978), p.p.41-42.

[5] Nezar AlSayyad, Irene A. Bierman, Nasser O. Rabbat, Making Cairo Medieval (United States, Lexington Books: 2005), p.147.

[6] Kelly Bloom, Orientalism in French 19th Century Art (Boston, Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation: 2004), p.02.

[7] Asaf Hussain, Robert W. Olson, Jamil A. Qureshi, Orientalism, Islam, and Islamists (Michigan, Amana Books:1984), p.24.

[8] Ranjana Khanna, Algeria Cuts: Women and Representation, 1830 to the Present (California, Stanford University Press: 2008), p.15

[9] Nimet Elif Vargı. The Imagery of Woman in Nineteenth Century Orientalist Photography (Turkey, Bđlkent University :2010), p.38.

[10] Rana Kabbani, Europe’s Myths of Orient: Devise and Rule (London, The Macmillan Press LTD: 1986), p.51.

[11] Lindsay J. Bosch, Debra N. Mancoff, Icons of Beauty: Art, Culture, and the Image of Women (California, Green Wood Press: 2010), p.596.

[12] Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert In Egypt (USA, Penguin Group :1999), p.220.

[13] Lisa Lowe, Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalisms (New York, Cornell University Press: 1992), p.47.

[14] Ibid, p.48.

[15] Lisa Lowe, Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalisms (New York, Cornell University Press: 1992), p.31:

[16] lady Mary Wortley Montagu, The Letters of Lady M. W. Montagu, During the Embassy to Constantinople, 1716-18, Volume 1 (London, Oxford University: 2006), p.22.

[17] Ibid, p.104.

[18] Richard van Leeuwen, The Thousand and One Nights and Twentieth-Century Fiction (Netherlands, Brill Publishers: 2020), p.01.

[19] Ali Behdad, Orientalism and Middle East Travel Writing (United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press: 2019), p.195.

[20] William Makepeace Thackeray, The Irish sketch book. Notes of a journey from Cornhill to grand Cairo (London, Smith, Elder & Company: 1869), p.496.
[21] Ibid, p.239-240.

[22]Valerie Kennedy, (2021), Eastern Exoticism: Thackeray As Tourist and Anti-Tourist. Turkey: Istanbul University Press, 73(2021/1), 133.

[23] Ali Behdad, Orientalism and Middle East Travel Writing (United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press: 2019), p.200.

[24]David LeHardy Sweet, Avant-garde Orientalism: The Eastern ‘Other’ in Twentieth-Century Travel Narrative and Poetry (New York, Palgrave Macmillan : 2017), p.157

[25] Ibid. p.159

[26] Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (United States, American Publishing Company: 1879), p.77.

[27] Mohammad Raji Zughoul, Mark Twain's Image of The Moor: How Innocent were the "Innocents"? (Journal of Arabic Language and Literature Vol. 3 No. 2004), p.24..

[28] Ibid, P. 76.

[29] Rachid Agliz , Morocco as an Exotic and Oriental Space in European and American Writings ( Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Special Issue on Literature No.3 October, 2015), p.37.

[30] Edith Wharton, In Morocco ( New Zealand, The Floating Press: 2009),p.11

[31] Rachid Agliz , The Exotic as Repulsive: Edith Wharton in Morocco (Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Special Issue on Literature No.2 October, 2014), p.191”

[32] Edith Wharton, In Morocco (New Zealand, The Floating Press: 2009), p.15