King Hassan II class. pron. [sâhibu l-jalâlati l-mâliku] (a)l-hasan uth-thânî, dial. (Mar.) [sâhibu l-jalâla el-mâlik] el-hasan ett(s)âni); July 9, 1929–July 23, 1999) was King of Morocco from 1961 until his death in 1999.

 He was the eldest son of Mohammed V, Sultan, then King of Morocco and his wife Lalla Abla bint Tahar.

Youth and education

From His childhood, He was prepared by his father the late His Majesty Mohammed V for the responsabilities He was later to assume as He was the right hand to the King in Affairs of State.

Prince Moulay Hassan participated in the February 1956 negotiations for Morocco's independence with his father, who later appointed him Chief of Staff of the newly founded Royal Armed Forces in April 1956.

In the unrest of the same year, he led army contingents battling rebels in the mountains of the Rif. Mohammed V changed the title of the Moroccan sovereign from Sultan to King in 1957. Hassan was proclaimed Crown Prince on 19 July 1957, and became King on 3 March 1961, after his father's death.

To this end, he received a modern education at a high school in Rabat where he studied alongside young Moroccans drawn from all the regions and all conditions of life in the country. His studies included Arabic language and Literature, but also the normal curicculum of a modern school; in addition, He was given personal training in Statesmanship by the late King Mohammed V.

After brilliant studies at the University of Bordeaux in France, He obtained the higher University Diploma in Law.
King Hassan II shared His Fathers exile in Madagascar at a time when the French Protectorate transferred the royal family to the Island of Corsica on August 20, 1953, then to Madagascar in Africa in January 1954; during all this period of time he was the political advisor to his father.

On the restoration of independence, he played the leading part in the creation of the Armed Forces of which he became The Chief of Staff in 1956. On July 9, 1957, he was officially invested as Crown Prince And Heir to the Throne by Late His Majesty Mohammed V, and, in 1960, he was appointed Head of the Government.

On the February 26, 1961, He was invested as King of Morocco after the demise of his father. King  Hassan II is also the father of a family and is particularly attentive to the education of his five children. The oldest is a daughter, H.R.H. Princess Lalla Meryem who was born in Roma on August 21, 1962.

Next the Crown Prince H.R.H. Sidi Mohammed, born August 21, 1963, at the Royal Palace in Rabat. Then comes H.R.H. Princess Lalla Asma born in Rabat on September 30, 1965. The next child is another daughter H.R.H. Princess Lalla Hasana born in Rabat on November 21, 1967, and finally there is H.R.H. Prince Moulay Rachid born also in Rabat on June 22, 1970.

Rule

Hassan's conservative rule strengthened the Alaouite dynasty. In Morocco's first constitution of 1963, Hassan II reaffirmed Morocco's choice of a multi-party political system, the only one in the Maghreb.

The constitution gave the King large powers he eventually used to strengthen his rule, which provoked strong political protest from the UNFP and the Istiqlal parties that formed the backbone of the opposition. In 1965, Hassan dissolved parliament and ruled directly, although he did not abolish the mechanisms of parliamentary democracy.

When elections were eventually held, they were mostly rigged in favor of loyal parties. This caused severe discontent among the opposition, and protest demonstrations and riots challenged the King's rule.

In the early 1970s, King Hassan survived two assassination attempts. The first, in 1971, was organized by General Madbouh and Colonel Ababou and carried out by cadets, during a function at Skhirat, an ocean resort.

On August 16, 1972, during a second attempt at a coup d'état, jets from the Royal Moroccan Air Force fired upon the King's Boeing 727 while he was traveling back to Rabat, but failed to bring it down.

General Mohamed Oufkir, Morocco's defense minister, was the man behind the coup and was officially declared to have committed suicide after the attack. His body, however, was found with several bullet wounds.

In the Cold War era, Hassan II allied Morocco with the West generally, and with the United States in particular. There were close and continuing ties between Hassan II's government and the CIA, who helped to reorganize Morocco's security forces in 1960. Hassan served as a back channel between the Arab world and Israel, facilitating early negotiations between them.

This was made possible due to the presence in Israel of a large Moroccan Jewish community. During his reign, Morocco recuperated the the Spanish-controlled area of Ifni in 1969, and seized two thirds of Spanish Sahara (now Western Sahara) through the "Green March" in 1975.

The latter issue continues to dominate Moroccan foreign policy to this day. Relations with Algeria have deteriorated sharply due to the Western Sahara affair, as well as due to Moroccan claims on Algerian territory, which unleashed the brief 1963 Sand War.
Economically, Hassan II adopted a market-based economy, where agriculture, tourism, and phosphates mining industries played a major role.

The period from the 1960s to the late '80s was labelled by the Moroccan opposition as the "years of lead"  and saw many dissidents jailed, killed, exiled or forcibly disappeared.

King Hassan II had extended many parliamentary functions by the early '90s and released hundreds of political prisoners in 1991, and allowed the Alternance, where the opposition assumed power, for the first time in the Arab World. He set up a Royal Council for Human Rights to look into allegations of abuse by the state.

The Hassan 11 Mosque

The Hassan 11 Mosque  does not convey to us only the movement, the interpretation and the strong and striking voice of a worship dedicated to The Almighty; it at the same time breathes into us the incarnation of its message today, of the ardent desire to have its call heard by the entire Mankind in the full extent of its authenticity, of its magnificence, of its gratitude and of its passion to understand others, -in its humanism and its tolerance.

The Hassan II Mosque is part of the tradition of religious monuments, in the phases of their history, in the quest of the architectural art it consecrates by bringing it to the heights of fame, by renewing it, by adapting it to the means that enable it to get free from the impact and stamp of the cities of another age.

The first monumental mosques date back to the Omeyyade era. Abd al-MaIik ordered the construction between 688 and 692 of the Dome of the Rock (Qubbat as-Sakhra), which is, along with Masjid al-Aqsâ, one of the most famous Islamic monuments.

It opens the way to great architectural achievements Of an Islam, deeply urban but continental. The reconstruction of The Grand Mosque of Madinah between 705 and 710, and the founding, between 706 and 715 of the Grand Mosque of Damascus are attributed to his son al-Walid.

The Grand Mosque of Damascus, whose transverse naves are separated by lines of two-level arches parallel to the qibla wall and crossed in their middle by a central nave, is the prototype of the mosques of the Muslim west. This layout characterizes the pattern called `medinian.

It will gain widespread acceptance and will even bring its impact to the Qarawiyyîne Mosque of Fez. In the Muslim west, the Grand Mosque of Kairouan is considered as the ancestor of all the mosques in the Maghreb. The Kairouan mosque, founded by 'Oqba ben Nâfi', demolished and then reconstructed at the end of the VIIth century, was enlarged in the second half of the VIIIth century by Caliph Hicham, then refurbished by Ziyâdat Allah before going through a last extension during the IXth century.
 
The layout of the naves directed in depth, perpendicular to the qibla wall, a layout called 'basilical' and already adopted by the al-Aqsâ Mosque, will be reproduced and perpetuated in the mosques of IFriqiya, Spain and Other parts of the Maghreb. The second monumental mosque of the Muslim West is the Grand Mosque of Cordoba, the dean of the mosques of Spain. Edified by 'Abd al-Rahmân I in 785-786, it was enlarged successively by Abd al-Rahmân II in 833, by al-Hakam in 961 and finally by al-Mansour in 987.

This building that its founder, who was keen on reproducing in Andalusia the splendor of the Omeyyad Caliphate, wanted to construct on the pattern Of the Grand Mosque of Damascus, is, more than the Kairouan mosque, the prototype of all the Arab-Andalusian monumental mosques, mainly those of Saragossa and Toledo.

Besides, it provide a catalogue of the ornamental designs that the art of the following centuries will reproduce in Morocco. It was in the IXth century, and more precisely in 859, that the two Moroccan monumental mosques were constructed: The qarawiyyîne Mosque and the Andalous Mosque.

The Qarawiyyîne Mosque, wich has since the start outshone its sister mosque, witnessed several extensions in 956 and 1135 under the reign of the Almoravids. Its transverse naves layouts breaks with the layout of other Almoravid shrines in the Maghreb: The Grand Mosque of Tlemcen(1136) and the Grand Mosque of Algiers (1096) for example.

The Green March

The Green March was a strategic mass demonstration in November 1975, coordinated by the Moroccan government, to force Spain to hand over the disputed, autonomous semi-metropolitan Spanish Province of Sahara to Morocco.

The Green March was a well-publicized popular march of enormous proportions. On November 6, 1975, approximately 350,000 unarmed Moroccans[1] converged on the city of Tarfaya in southern Morocco and waited for a signal from King Hassan II to cross into Western Sahara.

They brandished Moroccan flags, banners calling for the "return of the Moroccan Sahara," photographs of the King and the Qur'an; the color green for the march's name was intended as a symbol of Islam. As the marchers reached the border Spanish troops were ordered not to fire to avoid bloodshed.

In order to prepare the terrain and to riposte to any potential counter-invasion from Algeria, the Moroccan Army entered the northeast of the region where it met with sporadic resistance from the Polisario, by then a two-year-old independence movement.

Background

Morocco, to the north of the Spanish Sahara, had long claimed that the territory was historically an integral part of Morocco. Mauritania to the south argued similarly that the territory was in fact Mauritanian.

Since 1973, a Sahrawi guerrilla war led by the Algerian backed Polisario had challenged Spanish control, and in October 1975 Spain had quietly begun negotiations for a handover of power with leaders of the rebel movement, both in El Aaiún, and with foreign minister Pedro Cortina y Mauri meeting El Ouali in Algiers.[3]

Morocco intended to vindicate its claims by demanding a verdict from the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The ICJ stated that there were historical legal ties of allegiance between "some, but only some" Sahrawi tribes and the Sultan of Morocco, as well as ties including some rights relating to the land between Mauritania and other Sahrawi tribes.

[1] However, the ICJ stated also that there were no ties of territorial sovereignty between the territory and Morocco, or Mauritania, at the time of Spanish colonization; and that these contacts were not extensive enough to support either country's demand for annexation of the Spanish Sahara. Instead, the court argued, the indigenous population (the Sahrawis) were the owners of the land, and thus possessed the right of self-determination.

This meant that regardless of which political solution was found to the question of sovereignty (integration with Spain, Morocco, Mauritania, partition, or independence), it had to be explicitly approved by the people of the territory. Complicating matters, a UN visiting mission had concluded on October 15, the day before the ICJ verdict was released, that Sahrawi support for independence was "overwhelming".

However, the reference to previous Moroccan-Sahrawi ties of allegiance was presented by Hassan II as a vindication of his position, with no public mention of the court's further ruling on self-determination. (Until, seven years later, he formally agreed to a referendum before the Organisation of African Unity). Within hours of the ICJ verdict's release, he announced the organizing of a "green march" to Spanish Sahara, to "reunite it with the Motherland".

The Moroccan arguments for sovereignty

According to Morocco, the exercise of sovereignty by the Moroccan state was characterized by official pledges of allegiance to the sultan.

The Moroccan government was of the opinion that this allegiance existed during several centuries before the Spanish occupation and that it was a legal and political tie. The sultan Hassan I, for example, had carried out two expeditions in 1886 in order to put an end to foreign incursions in this territory and to officially invest several caids and cadis.

In its presentation to the ICJ, the Moroccan side also mentioned the levy of taxes as a further instance of the exercise of sovereignty. The exercise of this sovereignty had also appeared, according to the Moroccan government, at other levels, such as the appointment of local officials (governors and military officers), and the definition of the missions which were assigned to them.

The Moroccan government further pointed to several treaties between it and other states, such as with Spain in 1861, the United States of America in 1786, and 1836 and with Great Britain in 1856.

The court, however, found that "neither the internal nor the international acts relied upon by Morocco indicate the existence at the relevant period of either the existence or the international recognition of legal ties of territorial sovereignty between Western Sahara and the Moroccan State. Even taking account of the specific structure of that State, they do not show that Morocco displayed any effective and exclusive State activity in Western Sahara."

The Madrid Accords

Spain feared that the conflict with Morocco could lead to war, and with its government in disarray (the dictator, Franco, lay dying), it was in no mood for trouble in the colonies. Only the year before, the Portuguese government had been toppled, after becoming bogged down in colonial wars in Angola and Mozambique.

Therefore, following the Green March, and with a view to preserving as much as possible of its interest in the territory, Spain agreed to enter direct bilateral negotiations with Morocco, bringing in also Mauritania, who had made similar demands. This resulted in the November 14 Madrid Accords, a treaty  which divided Spanish Sahara between Mauritania and Morocco.

Spain received a 35% concession in the phosphate mines of Bou Craa, and offshore fishing rights . Morocco and Mauritania then formally annexed the parts they had been allotted in the Accords. Morocco claimed the northern part, i.e. Saguia el-Hamra and approximately half of Río de Oro, while Mauritania proceeded to occupy the southern third of the country under the name Tiris al-Gharbiyya. Mauritania later abandoned all claims to its portion in August 1979 and ceded this area to Popular Army of Saharwi Liberation but suddenly was occupied by Morocco.

The Polisario refused the Madrid Accords, and demanded that the ICJ's opinion on Sahrawi self-determination be respected; it turned its weapons on the new rulers of the country, sticking to its demand for independence outright, or a referendum on the matter. The conflict has still not been resolved.

Currently, there is a cease-fire in effect, after a Moroccan-Polisario agreement was struck in 1991 to solve the dispute through the organization of a referendum on independence. A UN peace-keeping mission (MINURSO) has been charged with overseeing the cease-fire and organizating the referendum, which has still not taken place as of 2007.

Morocco has rejected the idea of the referendum as not workable in 2000 and is suggesting an autonomy for Western Sahara within Morocco. That proposal been rejected by Polisario according to the Moroccan government, it will be presented to the UN in April 2007.