Decoding Muslim Cultural Code: Oral Poetic Tradition of the Jbala (Northern Morocco)

Sarali Gintsburg

doi:10.1515/opth-2025-0055

Article Open Access

Decoding Muslim Cultural Code: Oral Poetic Tradition of the Jbala (Northern Morocco)

Sarali Gintsburg

Published/Copyright: July 10, 2025

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From the journal Open Theology Volume 11 Issue 1

Abstract

Spiritual, sometimes directly imbued and sometimes indirectly suggestive of religiosity, poetic genres are common in all corners of the Arab world. While authored religious poetry in Arabic is fairly well studied, oral, unauthored poetic traditions remain somewhat under-researched, although the latter represents an intriguingly complex microcosm infused with local systems of beliefs and traditions. In my study, I propose to examine one such tradition – from the region of the Jbala (northern Morocco). This tradition is generally regarded as consisting of three genres (ayta, ayyu, and ughniya). Textually, however, all three genres are very similar, and entire beyts freely migrate from one genre to another. Although Jebli poetry cannot be classified as religious, much of it is contextually linked to religious aspects of life of the Jbala people – most notably, pilgrimages to the tombs of local saints, as well as lifestyle shaped by Islamic faith. In addition, this tradition draws from the heritage of the famous sixteenth-century Moroccan Sufi Abderrahman el-Mejdoub. In this article, I will demonstrate how Jebli's poetic texts are built on Islamic cultural code and how the readability of this code depends on the religious identity of the audience. To do so, I suggest analyzing the available corpus of Jebli poetry.

Keywords: Islam; cultural code; Morocco; oral improvised poetry; Arabic language; Sufi poetry

1 Introduction

Religion and literature, for all their essential differences, have traditionally been in an inseparable bond, clearly manifesting themselves within the boundaries of cultural space.

Indeed, as noted by Theodore Ziolkowski, a renowned expert in comparative literature and religion, the first poetic texts in the history of humanity were likely linked to worshipping. For instance, in the West, wrote this scholar, until the Enlightenment, literature was essentially Christ-centric and only starting from the eighteenth century onward, culture and literature underwent certain secularization. Although, according to Ziolkowski, contemporary Western literature is mostly secular, one can notice that it continues exploring Biblical motifs and therefore we can cautiously conclude that this literature is not completely free from religion.^[1] This difficulty the scholars have while attempting to disentangle religion and literature leads to another one, namely, distinguishing between two textual genres – religious literature and secular literature. All of the above is undoubtedly true for the literature of Muslim countries, in most of which the process of secularization of the text, if it has begun at all, then only recently. In this article, I will study oral poetic texts from the Muslim world – namely, from the Jbala, an Arabic-speaking region in northern Morocco. In order to demonstrate how this poetry can be an important source of theological information, I will apply to my material the concept of cultural code. The article is structured as follows: it first introduces the reader to a brief overview of the notion of cultural code and the history of its use, and then focuses on the definition of Muslim cultural code. The theoretical part is then followed by analysis, in which I first introduce the Jebli culture, where the cult of Muslim saints has an exceptionally important role and then the Jebli poetic tradition. I then offer an analysis of Jebli's poetry, which I divide into two major groups: secular poetry that contains religion-related lexicon and romantic/Sufi poetry. The analysis reveals that poetry from both groups contains particular religion-related code-words. While code-words from the first group are recognized and understood by members of local Jebli and, in a wider sense, the Muslim community, the code-words from the second group represent certain difficulty, as they can be recognized as religion-linked only by those who are familiar with the Sufi tradition.

For the purpose of this article, that is, studying how a presumably secular poetic text can contain code-words that bear important religion-related information, I will differentiate between religious and secular texts using the criterion of function. Therefore, I will consider the text religious if it was produced for specific, religion-related purposes, so that its primary function is essentially religious. Consequently, I will consider the text to be secular if its primary function is literary and aesthetic. A religious text can thus be used as a source of reference for norms and precepts that define a particular religion (the Vedas, the Bible, or the Quran). Another primary function of a religious text is its liturgical use (these are prayers, religious hymns, etc.). Finally, a significant volume of religious literature is represented by texts whose primary function is to be an additional source of information of a religious nature: these are various interpretations, hagiographic literature, etc. Other texts, whose primary function is not obviously religious, will be considered as secular. Since any text can have different uses, the function of religious and secular texts regularly overlaps, which, however, does not affect their primary use.

2 Cultural Code

Over the last century, attempts to develop a theoretical concept in order to explain the mechanism of creation, transmission, and perception of a certain cultural identity have been made in different scholarly disciplines. One of such concepts became the notion of cultural code, which was coined in the middle of the twentieth century and since then it has been recognized by a number of prominent scholars, coming mostly from philological and philosophical backgrounds, first and foremost, Yuri Lotman, Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, and Umberto Eco. Later, the concept of cultural code also gained relative popularity in culture studies, as well as sociology, anthropology, and cognitive science.^[2] It might appear that since a lot of theoretical work has been done by some of the brightest scholars of the past century, we should be well equipped for applying the notion of cultural code across various academic disciplines. Nevertheless, today the term cultural code is widely used in everyday speech, while, as it often happens, the interest in this concept in academic circles has almost disappeared.^[3] Meanwhile, cultural code is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon; its interpretations found in philosophical, cultural, and linguistic works reflect its different aspects, which makes the notion of cultural code worth revisiting.

The scholars’ interest in the concept of cultural code emerged at a certain level of development of semiotic science in the twentieth century and was associated primarily with the names of Yuri Lotman, Roland Barthes, and Umberto Eco.^[4] Each one of these scholars, speaking about cultural codes, proceeded from special philosophical and theoretical foundations, investigated the phenomena of national culture, and, being in constant and open discussion with other scholars, came to original conclusions. On this intellectual basis, independent research traditions were subsequently formed, each of which develops the content of the concept of cultural code in its own research field.

For Yuri Lotman, cultural codes are essential in the literature because “any artistic text can perform its social function only when aesthetic communication is present in the collective in which it operates” and if cultural codes are not shared by the author and his audience, the text will sound like an “an epitaph written in an incomprehensible tongue.”^[5] Along with Yuri Lotman, Mikhail Bakhtin made an important contribution to the development of the philological understanding of the concept of cultural code. Despite his controversial attitude toward semiotics as a field of research, this scholar agreed with the importance of the term cultural code (for Bakhtin simply “code”) for the philological analysis of a literary text.^[6] For Bakhtin, then “a [cultural] code is a deliberately established, deadened context [translation is mine, SG].”^[7] This definition quite accurately characterizes the concept of cultural code in its applied philological meaning.

In parallel, Roland Barthes developed a complex classification of codes that would allow researchers to analyze a literary text.^[8] Cultural codes, according to Barthes, are “résumés of common knowledge,” if we take cultural codes detected in a complex literary text, they, “taken up from citation to citation, together form an oddly joined miniature version of encyclopedic knowledge, a farrago.”^[9] Codes are crucially important not only for the reader but also for the protagonists of the story, as “one defect in this encyclopedia, one hole in this cultural fabric, and death can result.”^[10]

There are also definitions that emphasize the communicative aspect of cultural code. The concept of “cultural code” is as close as possible to the concept of “world picture,” for example: “symbols and systems of meaning that are relevant to members of a particular culture (or subculture),”^[11] while for Clotaire Rapaille, these are “the unconscious meaning we apply to any given thing via the culture in which we are raised.”^[12] Finally, some authors offer aesthetic definition of the notion of cultural code: for William Banfield, an expert in Afroamerican artistic production, culture codes set “patterns of particular paradigms for how people think, behave, and then as well define their roles, their rationale, worldviews, and value systems.”^[13]

Taking into account this polyphony of the existing definitions of the concept of cultural code, in this article, I have tried to develop a narrow and clear enough interpretation of this concept, including only figurative codes, since they have a linguistic aspect. I do not touch upon the issue of subconscious behavioral programs of representatives of one or another ethnic groups, since they are non-verbalized and therefore belong to the field of psychology and social anthropology rather than linguistics. Therefore, in this article, I suggest to use the following definition: cultural code is thus encrypted information that is transmitted to the bearer of a certain culture or community and is easily readable by him, while for the bearers of other cultures and communities such information may be incomprehensible and require considerable effort for its perception.

Does it make sense to theorize about such a broad concept as a “Muslim cultural code”? Does such a thing exist? What can be read in the Muslim cultural code as articulated in the Jebli poetry in Northern Morocco?

3 Cultural Codes and Islam

Although the concept of cultural code remains unclear to many ordinary people, adherence to it is clearly evident in their social practices. Through the transmission of knowledge from the past and the social practices of the present, the cultural code forms constructs of specific perceptions and understandings of the world. Eventually, in the shaping of the cultural code, a significant role is given to religion. The same religious cultural code therefore can be shared and understood by members of the same religious community or, in other words, when a person who belongs formally to a particular religion, uses a religious symbol (or code) in his speech or any other activity, those who belong to the same religious group will notice and understand it in much the same way. As a result, the message inherent in it finds its addressee and elicits the desired reaction.

There is quite a significant number of works showing the transmission and reading of religious identity in literary texts. As a bearer of Russian culture, I am, first and foremost, familiar with the works of Yuri Lotman and Mikhail Bakhtin, dedicated to the Christian (Orthodox) backdrop of literary works by Russian classics from the nineteenth century. In Western Europe, the presence of religion in the writings of authors such as Charlotte Brontë has been explored quite deeply.^[14] Nevertheless, the vast majority of these works focus on Christian identity or the cultural code of Christian culture. In this article, I would like to demonstrate that a similar backdrop can also be found in literary texts from the Muslim world.

Muslim identity, just like the Christian identity, is based on the idea of believing in God, and it is for a reason that at the dawn of Islam, in the Arabic language, the word imān (faith) was preferred. With time, the preference was made over imān to islām, which means “submission to God.”^[15] The believers, or those who submitted themselves to God, form the Ummah (or Ummat an-Nabī, the community of the Prophet), or the world Muslim community, attached to the Prophet and encompassing every Muslim person, regardless of age, gender, social status, and national background/race. According to Muslim teachings, the Qur’an was sent by God to the Prophet in the Arabic language, which led to the spread of Arabic across countries and even continents, and even today Arabic language occupies a privileged position in the Muslim world. Although Muslim teaching can and does vary based on the differences between the Sunni and the Shia branches of Islam, as well as the madhab (in case of Sunni Islam), there are fundamental principles that are respected by all members of the Ummah.

The symbolic codes in religious culture and how they are transmitted from one person to another mean that culture, though slow, is constantly changing. These changes can either be the result of the creation of new things (codes) or they can occur at the moment of contact with Such contact between cultures leads to cultural borrowing (through learning) of symbolic codes, that is, interpenetration of cultures. Symbolic/cultural codes determine how we react to objects, subjects, and situations – what we think about them and in what terms; how we feel, and experience them; finally, what value we recognize in them. Understanding the symbolic/cultural codes of everyday life in Muslim culture opens up the possibility to learn about this rich culture and form an adequate image of Islam.

Earlier in this article, I quoted various definitions of cultural codes suggested by Western scholars. As I was writing this article and looking for a possible definition of cultural code coming from the Muslim world, I came upon this warning written by two young Algerian scholars to Western researchers, who might consider studying literature coming from the Muslim World. This warning can perfectly serve as an alternative definition of cultural code, explained to a Christian researcher by a Muslim researcher:

Based on what has been presented, anyone who wants to deal with poetic texts, especially those colored with the symbols of Sufism laden with meanings, should be equipped with these cultural and religious insights. That may open up the horizon of interpretation for him. However, if he approaches these texts without any of this cultural and religious knowledge, he will undoubtedly stand at their doorstep with tied hands. Neither the door could be opened on its own, nor it beyond would be possible to be reached without unlocking the constraints and holding the keys to entry.^[16]

As follows from the quoted excerpt, it is specific culture and religion-linked information that can help not only a researcher but also an ordinary reader who comes from a different culture that can facilitate a better understanding of the hidden symbolism of Sufi (but also Muslim) literary text.

In what follows, I will analyze one particular tradition and demonstrate how cultural codes/cultural markers intrinsic to Islamic culture first form part of the poetic text and then are identified and perceived by the members of a given cultural and linguistic group as such. My case study will be the poetic texts from the Jbala, an Arabic-speaking region in Morocco, where Islam has been present for fourteen centuries.

Before proceeding directly to the analysis of the material, it should be noted that any literary work, whether written or oral, carries a variety of codes that complement each other but may well exist separately from each other: thus, in the oral poetry of the people of Jbala, one can easily distinguish the following codes: the Muslim cultural code, the cultural code of the Arabic-speaking Moroccan, and, finally, the code of the inhabitant of Jbala, a mountainous region with a special geography and cultural traditions.

4 Analysis

4.1 Northern Morocco: The Land of Jbala, the Land of Saints

The Jbala region (from Moroccan Arabic jbāl (pl.), “mountains”), which occupies the western part of the Rif mountains, has always had a mixed population. Although its inhabitants speak a similar variety of Moroccan Arabic, known as Jebli Moroccan Arabic, their origin is very varied. While some Jbala tribes are regarded to be pure Jebli, i.e., Arab, others are associated with an Amazigh origin, among which there are two major subgroups, the Ghomara and the Senhadja. In addition to demographic heterogeneity, this region is also geographically diverse. High mountains are interspersed with hills and flatlands, and local inhabitants settle in both the high mountains and the valleys. There are only a few cities in the country of the Jbala, and its population remains mostly rural. Nevertheless, the inhabitants of the Jbala region both typically identify themselves and are seen by outsiders as one ethnic and cultural group with integrated tribes and tribal confederations. What is more reliant in connection to the main theme of this article is the fact that Jebli people, despite their “rural” status have long enjoyed the reputation of one of the most learned community in Morocco. Moreover, Jebli fuqāhas contributed to the fact that physical, political, and social space throughout the northern region is saturated with these saints, who also contributed to the spiritual centralization of the region,^[17] which crystallized around the quṭb Moulay Abdessalam Ben Mshish.^[18]

The tradition of going on pilgrimage to the shrine of Moulay Abdessalam ben Mchich has played an exceptionally important role in Jebli society over many centuries, to the degree that Michaux-Bellaire, a French ethnographer who worked in Morocco at the beginning of the twentieth century, described this phenomenon as the “cult of Moulay Abdessalam.”^[19] He goes further and suggests that the Jbala view pilgrimage to Moulay Abdessalam as an equivalent to ḥajj because for them, this saint represents the essence of Islam. This is in line with the description of various rituals associated with the ziyara to Moulay Abdessalam, where the rituals often repeat in one or another way the rituals, associated with hajj to Mecca, among them are ṭawāf (walking in circles around the Kaaba in an anti-clockwise motion) that is done around the shrine of another saint, Sidi Heddi, whose tomb located nearby, lapidation, Marble Prayer that mimics the Kaaba prayer, etc. The tradition of ziyara, therefore, is rightfully seen by the locals as a pilgrimage of the poor (of ḥažž əl-məskīn) and symbols and rituals associated with it transmit in the eyes of the local community true values and beliefs associated with the Islamic religion because, as a local saying has it, “the one who visited [the shrine of] Moulay is equal to the one who visited the Prophet (lli zār Mūlāy ‘Abdǝssalām bḥāl ila zār ǝn-nbi).”^[20]

The Jbala region in northern Morocco is known for an enormous number of Sufi lodges, shrines of local saints, and the cults of those saints. As of today, Sufi lodges continue to play an important role in the spiritual guidance of the Moroccan Muslim population.

4.2 Poetic Tradition of the Jbala as a Transmitter of Cultural Code

There are several genres existing within the Jebli oral poetic tradition. While some, such našīd, or religious hymn, or dhikr, or litany, are of clearly religious nature and therefore won’t be discussed in this article, other genres present secular poetry. Today, there exist three distinct genres distinguished by the Jbala as separate genres: 'ayṭa (also known as ṭaqṭūqa), 'ayyū', and uġnīya. Structurally, the poetry is organized in quatrains that are locally known as beyt jebli. The poetic language is highly formulaic, that is, it is made of stock phrases that offer the poet the possibility for some variations within the phrase. Despite this clear distinction, separate poetic lines and sometimes entire beyts freely travel from one genre to another, and one genre can be distinguished from another only based on the tune and the context of performance.^[21] It is important to mention here as well that Jebli's poetry is inseparable from music and it is meant to be chanted. Jebli poets, who are often also musicians, insist that Jebli tradition is the direct descent of the Andalusian tradition and therefore Jebli music is a simplified version of aṭ-ṭarab.^[22] The desire to see in one's tradition the remnants of the Andalusian heritage becomes particularly interesting if we take into account the fact that the legitimacy of music in the Muslim world is an old and unresolved problem. Different interpretations of what can be considered legitimate and what cannot be considered legitimate have been proposed at different times. One criterion is the presence of maqāms in music.^[23] Thus, by tracing a direct link to the Andalusian tradition, the custodians of the local tradition claim the legitimacy of their art and its spiritual orientation.

In addition, the Jebli poetic tradition also seems to have direct links to the oral heritage of Abderrahman el-Mejdoub, a famous sixteenth-century Sufi mystic and a poet who originated from the town of el-Qsar el-Kebir (located in the territory of what is known today as the Jbala region). Attributed to el-Mejdoub, these beyts, somewhat of proverbial character, circulate in the Moroccan north under the name of mǝždūbiyāt ^[24] and share a lot in common with the Jebli beyts both structurally and lexically.

I will now turn to analyzing the poetic corpus. The corpus consists of a collection of poetic texts collected by me for the purpose of my doctoral dissertation,^[25] and an archive of beyts collected by the Spanish amateur ethnographer Carlos Pereda and prepared for publication by Francisco Moscoso.^[26] Where appropriate, with the purpose of demonstrating the continuity of cultural codes in the Jebli tradition, I will be drawing parallels with de Prémare’s collection of mǝždūbiyāt, first and foremost with those that were classified by de Prémare as mystical and/or religious.^[27]

According to the themes and motifs, I divided poetry from the corpus into two major groups: 1. secular poetry that nevertheless has an obvious relation to Islam and cultural practices related to Muslim culture, and 2. poetry that can be classified both as love poetry and Sufi poetry. The latter group, in accordance with the definition of cultural code, can be interpreted as love poetry by those who have no experience of Sufism and as religious poetry by those who do.

4.3 Group One: Secular Poetry that Contains Lexicon Specific of Islamic Culture and Life Style

4.3.1 Pilgrimage Related Songs

A considerable part of Jebli's verses are texts that are related to pilgrimage (ziyāra) – a well-known tradition in the Islamic world of venerating shrines of local saints. In my previous research, I demonstrated how, in order to decode and understand this poetry, which is highly contextual, it is often not enough to be a member of a given cultural and religious group, as it is also important to participate in a certain event. To illustrate this, I analyzed the process of constructing and then maintaining a particular identity – in this case, Muslim pilgrims going on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Moulay Abdessalam – through improvised sung poems of secular character. These poems, as revealed in the analysis, are highly codified and carry numerous symbols/codes that contain important information on the identities of the pilgrims and the character of the event in which they participated (Muslim, pilgrim, Jebli).^[28]

Such sung poems usually do not discuss any religious norms and stipulations, nor are they used for religious purposes as there is a separate genre for this, known as nāšīd – that is, religious hymns and prayers. Instead, these texts mention the process of going on a pilgrimage and/or spending time at the shrine of a particular saint and therefore contain information related to the tradition of ziyāra, but offer no direct instructions of a religious character. A great many of these verses are dedicated to the theme of visiting the shrine of Moulay Abdessalam. Moulay Abdessalam is well-known not only outside the Jbala region but also outside Morocco, considered to be a Sufi quṭb. To appreciate the meaning hidden in these poems, one has to be a bearer of a particular code that would imply knowledge of performing a ziyāra. Consider the following examples, where beyt (1)^[29] describes the process of going to visit this reputable saint, beyt (2) commemorates the place where this saint has his shrine and zāwiya:

(1) ṭ-ṭāl‘īn yǝzūrū

[We] are going to visit [his shrine],

wa-ṭāl‘īn bǝ l-ǧalāla

Ah and we are going [there] extolling God.

wa-mūlāy ‘Abdǝsslām

Ah and Moulay Abdessalam,

ya qandīl Jbāla

[he is] the oil lamp of the Jbala!^[30]

The metaphor of the oil-lamp being the Divine’s light is all found in de Prémare’s collection of meždūbiyāt, with the difference that in beyt (1) divine light comes from Moulay Abdessalam, and in de Prémare’s poem, the source of light is the Lord: a la ftīla la qandīl/ ġir ḍḍawwak ya Rǝbbi (There is no [other] wick and no [other] oil-lamp/There is [only one] light, which yours, my Lord).^[31] The image of lamp as a source of divine light plays an important role in the Muslim religion – in the Qur’an not only the faith in God is likened to a niche with a lamp in it (miškātun fīha miṣbāḥun, sura 24, verse 35) but also the Prophet is referred to as a “a shining lamp” (sirāžun munīrun, Sura 33, verse 46).^[32]

In the example below (beyt 2), the first two lines are used to schematically depict a typical image known to every Jebli person – patches of growing marjoram plants, while the second two lines mention the tribe Bni Arus – the territory where the shrine and the zawiya of Moulay Abdessalam are located:

(2) mǝrdǝddūš ya lǝ-xḍǝr,

Oh, green marjoram,

beyn ǝs-swāqi mǝġrūs;

Growing between irrigation ditches;

ǝl-ḥbīb mūlāy ‘Abd ǝs-Slām,

Our beloved Mulay Abdessalam,

ǝl-mǝdfūn bǝ Bni ‘Arōs.

He was buried in Bni Arus.^[33]

Jebli poetry contains numerous references to other local saints, and although, again, such texts are secular, they usually either have a brief description of the place the saint is buried, or at least the epithet through which the saint is locally known. By including this information, local poets encode and pass forward the idea of the importance of venerating local saints, the tradition which forms part of the local variety of piousness. In the following example (beyt 3), the anonymous Jebli poet fits in the same quatrain the description of two prominent Jebli saints – Moulay Bu Shta el-Khemmar,^[34] and Sidi Allal el-Hajj.^[35] While the Moulay Bou Shta’s is described quite schematically – the text vaguely explains that his mausoleum is located in the village, Sidi Allal el-Hajj is assigned the epithet of the banner for pilgrims (‘alam ǝz-zuyār)^[36]:

(3) a wa-beyna duwār wa-diyar

Ah and between the village and houses!

wa-Mūlāy Bu Šta ǝl-Xammār

And Moulay Bu Shta el-Khemmar!

wa-sīdi ‘Allāl el-Ḥažž

Oh, and Sidi Allal el-Hajj,

wa-huwa ‘alam ǝz-zuyār

Oh, he is the banner for pilgrims^[37]

4.3.2 Cultural Codes Intrinsic to Islamic Culture

Jebli poetry contains numerous references to concepts that form cultural code intrinsic to Islamic culture and therefore relevant for the Jebli society. Although such texts don’t contain any specific and detailed information related to such concepts, the meaning of the poetic text can only be understood and appreciated by those who are familiar with this culture and therefore share the same cultural code. Among such code words are: the Qibla (the direction of Kaaba), mǝktūb (fate), tūba (repentance), miḥrāb (mihrab), kāfir (infidel), ḥažž (pilgrimage to Mecca), d-dīn (religion), mǝlki (of the Maliki madhab), msǝllǝm (Muslim), š-šrā‘ (the Sharia), and many others. To offer the reader a general idea about the role code-words play in a poetic text, I will analyze several of them.

Qibla: the direction of Kaaba is one of the key symbols of Islam, as it defines the direction in which the ṣalāt (prayer) is performed by Muslims and, according to some sources, was introduced by the Prophet to the first Muslims together with ṣalāt.^[38] In this text, as we can understand it, the anonymous poet first looks at the sky to find the stars that will indicate the direction of the prayer – the Qibla stars (n-nžūm d ǝl-qǝbla) and, once they were found, performs a prayer. The prayer, however, has something to do with the poet’s personal wishes (beyt 4):

(4) ṭǝl‘u n-nžūm d ǝl-qǝbla

The stars of the Qibla have appeared,

hādi mūra hādi

One after another,

nǝṭlub sīdi rǝbbi

I am asking you, my Lord,

yūfi li murādi.

To make my wishes come true.^[39]

Mǝktūb: mǝktūb (literal meaning ‘written) is a synonym to the Muslim concept of predestination (al-qadā’ wa-l-qadr), or Divine Decree.^[40] This concept, with very few exceptions, is seen as fundamental in the Muslim religion: in Sunni Islam, and Morocco is predominantly of the Sunni Maliki madhab, belief in predestination (al-qadr) is one of the six articles of faith. In the Maghreb culture, it is widely known and used as mǝktūb. There is a plethora of colloquial expressions that imply the concept of Divine Predestination: ka-yǝṣǝrrǝf ǝl-mǝktūb (he fulfils what was predestined for him), hāda mǝktūbi (this is my fate), etc.^[41] The Jebli poets also often mention fate. Consider, for instance, the following short poem, in which the inevitability of enduring what was destined is likened to the need to cross a swollen river in order to proceed further (beyt 5):

(5) ǝl-wād ḥāmǝl ḥāmǝl,

The river is rising, rising

īḏa a ḥmǝl nǝ‘dīwǝh;

And if it becomes swollen, we will still cross it.

wa-dǝnhu mǝktūb f ǝr-rās,

What was predestined for us,

wa-la budda nwǝddīwha.

We will have no choice but to fulfil it.^[42]

Some verses that date back to the beginning of the twentieth century treat the topic of attempts to colonize the country (and the region). Although such texts, again, in no way can be considered religious, they introduce the theme of animosity based on religious difference: Muslims protect their lands and fight against infidels (kāfir) (beyt 6)^[43]:

(6) ǝn-nār fi l-xǝrrūba,

There is fire in Kharruba^[44],

ǝn-nār fi l-xǝrrūba;

There is fire in Kharruba

ǝl-mḥǝlla ḏ a l-kāfǝr,

The infidels’ troops,

kullha a mšāt mǝḍrūba.

Were completely defeated.^[45]

Poetic texts also contain references to important events, often related to religious festivities. Although the beyts below don’t contain any information of religious character, such as guidelines or instructions, as they only mention the Muslim holidays such as Eid el-Kabir and the Day of Arafa, the meaning of these lines can only be understood by a member of the Muslim community.

In Pereda’s collection, there is a beyt that contains a reference to the Great Feast which is celebrated on the tenth day of the month of ḏul-ḥižža, when the pilgrimage to Mecca ends (beyt 7):

(7) a ya ḥbībǝt ǝš-š‘īr,

Oh, barley grain,

a ya ḥbībǝt ǝš-š‘īr;

Oh, barley grain;

‘ǝbbāwna s-sŭlṭān,

They took us to the Sultan,

fi ṣ-ṣbāḥ ḏ a l-‘īd ǝl-kbīr.

In the morning of the Great Feast^[46]

Beyt (8) is an excerpt from the song produced by Latifa Laaroussia, a contemporary Jebli singer and poet from Chefchaouen. In her poem, dedicated to Moulay Abdessalam, Latifa mentions the Arafa Day, the day that precedes the Holy Feast and is considered to be an important day in the Islamic calendar. The Day of Arafa, however, also has a specific meaning in the Jebli culture: according to one popular local belief, Jebli saints get together on the shrine of Moulay Abdessalam and then travel together to the mount of Arafat in Mecca to accompany the pilgrims.^[47] There is another codified meaning associated with visiting the shrine of Mouay Abdessalam – those, who visit this saint on the Arafa Day reproduce the essential elements of the pilgrimage to Mecca:^[48]

(8) zūrū fǝ ‘īd ‘arafa

Visit his shrine on the day of Arafa

wa-da‘iw m‘āna š-šorfa

And take with us sherifs.

ya alla ya bǝn ‘ammi

Oh God, oh my cousin,

tǝmma qalbak yǝtfažža

To the place where your heart was filled with joy.^[49]

4.4 Group Two: Romantic Poetry/Sufi Poetry

I will complete my analysis with what can be classified as Sufi vernacular poetry still circulating in the Jebli community but also as romantic poetry, or, using Jebli terminology ši‘r ġarāmi. This should not be surprising at all, as in the Islamic culture, love poetry, as we know, was the precursor of mystical or Sufi poetry. In his relatively recent work on Classical Sufism, for instance, Bilal Orfali finds traces of how themes and motifs from ghazal poems dating back to pre-Islamic, Umayyad, and early Abbasid periods became an important stock for images that started circulating in mystical poetry after the birth of Sufism in the early tenth century.^[50] These motifs are also central to a great number of Jebli beyts, especially, but not exclusively to those that belong to the genre of ayyu. This may appear odd to the uninitiated reader, since, as Maria Curtis notes in her analysis of the role of women in Jebli poetic tradition, “In the Western context, there is a strict separation between love poetry and religious poetry. This is not so in ayyu, nor in other examples of Sufi poetry from almost every region of the Muslim world.”^[51]

As I discussed in detail in my earlier research, ayyu, with some exceptions, is often regarded as poetry for women and by women, while ayta is traditionally seen as poetry for men and by men.^[52] Francisco Moscoso, in his study of themes and motifs of Jebli poetry based on the quatrains collected by Carlos Pereda, conducted a technical analysis, in which he calculated gender use in romantic vocabulary found in these quatrains. The results reveal that, indeed, romantic vocabulary found in the poems is predominantly in the masculine gender, which is supposed to confirm the idea that the anonymous authors of these love songs were predominantly women.^[53] Further in his analysis, Moscoso, who relies mostly on the commentaries left by Pereda, classifies these poetic texts as love/erotic and not as a religious genre. His conclusion, therefore, is that the genre of ayyu is, indeed, assigned to women, that it is secular and that love and romance are predominant themes in this genre. In her article, however, Maria Curtis applied some of the ideas of Annemarie Schimmel, a renowned expert in Sufism and Sufi literature, and love/romantic verses circulating among local, Jebli women, to the rich tradition of Sufism that, as I discussed earlier, existed in the region. First, Curtis notes that her acquaintances from the area who were known for singing ayyu were shorfa, or descendants of Moulay Abdessalam and, through him, descendants of the Prophet. She then also mentions that Jebli women are also familiar, although often indirectly, with Sufi teachings and uses the following quote from Annemarie Schimmel: “The image of the loving soul pervades the whole corpus of vernacular Sufi poetry.”^[54] Following Schimmel, Curtis decodes this love poetry as “the preeminent image of the devoted worshipper.”^[55]

Verses that can be read as mystical and expressing eternal love for the Creator, of course, circulate not only among women but also among men, who in their poetry also often use masculine forms. In my corpus, for instance, I have songs I recorded from Mohamed Laroussi, a Jebli poet, violinist, and singer, known outside the Jbala region and less known Abdessalam al-Khomsi, that contain the following lines (beyts 9 and 10):

(9) l-‘īša dyāli bla ḥbībi

Life without my love

rāha ‘andi kīf wālu

Is just nothing.^[56]

(10) ana mrīḍ ana mrīḍ

I am ill, I am ill

wa-ši marḍ ana māhu fīya

But I do not have any illness.

aa wa-mǝn kiyyat ḥbībi

Because of the burnt left by my beloved

w-ana mšīt xṭīya

I was hurt.^[57]

Beyt 10, moreover, echoes the following lines from de Prémare’s mǝždūbiyāt, where the protagonist concludes that only the Lord can cure him: qǝlbi mrīḍ w-b aš mrīḍ/qǝlbi mrīḍ mǝn ġeyr žrāḥ (My heart is ill, [but] what is its illness?/My heart is ill but it was not wounded).^[58]

Curiously, it is in this hidden variety of poetry where the Muslim cultural code is being preserved and passed on to those who belong to the Sufi community in the most direct way, while those who are not part of it identify this poetry as romantic and even erotic. For instance, beyt 11, which sketches out the shrine of a saint located on the top of the mountain Sidi el-Hbib and the main protagonist (we don’t know the gender), who is a tears, was classified by Moscoso as an example of Jebli love poetry. However, if we turn to de Prémare’s collection of mǝždūbiyāt, tears are associated with the protagonist's inability to go to Hajj and visit the Prophet – n-nās zārat Moḥammād/w-ana dmū'i siyyāḥa ([other] People went to visit Mohammad/and me – my tears are running down [my cheeks]).^[59] This resonance with a supposedly romantic poem with a mystical poem from de Prémare enables us to assume that beyt 11 can have another reading:

(11) Sīdi ǝl-Ḥbīb ǝl-‘āli,

Sidi El Hbib, the elevated,

b ǝl-bǝlž w-ǝr-rǝyyāḥa;

With its door and window;

‘ǝyni ‘la kull ṭrīq,

My eyes are peering into each road,

wa dmū‘i suyyāḥa

And tears are running down [my cheeks].^[60]

The theme of crying and suffering is well-known in Classical mystical poetry. Bilal Orfali connects it to the ʿUdhrī tradition of love poetry, where the poet’s focus was placed not on the object of love but on the sorrowing of the lover.^[61] It is even more valid in the context of Jebli poetry if we consider the fact the traditionally the tribe Jbel el-Hbib enjoys the reputation of being the land of pious people and many shrines and zawiyas.^[62]

The following two beyts can be interpreted as an example love/romantic poetry, where the dove plays the role of a love-messenger. In beyt 12, the dove flies to the city of Fes with the purpose of delivering a message to a certain Allal. However, it can also be read as a mystical text, where the poet refers to the mosque of Sīdi Allal, located in old Fes. In beyt 13, the dove, as we understand, is supposed to look to the beloved one. Both beyts share certain similarity with a beyt from de Prémare’s mǝzdūbiyāt, in which the city of Mecca is presented as a beautiful bride: dīk ǝṭ-ṭyūr ǝlli ṭāru/w-f ǝs-sma ‘amlu ḍāra/ mǝnt šāfu ḥabībi/hawwdu līla b ǝl-ġāra (Those birds that flew away/They formed a circle in the sky/ and when they saw my beloved one/They hurried towards her):^[63]

(12) ṭār ǝl-ḥmām w-‘la,

The dove took off and soared,

wa-nzǝl ‘la qubba fi Fās;

And the landed on the dome of Fez;

dīk sīdi ‘Allāl,

My master Allal,

ka l-wǝrda fi l-kās.

Is [handsome] like that rose in a vase.^[64]

(13) ṭīr əl-ḥmām w-‘əlli,

Take off, dove, and soar

wa nzəl ‘la dāk əḍ-ḍhər;

And then land on that hill;

w īḏa bqīt kā-nə‘šəq,

And if I continue to love [so deeply],

nəḥrəq qəlbi f ən-nār.

My heart will burn in fire.^[65]

To conclude my analysis, I will introduce the metaphor, associated with both romantic and mystical poetry: the beloved one as a flower, resorting to de Prémare’s collection of mǝždūbiyāt. In Jebli's poetic tradition, the poets often compare the object of love to roses, flowers, and sometimes gardens. Similarly, de Prémare’s collection contains a beyt, which compares a flower directly to the Prophet: šufna ǝn-nḥāl al n-nuwwār/ḥna n-nbi nuwwarǝtna (I saw bees on flowers/[and] for us, the Prophet is our flower).^[66] This resonates with the Jebli poetry, previously attributed as romantic 14 (and also beyt 12), where the anonymous object of love is likened to a rose. Rose, as we learn from Lois Rinn, who left a detailed description of Sufi orders in late nineteenth-century Algeria, had an important symbolic role in Maghrebi Sufism. Rinn left a curious explanation in this regard: he insisted that the werd is in fact linked to wird, a well-known Sufi term, meaning “mystical invocation” (Rinn translated it as “arrival”). He then explained that many illiterate members of Maghreb Sufi orders misunderstand it and interpret this word as “rose”, which they then use as a poetic metaphor.^[67] While Rinn’s interpretation can be questionable, it proves that the image of the rose was in use among Muslim mystics not only in the Arab East, but also in the Maghreb:

(14) ya l-warda ya lalla

Ah rose, oh, lalla!

wa-ṭāḥ ǝš-šta w-zyānit

It became [even] more beautiful after rain.

yǝšūf fīha ḥabībi

Ah my beloved will look at it

wa-yǝrudda fāy kānet

And return it to its place.^[68]

Jebli love poems contain numerous metaphors that are well-known and symbolic for Sufi mystical poetry: rose, or rose garden, fire consuming the loving heart, bird as a human soul, longing, where the object of love appears to be not only God and the Prophet but also local saints. Such openness of Jebli love poetry to double-reading can be justified by Alexander Knysh’s observations on Muslim mystical poetry: both poetry and religious (mystical) experience make use of symbols and associations they produce and therefore are open to various interpretations.^[69]

5 Conclusion

In this article, I used the notion of cultural code to demonstrate how Muslim identity is constructed, passed on, and then unlocked by inhabitants of the Jbala, an Arabic-speaking region in northern Morocco. In order to complete my analysis, I first offered an overview of various approaches to the notion of cultural code, as well as various definitions. I concluded that for the purposes of this article, cultural codes can best be defined as encrypted information that is easily understood by bearers of the same culture, while for outsiders, understanding this information may and often does represent a considerable challenge. Further, I offered a brief description of the kind of cultural code embedded in the Jebli poetry in Northern Morocco that might characterize the Muslim world and participate in the construction of Muslim identity. I then introduced the material for my case study – a poetic tradition of the Jbala and proceeded to analysis.

In my analysis, I offered a description of two major types of oral poetry that, as I suggested, contain such cultural codes intrinsic to Muslim culture: 1. Non-religious poetic texts that contain code-words: clear connotation to Islam, such as religious traditions, religious festivities, and societal norms. Such code-words are easily deciphered by members of the Muslim community but require additional clarification for those who are not part of this culture; and 2. Poetry that can be identified both as romantic and religious (mystical). As this is the case with mystical Sufi poetry in general, such texts represent a special difficulty, as the codes hidden in them can be deciphered by those who are familiar not only with Muslim cultural norms but also with the coded language of Sufi mystics.

To conclude, my research thus demonstrates the potential of the notion of cultural code offers to researchers who work with literary texts originating from other cultures (that, of course, should not be limited exclusively to cultures belonging to the Islamic world). Thus, further elaboration of the notion of cultural code – an implicit rather than explicit phenomenon deeply embedded in a given culture – may contribute to a deeper and more accurate understanding of foreign literary production. One of the steps in this direction could be to apply the notion of cultural code to another case study, for instance, coming from a different Muslim country and compare the results with the outcomes of this article.

Funding information: Author states no funding involved.
Author contribution: The author confirms the sole responsibility for the conception of the study, the presented results, and the manuscript preparation.
Conflict of interest: Author states no conflict of interest.

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Received: 2024-12-05

Revised: 2025-06-11

Accepted: 2025-06-20

Published Online: 2025-07-10

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.