Additional information
by Gavin Maxwell (Author)
Set in the medieval city of Marrakesh and the majestic kasbahs of the High Atlas mountains, Lords of the Atlas tells the extraordinary story of the Madani and T'hami el Glaoui, warlord brothers who carved out a feudal fiefdom in southern Morocco in the early twentieth century. Quislings of the French colonial administration, they combined the aggression of gangland mobsters with the opulence of hereditary Indian princes, and ruled with a mixture of flamboyance and terror. On returning from the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, T'hami ordered the severed heads of his enemies to be mounted on his gates. Yet in 1956, when the French left Morocco, the Glaoua regime toppled like a pack of cards.
Back Jacket
Lords of the Atlas is a classic story of Morocco and the rise and spectacular fall of the House of Glaoua. Madini and T'hami El Glaoui, sons of a Moroccan Caid by an Ethiopian concubine, rose meteorically to power in the almost medieval state of Morocco at the end of the nineteenth Century. This is the epic story of the more than fifty years in which they governed the country in barbaric, ostentatious splendor, until their spectacular downfall in 1956. Out of the intriguing and dramatic lives of Madair and T'hami, Gavin Maxwell has fashioned an epic story set against the superb background of Marrakesh and the pinnacled castles of the High Atlas, still magnificent as crumbling ruins. A dramatic history of intrigue, action, and exotic places, and illustrated with over one hundred color illustrations and photographs, Lords of the Atlas is a stunning look at the rise and fall of one of the twentieth century's most fascinating rulers. (8 X 9 3/4, 276 pages, color photos, b&w photos, map, illustrations)
