ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the construction of a contemporary Andalusian Moroccan context, in the city of Rabat. It addresses the inherent multidimensionality and multidirectionality of global phenomena touching the social context, and examines the transnational identity dynamics among Andalusians of Rabat, as guided by the ways in which they remember their historic roots in al-Andalus. The chapter deals with Ulf Hannerz’s ideas of global creolization and with Arjun Appadurai’s understanding of ethnoscapes and processes of global territorialization in order to illuminate the syncretic dynamics of Andalusian identity in Rabat. The most significant aspect of Rabat’s absorption into the central government was that it began a process of assimilating the moriscos, then mostly Spanish-speaking, and a blend of past Hispano-Islamic and Christian Spanish cultures, into a more Moroccan, Arabic, and Islamic culture. By the sixteenth century the city of Rabat, on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, was mostly in ruins following the abandoned building campaigns of the Almohad Dynasty in the twelfth century.
