Abstract
One day, the inhabitants of a small town in south Morocco found a man early morning sitting near one of their main mosques. The mosque itself is separated from the sanctuary of the patron saint of Tiznit by a small river. For nearly half a century, the man never left his place. The first tent that was later offered to him has been successively renewed until it was replaced by a wooden shed. Still no one knows much about the man. Not even his name or what language he speaks, Berber or Arabic. The space near the Id-Zekri quarter mosque which the man has been watching for days, months, years and decades in an almost immobile posture with the same light smile had been becoming more and more crowded with social changes the small town had been subject to after 1975 and the Sahara question. Few years before he passed away, we started to get interested in him and particularly in what people think about his case. We succeeded in collecting some stories and miracles attributed to the enigmatic person.
Until his death in 1998, nobody could pretend to have had a conversion with him. Even with the very few persons he allowed to feed him and take care of his affairs, he often used to answer their questions with a “yes” or a “no” and sometimes with a gesture or a simple smile. Moreover, Local Authorities for a long time never dared to disturb his peace... Can simple silence and immobile position be the real assets that allowed him to ascend from the status of a privileged beggar to that of being a respected and feared holy man and finally attributed to him a Prophetic genealogy?
