The Moroccan nationalist leader Mohamed Allal al-Fassi (1910-1974) was one of the founders and later the president of the Istiqlal party, an erudite Islamic scholar, and an author.

Mohamed Allal al-Fassi was born in Fez on January 10, 1910, into a family which descended from a companion of the prophet Mohammed and included hundreds of famous Islamic scholars, as well as the first governor general of Moslem North Africa. Allal al-Fassi's father was a doctor of divinity and curator of the famous library of Qarawiyin University in Fez. His mother also belonged to a famous family with considerable influence in northern Morocco.

As a youth, Allal al-Fassi was one of the most fervent, gifted, and revolutionary theologians and nationalists in Morocco. Beginning as a lean boy with piercing blue eyes and blond hair, he developed into a stout spokesman for Morocco's traditional middle class. His personal evolution accurately reflected the...