1. Muhammad bin 'Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi, better known as Abd el-Krim, was a Moroccan political and military leader and the president of the Republic of the Rif.
23 Facts About Abd el-Krim
1. 2.
Abd el-Krim became one of the major figures of Arab nationalism, which he actively supported.
3.
Muhammad ibn Abd al-Karim was born in 1882 in the settlement of Ajdir, Morocco.
4.
Abd el-Krim was the son of Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi, a qadi of the Ait Youssef ou Ali clan of the Rifian Ait Ouriaghel tribe.
5.
Abd el-Krim's ancestry is unclear, as Riffian families did not hold proper documentation regarding their genealogy.
6.
Historian Maria Rosa de Madariaga denies Abd el-Krim's alleged sharifian lineage.
7.
Abd el-Krim received a customary formative education at a local school in Ajdir and subsequently attended an institute at Tetouan.
8.
In 1910, Abd el-Krim took a position as secretary-interpreter in the Native Affairs Office in Melilla, which brought him into close contact with the Spanish military bureaucracy and the town's civil society and gained a reputation for intelligence, efficiency and discretion.
9.
Abd el-Krim entered the Spanish administration first as a secretary in the Bureau of Native Affairs, and he was later appointed chief qadi for Melilla in 1915.
10.
Abd el-Krim taught at a Hispano-Arabic school and was an editor for the Arab section of the newspaper, El Telegrama del Rif.
11.
Abd el-Krim was imprisoned in Chefchaouen from 1916 to 1918 but then escaped.
12.
Abd el-Krim regained his job as a judge in Melilla.
13.
Abd el-Krim's goal was to unite the tribes of the Rif into an independent Republic of the Rif, to dismantle the entire French-Spanish colonial project in Morocco and to introduce modern political reform.
14.
Intense combat lasted ten months, but eventually, the combined French and Spanish armies, which used chemical bombs against the population as well as other weapons, defeated the forces of Abd el-Krim and inflicted extensive damage on the local Berber population.
15.
On 26 May 1926, Abd el-Krim surrendered to the French at his then headquarters of Targuist.
16.
Abd el-Krim encouraged and supported the Algerian National Liberation Front insurgents during the Algerian War from 1954 to 1962.
17.
Abd el-Krim defined the Maghreb as "indissolubly part of Arab countries" and "having owed its existence to Islam," which he saw as an Arab and Muslim region.
18.
In 1947, Abd el-Krim was given permission to live in the south of France after he had been released on health grounds; however, during his transfer he was freed from his French keepers and escorted to Cairo by Moroccan nationalists.
19.
Abd el-Krim was nominally appointed as head of the Liberation Committee of the Arab Maghreb.
20.
Abd el-Krim refused as long as French forces were on North African soil.
21.
Abd el-Krim died in 1963, just after he had seen his hopes of a Maghreb independent of colonial powers completed by the independence of Algeria.
22.
Abd el-Krim had 6 sons and 5 daughters from two different women.
23.
Abd el-Krim's funeral took place 2 days later on a Friday, which was attended by Prince Moulay Rachid.