Frontiers in North Africa

i) The Treaty of Lalla Marnia

The initial contact over boundary delimitation occurred in the 1840s, however, after the Morocco defeat by French forces at Isly in 1844. France was then able to require Morocco to sign the Treaty of Lalla Marnia in 1845, which delimited the border between the coast by Selwan and Teniet el-Sassi. This effectively codified the traditional division between the Moroccan sultanate and the Beylik of Oran - set up first after the Saadian repulse of Ottoman attempts to invade Morocco (Yahya 1981; 174-180). It also outlined a delimitation down as far as Figuig in terms of the allegiance of local populations and rejected the need for a delimitation further south because it was uninhabited, a good indication of the flexible and communal nature of local perceptions of sovereignty (see clause 6 of the treaty - Brownlie 1979; 62). The 1845 treaty was confirmed by protocols signed between Morocco and France in 1901 and 1902, which also made it clear that Figuig and Ich were to be considered Moroccan.