Patrimoine, mémoire, enjeu politique et territoire. Cas de la Maison d’Iligh (royaume de Tazeroualt), Souss-Massa, Maroc

The literature generally agrees on the overall importance of the socio-economic impacts of the enhancement of historical heritage, which is nowadays widely mobilised within territorial development programmes. Although heritage is perceived as a resource for the development of territories, the observation of local development processes in the Souss-Massa region does not highlight any mobilisation of certain heritage objects in the construction of territorial projects. The objective here is to question the neglect of a certain number of heritage monuments that are the target of symbolic violence, through the analysis of the situation observed in Iligh, which is a typical example of the extraordinary complexity of the links between heritage, territory and memory. This complexity cannot be understood without considering the political factor. The instrumentalisation of the past for political purposes is not new ; in Morocco this political instrumentalisation has played a role in the construction of the nation-state. Political and intellectual elites have seized upon history to support their ideas and official narratives.