Abdellah Guennoun introduces the book as an endeavor to trace the course of intellectual life in al-Maghrib al-Aqsa, the far west, over the centuries from the conquest of Al-Andalus in 711 led by Tariq ibn Ziyad.
والسياسة واتجاهاتها التي كانت تتخذها بحسب طبيعة كل دولة مفصلة فيه تفصيلا ً مستوفى[1] This is a book in which we have collected from knowledge, literature, history, and politics, with the objective of imagining the intellectual life in our homeland al-Maghrib (Morocco) and its development over the various periods, from the first of the Muslim conquests until close to our time.
The intellectual trends, through periods of activity and lull, through all the eras, is explained thoroughly, and politics and the directions they took according to the nature of each state are explored in detail.Guennoun describes the neglect and disregard with which the Mashriq, the Arab East, tended to regard the literature of al-Maghrib al-Aqsa, the far west as his motivation for the project.
"[3] Head also notes the use of the phrase waṭanina al-Maghrib ('our homeland Morocco') and places the work within a trend of textual production by intellectuals associated with the Moroccan Nationalist Movement.
[8] Gonzalo Fernández Parrilla and Eric Calderwood, writing in 2021, note that the organization in an-Nubūgh al-Maghribī of Moroccan literature under the banners of Islam and Arabness led to striking omissions.