Architecture of Peace A scholarly series on the 1786 Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the Empire of Morocco and the United States of America
Volume L: The Grantor’s Legal Tradition and the 1836 Instrument
Series-wide doctrinal locks observed: The grantor is named the Empire of Morocco throughout (never Kingdom of Morocco). The 1786 grant is self-activating per its terms, not contingent on recognition. Only pre-1836 period authorities are cited as controlling on either side of the analysis. The U.S. controlling source is the Statutes at Large of the Library of Congress. Citations follow Chicago author-date conventions. Arabic transliteration follows Hans Wehr / IJMES. Cross-reference: The Western period-authority stack carrying the convergence in Part II is developed in Volume K and is cross-referenced rather than reproduced in the present volume. Companion volumes: The next volume in the series (Volume M, in preparation) addresses the beneficiaries of the 1786 grant, the constructive notice doctrine, and the Webster 1828 / Banneker 1791 evidentiary anchors. Volume M draws on the Maliki hiba framework developed in the present volume but addresses a distinct subject-matter.
Architecture of Peace
Volume L The Grantor’s Legal Tradition and the 1836 Instrument Maliki Hiba, the Makhzen, and the Institutional Impossibility of the 1836 “Renewal”
Dr. Yasapa-Al, MD, MBA Consular Economic Attaché Empire of Morocco
© Dr. Yasapa-Al, 2026 All rights reserved. April 2026
Contents
Part I: The Grantor’s Own Legal Tradition
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Why the Grantor’s Own Law Matters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 The Completeness Requirement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 The Asymmetric Default and Its Consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 The Convergence Thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 What This Volume Is and Is Not . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 The Structure of What Follows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Maliki Hiba — Core Doctrine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Etymology and Foundational Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 The Three Constitutive Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Irrevocability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Perpetuity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 Repugnancy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6 Hiba vs. caqd: The Category Distinction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.7 The Extinction of Donor Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.8 Summary Propositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Seven Grounds of Legal Impossibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 The First Ground: A Completed Hiba Is Irrevocable . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 The Second Ground: The Vertical Relationship Is Non-Invertible 3.3 The Third Ground: A Perpetual Grant Has No “Renewal” . . . . . 3.4 The Fourth Ground: A Seal Obtained Under Jahālah Is Void . . 3.5 The Fifth Ground: Niyyah Governs in Perpetuity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6 The Sixth Ground: The Grantee Cannot Alter the Grant . . . . . . . 3.7 The Seventh Ground: Hybrid Instruments Are Nullities Pro Tanto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.8 The Seven Grounds as a System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Institutional Framework — Makhzen and Ulema . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 The Ulema as an Institutional Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 The Makhzen as the Governing Apparatus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7
The Coordinated Review System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Architectural Incapacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Emperor’s Seal as the Terminus of a Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Consequences for Instrument Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Institutional Premise for What Follows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Part II: The Convergence
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The Blackstone/Maliki Convergence — Eight Principles . . . . . . . . . 5.1 The Eight Principles at a Glance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Principle 1: The Grant, Once Complete, Is Irrevocable . . . . . . . . 5.3 Principle 2: The Grantor’s Original Intent Governs . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Principle 3: The Grantee Cannot Alter the Grant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 Principle 4: The Grant Is Perpetual Through Succession on Both Sides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6 Principle 5: Construction Is Adverse to the Drafter . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.7 Principle 6: Time Does Not Bar the Sovereign Grant . . . . . . . . . . 5.8 Principle 7: Repugnant Conditions Are Void; the Grant Stands 5.9 Principle 8: The Seal Must Reflect Real Intent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.10 The Eight Principles as a System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6 Jahālah and Contra Proferentem — Parallel Construction Doctrines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 The Construction Asymmetry Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Jahālah in the Maliki Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Contra Proferentem in the Western Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 Bynkershoek’s Structural Rule Distinguished . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 Three Independent Foundations, One Convergent Output . . . . . . 6.6 Consequences for Grantee-Controlled Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Niyyah and Grantor’s Intent — Parallel Intent Doctrines . . . . . . . . 7.1 The Persistence of Meaning Across Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Niyyah in the Maliki Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 Coke and Bynkershoek on Grantor’s Intent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4 The Structural Convergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.5 The Independent-Origins Test Applied . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.6 Consequences for Grants Interpreted Across Successions . . . . . . 7.7 Closing of Part II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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CONTENTS
Part III: Application — Genealogical Tests, Scenarios, and Forensics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Genealogical Chain — Mohammed III to Abd al-Rahman . . 8.1 The Four Sovereigns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2 The Succession Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3 The Weakest-Branch Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.4 The Three-Succession Span and the Doctrinal Test Across Time
The Yazid Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1 The Character of Yazid’s Reign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2 Yazid’s Authority Over the Grant: The Best-Case-for-the-HostileReader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.3 The Test: Yazid Did Not Act on the Grant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.4 The Doctrinal Weight of Yazid’s Non-Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Sulayman Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.1 The Character of Sulayman’s Reign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2 Sulayman’s Authority and the Opportunity Window . . . . . . . . . . 10.3 The Test: Sulayman Did Not Act on the Grant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.4 The Conjunction of the Two Tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Algeria Shadow — Duress Context for 1836 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1 The French Conquest of Algeria and Its Trajectory . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2 The Six-Year Interval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.3 Classical Duress Doctrine and the Niyyah-Integrity Question 11.4 The Configuration of the 1836 Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.5 The Transition to Mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Four Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.1 The Four Scenarios Stated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.2 Scenario A — Knowing Approval and Its Institutional Impossibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.3 Scenario B — Unknowing Approval and the Jahālah Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.4 Scenario C — The Different-Document Seal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.5 Scenario D — The No-Seal Fabrication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.6 Ground 7 and the Foreclosure of Hybrid Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . 12.7 The Doctrinal Convergence of C and D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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The Nine-Step Mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.1 Step One — The State Department Drafting Decision (August 1835) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.2 Step Two — Blank Books and the Pre-Drafted New Form . . . . 13.3 Step Three — The Dispatch of Agents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.4 Step Four — The Non-Meeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.5 Step Five — The Arabic Rendering and the Scribal-Alibi Pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.6 Step Six — The Sealing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.7 Step Seven — The United States Ratifies Only the English . . . 13.8 Step Eight — The Missing Second Original . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.9 Step Nine — The Subsequent Unavailability of the Arabic . . . 13.10 The Nine Steps as a System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Textual Forensics — The Arabic That Is Missing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.1 Textual Forensics as the Third Evidentiary Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.2 The 1786 Arabic Baseline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.3 The 1836 Arabic: What the Record Claims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.4 The Hurgronje Audit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.5 The Surgical Character of the Article 25 Insertion . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.6 The English-Side Directional Pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.7 Spoliation Doctrine and Adverse Inference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.8 The Accessibility Audit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.9 Doctrinal Convergence and Closure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Perpetual-Succession Contradiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.1 The 1789 Transition and the Survival of the Grant . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.2 The 1836 Renewal Demand and the Inversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.3 The Forced Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.4 The Convergence with the Maliki Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.5 The Estoppel Consequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.6 Closure of the Chapter and Transition to Chapter 16 . . . . . . . . . .
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CONTENTS
The Fifty-Year Two-Stage Fabrication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.1 The Fifty-Year Reference in the 1786 Instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.2 The 1836 Transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.3 The Renewal Frame as Vehicle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.4 The Two-Stage Structure as Hostile-Reader Closure . . . . . . . . . . 16.5 The Compound Doctrinal Failure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.6 Closing of Phase 3D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Closure — The Category Was Settled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17.1 The Spine — Two Acts, Two Traditions, One Settled Category 17.2 The Backstops — Each Other Chapter as a Reopening Route Closed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17.3 What the Closure Means . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Index of Authorities
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Volume K Cross-Reference Index
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Orthographic and Citation Conventions Arabic technical terms are given in Hans Wehr / IJMES transliteration with diacritics preserved; Arabic script is provided on first occurrence of each key term. Classical Maliki authorities are cited by author, transliterated title with English gloss on first mention, and chapter or section reference. All authorities cited as controlling in this volume are pre-1836 and internal to the legal tradition under which the Alawite dynasty operated. No post-1836 Islamic-law authority is cited as controlling. The Western period-authority stack is carried by cross-reference to Volume K and is not reproduced here. Parts I and II contain no facts of any particular treaty controversy. The doctrine is stated in the abstract. Application to the specific historical record begins in Part III. Quotation discipline: where direct quotations from primary documents appear, they are extracts of operative language with parenthetical Chicago author-date attribution. Each primary source is quoted at most once across the volume; further engagement with each source proceeds by paraphrase. Surrounding analysis is the author’s prose throughout.
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Part I
The Grantor’s Own Legal Tradition
Chapter 1 Why the Grantor’s Own Law Matters The grantor declared the instrument a hiba; the grantee acknowledged it as a sovereign grant across one hundred and forty-five years of sovereign practice. Both the grantor’s own law and the grantee’s own law treat category as settled by these declarations. The remainder of this volume is the unfolding of that single doctrinal fact. This is the doctrinal spine of Volume L. It is not a proposition the volume sets out to prove; it is the starting point from which the volume’s analysis proceeds. The category of the instrument — whether it is a unilateral sovereign grant of the kind the grantor’s tradition calls hiba, or something else — was fixed at execution by the grantor’s own declaration, and ratified across the subsequent long period by the grantee’s own acknowledgments in sovereign practice. Category-settlement occurred through acts that each of the two legal traditions in play independently recognizes as category-settling. The category question is, as between the parties whose acts determine it, closed. What the volume undertakes is not the re-opening of that closed question by a later analyst but the closing of a specific class of reopening arguments by hostile readers. A reader who accepts every proposition of Volume K and every proposition of Volume L Parts I and II may nonetheless wish to treat the category question as an open interpretive matter that later readers may re-decide on their own reasoning and their own evidence. The volume’s task is to show why that reopening is doctrinally unavailable. Each of the two traditions, operating through its own rules, makes the category question a matter the parties themselves have closed by their own acts. Any later attempt to reopen the matter is an attempt by a non-party to overrule the settled declarations of the parties whose declarations the law recognizes as controlling. The rest of Part I develops the grantor’s own legal tradition. Part II develops the convergence of that tradition with the Western period-authority stack of Volume K. Part III applies the combined framework to the specific historical record. Every chapter of the volume is in service of a single purpose: showing, from two independent traditions, why no later reading can overturn the category the two sovereigns have together settled. The spine is the settled fact; the chapters are the demonstration that the settled fact stays settled.
WHY THE GRANTOR’S OWN LAW MATTERS
Every sovereign grant carries two legal traditions within it. The grantor executes the grant under the law of the grantor’s own jurisdiction. The grantee receives the grant under the law of the grantee’s own jurisdiction. Between the moment of execution and the moment of reception, the grant crosses a juridical boundary. What the grant is, in its character and in its force, is determined at the moment of execution — under the grantor’s law. What the grantee may do with the grant, in its reception and its custody, is determined under the grantee’s law. The two laws are not interchangeable, and they are not of equal authority over the instrument. The grantor’s law determines the grant’s nature; the grantee’s law determines only the grantee’s relationship to it. Most scholarship on sovereign-to-sovereign grants proceeds asymmetrically. Where the grantor and the grantee stand in different legal traditions, commentary tends to examine the tradition of the grantee — often because the grantee’s tradition is the commentator’s own, often because the grantee’s archive is more accessible, sometimes because the grantor’s tradition is treated as an object of description rather than as a source of governing rules. The asymmetry is not innocuous. It reproduces in scholarship the precise distortion that sovereignty doctrine condemns in diplomacy: the substitution of the recipient’s law for the source’s law in the analysis of what the source conveyed. 1.1
The Completeness Requirement
A complete analysis of a sovereign grant requires both traditions — the grantor’s and the grantee’s — to be given their full voice.