The 1866 Book Names Neither Tindouf, Nor Touat, Nor Allegiance — and Morocco Signed in 1972 That the Border Was Settled

Élodie Moreau — Paris, France — 2026-09-11

Note on method. We did three things, and they are enough. One: we opened the book the article invokes, and we searched its words. Two: we read the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that this debate has already settled. Three: we looked for the treaty that settles the border between the two countries. Every quotation is given with its page, its paragraph or its official document number, so that anyone can check.

📌 What the article we are examining says

On September 6, 2026, the Moroccan website hespress.com published an article titled “Borders of Algeria: what a French work published in 1866 reveals,” signed Yasmine Saih. It relies on a book by Léon Plée published in 1866, Abd-el-Kader, nos soldats, nos généraux et la guerre d'Afrique, to argue that the Saharan territories of the south were not attached to Algeria, that Algeria was limited to the coast, and that the tribes of the Sud-Oranais, of Colomb-Béchar, of Tindouf and of the Touat-Gourara gave allegiance to the Sultan of Morocco — which would attach those territories to the Cherifian Empire.

🔍 First verification: we opened the book

The book exists. It is digitized by the Bibliothèque nationale de France, under reference ark bpt6k6358295z, 364 views. We consulted it.

Here is the result, and it is damning:

The Moroccan article writes that this book “proves” an allegiance of the tribes of Touat, Tindouf and Béchar. These words do not appear in it a single time. The article must moreover half-admit it: it twice uses the tag “ndlr” — an editor's note — that is, an addition by the Moroccan editorial desk, precisely to introduce what the book does not say.

And the book sometimes even says the opposite of what it is made to say. Three passages, with their page:

• page 9: Plée writes that “to the east the beylich of Tunis, to the west the empire of Morocco are the other limits of Algeria” — so he places Morocco as a limit of Algeria, not the other way round;
• page 271: he describes the operations of 1847 as “pushed beyond the natural limits of Algeria”;
• page 225: he cites the delimitation treaty of March 18, 1845 — he calls it the “treaty of limits.”

A clarification on this book, to settle its authority once and for all: Léon Plée was a journalist and writer, not a historian. He himself presents his work as “this little book,” published in a popularization series, and announces its purpose: “it is the conquest of Algeria.” His account stops in 1852, not 1847. This is not a historian's work on borders — and yet the article makes it its centerpiece.

And one methodological limit we must declare. We worked on the digitised version of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, not by reading it page by page. The word count therefore applies to a digitised text. It is reliable for establishing that a term does not appear in it; it does not replace reading. The exact verdict we deliver on the hespress article is not “it is false,” but: it is not probative. It advances its thesis by suggestion, places its two strongest claims in an editor's note, and does not quote a single line of its own source.

⚖️ Three propositions that must never be confused

This is the methodological point missing from this entire debate, and it must be stated from the outset.

First proposition: “Algeria in 1830 was limited to the Regency, and the Sahara was not administratively attached to it; French colonization aggregated the Sahara.” That is a defensible and debated historical thesis. We do not contest it. But it says nothing about Morocco.

Second proposition: “Tindouf, Béchar, Touat, Gourara, Tidikelt and Saoura were Moroccan.” That is a polemical political claim. We have found no Moroccan official document that supports it.

Third proposition: “The Moroccan State does not recognize the border.” That one is contradicted by a treaty signed by Morocco, and we are coming to it.

The hespress article supports the first two. It does not support the third — and that is precisely the one on which everything turns.

🏛️ What the International Court of Justice (ICJ) held — and how Morocco received the advisory opinion

The allegiance argument has already been brought before the highest international court. By Morocco itself. Here is what the Court wrote, in its advisory opinion of October 16, 1975, at paragraph 162:

“[…] legal ties of allegiance between the Sultan of Morocco and some of the tribes […] However, the Court concludes that the elements […] do not establish the existence of any tie of territorial sovereignty.”

A clarification that decides everything, and that we give against ourselves: the Court did recognize the allegiance. We will never say otherwise. But the same sentence, the same paragraph, says that no tie of territorial sovereignty exists. And paragraph 163, which forms the operative part of the opinion, does not contain the word “allegiance”: it refers to paragraph 162 as a whole. Judge Dillard noted this explicitly: the reference would incorporate that paragraph into the operative part. So one cannot keep the allegiance and throw away the absence of sovereignty: it is the same paragraph.

A second point, and it is decisive. We searched, throughout that entire opinion, for the names of the territories the Moroccan article claims: “Touat,” “Tindouf,” “Gourara,” “Béchar,” “Sud-Oranais,” “Oran” — zero occurrences. The opinion concerns “Western Sahara (Rio de Oro and Sakiet El Hamra).” Extending that opinion to western Algeria is an extrapolation, not a quotation.

And here is how Morocco received that opinion. In an official United Nations document — S/11863, of October 31, 1975 — Morocco accepts the Court's conclusion on the ties of allegiance and rejects the one on the absence of territorial sovereignty. Morocco therefore itself recognized the opinion on one point and set aside the other. That is a fact, and it is documented.

⭐ The Moroccan official document that settles it: the 2023 White Book

Here is the most important piece in this entire file, and it is Moroccan. In June 2023, the Royal Institute for Strategic Studies, in Rabat, published a “White Book on the Moroccan Sahara,” 59 pages, available on its official website. We downloaded it and counted the words.

In other words: in the official document where the Moroccan State sets out its territorial doctrine, Béchar, Touat, Gourara and Tidikelt do not appear a single time. Tindouf does appear — but as the site of refugee camps, never as a claimed province.

And the White Book itself says, word for word:

“The intangibility of colonial borders does not apply ipso facto […] It is valid only if the States concerned consent to it explicitly and specifically, as in the case of Morocco's recognition of Mauritania in 1969 and of the conclusion of the 1972 convention on its borders with Algeria.”

What this means, and it must be read twice. The Moroccan State does not say “Béchar and Tindouf are Moroccan.” It says something else, and it is far subtler: that the border was born of a consent, and that a consent can be revised.

So we concede this: the Moroccan character of the Sud-Oranais and of Touat is NOT the official position of the Moroccan State. It is circulated by media and public figures. An article that presents it as a State thesis gives it a reach it does not have.

And we also concede the substantive objection the White Book implies: if a border is born of an agreement, it can in theory be revised by another agreement. That is the best Moroccan objection, and it is admissible in law. But it runs into an obstacle we describe below: Morocco has never requested that revision, and Algeria has never contemplated touching a single line.

✍️ And what was allegiance really? Three historians, two of them Moroccan, answer

This may be the most useful part of this file. The bay'a — the act of allegiance — is at the heart of the Moroccan argument. What Moroccan historians themselves say about it is decisive.

• Hassan Rachik, anthropologist at Hassan II University in Casablanca: “**The baraka, unlike the bay'a, concerns the whole country, submissive and unsubmissive. […] The Sultan reigned everywhere, but governed only in certain places.**”
• Mohamed El Mansour, Mohammed V University in Rabat: the bay'a consisted in “ratifying a fait accompli” and in “legitimizing a situation already settled by force rather than by legal opinion.”
• Alain Claisse, researcher at the CNRS: belonging to the bled makhzen was defined by taxation, not by the bay'a.

**The conclusion is unavoidable: the bay'a is constitutive of AUTHORITY — the imamate — not of TERRITORY.** One pledges allegiance to a sovereign; one does not transfer land to him.

And here we concede something that bothers us, because it is true. The Court expressly set aside the argument that would run: “these tribes did not obey the Sultan, therefore the region was not Moroccan.” At paragraph 96, it notes that “**Spain, Morocco and Mauritania agreed in recognizing that the bled siba was considered as forming part of the Moroccan State**.”

So the distinction to be maintained is not that one. It is between “forming part of a State” and “exercising territorial sovereignty in the sense of international law.” The hespress article moves from one to the other without saying so — and that is its entire error.

📜 The document the article does not cite: the convention of June 15, 1972

Here is the piece the article omits, and it closes the file.

On June 15, 1972, in Rabat, Algeria and Morocco signed a convention published in the United Nations Treaty Series, volume 2189, number 38587, page 87. It was signed, on the Moroccan side, by Mohamed Benhima, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and on the Algerian side by Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

Its preamble refers, word for word, to: “Considering the delimitation treaty concluded at Lalla Maghnia on March 18, 1845 […] as well as subsequent texts, in particular the convention of July 20, 1901 and the Agreement of April 20, 1902, in their provisions delimiting the border between the two States.”

And its article 7 provides that the two States “definitively settle the border questions between Algeria and Morocco.” The treaty has been in force since May 14, 1989, and was registered with the UN on July 30, 2002.

In other words: Morocco is a signatory of a treaty declaring the border definitively settled, and that treaty relies explicitly on the acts of 1845, 1901 and 1902.

And Morocco was not forced. An opinion piece published by hespress itself, on June 25, 2021, documents that Hassan II demanded the addition of a “forty-kilometer strip” before ratifying — then ratified in 1989. Morocco negotiated, obtained, and signed.

🗺️ The material proof: the maps annexed to the treaty are French maps bearing “BECHAR”

Here is the detail that should have closed the debate in 1972. Article 1 of the convention describes the border as “following the line indicated on the maps numbered 1 to 15, annexed to this Convention, of which they form an integral part.”

And the treaty itself gives the official list of those maps: Merkala, Hassi El Naoueirra, Igma, Tinjoub, Oued Ed Daoura, Oglat Beraber, Tibertatine, Bechar, Beni Ounif, Djenien Bou Rezg, Fort Hassa Rharbia, Oued Khalkhal, Oued Bou Adjarn, Oglat Iarhbouna, Laghoura — all produced by the French Institut géographique national, Sahara edition, between 1956 and 1966.

Let us weigh what this means. The Kingdom of Morocco signed, then ratified, then had registered with the United Nations a border treaty whose integrated cartographic documents are maps of the French Institut géographique national — and one of which bears the title “BECHAR.”

This is the material refutation, by the document itself, of the idea that Morocco would never have accepted a border built by colonization. And it rests on no interpretation: one need only open the treaty and read the list of annexed maps.

Let us add one point we must concede, and it is serious. On May 25, 1963, Morocco did not sign the Charter of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU): it signed it on September 19, 1963, with an annexed declaration, published in the United Nations Treaty Series, volume 479, number 6947, page 89:

“However […] the Government of His Majesty the King has not intended to renounce in any way its legitimate rights in the peaceful achievement and the safeguarding of the territorial integrity of the Kingdom WITHIN ITS AUTHENTIC BORDERS.”

The phrase “within its authentic borders” is, textually, that of article 42 of the Moroccan Constitution of 2011. The constitutional clause is therefore the heir of a diplomatic reservation of 1963: it predates the border conflict, it is not an argument of convenience. We concede it.

But that makes the rest heavier, not lighter. For seventeen years after signing the 1972 convention, Morocco ended up ratifying it — on May 14, 1989 — and a published American diplomatic cable shows it doing so reluctantly. On May 16, 1988, the Moroccan Minister of the Interior stated, according to a telegram from the United States embassy in Rabat:

“Morocco had not committed itself to recognizing the 1972 border agreement, which first had to be ratified by Parliament.”

The wording we retain, and no other: Morocco recognized the border reluctantly, seventeen years after signing it. We will not write that it did not recognize it — that would be false, it ratified it. And above all we note what this cable establishes: in 1988, the Moroccan State itself regarded the 1972 agreement as not yet binding.

🧭 What we concede — because it is true

We would not be credible if we said only what suits us. Three concessions.

First, the 1845 treaty did not delimit the Sahara. Its article 4 states that “there is no territorial limit to be established,” and its article 6 calls delimitation “superfluous” in that zone. So we will not claim that 1845 settled the Saharan question.

Second, the Saharan border was not delimited before 1972. A 1961 study by the United States Department of State explicitly calls it “undetermined,” that is, not determined.

Third, precolonial Algeria's authority over the deep Sahara was weak. That is accurate. But it establishes no Moroccan title: moving from “that State had no title” to “this other one had one” is an error of reasoning. And Algerian sovereignty derives not from the Dey of Algiers: it derives from succession of States, that is, from the transfer of sovereignty at independence, over a territory whose borders had been fixed by acts to which Morocco is a party.

One correction, finally, against an argument some in our own camp use and which is false. One sometimes reads that the delimitation treaties were “prior” to the attachment of Touat to Algeria. That is chronologically inaccurate: the occupation of Touat dates from January to July 1900, the delimitation protocol from July 20, 1901, the agreement from April 20, 1902, and the administrative attachment from the law of December 24, 1902. Only the 1845 treaty is prior, and it does not delimit the Sahara.

So the strength of our argument is not priority in time. It is that Morocco is a signatory.

🗞️ On the outlet and on the author — without insinuating anything

hespress.com was created in February 2007 by the brothers Hassane and Mohamed El Amin El Guennouni, and it is published by the company MarocAds. Its French edition was launched in April 2019. The site publishes in three languages — Arabic, French, English — and its legal notice is empty.

Two public elements, which we give for what they are. The organization Freedom House, in its report Freedom on the Net, names hespress and notes that it “removed videos of street protests and interviews with opposition figures because of anticipated or actual pressure from the authorities.” That is a finding of pressure endured, not of collusion — and we will not confuse the two. Conversely, Reporters Without Borders does not name hespress: so one can rely on RSF neither to accuse it nor to exonerate it.

On the author, a point of accuracy: Yasmine Saih IS a staff journalist at hespress, she appears on the site's team page. We will not say otherwise. An analysis of 116 articles signed by her between June and September 2026 shows the profile of a versatile writer: Spain and migration 24, society 20, domestic politics 15, economy 13, Sahara 10 — and only one article on Algeria outside the Sahara.

One last element, also factual: the article is not an original investigation. A text with the same content was published by al3omk.com on September 4, 2026, at 9 p.m. — two days before hespress — and another on September 6 in the morning. We are dealing with a cascade reprint, not a discovery.

And we will go no further. We accuse neither the outlet, nor the author, nor the Moroccan State of having commissioned anything. We note a simple fact: a political thesis is circulating, and it is backed by no Moroccan official document that we were able to find.

🧾 The claims we set aside — including in our own camp

We apply to ourselves the standard we bring before others. Here is what we verified and will not publish.

- “The 1964 OAU resolution on the intangibility of borders was adopted unanimously, with Morocco voting in favor.” We will not write that. Judge Yusuf, of the International Court of Justice, wrote in 2013 that “the only two countries that voted against were Somalia and Morocco.” A CODESRIA researcher speaks of countries that “reserved their position” and writes that “the myth of unanimity does not withstand scrutiny.” But we will not write either that Morocco voted against. We consulted the official record of the Cairo session, published by the African Union: resolutions 1 to 24, 23 pages. Count: the word “reservation” does not appear in it; nor does the word “abstention”; nor “Somalia”; nor “intangibility.” Only two mentions of the word “vote” appear in the entire record, and none concerns the resolution on borders. So we will write it this way, and we will probably be the only ones to do so: the primary source allows neither affirming unanimity nor affirming Morocco's opposition. Both readings rest on academic work, not on the document — and we cite them as such.

And here is the finding that defuses the objection we will face — “you refuse all dialogue.” In the same session, the same conference adopts two resolutions: one on the intangibility of borders, the other — resolution 19 — which “recommends to the Heads of State of Ghana and Upper Volta to hold direct discussions with a view to finding a mutually acceptable solution to their border dispute.” Translation: intangibility never forbade negotiating. It forbade changing borders by force. A border can therefore be discussed — and that is precisely why Morocco and Algeria signed a convention in 1972, and why Algeria has never asked that a single line of it be touched.

- A “protocol of March 20, 1900”: not found. Do not cite it.

- A “convention of May 20, 1901”: not found — the real act is the protocol of July 20, 1901.

- Treaties of January 15 or June 15, 1912: not found as treaties. What exists is a unilateral French administrative act of January 1912. A unilateral act is not a treaty.

- “Judge Petrén was a dissenter in 1975”: false. Petrén delivered a separate opinion; the only dissenter is Judge Ruda.

- “Any ‘Greater Morocco’ doctrine is an official Moroccan position.” Not found. We will not assert it.

And another one, circulating in our own camp: we searched for a Moroccan official document claiming Tindouf, Béchar or Touat. We found none. We found a statement by a former head of government, in January 2025, at a partisan meeting — and it was contested in Morocco itself. A political statement is not a State position.

🎯 The conclusion: the book does not say what it is made to say, and the treaty says the opposite

Let us summarize, because three facts are enough.

The 1866 book contains none of the words on which the article is built: neither allegiance, nor Touat, nor Tindouf, nor Gourara, nor Béchar. It does, however, cite the 1845 treaty, and it places Morocco among the limits of Algeria.

Allegiance is not sovereignty — and it was the International Court of Justice that said so, seized by Morocco, in the same sentence in which it recognized the allegiance. Morocco accepted the first half and set aside the second. And the opinion mentions neither Touat, nor Tindouf, nor Béchar, nor Oran: it cannot be made to say what it does not say.

Finally, Morocco has been a signatory, since 1972 and in force since 1989, of a convention declaring that the two States “definitively settle the border questions” — and that convention relies explicitly on the acts of 1845, 1901 and 1902.

A country can argue about its history. It cannot argue about its signature.

🔗 The documents, directly accessible — click and check for yourself

We ask no one to believe us. Here are the documents, at their source, so that anyone can open and read.

• The 1866 book, in its official digitization by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (364 pages, this is where we searched the words): https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6358295z
• The International Court of Justice advisory opinion of October 16, 1975 on Western Sahara — paragraph 162 is the one we quote: https://icj-cij.org/case/61
• The Algerian-Moroccan convention of June 15, 1972, in the United Nations Treaty Series, volume 2189, number 38587 (page 87: this is where, in article 1, the list of annexed maps appears, including the one titled “BECHAR”): https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%202189/v2189.pdf
• The Moroccan declaration of September 19, 1963 accompanying the signature of the African Charter — “within its authentic borders” —, United Nations Treaty Series, volume 479, number 6947, page 89: https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%20479/v479.pdf
• The official Moroccan White Book on the Sahara, Royal Institute for Strategic Studies, Rabat, June 2023 — this is where we counted the words “Béchar,” “Touat,” “Gourara”: https://www.ires.ma/sites/default/files/docs_publications/the-white-book-on-moroccan-sahara-2023.pdf
• The American diplomatic cable of May 16, 1988 on the 1972 border agreement, published by the Department of State: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1981-88v24/d88
• The official record of the Cairo session of the Organisation of African Unity, 1964, resolutions 1 to 24 — the one in which we found neither “unanimity,” nor “reservation,” nor the word “intangibility”: https://au.int/sites/default/files/decisions/9514-1964_ahg_res_1-24_i_e.pdf
• The article we are examining, on hespress.com: https://fr.hespress.com/487170-frontieres-de-lalgerie-ce-que-revele-un-ouvrage-francais-publie-en-1866.html

A word on the maps. The fifteen maps annexed to the 1972 treaty — including the one titled “BECHAR” — are not reproduced in the United Nations file, which publishes only the text. So we do not have them before our eyes, and we do not claim to have seen them. What we affirm is what is written in the treaty itself: the list of those maps appears in it, and they are declared “an integral part” of the convention. The document is freely accessible at the link above: open it at page 87, and read.

📚 All the sources — so that everyone can check

The book invoked — Léon Plée, Abd-el-Kader, nos soldats, nos généraux et la guerre d'Afrique, Paris, G. Barba, 1866, 1 volume, III-344 pages, “Georges Barba” series, also published in the Panthéon populaire illustré. Digitization: Bibliothèque nationale de France, ark bpt6k6358295z, 364 views; record ark cb31122928f. Searches through the Gallica content index. Quotations: page 9 (“to the east the beylich of Tunis, to the west the empire of Morocco are the other limits of Algeria”), page 271 (“pushed beyond the natural limits of Algeria”), page 225 (the “treaty of limits” of 1845), page 22 (“it is the conquest of Algeria”).

The International Court of Justice advisory opinion — Western Sahara, advisory opinion of October 16, 1975, paragraphs 96, 162 and 163; ICJ Reports 1975, page 68; opinion of Judge Dillard, page 119. Morocco's reception of it: official United Nations document S/11863 of October 31, 1975, paragraph 12 c).

The border treaty — Convention between Algeria and Morocco of June 15, 1972, Rabat, signed by Mohamed Benhima and Abdelaziz Bouteflika; United Nations Treaty Series, volume 2189, number 38587, page 87; preamble and article 7; in force since May 14, 1989, registered on July 30, 2002. Antecedents referred to by the convention: delimitation treaty of Lalla Maghnia of March 18, 1845; protocol of July 20, 1901; agreement of April 20, 1902. The Moroccan debate on the “forty-kilometer strip”: opinion piece published by hespress on June 25, 2021.

Allegiance — Hassan Rachik, L'esprit du terrain, 2016, Hassan II University, Casablanca; Mohamed El Mansour, Mohammed V University, Rabat, and Alain Claisse, CNRS, contributions published by the Institut de recherches et d'études sur le monde arabe et musulman, 1992.

The outlet — hespress.com, ownership and creation details; Freedom House, Freedom on the Net, 2018 edition, confirmed in 2024; the site's team page (author); earlier publication: al3omk.com, September 4, 2026, 9 p.m.; 1001infos.net, September 6, 2026, 9:30 a.m. UTC.

Final note on method. One shortcoming of this file must be declared: we found no Arabic-language Moroccan equivalent to the documents we cite. Our documentation therefore leans toward European sources, and we flag it. We did, however, read and verify at the source the book invoked, the Court's opinion and the 1972 treaty. The passages we concede — the absence of delimitation of the Sahara in 1845, the undetermined border before 1972, the weakness of precolonial authority over the deep Sahara — are credited to our opponents, because they are accurate.