Par Many Moroccan historians like to recount, with a certain delight, this anecdote that took place in the court of an Abbasid caliph in Baghdad. A courtier, believing he was flattering the caliph, explained to him that the world resembled a huge bird, with its head in the East, its two wings spread over Yemen and Syria, its heart in Iraq, and its tail in the West, in the Maghreb.