Arsène Roux Collection

Photo : manuscrit-berbère-MS-46. Exposition manuscrits Roux © Atelier numérique d’e-Médiathèque (MMSH)

Arsène Roux (1893-1971) was Director of the Collège d’Azrou, then Director of studies in Berber dialectology at the Institut des Hautes études marocaines; he taught Berber to the Affaires Indigènes officers.

His archives, bequeathed to the l’Encylopédie Berbère (Berber Encyclopaedia) in 1974, belong to IREMAM and are housed at the MMSH Library.

For specialist researchers, the collection provides:
- A library of several thousand rare books (Latin and Arabic script).
- A collection of Arab and Berber manuscripts (around 200 texts).
- Manuscripts: oral tradition collections, literary texts, ethnography, sociology, history or geography texts, etc.
- Lexicographic and grammatical files (75 000), part of which were used for the compilation of the first Tashelhit-French/French-Tashelhit dictionary, and a grammar book.

This library is a unique tool for those interested in Berber studies, and in particular in popular Berber literature and poetry, and the material and social culture of the Berbers and Arabs of central Morocco. See online the collection "Les archives Roux" on the website: Cité numérique de la Méditerranée | Cinumed and the "Fonds Roux : catalogue des manuscrits, un catalogue interactif augmenté des manuscrits arabes et berbères du fonds Roux" prepared by Abdelmajid Arrif et Hassan Moukhlisse (2018).