Abdessamad Belkabir (born in Marrakesh, 1947) is a Moroccan thinker, writer, academic and politician, a leading figure of Morocco's national left and of Arab nationalist thought. Founder in 1984 of the cultural review Al-Moultaka ("The Crossroads"), which he still edits today — issue 63 appeared in February 2026 —, he has combined, over more than six decades, political and trade-union activism, university teaching, research on popular literature, the building of cultural platforms, and public service at the highest levels of the state.
Born in Marrakesh in 1947, Abdessamad Belkabir received his first schooling at the Abdellaouia school of Bab Doukkala, of national-salafi reformist orientation, where he studied under the faqih Abdelkrim Zemrani, one of the city's scholarly figures, who left a deep mark on him. From primary school onwards he immersed himself in Nassiri's Kitab al-Istiqsa and in the works of Ibn Khaldun — sources to which he would return, half a century later, as researcher and editor. He attended the prestigious Ben Youssef college in the 1960s and entered public life remarkably early: scouting in 1954, then, in 1957, the young workers' section of the Moroccan Labour Union (UMT). After his baccalaureate in 1968 he moved to Fez to study Arabic literature, graduated from the École normale supérieure, and later earned a State Doctorate in popular literature.
While still a pupil he was one of the leaders of the 1963 strike over traditional education — his first arrest came after the students stormed the Marrakesh courthouse. During the events of 23 March 1965 he led the Marrakesh strikes of 27 March and was jailed at Boulmharez prison, where the detainees waged their first hunger strike. He joined the National Union of Popular Forces (UNFP) in 1965, held responsibilities in its youth wing alongside Habib El Forkani, and became one of the figures of the leftist "23 March" organization. In March 1973, at the height of the repression of the Moroccan left, he was arrested and tried; he sustained a 36-day hunger strike before serving his sentence. After his release he continued his civic engagement: co-founding the AMDH in 1979 alongside Abderrahim Jamaï, then the OADP in 1984 — under whose banner his parliamentary candidacy was invalidated by the authorities of the time.
When Cadi Ayyad University was created, he founded the Arabic-language department of the Marrakesh faculty of letters and chaired it from 1979 to 1989, sitting on the faculty and university councils until 1992. The department became a benchmark — in one session of the national teaching examination, all ten top graduates came from it. His third-cycle thesis dealt with modern Arab thought; his State Doctorate, in four volumes, was devoted to the melhoun ("Melhoun poetry: the phenomenon and its meanings"), a reference work on Moroccan popular poetry.
His organized cultural work began in 1962 in the "Intellectual League"; in 1967 he was active in the union of Marrakesh associations. He founded the student newspaper Al-Jamiaa, whose sales reportedly reached one hundred thousand copies and whose revenues financed the publication of twenty-five Moroccan literary works — including books by Ahmed Bouzfour, Mohamed Zafzaf and Malika El Assimi — as well as writings by political prisoners. He contributed to the women's review 8 Mars, the Anoual cultural supplement and the review Ouyoune al-Maqalat. In mid-1984 he launched his major project: Al-Moultaka, a monthly cultural and intellectual review published from Marrakesh, which reached its 63rd issue in February 2026, faithful to its editorial line — a comprehensive approach to national and Arab questions, open to leading writers from Morocco and the Arab world. Alongside it he has run the Ittissalat Sebou publishing house, led the "Ibn Tachfine: society and territory" forum (more than twenty publications on Marrakesh and its region), and co-founded the Arab National Congress and the Islamic National Congress.
Elected to Parliament in 1993 for the OADP, he set a record for parliamentary questions, opened Morocco's first local parliamentary office, and published the record of his term as a book — a first in Moroccan parliamentary practice. From 1998 to 2002 he served as adviser to Prime Minister Abderrahmane Youssoufi in the alternance government, leaving when Youssoufi did. As a Marrakesh city councillor (2003–2009) he chaired the committee for culture, scientific research and heritage. In 2017, during the Rif Hirak, he launched the "white march" initiative — a mediation effort between protesters and the state, after consulting national figures including Mustapha Benhamza and Khnata Bennouna.
His thinking revolves around a few constant causes: Palestine, which he regards as a Moroccan "national cause" rather than a foreign issue, documenting the organic ties between the Moroccan and Palestinian peoples since the Almohads and insisting that "the battle to liberate consciousness is the first condition for mobilizing and uniting people"; the Moroccan character of the Sahara, to which he has devoted a book and lectures reading the conflict in the light of imperial rivalries; the Arabic language, which he defends against the francization of education, calling for a Moroccan language academy and for the renewal of Arabic as the condition of its preservation; and Arab unity, through the nationalist–Islamic dialogue of the two Congresses. He is one of the few intellectuals to combine, in his analysis, Marxist tools with Khaldunian historical depth.
Belkabir is among the Moroccan intellectuals most present in the media: a political analyst sought out by Moroccan and Arab outlets (Hespress, Yabiladi, Maroc Hebdo, Al3omk…), a regular guest of long-form interview programmes, and, since 2024, the narrator of a filmed memoir series on half a century of Moroccan political life. He has been honoured on several occasions, notably with a volume of tributes written by intellectual and political figures from Morocco and beyond. See the press archive and the video library.