Sharifism
Sharifism was the system in pre-colonial Morocco in which the shurafā'—descendants of the Islamic prophet Muhammad (through his grandson Hasan ibn Ali, in the case of Morocco)—held a privileged religious and political position in society. Those who claimed this lineage were regarded as a kind of nobility and were privileged, in the words of Sahar Bazzaz, "as political agents, as interlocutors between various sectors of society, and as would be dynasts of Morocco".