I probably should have expected the people at Poor Man's Corner (which deserves 5 blog posts of its own) to be too preoccupied with their work to hold a long discussion about a mountain in the back-country. However, one person did point me in the direction of Ribat el Kheir, which is purportedly at the foot of the mountain.
I asked a professor at ALIF for more information about the area and received an expose on Ribat el Kheir's history. Firstly, the town used to be called Ahermoumou, which sounds a whole lot like the name of the mountain. Ahermoumou's principal claim to fame was its military cadet training school, which was a draw for hundreds of local Amazigh men from the surrounding countryside.
Hassan II was a pretty handsome man
Ahermoumou holds another, darker legacy. From July 10-13, 1971, about 1400 officers and cadets from Ahermoumou drove 200 km to Rabat--the capital--and instigated a coup against then king Hassan II. The rebels stormed the palace and held the king hostage. General Mohammad Oufkir, a military veteran who was one year later suspected of orchestrating his own royal assassination attempt, directed the retaking of the palace and rescued the king.
General Oufkir, who fought for the French army in Italy during WWII, then in Vietnam
Hassan II's retaliation was thorough. He executed or imprisoned the coup's masterminds, pardoned the cadets, and closed the cadet training school in Ahermoumou. For good measure, he also had the town renamed to bury the coups' legacy. As an aside, I m pretty sure that Ribat el Kheir means Fortress of Goodness.
Officers on trial after the coup
Later the same day, I asked another professor, Sidi Taoufiq about the location of the mountain. He told me the mountain was not, in fact near Ribat el Kheir, but closer to the town of Zaouia Bougrine (Bougrine's Shrine). Two steps forward, one step back.
Sources: http://terangaweb.com/de-skhirat-a-tazmamarti-histoire-dun-coup-detat-contre-le-roi-hassan-ii/
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