Viral bookseller's life story
- Mohamed Aziz, a 77‑year‑old Moroccan bookseller, went viral for reading more than 4,000 books despite leaving school at 15. - His video post received about 41,000 views and over 1,100 likes on X. - Social attention skewed toward celebrating lifelong reading and informal routes to literacy. (x.com)
A video about Mohamed Aziz, a Moroccan bookseller who says he has read more than 4,000 books, spread across X this week and renewed attention on a life built around self-education. (x.com) Aziz has run his small shop on Mohammed V Avenue in Rabat’s medina for more than four decades, and Morocco World News reported in 2019 that he had already spent 43 years in the same spot. The outlet described him as the oldest bookseller still working in the old city. (moroccoworldnews.com) That same report said Aziz was orphaned at 6 and left school at 15 because textbooks were too expensive. He told the publication his career selling books was how he took “revenge” on poverty and a lost education. (moroccoworldnews.com) By 2019, Aziz said he had read more than 4,000 books and worked 12-hour days, usually making one or two sales. He read in the doorway of his five-by-five-foot shop and stopped mainly to eat, pray, smoke, and help customers. (moroccoworldnews.com) The story lands in a country where literacy has improved sharply but remains uneven. Morocco World News cited state statistics showing illiteracy fell from 87% in 1960 to 32% in 2014, and World Bank data based on UNESCO figures lists Morocco’s adult literacy rate at 85.62% in 2022. (moroccoworldnews.com) (worldbank.org) That gap helps explain why Aziz’s biography keeps resurfacing online. The posts frame reading less as a credential than as a daily practice, with Aziz’s shop serving as proof that formal schooling is only one route into books. (x.com) (moroccoworldnews.com) Older profiles of Aziz also show how internet fame built slowly around the same image: an elderly man reading at the threshold of a cramped bookstore. Ebook Friendly wrote in 2022 that many widely shared photos of him circulated online without attribution, turning him into a recognizable figure beyond Rabat. (ebookfriendly.com) Aziz’s own line has remained the clearest summary of why people keep sharing him. “I’ve read more than 4,000 books, so I’ve lived more than 4,000 lives,” he told Morocco World News in 2019. (moroccoworldnews.com)
