The king suddenly rose and beckoned his interviewer to follow him, taking along for his visitor a crystal glass of almond milk and a silver bowl filled with French chocolates. In an adjacent room, the king noted the gold-plated ceiling on which were carved scores of names in Arabic. “Those are the names of my ancestors–every one of them, dating back to the Prophet Muhammed,” Hassan said. “Do you know what that means? That means I have legitimacy. I am both temporal and spiritual ruler of my people.”

That extraordinary pedigree–and the legitimacy that flowed from it in the perception of his people–mainly accounted for the great domestic popularity of Hassan, who died of heart failure last week in Rabat at 70. It also explained his stubbornness over issues such as Western Sahara. And his sense of personal history pushed him toward getting Arabs and Israelis together in the cause of Mideast peace. His quiet diplomacy helped fashion the 1979 treaty between Israel and Egypt. In 1994, he was instrumental in coaxing the 52-nation Islamic Conference to condemn Islamic extremism. And the next year he mediated difficult talks between Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat.

Hassan shared a special sensitivity with Mideast Jews: he understood what it was like to be constantly endangered. He was the Middle East’s longest-serving monarch, having succeeded his father, King Mohammed V, in 1961. He told NEWSWEEK that few people expected him to reach middle age–indeed, not long after his coronation, Hassan was flying over Morocco’s Atlas Mountains when renegade air force planes strafed his aircraft, killing the pilot. The young king, an experienced pilot himself, took over the controls. One of the renegades radioed to ask if the king was dead. “Oui, Sa Majeste est mort,” Hassan replied– “The king is dead.”

That sense of besiegement may explain why Hassan wasn’t a democrat at heart. Until a decade ago, he ran an authoritarian state where hundreds of political opponents were incarcerated, with some disappearing mysteriously. International human-rights groups bitterly criticized Hassan. Human rights increasingly came to be a factor in the decisions of international aid donors. Moreover, Hassan’s stewardship of the economy was less than praiseworthy. The country suffered from the global downturn in commodity prices in the 1980s and 1990s. But there were also the harsh consequences of Hassan’s own lavish expenditures: building sprawling palaces and golf courses, buying expensive real estate in Europe and the United States, and indulging in personal entertainment.

Yet the king became a convert to democracy–and to IMF prescriptions such as leaner bureaucracies. For the last several years, Hassan presided over the only genuine multiparty democracy in the Arab world, with representatives of some 16 political parties. Privately, however, he grumbled that his nation was ill-served by so many disputatious voices.

It is unlikely that his successor, 35-year-old Sidi Mohammed–the older of his two sons–will enjoy the same personal status that Hassan did in the eyes of the Moroccan people. Mohammed, a shy, almost reclusive man, doesn’t have Hassan’s charisma and charm. One of the challenges that now confronts him is that 75 percent of the population is younger than 30 years of age–which means that the new king and his government will be increasingly confronted with the rising economic and social expectations of a growing and youthful population vulnerable to Islamic extremism.

During his lifetime, Hassan countered religious fundamentalism with the indisputable historical fact of his pedigree: he was the Prophet’s direct descendant–able to document his family tree of the Alawite Dynasty; the mullahs broadcasting jeremiads against corrupting Western influences were mere plebians and rabble-rousers. And there was something else–almost a paradox–about Hassan: despite his profligacy and occasional dissolute behavior, Hassan was privately haunted by the inequities of Morocco’s human environment. He often visited hovels unannounced to listen to citizens’ problems. He supervised a program under which millions of trees were planted to make Morocco greener. Few monarchs have the gift of the common touch, but Hassan II of Morocco certainly did–and that, too, was a source of his legitimacy.