I’m pleased to announce Revolution’s latest collaboration. This time it’s a pair of Maghnam Mohareb timepieces named for the elements of water and earth — the Ocean Relic and Desert Relic, respectively. The Mohareb is an ultra thin shaped watch inspired by historic warrior helmets that transforms time into a kinetic language through the use of a retrograde jump hour and a vertical minute indicator. Unlike many avant-gardist, modernist watches in this category, the Mohareb is distinguished by its extraordinary refinement thanks to its extremely slim profile measuring just 8.6mm in height. Says its creator Sohaib Maghnam, “Some of my favorite timepieces are Cartiers like the Tank Cintrée that really follow the morphology of the human wrist. Even though my watches look completely different, I wanted them to have this same sense of elegance.”

Maghnam is a design engineer who studied at the Politecnico di Milano and subsequently felt the calling to create his own form of expressionist horology. Each of our collaborative watches features a unique engraved pattern meant to recall ancient warrior culture expressed through runic symbolism and hieroglyphics. Each is also expressed in a unique colorway with our Desert Relic featuring a bronze PVD treatment meant to recall the material used for helmets, shields and greaves worn by warriors throughout history, complemented by red elements, while the Ocean Relic features a stunning blue PVD treated case.

The Revolution × Maghnam Mohareb Desert Relic and Ocean Relic are produced in a limited edition of 10 pieces in each colorway, and priced at EUR 7,200 (excluding taxes). They are now available to the public for purchase through the link below.

I first met Sohaib Maghnam three years ago at Dubai Watch Week in 2021. He had just finished his third watch named Madar. It took inspiration from “futuristic galactic exploration” and, accordingly, looked like a spacecraft attached to a watch strap. Interestingly, the entire watch case could be rotated and worn with different orientations on the wrist. I found the watch interesting. But to me, the young man talking with an almost feverish passion for watch and industrial design was the most intriguing part of that encounter. I had the feeling that he wasn’t simply one of those many dreamers enchanted with his own novel expression for time, and that our paths would cross again one day. I would encounter his watch again a year later on the wrist of my friend Paul Blandford. Anyone with a passion for independent watchmaking will have met Paul, such is his wonderfully affable demeanor and serious love for the rebellious, quirky and original world of watchmaking auteurs. Such is Blandford’s seriously infective ability to spread his devotion to brands like Max Büsser & Friends and Urwerk that he was one of Max Büsser’s first choices as a guest for MB&F’s inaugural Gathering of the Tribe in 2023. It was there I had the pleasure of spending a week with him in the Maldives. We started talking about the young generation of scrappy upstarts bringing a great fresh new energy into the watch world and Maghnam’s name came up. Blandford then said, “I love Sohaib. He’s brilliant. He’s working on something really great. Just wait.”

A Warrior’s Call

I still recall the moment. I was at Watches and Wonders running from one appointment to another when I bumped into Blandford coming out of the Carré de Horlogers, a space dedicated — of course — to independent watch brands. As I passed by, he brandished what was on his wrist and I felt inexplicably compelled to stop in my tracks. This was the first time I set eyes on the Mohareb. It is interesting, but there is always that moment where an artist finds his voice and achieves his signature singularity of expression. During a retrospective of one of my favorite painters Mark Rothko at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, you can see him shifting from figuratism to abstraction before he finds the primal power of his extraordinary color fields. Standing in front of his works, I have always felt remarkably moved as if in the presence of something vast and omnipotent — as if the color fields, which to me always vibrate with energy, are a door to something cosmic and beyond my understanding. But what is more remarkable is when a young artist finds his or her voice at an early age. For example, one of my favorite albums is Paul’s Boutique, the Beastie Boys’ second album. Many critics were ready to dismiss them as a one-shot novelty act masquerading as real M.C.’s thanks to the slickness of Rick Rubin’s producing. Paul’s Boutique demonstrated their extraordinary creative abilities with an album so layered, textural and inventive that it was genre changing.

That was what the Mohareb represented to me. It was a creation of a young artist that has found his voice. In many ways, the watch reminded me of the first time I set eyes on Felix Baumgartner and Martin Frei’s seminal UR-103.03. It was so different from anything else I’d seen. Created in collaboration with Revolution, the new Mohareb Ocean Relic and Desert Relic are formed art pieces for the wrist that transform time into an expressionist language. But both do so in a decidedly ungimmicky manner and are, one could even say, restrained in their own way. Maghnam originally created the Mohareb to be a modular watch, meaning that you could switch between different case shapes that were inspired by different armaments, such as Halo, Wings and Armor. But, in the end, the majority of his customers chose the case configuration he calls Blades. It is this shape that we’ve also selected for the basis of our two watches, because it looks to me, for lack of a better description, “insanely badass,” like a double-sided battle axe gleaned from alien distant shores. In this swooping form of the two blade-like brancards, you also see a strong sense of automotive design with a shape that reminds me of the Bugatti Bolide. What is also impressive is the level of refinement everywhere on the watch and, in particular, on the contrasting matte and polished surfaces of the case.

Dynamic Kinetic Artifacts

On the subject of the case, it is interesting to note that Maghnam’s 8.6mm in height profile could only have been achieved thanks to his almost obsessive devotion to pushing tolerances to the edge. He explains, “I wanted the Mohareb to have this dynamic contrast between this aggressive design but that wears really elegantly on the wrist. I started with the movement. The base caliber is a reworked Sellita SW210, but there were no modules for the retrograde jump hour indicator and vertical minutes that I wanted. The first partners I approached all wanted to add too much thickness to the movement and so, in the end, I had to undertake to create my own module. The movement, the MCR01, took a substantial amount of development. Then when it came to the case, I really wanted to keep the profile thin. In the end, the case we have is just at the edge of what is possible. We couldn’t even make it thinner by even a few microns more, because at that point it would bend. That [the thinness of the case] would create a lot of challenges for our collaboration because we wanted the cases to be engraved.”

The thickness of the top plate, measuring just 0.25mm, was in fact so difficult to accomplish that Maghnam’s request was turned down by several traditional watch manufacturers. To achieve this, he went down a wholly unconventional route, turning to company that typically manufactures medical and dental equipment.

Indeed, when I finally tracked Maghnam down at Watches and Wonders and strapped the Mohareb on my wrist for the first time, I immediately thought it looked simultaneously futuristic and ancient, which is a big reason for its visual appeal. I asked him what he thought of pushing the concept of the watch being ancient to another level and creating watches that looked like relics buried deep in the desert sand, for the Desert Relic, and at the bottom of the ocean floor, for the Ocean Relic. He loved the idea and immediately thought about having engraved cases. We were both inspired by the Swiss artist H.R. Giger, who created all the creatures and their spacecraft in the Ridley Scott film Alien. At one moment, we even referenced the 1987 film Predator; we both loved the story line of the ancient trophy hunting warrior race and the designs on the Predator’s armor. But, as mentioned, the idea of engraving on his cases presented a big challenge because of the thinness of his 316L steel cases. Finally, he found a company that agreed to laser engrave the patterns for our Relic watches.

The idea behind Revolution’s collaborative editions has always been to do something more extroverted or conceptual than a brand might do for themselves. But because of how elegant the Mohareb is, Sohaib and I both wanted the watches to remain horological; we wanted them to stay relevant and cool for the long term. Looking at the resulting watches, we have arrived at the right balance point.

Tech Specs

Revolution × Maghnam Mohareb Desert Relic and Ocean Relic

Movement: Manual winding caliber MCR01; 42-hour power reserve
Functions: Jumping hours and vertical minutes
Case: 39.5mm (core watch); 316L stainless steel with bronze or blue PVD treatment and laser engraving
Water Resistance: N/A
Dial: Retrograde display with vertical minutes counter
Strap: Color coordinated Cordura with leather lining; PVD treated steel pin buckle
Price: EUR 7,200
Availability: Limited edition of 10 pieces each