Titanium disulfide TiS$_2$, which is a member of the layered transition-metal dichalcogenides with the 1T-CdI$_2$-type crystal structure, is known to exhibit a wide variety of magnetism through intercalating various kinds of transition-metal atoms of different concentrations. Among them, Fe-intercalated titanium disulfide Fe$_x$TiS$_2$ is known to be ferromagnetic with strong perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) and large coercive fields ($H_text{c}$). In order to study the microscopic origin of the magnetism of this compound, we have performed X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) measurements on single crystals of heavily intercalated Fe$_x$TiS$_2$ ($xsim0.5$). The grown single crystals showed a strong PMA with a large $H_text{c}$ of $mu_0H_text{c} simeq 1.0 text{T}$. XAS and XMCD spectra showed that Fe is fully in the valence states of 2+ and that Ti is in an itinerant electronic state, indicating electron transfer from the intercalated Fe atoms to the host TiS$_2$ bands. The Fe$^{2+}$ ions were shown to have a large orbital magnetic moment of $simeq 0.59 mu_text{B}text{/Fe}$, to which, combined with the spin-orbit interaction and the trigonal crystal field, we attribute the strong magnetic anisotropy of Fe$_x$TiS$_2$.
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