Roads to Ruin: The War for Morocco In the Sixteenth Century

By Comer Plummer III

Roads to Ruin: The War for Morocco in the Sixteenth Century recounts the long contest for Morocco that ended on August 4, 1578, with Portugal’s spectacular defeat at the Battle of Ksar el-Kébir, also called the Battle of the Three Kings for the three monarchs who perished on the field of battle. This singular event heralded the end of Portugal’s golden age and the emergence of the modern Moroccan state.

This fascinating history is told through figures of disparate backgrounds and nationalities, Christians and Muslims, whose lives traversed some of the great events of this era, including the religious wars of the Reformation, the Battle of Lepanto, and the last siege of Tunis, before converging that fateful day in northern Morocco. Roads to Ruin: The War for Morocco in the Sixteenth Century describes a momentous period of world history, the consequences of which reverberate to this day.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Sep 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483431048

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Copyright © 2015 Comer Plummer III.

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ISBN: 978-1-4834-3677-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-3105-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-3104-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015910646

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CONTENTS

Maps And Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Part 1:   Setting

Chapter 1:   The Maraboutic Crisis

Chapter 2:   From Eggs To Guns

Chapter 3:   The Meridional Mutiny

Chapter 4:   Breakthrough

Part 2:   Actors

Chapter 5:   The Desired

Chapter 6:   Long Hopes

Chapter 7:   Afterglow

Chapter 8:   The Prudent One

Part 3:   Motives

Chapter 9:   The Sultan Of Fishing Boats

Chapter 10:   Lessons Learned?

Chapter 11:   In The Style Of Princes

Chapter 12:   Purgatory In Life, Hell On Earth

Chapter 13:   Fluxum Seminis

Part 4:   Schemes

Chapter 14:   The Irish Enterprise

Chapter 15:   Petitions And Petitioners

Chapter 16:   The Tides Of Fortune

Chapter 17:   Fantasia

Chapter 18:   Coming Up With The Fish

Chapter 19:   Dancing The Galliard

Part 5:   Plans

Chapter 20:   Homecoming

Chapter 21:   A Bordello Of Loopholes

Chapter 22:   A Servant To Thorns

Chapter 23:   Stiff Upper Lip

Chapter 24:   Angst And Impedimenta

Part 6:   Endgame

Chapter 25:   African Incubi

Chapter 26:   Collision Course

Chapter 27:   Reflections

Chapter 28:   Apocalypse

Chapter 29:   Grim Tidings

Chapter 30:   Captives And Orphans

Epilogue

Glossary Of Terms

Bibliography

Notes

About The Author

For my parents

MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1: Morocco Under Siege

Figure 2: Weapons Of The Sixteenth Century

Figure 3: Capitals

Figure 4: The Portuguese Fortress Of Mazagan (El Jadida)

Figure 5: King Sebastian I Of Portugal And The Algarves

Figure 6: Sebastian’s Family

Figure 7: Rivals

Figure 8: Frontieras

Figure 9: Saadian Images

Figure 10: Objectives

Figure 11: Approach March Of The Armies

Figure 12: Order Of Battle Of The Battle Of Ksar El-Kébir

Figures 13-15: Terrain And Battlefield Images

Figure 16: Tombs Of The Saadian Kings And Sebastian I

PREFACE

R arely in its long existence has Morocco been a particularly important place in the world, despite its undeniably important geographic location. Part of that reason is the makeup of the land, the human and the physical geography, which favored that which can simply be described as chaos.

There were two exceptions. In the early centuries of Islam, Morocco played a pivotal role in advancing and then defending Muslim lands in Spain. Moroccan forces were the bulk of the Umayyad army that invaded and conquered the Visigothic kingdom of Hispania in 711. By the eleventh century, Berber rulers from Marrakech had displaced the Umayyads and for nearly two centuries ruled both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar. They tried, unsuccessfully, to arrest the tide of the Christian Reconquest.

This account is about the second exception, a period subsequent to those rapturous years, after which the old vicissitudes had reasserted themselves with a vengeance. In the early years of the sixteenth century, various forces and circumstances converged to overcome Morocco’s natural tendencies and to once more elevate the profile of this land. For a few decades, Morocco stepped out of character, centralizing its power, developing its economy, and reaching out to foreign lands. In so doing, the kingdom became a regional player and a powerbroker (or at least was so perceived) in a tumultuous period of struggle between two mighty empires, those of Spain and Ottoman Turkey—in Cold War terms, a nonaligned nation in the western Mediterranean.

The Battle of the Three Kings, also called the Battle of Ksar el-Kébir, which ends this account, was in large part responsible for these glory years. To Moroccans, who commonly refer to the encounter as the Battle of Oued el-Makhazen (Makhazen River), it is often hailed as a Second Badr, a reference to a battle in western Arabia in 624. The Battle of Badr was the first significant military triumph of the Prophet Mohammad and his Muslim army, who, despite overwhelming odds, prevailed over Meccan forces of the Quraish tribe. Among Muslims it is commonly accepted that had Mohammad lost this contest, Islam would have died in its infancy.

Equating these two events is an exaggeration, though an understandable one. Both clashes lend themselves to drama. As concerns the latter, the death of three kings on the same field was certainly exceptional, as the name of the battle popularized by European chroniclers would indicate. The outcome was, however, not decisive. It did not preserve Moroccan independence or her religious identity. Neither did it destroy the Portuguese Empire. Its significance is nuanced. It was one of many events over centuries—albeit a very important one—that fostered the idea of separateness in this nook of the greater Maghrebian community, a notion that took root over many years and is still evolving. And, just as surely, it is one of many events that shaped the character of the Portuguese people.

I wrote this book to provide a comprehensive and readable treatment of Morocco in the sixteenth century. I also sought to fill such glaring holes in other versions of these events, such as the cause of King Sebastian’s behavior, to avoid parroting folklore, and to incorporate a more balanced, less European, point of view.

The end product concerns a good deal more than the events of this era. This book is also about the origins of Morocco, for the Saadian dynasty was in many ways the embryonic modern Moroccan state. And there are the timeless aspects, such as governance, or rather misgovernance. The Portuguese policy in Morocco is a prime example of what Barbara W. Tuchman called the pursuit of a policy contrary to self-interest in her study, The March of Folly. While Tuchman’s exploration of famous instances of political wood-headedness from Troy to America’s Vietnam debacle skipped over Portugal’s Moroccan policy, it certainly qualifies. At its most elemental level, this is a study of the human basics—the importance of parenting, the impact of childhood upon our lives; and it is a lesson in perseverance.

The challenges were many. On the Moroccan side, there are very few primary sources. In this category, the best material available was often recorded long after these events and relied upon documents since lost or upon oral history, such as Mohammad el-Oufrani’s Nohzet-el hādi bi akhbar moulouk el-Karn el-Hadi:1611–1670, written in 1724. There were also the usual barriers to understanding—legends and taboos. And so forth.

For the spelling of Arabic terminology, I relied primarily on the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. When deconflicting differing accounts and information from various sources, I inclined to rest on the prevailing view of historians and chroniclers or, when there was none, on the oldest or the most respected sources. Often, I used my own analysis. The explanation for each instance may be found in the endnotes.

Ultimately, the truth is a matter of interpretation.

White Plains

August 1, 2014

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am most grateful to those who helped make this vision a reality. First, my thanks to Kamal Lakhdar for his unfailing support in research assistance and translations. His involvement made this book possible. To the late Abdelkarim Kriem, the former dean of Moroccan historians, goes my gratitude for according me most generously his time and unique perspective. Anyone who has studied this subject owes a debt to the late Henry de Castries for painstakingly cataloging, documenting, and analyzing Moroccan and foreign documents from this era. His work is foundational to our understanding of the Saadian dynasty. I also wish to recognize the outstanding resources of the Library of Congress of the United States and Gallica, the digital archive of the National Library of France. I must also acknowledge the cooperation of several institutions for allowing me to use their copyrighted images: the National Portrait Gallery, London; the Kunsthistorishes Museum, Vienna; the Directorate-General of Cultural Heritage, Lisbon; the Prado Museum, Madrid; and the Nord Organization. Finally, I thank my family for their patience and support in seeing this project through.

PROLOGUE

H istory does not record how the idea came to pass, but sometime around 1409 a few Portuguese nobles began to discuss the idea of a foray into North Africa. To these men, it was probably within the norm of the kingdom’s evolution. At the dawn of the fifteenth century, Portugal had risen above the Reconquista, from which she had been born, and stood united and infused with restless possibilities. The Portuguese nobles and their armies carved a place of relative peace and prosperity out of western Iberia, evicting the last Moorish forces in 1249 and fending off Castilian designs at the Battle of Aljubarr ota in 1385. In contrast to her Christian neighbors, the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, which remained mired in their squabbles and a seven hundred years’ war with the Muslims of Al Andalus, or the Emirate of Granada, Portugal had energy to spare.

The proponents of expansionism found no difficulty making their case. North Africa was terra irredenta for Portugal, as well as for Castile and Aragon. It was only natural that they carry the Reconquest into the Maghreb, a so-called neoreconquest, and reclaim the lands of their Visigoth ancestors. To that end, Portugal had worked to secure a series of papal bulls, or decrees, recognizing her rights to crusade in Granada and North Africa.¹ Since Granada was in the sphere of interest of her neighbors, Portugal looked further south. Practically speaking, a foothold in North Africa, the expansionists said, was critical to secure shipping lanes into and out of the Mediterranean Sea; such would also provide the Algarve, a nominal kingdom that was the southernmost region of Portugal, protection against raids or even a full-blown Muslim invasion from the Barbary; a forward naval base would provide rich opportunities for Christian corsairs against Muslim coastal and riverine shipping, as well as a base of operations for future expansion; visions of wheat, of which Portugal was in perpetual need, and of caravan riches titillated. And, if all this was not reason enough, Portugal needed to stay one step ahead of the competition. Once Castile and Aragon were done finishing off Granada, it was expected that they too would seek opportunities in North Africa. The neoreconquest viewpoint was more than opportune—it was irresistible.

There were a few skeptics, of course. The naysayers had their doubts. Mostly, they pointed to the expected cost of such an enterprise. They doubted about the long-term profitability of a North African venture and saw the final result as nothing more than a drain on the state’s coffers. And, privately, they wondered whether territory captured in Muslim North Africa could be held very long in the face of certain and fierce resistance.²

In the end, it was a foregone conclusion. But unstated motives decided the matter. The Portuguese nobility and military orders were nourished by glory, title, and booty. These opportunities had, for some time, been waning. When, in 1411, a treaty ended a war in Spain, they all but dried up. Thereafter, the king was saddled with thousands of battle-hardened warriors and their sons, all of whom were very much in need of fresh diversions and new horizons. And for a nation about to find its sea legs as a global power, North Africa seemed a natural first step in empire building.

They selected an obvious target, the port city of Ceuta, on Morocco’s Mediterranean coast. Nestled against the western slope of a finger of land that extended three miles into the Strait of Gibraltar, the Portuguese conjured this city to be, in the words of the preeminent Lusophone chronicler of the times, Gomes Eanes de Azurara, the key to the whole Mediterranean Sea.³ It was a strategic position that had once served as a launch point for several Muslim invasions of Iberia.

Such a vital position should have been stoutly defended. From afar, Ceuta certainly looked imposing. A series of interconnected land and sea walls coursed over the seven hills from which the city derived its name, punctuated at intervals by towers and anchored at each extremity by strong points. However, centuries of neglect had taken their toll on the place. The fortifications, like the city, were in decay. The tricky winds that blew through the strait were Ceuta’s best defense, given the understrength, complacent garrison and the paucity of cannon along the sea walls. The labyrinth of the old medina bore the crumbing facades of ornate palaces and mosques, the stamp of a glorious past, but what remained of the city’s vibrancy was now in the hands of Genoese traders and corsairs. The latest ruler, the Merinid sultan of Morocco, took little interest in Ceuta or its defense. The front lines were, after all, in Al Andalus.

The Portuguese determined that for this baptism by blood no expense would be spared. Presumably, no able-bodied man would remain behind. And so it was that on August 21, 1514, King John I, at the head of a disproportionate force of twenty thousand men aboard some two hundred ships, fell upon Ceuta.⁴ The corsairs scattered. By nightfall the Portuguese had chased off the few defenders and begun the requisite sacking of the place. There was little glory to be had and only slightly more booty. Determined for anything movable, they tore the city apart. The most egregious example was supplied by the Duke of Barcellos, who, in search of trophies to adorn a new palace, directed gangs of men who pried some six hundred alabaster and marble columns from the great residences of the city.⁵

Other than a few skirmishes and a number of weepy Christian captives set free, it was a rather anticlimactic affair. Many were crestfallen, for they had failed to wet their swords. They had caused to expect otherwise. In the days preceding the invasion, weather had on two occasions dispersed the fleet, causing great frustration in the ranks. Worse still, the fleet had floundered in full view of Ceuta’s garrison, turning the element of surprise into a bitter comedy. By the time they at last staggered onto the beach in an unseasonably icy downpour, the Portuguese were in full expectation of a severe contest that honor demanded. But the enemy was to disappoint them, and the gates were quickly breached. Even the culminating battle at the citadel was a nonevent. A reconnaissance party crept forward to inspect the defenses only to be advised by two Moors not to trouble themselves, for the defenders had fled during the night.⁶

As the embers still burned and thousands of soldiers milled about the deserted streets, the king and his advisors settled into an extended debate over what to do next. Should they hold onto the town, or simply declare victory and return home? The expansionists and the naysayers had their word, and once again the former prevailed. If national prestige was not a reason for going to Ceuta, it was now apparently the primary reason for staying there. The town, once taken, could simply not be surrendered to the Moors. To do so would make the nation and its king look ridiculous.

After a few formalities were completed, including the purification and conversion of the main mosque into a church and bestowing knighthood on his three sons who had accompanied him, King John turned over the operation to Pedro de Meneses. As governor, Meneses would begin a long and illustrious family tradition in Morocco. Leaving behind a garrison of twenty-seven hundred men, a few ships, supplies, and ammunition, on September 2, the king sailed back to Lisbon.⁷

The men of Ceuta’s garrison stood at the threshold of a vast, unknown continent. Just how vast, they could not comprehend. The prisoners they rescued spoke of fantastic and tantalizing things, of vibrant cities fed by caravans laden with ivory, gold, and spices; of bustling oasis towns on the frontier of an ocean of desert; of aboriginal races of colored men, some so black they were tinted blue; and of exotic women and lascivious customs. It would be one of the members of their expedition who would contribute to the answer. Prince Henry, third son of King John, returned to Lisbon with a burning desire to know more of the African coast beyond Cape Bojador, a headland off the northwestern African coast and the limit of navigation to that time.

The men put their backs into reinforcing the dilapidated stronghold. In quiet times they would, as idle soldiers do, think of home. Its reminder was all around, in the undulating terrain, with its tuffs of olive trees and hardy vegetation. The distant hills even bore the same purple hue of Iberia. The ground upon which they stood was, in fact, part of the same geological region as southern Iberia, separated by the forces of nature eons ago. They knew, of course, that any similarity was a deception. This was an outpost in a hostile land. Out there, beyond the horizon, Islam would mobilize to receive them. It was but a matter of time.

Part 1

SETTING

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Chapter 1

THE MARABOUTIC CRISIS

Morocco, 1416 to 1511

The gates of Paradise are under the shadow of swords.—Attributed to the Prophet Mohammad as recorded in the Hadith ¹

H istorian Henri Terrasse described Morocco as the cul-de-sac of North Africa. ² It is an apt description. From time immemorial various peoples traversed the Barbary Coast into Morocco, some passing north and across the Strait of Gibraltar into Europe, others to various points south. Many crossed over the Atlas Mountains and pooled there in the plains. In time, the overflow carried some into the mountains and the shelter afforded by jigsaw heights, innumerable recesses, and hidden valleys. It was a geography that ensnared, isolated, and diversified.

Geography also made Morocco a precarious place in which to live. Generally speaking, the land was mediocre, with too little soil, too much rock and sand in most regions, and insufficient rains almost everywhere. Only in the Riff and Atlas Mountains, where precipitation was abundant, was agriculture consistently possible. The northeastern plain, nestled in an arch formed by these mountains, allowing the retention of the temperate Atlantic climate, was fairly fecund. But elsewhere, to the south and west, beyond the mountains, in the arid and semiarid bio-climatic zones, agriculture was dependent upon irrigation. The winter snows were hardly predictable, and if they failed to come in sufficiency, there would be no runoff and drought would inevitably follow. Equally unpredictable was the dreaded Chergui, or hot winds from the Sahara, capable of blowing over the mountains and parching everything in its path right down to the coast. It was an environment that demanded of its people ingenuity, diversification, and endurance.

Socially too, this was a landscape of contention, where consensus was scarce, the tribe was predominant, government was local, and the institutions of central government were fleeting. The defining factor was the attitude of the Berbers, the indigenous people of the Maghrebian region of modern Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. In their highland redoubts, where they had fled to avoid succeeding invading armies of Romans, Byzantines, the Visigoths, and the Arabs, they were more than the backdrop of power politics in the region. Notoriously clannish, truculent, and prone to vendettas, they were a kaleidoscope of wild nations that for the most part would not countenance servitude to, let alone integration with, their nominal conquerors. The Berbers had converted to Islam and did battle for the caliphate (in large part for booty) but were not drawn to the Arab or even the subsequent Berber-dominated states. Consequently, the political climate of Islamic Morocco was chronically fragile. Since the coming of Islam to Morocco in the eighth century, several dynasties had come and gone. None had been able to put down institutional roots, and all had crumbled within one to two centuries under factional squabbles and palace intrigues. By the dawn of the sixteenth century, Morocco was at its lowest point, lost and ungovernable. It had become, in modern parlance, a failed state. It would take an unprecedented dose of religious extremism to reverse this decline, and such was the period that came to be known as the Maraboutic Crisis.³

The troubles began to unfold in the preceding century with the collapse of the last great Berber dynasty, the Merinids. As the centennial wore on, the paralysis of the Moroccan state accelerated, and the land regressed to a muddle of petty states and into sectarian war. The Wattasid dynasty, which tried to succeed the Merinids, was able to effectively control only part of the north from their capital at Fez. Lesser fiefdoms ringed the Wattasids—the Mnadi at Tétouan, the Banou Rachid at Inaouen, and the Hintana emirs at Marrakech. In the countryside violence, intertribal warfare, and brigandage were pervasive.

Insecurity contributed to a bleak economic picture. By the early 1500s, agriculture and arboriculture were severely contracted, ravaged by a fourteen-year interval of alternating droughts and floods.⁴ Frequently, dietary staples such as cereals, dates, and figs became luxuries. The granaries, intended to provide succor in such times, were of no use. Without government to ensure their replenishment, they had long been empty.

Most ominous of all was the decline of the trans-Saharan caravans. They still brought their wares from Tagost and Timbuktu, but not as before. The lawlessness of the interior and the competition of Portuguese trading posts were creating a seismic shift in West African patterns of trade. For the previous four centuries, Morocco had served as the transit point for precious metals from West Africa to Europe. However, as the Age of Discovery gained momentum, change came quickly.⁵ The Portuguese exploration of the West African coast left in its wake a series of feitorias, or trading posts, including Arguin off the Mauritanian littoral, and La Mina in modern Ghana. The gold, ivory, spices, and slaves that once went into the Muslim interior were increasingly making their way to these oceanic trading posts. For example, by 1495, only twenty-four years after it was established, the La Mina factory alone was yielding twelve annual shiploads of gold for Lisbon, each carrying 410 kilograms worth 100,000 cruzados.⁶ This trade once went by the caravans, and its loss impacted the livelihoods of countless people all along the terrestrial trade routes, as well as the governments that were dependent on those taxes. As caravan trade slowed, currency fell into short supply and urban life declined.

The Portuguese profited from Morocco’s weakened condition. In the decades since they landed at Ceuta, the Portuguese gradually extended their presence along the Moroccan coast through a string of trading posts and frontieras, or fortified enclaves, from the Strait of Gibraltar to Agadir, nearly five hundred miles to the south, with most major sea ports in between coming under their control. The Portuguese chose their sites well, concentrating on the mouths of major river systems, thereby controlling critical commercial arteries that extended far into the interior. The trade controls and taxes they imposed gave the Portuguese a stranglehold on regional trade. For Morocco, it amounted to a slow asphyxiation.

Plagues added to the general misery, carrying off tens of thousands of souls, further depopulating the cities and towns. Nomadism reemerged as a social phenomenon. Under the weight of so many pressures, social order began to break down. In 1521, during a famine in the Doukkala region, a Portuguese visitor to Azemmour, one of the frontieras, provided the following vignette:

When we arrived at Azemmour, Duarte Rodriguez and Pedro Alfonso presented themselves to the captain of the city, Don Alvaro de Noronha. He [Noronha] told them that these people of Arzila could go to the douars [groups of familial dwellings] and purchase that which they desired. With this authority, we went to the douars which were at a distance of five or six leagues of Azemmour; these douars were very numerous that they occupied three or four areas and all was very peaceful and subjects of an important Moor called Aco Bengabira … The Moors of these douars had gotten together and made prisoners of others not under their authority, and those taken by force and others who came with them were so numerous that we saw on the river at least a hundred boats loaded with beautiful Moorish women who no one, neither man or woman, had the money to buy.⁷

Morocco’s downward spiral reinforced the notion of a fallen people. The long crisis of national leadership and the Christian incursions, even the natural disasters of drought, flood, and famine, came to be seen as a reflection of Allah’s displeasure with a land that had drifted from the precepts of Islam.⁸ The popular emotional response was a turn toward the network of outland mystics who offered some hope of a better future.

The Maraboutic Crisis, as this era of political turmoil came to be called, was a misnomer, owing to inaccurate references by historians in later times to rural holy men and mystics as marabouts.⁹ In Morocco, however, the term actually refers to the tomb of an Islamic saint. Though Morocco’s confection of misery, isolation, and xenophobia was the ideal incubator for mystical cults, above all Sufism, they were not themselves the cause of the crisis. The mystics were, however, the primary beneficiaries of it.

Sufism and its mystical interpretation of Islam was firmly implanted in Morocco by the late twelfth century. As elsewhere in what became the Dar al-Islam, or the House of Islam, Sufism paved the way for Islamization through its readiness to accommodate essential local religious practices and thus made the new faith more appealing to potential converts. As such, Sufism allowed Islam to put down roots in many lands that might have otherwise resisted the new faith. In Morocco, these vital indigenous tastes included the common quest for baraka and the cult of the marabout.

Baraka was a kind of divine favor and a power that a possessor might use or bestow, or that a follower might absorb, even after the possessor’s death. Not surprisingly, it was a power claimed by all manner of Moroccan saints. By the fifteenth century, Morocco’s religious establishment, so to speak, had evolved to three distinct groups. On the traditional side were the ulama of madrassa-trained scholars and jurists and the comparatively small class of bluebloods, the shurafa (singular, sharif). As descendants of the Prophet Mohammad, these few men enjoyed the ultimate stamp of sociopolitical legitimacy in the Muslim world. At the other end of the spectrum were the mystical brotherhoods. While all three groups were believed to be imbued with baraka, the Sufis offered common folk the greatest access to it.

As part of providing a wider entrée to baraka, Sufism co-opted the maraboutic cults. Early Sufi shaykhs, in search of local roots, gravitated to sects organized around the tombs of venerated saints. These marabouts were places of pious reflection and inspiration and were believed to radiate baraka. As such, they were a natural fit for the Sufi shaykhs, who selected them as the locales for their religious brotherhoods. In this way the Sufis joined traditional spiritual practices with a less structured Islam. Simple people were drawn to Sufi asceticism, its quest for a more direct relationship with Allah, the distinct rituals (tariqa) of brotherhood, and the promise of baraka. The lodge, or center of devotion and learning, was called a ribat, the Arabic term for a military outpost, which evoked the early days when Sufi masters had to avail themselves of abandoned forts for their congregations. The brotherhoods, the zawaya (singular, zawiya) proliferated, eventually checkering the land and attracting tens of thousands of adherents. The zawaya were also about more than the esoteric. As the primary mediators between tribes and ethnic groups, they served as the essential arbiter in a consensus-based society. They also provided important services, such as lodging and guides for traders and travelers, and charitable and social services.¹⁰ The zawaya became an indispensable part of the national fabric. As it was commonly said, He who has no shaykh, has [Shaitan] for a shaykh.¹¹

Of all the religious shaykhs, none rivaled Muhammad ibn Sulayman al-Jazuli. His emphasis on social activism was noteworthy, and his teachings carved out an unprecedented political role for the Sufi shaykh. Al-Jazuli effectively conjoined the concepts of divine presence and the exercise of worldly authority, thereby making the religious shaykh the incarnation of the Mohammadian tradition and fully justifying his role in political life.¹² As government receded from the countryside during the late fifteenth century, the zawaya shaykhs, with the Jazuliyya Sufi Order in the vanguard, filled the void, and they became the de facto administration in much of Morocco.¹³ By that time, their power was unrivaled, and no one dared to openly oppose them. Even the ulama, which had scorned the Sufis during the time of the Merinids, fell into line. Islamic intellectuals and Malikite jurists alike joined the brotherhoods in droves; they wrote of the miracles of the Sufi masters and brought the teachings of the mystics into the madrassas.¹⁴

The Sufi shaykhs, however, wanted power on their own terms. They resisted integration with the secular power structure and jealously guarded their new-found clout. Rulers and their bureaucrats found that they had to curry the favor of the religious shaykhs. For both sides the dialogue was a mutual annoyance. It could not, however, be silenced. The shaykhs were finding the need of a larger audience. While secular leaders in their palaces and fortresses could tune out much of the blather from the countryside, they found it hard to ignore the upswell for jihad.

If Morocco’s weak, self-consuming condition made Portugal’s presence on her coast possible, it also engendered a strong reaction that ultimately restored national unity. After the Portuguese began to colonize the Moroccan coast in 1415, jihad, or a holy war, against the Christian invader became the rallying cry and the means to a common redemption. The zawaya shaykhs led the call. Emboldened to move beyond spiritual teachings and charitable works, the shaykhs undertook a greater cause of national revival. Few questioned this rhetoric, but the practical aspect was lacking. While the moral authority of the religious shaykh was great, it was just that—moral. As a group, they represented only half of a partnership. Only a strongman could provide an army.

In 1510, one such leader emerged to lead the tribes of the Sous Valley of southwestern Morocco. His name was Mohammad ibn ‘Abd ar-Rahmān, and the tribes, under the auspices of local Sufi shaykhs, nominated him to lead them in jihad against the Portuguese enclave at Santa Cruz de Auger (Agadir). That year the tribes at last came to the realization that they had no other recourse but to cooperate: there was no prospect of aid from their nominal overlord, the Wattasid sultan in Fez, or his Hintana vassal in Marrakech. Nevertheless, formalities were observed. The tribes formally requested a holy crusade. The sultan, loath to provide any tangible contribution and eager to delegate authority for the operation, gave his stamp of approval.¹⁵

The choice of Mohammad ibn ‘Abd ar-Rahmān was hardly obvious. Shaykh of the tribe that came to be called Saadians, he was also a sharif, so it was said, and leader of a Sufi zawiya. He was also a virulent critic of the Portuguese policy in Morocco and of the impotent Muslim response. These were excellent qualifications, but they hardly made him unique. Nor did they compensate for his lack of the kind of military experience required for such an undertaking. Plus, he was an outsider. The tribes and their religious leaders who nominated him were Berbers, the indigenous people who had occupied the Maghreb since antiquity. They were of the Sous Valley, the region most impacted by Portuguese presence at Agadir. Abd ar-Rahmān was from a remote region beyond the High Atlas Mountains, and he was an Arab.

The Arab Problem permeated Moroccan society, and it was a contributing factor to social and political instability and economic decline. The conflict between Berbers and Arabs was on old one, dating to the Arab conquest of the eighth century. In subsequent centuries it worsened with the influx of Hilalien and Maqil Arabs to the Moroccan plains, pressing many Berber tribes farther into arid mountain regions and touching off renewed intertribal competition for dwindling resources. While Berbers and Arabs came to share the same religion, they were of different cultures and did not blend well. The Berbers, sedentary and insular, brooded in their ksour (single, ksar), or earthen fortresses, emerging from time to time for a swipe at their neighbor for some perceived injustice. The Arabs clung to their pastoral ways and had a proclivity for warlike activities. When the two came together it was to perpetuate an unending cycle of violence in the hinterlands. As al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi, better known as Leo Africanus, recorded from his travels through the south of Morocco:

Among the people of the Dra’a are many chiefs who are constantly coming to blows. Each faction draws support from the local Arabs, who are paid for their services a half-ducat a day if they are fully equipped horsemen. They are, however, only paid from day to day and only if they actually use their weapons. These folk here use firearms, the arquebus [a forerunner of the rifle] and espingard [a kind of small cannon], and I have never seen such finely decorated guns. With these weapons, they kill each other all the time.¹⁶

That the Berbers of the Sous turned to Mohammad ibn ‘Abd ar-Rahmān was probably as much a sign of desperation as any endorsement of his qualifications to lead them. Perhaps, as Moroccan historian Abu al-Qasim al-Zayyânî suggested, Abd ar-Rahmān was chosen precisely because he was an outsider and therefore the only candidate upon which the discordant tribes could agree. It must have given them great angst.

Mohammad ibn ‘Abd ar-Rahmān tried to rise to the occasion. He adopted the name al-Qāim bi Amrillah (He Who Has Arisen by the Command of Allah) and undertook to organize a jihadist army.

Unfortunately for the Moors, religious zeal could not compensate for Portuguese fortifications and artillery, or their complete mastery of the seas. Mohammad al-Qaim’s campaign against the Portuguese yielded inconsequential results. Most prominent was his failed assault on Agadir in 1511. Waves of infantry equipped with scaling ladders made no impression on prepared defenses and integrated missile weapons, with supporting naval gunfire. The appalling casualties suffered by the Moors dampened support for al-Qaim. His jihad, for all intents and purposes, was over.

Chapter 2

FROM EGGS TO GUNS

Morocco, 1511 to 1524

Even the loftiest mountain begins on the ground.—Moroccan proverb ¹

T he failure at Agadir ignited an old controversy among the people of the Sous: whether to reform (meaning centralized government, taxation, imported weapons, and foreign ideas, etc.) or not. Many tribal leaders could not comprehend the defeat or would not sanction the ways and means needed to achieve victory. For the most part, they returned home. A few reformists decided to remain with Mohammad al-Qaim at Taroudant. In this light, the failure at Agadir was in a sense a step forward, since it cleared the way for the visionaries.

The reformists understood very well what had transpired, and they knew that the old ways were no longer good enough. It was useless to boast, as the traditionalists would do, of how the Moorish horseman was a match for any Portuguese in the open field when he seldom had the opportunity. But for brief raids and foraging parties, the infidels seldom ventured from their coastal shelters. Defeating the Portuguese meant dislodging them by siege, and this required wholesale modernization and a new military system.

This was no easy matter. Al-Qaim’s army was feudal in nature, rooted in a centuries-old tradition of equestrian warfare and heavily reliant on tribal contingents of cavalry equipped with lances and sabers. Specialization in modern technologies and methods, such as artillery and siege craft, was usually provided by foreign mercenaries or captives. In addition to archaic methods and poor cohesiveness, the feudal army was also notoriously unreliable. Its loyalties lay heavily with the king/employer’s ability to pay, or the perception for success, and therefore some future hope for recompense. For military leaders in Morocco, as in Europe, the drama of warfare was getting into the fight. War, as they knew it, was rife with treachery and instances of defections en masse by tribal or mercenary contingents at the very moment of battle were commonplace. Added to this, there were essential matters that overtook war at various times of the year. The campaign season in Morocco was just more than that, about four months long, being constrained by the harvest, the holy observances of moharram, or first month of the Islamic calendar, and the time of fasting, Ramadan.² As these periods approached, tribal contingents had the disturbing tendency to head home. It all made for the Moorish commander in the field a constant angst over the fragile coalition that was the feudal army.

Their early failures brought the Saadians to a conclusion shared by many of the kings and princes of sixteenth century Europe: building a dependable and efficient army meant developing a professional nucleus, a standing force. But in the Sous, the expertise and the tools of modern warfare, and the means to pay for them, were in short supply. Turkish renegades and mercenaries brought new methods of war, but they only began to appear in southern Morocco in substantial numbers in the 1530s. Modern arms were almost as scarce. Neither the Wattasids nor the Portuguese favored the flow of firearms and cannon to the Saadians, and they did what they could to prevent it. Lack of access to oceanic ports was the critical problem, leaving southern Morocco virtually cut off from Europe and deprived of an important source of tax revenue. Smugglers managed to infiltrate small quantities of firearms and artillery, but such weapons remained in short supply during al-Qaim’s time. And, finally, there was no general fund to purchase war materiel and services. The road to military reform looked to be a long one.

Mohammad al-Qaim did not transform warfare in southern Morocco. This was the work of generations. He did, however, pave the way in at least one respect: He resurrected a general tax from Merinid times, the naiba, or affliction, as the people called it, which he used to create and support a small cadre of professional soldiers. And he cunningly calculated that if he made the tax modest enough, he could impose it broadly, even upon the shurafa, which, as an upper caste of society, had been customarily tax exempt.³

Legend has it that upon venturing into the Sous countryside to survey the people he was to lead in war, al-Qaim was shocked by the poverty he witnessed. Such a landscape hardly offered the prospect of tax revenues he would need to sustain a force in the field. He determined, however, to try. The sharif sent messengers forth to every village with the call for each foyer to provide his tax collectors the sum of one egg. The people, relieved at such a modest request, readily complied, and soon Mohammad al-Qaim was awash in eggs. He then determined that those who could afford an egg could afford a dirham (a silver coin). This too was duly collected and none were spared. The people grumbled, but for the most part they paid. The fact that it was egalitarian went a long way in their minds. The ire of the shurafa paying taxes had a definite appeal to the masses. The precedent was established and would be exploited to the full in years to come. The funds raised were modest but allowed al-Qaim to create a small standing army, five hundred cavalry initially, which in a few years grew to three thousand.⁴

From the start, al-Qaim’s sons, Ahmad, the eldest, and Mohammad, figured closely in his designs. To cement his alliance with the Sous zawaya, al-Qaim married his younger son to the daughter of his most influential zawiya sponsor, the Sufi shaykh Mohammad ben Mubarak.⁵ According to Moroccan historian Mohammad el-Oufrani, Mohammad al-Qaim conceived a great destiny for his sons, as revealed to him in a religious vision that he was fond of recounting. According to this story, during al-Qaim’s hajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca around 1506, the sharif sought out a holy man to interpret a dream he was having. In the dream, two lions emerged from his navel, and, as they sauntered forth, a crowd of people formed behind them. The lions led them to a tower, into which the beasts disappeared, leaving the people and al-Qaim at the door. The holy man interpreted this to be a vision of how al-Qaim’s sons would be men of consequence and would one day rule.⁶ Over what they would hold dominion, neither the holy man nor el-Oufrani provided any indication.

Sometime after Muhammad al-Qaim made the hajj, the brothers made the trip.⁷ They too came away deeply affected, not only by the experience of religious renewal, but also by an awakening to a distinctly personal call of the obligations of sharifism. And like many émigrés from the Islamic heartland, the return to Arabia was an emotional homecoming. Their route might well have taken the brothers through the Red Sea port town of Yambo, their ancestral home.

For the Saadian brothers, the hajj was also an intellectually broadened experience. Certainly, their sojourn in Cairo, the bustling capital of the Mamluks, was enlightening. At more than half a million people, it was the largest city in the Western world. It was cosmopolitan, an important center of the spice trade, and home to the Al-Azhar University, one of the oldest institutions of higher learning in the world. Since the breakup of Abbasid Caliphate three centuries earlier, this strange state run by a caste of soldier-slaves had been the center of the Muslim world and its vanguard against the Mongols and Crusaders. It was a position symbolically reinforced by Cairo’s possession of many of Islam’s holiest relics, including the mantle and sword of the Prophet.

In Cairo, the brothers would have also experienced a wider geopolitical struggle. To date, apart from the usual tribal rivalries, they had only known of the Portuguese enemy and their local lackeys and collaborators. In Egypt, they were exposed to the unfolding struggle for supremacy in the Dar al-Islam. With the rise of the Ottoman Turks and their drive for conquest, the Muslim world was presented with the specter of domination by a non-Arab state. The Turks had already nibbled at the periphery of the Mamluk provinces in Syria. A showdown, it was said, was imminent.

After their return to Morocco, Mohammad al-Qaim sent his sons to Fez to complete their education. In the imperial court, they learned of the interworking of the makhzen, or governing elite. They cultivated the sultan’s favor and made connections with men of influence. To that end, both served under the sultan’s banner in campaigns against the Portuguese frontieras of Arzila and Tangiers.⁸

By the time of al-Qaim’s death in 1517, both were experienced leaders and field commanders. As eldest, Ahmad received the bay’ah as shaykh and succeeded his father. Having witnessed the ineffectual results of the past six years, the brothers decided on another approach—one of political power. To that point, they had accepted the Wattasid sultan as their overlord. They would do so no more. Henceforth, their policy would be to take his domains and those of his vassals in the south, and to challenge his position as ruler. This decision was the embryo of the Saadian polity; at the same time it signaled the end of the jihadist movement. Thereafter, the regime would pull away from its religious roots, posturing as mujahidin, or holy warriors, while continuing what became largely an internal power struggle.

This shift in policy was problematic and would prove to be a nagging controversy for the Saadians. It would also have major implications for governance. The most visible sign of their ambitions, the naiba, was expanded from the people of the cities and the plains to the Berber tribes of the mountains, who had remained largely beyond the reach of the tax collector, for whom such an imposition was an anathema. Another irritant between the governing elite and the governed was that, as Arabs, the Saadians were, for the majority of the indigenous people, outsiders; and their administration was not inclusive. Trusting in few outside their clan and only a few proven allies, such as the Maqil Arabs and the Ilalen Berbers, the Saadian makhzen came to be dominated by minority interests, foreigners, and renegades, which only served to reinforce the divide. Furthermore, as the Saadians doubtless came to understand, their power could not be easily detached from its religious underpinnings.⁹ To do so risked violating a fragile consensus. Jihad, the so-called Sixth Pillar of Islam, was widely accepted by the spectrum of Morocco’s religious establishment; intertribal warfare,