Saadi Sultanate

Politics and institutions

The Saadis were sharifs from the Sous, and their legitimacy as descendants of the Prophet was as important as their army. Al-Qa'im was proclaimed leader of the Sous tribes in 1510; his sons Ahmad al-Araj and Muhammad al-Shaykh took Marrakesh and then Fez, ending Wattasid rule in 1549. The dynasty's central crisis came in 1578, when a Portuguese crusade for the deposed Muhammad al-Mutawakkil was destroyed at Ksar el-Kebir and Ahmad al-Mansur took power. Al-Mansur built a more absolute Makhzen, veiled himself in Abbasid style, and claimed the caliphate; after his death in 1603 his sons tore the realm apart, and although it was reunified in 1627, the Saadis were overthrown by the Alawis in 1659.

Economy and finance

Saadian wealth rested on three things: the Atlantic ports, the trans-Saharan trade and sugar. Moroccan sugar, produced in the Sous and around Taroudant, was exported to Europe; gold, slaves and ivory came north from the Niger bend, especially after al-Mansur's conquest of Songhai in 1591. The ransoms of Portuguese nobles captured at Ksar el-Kebir financed a new gold coinage and the El Badi palace in Marrakesh. English merchants bought saltpeter and sold cloth and naval timber, while Genoese, French and Dutch ships called at Safi, Salé and Agadir. Heavy taxation and the cost of the Sudan expedition strained the system, and after 1603 the caravans grew rarer and the sugar mills declined.

Society and culture

Saadian society was reshaped by refugees. Some 100,000 Andalusi Muslims and Jews arrived after the fall of Granada in 1492, followed by Moriscos a century later; they revived Tetouan and other northern towns and split Moroccan Jewry into Andalusian and indigenous communities. The Makhzen became more visible in everyday life, and the sultan's sharifian status became the central fact of political legitimacy. Marrakesh, rebuilt as the capital, received the Saadian Tombs, the Ben Youssef Madrasa and the El Badi palace, while Fes remained the religious and scholarly counterweight. Arabic and Berber coexisted; Sufi brotherhoods, especially in the Atlas and the south, organized rural society and later supplied the Alawi movement with its base.

Military and frontiers

The Saadian army was a composite of tribal cavalry, salaried corps and artillery. The Jazula of the Sous and the Arab tribes of the Banu Ma'qil formed the original nucleus; under al-Mansur the Cheraga, Andalusians and European renegades supplied firearm infantry, and Morisco founders cast cannon at Marrakesh, Fez and Taroudant. At Ksar el-Kebir in 1578 the Saadians destroyed a Portuguese army and killed its king, a victory that gave Morocco its reputation as a regional power. The 1591 expedition across the Sahara to Tondibi used firearms against the Songhai and captured Gao and Timbuktu, but the occupation was costly and never fully controlled. After 1603 the army fragmented among rival princes, and the militia of Salé turned to piracy.

Foreign relations

Saadian diplomacy was a balancing act between Portugal, Spain and the Ottoman Empire. The dynasty began by expelling the Portuguese from Atlantic ports; after Ksar el-Kebir, al-Mansur used the threat of Ottoman power and the friendship of Spain and England as counterweights. He formally recognized Ottoman suzerainty at first, then minted coins and had the khutba read in his own name, and finally paid tribute when Murad III prepared an invasion. Elizabeth I's England sought saltpeter and an anti-Spanish alliance; the Barbary Company was founded in 1585, and an ambassador went to London in 1600. The conquest of Songhai was the only major overseas venture, and it was justified in caliphal language.

Legacy and influence

The Saadis gave Morocco its early modern shape. Their borders, their sharifian monarchy and their Makhzen were inherited by the Alawis, who still rule; the Saadian Tombs, the Ben Youssef Madrasa and the ruins of El Badi are among the country's defining monuments. The conquest of Timbuktu created the Arma pashalik, which outlasted the dynasty and kept a tenuous Moroccan claim to the Niger bend into the nineteenth century. The sugar and slave economy declined, but the memory of al-Mansur as the golden sultan, the victor of the Three Kings and the conqueror of the Sudan, remained a model for later Moroccan rulers. In the long run, the Saadis made Morocco a recognized actor in Mediterranean diplomacy.