16

The Marīnids

614–869/1217–1465

North Africa

The Marīnids succeeded to the heritage of the Almohads (see above, no. 15) in Morocco and much of the lands of the Maghrib lying to the east. The Banū Marīn were a tribe of Zanāta Berbers who nomadised on the north-western fringes of the Sahara, where there now runs in a north-east to south-west direction the modern border between Algeria and Morocco. It seems that they were sheep herders and that they gave their name to the fine-quality merino wool exported from an early date via mediaeval Italy to Europe. The cultural level of the Banū Marīn was probably low; they were uninspired in their bid for power by any of the religious enthusiasms which had given impetus to the movements of the Almoravids and Almohads, and may not have been long converted to Islam. These facts, combined with what seem to have been comparatively restricted numbers, doubtless account for the protracted nature of their struggles in the mid-thirteenth century with the later Almohads. They first invaded Morocco from the Sahara in 613/1216, but were halted by the Almohad rulers, and did not capture the latter’s capital Marrakech until 668/1269 and Sijilmāsa until four years later.

Once established in their capital at Fez, the Marīnids acquired a strong sense of being heirs to the Almohads, and attempted, with considerable success, to rebuild their empire in the Maghrib. They further nurtured the spirit of jihād and utilised popular religious fervour in the Maghrib for a desired reconquest of Spain. Several Marīnid sultans fought personally in the Iberian peninsula. Abū Yūsuf Ya‘qūb crossed over in answer to an appeal from the Naṣrids of Granada (see above, no. 7) and won the battle of Ecija in 674/1275. After the Christian capture of Gibraltar in 709/1309, Marīnid troops again appeared in Spain, but Abu ’1-Ḥasan ‘Alī was routed at the Rio Salado in 741/1340 by the forces of Alfonso XI of Castile and his brother-in-law Alfonso IV of Portugal, and the Marīnids never again tried to intervene directly in Spain. Within North Africa, the Marīnids wore down their neighbours the ‘Abd al-Wādids (see below, no. 17), occupying their capital Tlemcen in 737/1337 and 753/1352 and temporarily dislodging the Ḥafṣids from Tunis in 748/1347, for a while controlling the whole Maghrib. These years of the later thirteenth and the first two-thirds of the fourteenth century also saw a remarkable cultural and artistic efflorescence in Morocco, seen in the extensive building of mosques, madrasas and other public buildings which gave concrete expression to the strength of a restored Mālikism and an increased trend towards popular Sūfism and maraboutism.

Towards the end of the fourteenth century, the decline of the Marīnids began to be apparent. In 803/1401, Henry III of Castile attacked Tetouan (Tiṭṭāwīn) and in 818/1415 the Portuguese took Ceuta (Sabta), and this extension of the Reconquista to North Africa provoked a further wave of religious sentiment and calls for jihād in the Maghrib against the infidels. Within the Marīnid sultanate, there was a prolonged series of succession crises, with Marīnid princes placed on the throne for short reigns by palace coups or by Arab and Berber tribal revolts. After the assassination of sultan Abū Sa‘īd ‘Uthmān III in 823/1420, de facto power in the western Maghrib was assumed by a family related to the Marīnids, the Banū Waṭṭās (see below, no. 19), acting at first as regents for the infant Abū Muḥammad ‘Abd al-Ḥaqq II; but after the latter’s murder in 869/1465, the Waṭṭāsids shortly afterwards succeeded in form as well as name to the heritage of the Marīnids in Morocco.

Lane-Poole, 57–9; Zambaur, 79–80; Album, 18.

EI¹ ‘Merīnids’ (G. Marçais); EI² ‘Marīnids’ (Maya Shatzmiller), with detailed genealogical table, correcting and replacing that of Zambaur.

H. Terrasse, Histoire du Maroc, II, 3–104.

H. W. Hazard, The Numismatic History of Late Medieval North Africa, 79–84, 192–227, 275–8, 284–5.