Marinid Dynasty - History

History

The Marinids were a nomadic Zenata Berber tribe from the area between Tlemcen and Tahert. They advanced through the Moulouya basin east of Morocco. As early as 1145, the Marinids engaged in several battles with the Almohads, the ruling dynasty at the time, who regularly defeated them until 1169. In that year, the Marinids began a dedicated pursuit to take Morocco from the Almohads. Following their expulsion from the south, the Marinids moved northwards under the command of Abu Yahya ibn Abd al-Haqq and took Fes in 1244, making it their capital. This date marks the beginning of the Marinid dynasty.

The Marinid leadership installed in Fes declared war on the Almohads, fighting with the aid of Christian mercenaries. Abu Yusuf Yaqub (1259–1286) captured Marrakech in 1269 and took control of most of the Maghreb towards the end of 1268, including what is now Morocco, Algeria and part of Tunisia. After the Nasrids ceded Algeciras to the Marinids, Abu Yusuf went to Al-Andalus to support the ongoing struggle against the Kingdom of Castile.

The Marinid dynasty then tried to extend its control to include the commercial traffic of the Strait of Gibraltar. To this end, they declared jihad on the Christians and successively occupied the cities of Rota, Algiers and Gibraltar, surrounding Tarifa for the first time in 1294.

Internal power struggles among the Marinids followed, but they did not prevent Abu Said Uthman II (1310–1331) from undertaking substantial construction work in Fes. Several madrassas for the education of public servants were founded as part of a drive to centralize public administration and to reduce the influence of the unreliable marabouts in his realm.

The Marinids also strongly influenced the policy of the Emirate of Granada, from which they enlarged their army in 1275. In the 13th century, the Kingdom of Castile made several incursions into Morocco. In 1260, Castilian forces raided Salé and, in 1267, initiated a full-scale invasion of Morocco, but the Marinids repelled them.

Under Abu al-Hasan (1331–1348) another attempt was made to reunite the Maghreb. In 1337 the empire of the Abdalwadids in (what is now) Algeria was conquered, followed in 1347 by the defeat of the Hafsid empire in Ifriqiya. However in 1340 the Marinids suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of a Portuguese-Castilian coalition in the Battle of Río Salado, and finally had to withdraw from Andalusia. Abu al-Hasan was deposed by his son Abu Inan Faris (1348–1358), who tried to reconquer Algeria and Tunisia. Despite several successes, the dynasty began to decline after the murder of Abu Inan Faris, who was strangled by his own vizir in 1358.

Unruly Arab Bedouin tribes increasingly spread anarchy in Morocco, which accelerated the decline of the empire. The Marinids reduced their funding of the marabouts in the wake of a financial crisis in the 15th century, and the marabouts' political support for the Marinids waned. The empire fractured into multiple small kingdoms and city-states.

Marinid rulers after 1358 came under the control of the Wattasids, who as viziers exercised the real power in the empire. They rotated Marinid sultans, who were often still children, in quick succession to ensure a strong viziership. The Wattasids were equally unable to consolidate the empire, so that in 1415 Portugal was able to occupy the town of Ceuta and by 1513 had gained control over all important harbours on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. After Abd al-Haqq II (1421–1465) tried in vain to break the power of the Wattasids, he finally toppled the Marinid dynasty.