III
THE ARAB CONQUEST
The first Arab invasion of Morocco is said to have reached the Atlantic
coast, but it left no lasting traces, and the real Islamisation of
Barbary did not happen till near the end of the eighth century, when a
descendant of Ali, driven from Mesopotamia by the Caliphate, reached the
mountains above Volubilis and there founded an empire. The Berbers,
though indifferent in religious matters, had always, from a spirit of
independence, tended to heresy and schism. Under the rule of Christian
Rome they had been Donatists, as M. Bernard puts it, "out of opposition
to the Empire"; and so, out of opposition to the Caliphate, they took up
the cause of one Moslem schismatic after another. Their great popular
movements have always had a religious basis, or perhaps it would be
truer to say, a religious pretext, for they have been in reality the
partly moral, partly envious revolt of hungry and ascetic warrior tribes
against the fatness and corruption of the "cities of the plain."
Idriss I became the first national saint and ruler of Morocco. His rule
extended throughout northern Morocco, and his son, Idriss II, attacking
a Berber tribe on the banks of the Oued Fez, routed them, took
possession of their oasis and founded the city of Fez. Thither came
schismatic refugees from Kairouan and Moors from Andalusia. The Islamite
Empire of Morocco was founded, and Idriss II has become the legendary
ancestor of all its subsequent rulers.
The Idrissite rule is a welter of obscure struggles between rapidly
melting groups of adherents. Its chief features are: the founding of
Moulay Idriss and Fez, and the building of the mosques of El Andalous
and Kairouiyin at Fez for the two groups of refugees from Tunisia and
Spain. Meanwhile the Caliphate of Cordova had reached the height of its
power, while that of the Fatimites extended from the Nile to western
Morocco, and the little Idrissite empire, pulverized under the weight of
these expanding powers, became once more a dust of disintegrated tribes.
It was only in the eleventh century that the dust again conglomerated.
Two Arab tribes from the desert of the Hedjaz, suddenly driven westward
by the Fatimites, entered Morocco, not with a small military
expedition, as the Arabs had hitherto done, but with a horde of
emigrants reckoned as high as 200,000 families; and this first
colonizing expedition was doubtless succeeded by others.
To strengthen their hold in Morocco the Arab colonists embraced the
dynastic feuds of the Berbers. They inaugurated a period of general
havoc which destroyed what little prosperity had survived the break-up
of the Idrissite rule, and many Berber tribes took refuge in the
mountains; but others remained and were merged with the invaders,
reforming into new tribes of mixed Berber and Arab blood. This invasion
was almost purely destructive, it marks one of the most desolate periods
in the progress of the "wasteful Empire" of Moghreb.
