VI
THE SAADIANS
Meanwhile, behind all the Berber turmoil a secret work of religious
propaganda was going on. The Arab element had been crushed but not
extirpated. The crude idolatrous wealth-loving Berbers apparently
dominated, but whenever there was a new uprising or a new invasion it
was based on the religious discontent perpetually stirred up by
Mahometan agents. The longing for a Mahdi, a Saviour, the craving for
purification combined with an opportunity to murder and rob, always gave
the Moslem apostle a ready opening; and the downfall of the Merinids was
the result of a long series of religious movements to which the European
invasion gave an object and a war-cry.
The Saadians were Cherifian Arabs, newcomers from Arabia, to whom the
lax Berber paganism was abhorrent. They preached a return to the creed
of Mahomet, and proclaimed the Holy War against the hated Portuguese,
who had set up fortified posts all along the west coast of Morocco.
It is a mistake to suppose that hatred of the Christian has always
existed among the North African Moslems. The earlier dynasties, and
especially the great Almohad Sultans, were on friendly terms with the
Catholic powers of Europe, and in the thirteenth century a treaty
assured to Christians in Africa full religious liberty, excepting only
the right to preach their doctrine in public places. There was a
Catholic diocese at Fez, and afterward at Marrakech under Gregory IX,
and there is a letter of the Pope thanking the "Miromilan" (the Emir El
Moumenin) for his kindness to the Bishop and the friars living in his
dominions. Another Bishop was recommended by Innocent IV to the Sultan
of Morocco; the Pope even asked that certain strongholds should be
assigned to the Christians in Morocco as places of refuge in times of
disturbance. But the best proof of the friendly relations between
Christians and infidels is the fact that the Christian armies which
helped the Sultans of Morocco to defeat Spain and subjugate Algeria and
Tunisia were not composed of "renegadoes" or captives, as is generally
supposed, but of Christian mercenaries, French and English, led by
knights and nobles, and fighting for the Sultan of Morocco exactly as
they would have fought for the Duke of Burgundy, the Count of Flanders,
or any other Prince who offered high pay and held out the hope of rich
spoils. Any one who has read Villehardouin and Joinville will own that
there is not much to choose between the motives animating these noble
freebooters and those which caused the Crusaders to loot Constantinople
"on the way" to the Holy Sepulchre. War in those days was regarded as a
lucrative and legitimate form of business, exactly as it was when the
earlier heroes started out to take the rich robber-town of Troy.
The Berbers have never been religious fanatics, and the Vicomte de
Foucauld, when he made his great journey of exploration in the Atlas in
1883, remarked that antagonism to the foreigner was always due to the
fear of military espionage and never to religious motives. This equally
applies to the Berbers of the sixteenth century, when the Holy War
against Catholic Spain and Portugal was preached. The real cause of the
sudden deadly hatred of the foreigner was twofold. The Spaniards were
detested because of the ferocious cruelty with which they had driven the
Moors from Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella, and the Portuguese
because of the arrogance and brutality of their military colonists in
the fortified trading stations of the west coast. And both were feared
as possible conquerors and overlords.
There was a third incentive also: the Moroccans, dealing in black slaves
for the European market, had discovered the value of white slaves in
Moslem markets. The Sultan had his fleet, and each coast-town its
powerful pirate vessels, and from pirate-nests like Salé and Tangier the
raiders continued, till well on into the first half of the nineteenth
century, to seize European ships and carry their passengers to the
slave-markets of Fez and Marrakech.[A] The miseries endured by these
captives, and so poignantly described in John Windus's travels, and in
the "Naufrage du Brick Sophie" by Charles Cochelet,[B] show how savage
the feeling against the foreigner had become.
[Footnote A: The Moroccans being very poor seamen, these corsair-vessels
were usually commanded and manned by Christian renegadoes and Turks.]
[Footnote B: Cochelet was wrecked on the coast near Agadir early in the
nineteenth century and was taken with his fellow-travellers overland to
El-Ksar and Tangier, enduring terrible hardships by the way.]
With the advent of the Cherifian dynasties, which coincided with this
religious reform, and was in fact brought about by it, Morocco became a
closed country, as fiercely guarded as Japan against European
penetration. Cut off from civilizing influences, the Moslems isolated
themselves in a lonely fanaticism, far more racial than religious, and
the history of the country from the fall of the Merinids till the French
annexation is mainly a dull tale of tribal warfare.
The religious movement of the sixteenth century was led and fed by
zealots from the Sahara. One of them took possession of Rabat and
Azemmour, and preached the Holy War; other "feudal fiefs" (as M.
Augustin Bernard has well called them) were founded at Tameslout, Ilegh,
Tamgrout: the tombs of the _marabouts_ who led these revolts are
scattered all along the west coast, and are still objects of popular
veneration. The unorthodox saint worship which marks Moroccan Moslemism,
and is commemorated by the countless white _koubbas_ throughout the
country, grew up chiefly at the time of the religious revival under the
Saadian dynasty, and almost all the "Moulays" and "Sidis" venerated
between Tangier and the Atlas were warrior monks who issued forth from
their fortified _Zaouias_ to drive the Christians out of Africa.
The Saadians were probably rather embarrassed by these fanatics, whom
they found useful to oppose to the Merinids, but troublesome where their
own plans were concerned. They were ambitious and luxury-loving princes,
who invaded the wealthy kingdom of the Soudan, conquered the Sultan of
Timbuctoo, and came back laden with slaves and gold to embellish
Marrakech and spend their treasure in the usual demoralizing orgies.
Their exquisite tombs at Marrakech commemorate in courtly language the
superhuman virtues of a series of rulers whose debaucheries and vices
were usually cut short by assassination. Finally another austere and
fanatical mountain tribe surged down on them, wiped them out, and ruled
in their stead.
