Al Hoceima
Al Hoceima is a city in the north of Morocco, on the northern edge of the Rif Mountains and on the Mediterranean coast. It is the capital city of the Al Hoceima Province, it is situated in the territory of the Ait Waryagher and Ibeqquyen tribes of the Rif region, who speak a Riffian variety of the Berber language locally called Tmaziɣt. The city is a known tourists' destination despite its small size, it has a population of about 60,000 to 90,000. The inhabitants of the city speak Berber. Al Hoceima is cited among safest Moroccan cities, it is characterized by its astonishing sandy and shingly beaches like Cala Iris, Torres and Tala Yussef, its mountainous rocky areas. Parts of Al Hoceima are being integrated into the municipality through the construction of new roads to ease transportation and new faculties are being built to better educational systems in the city; the name Al Hoceima is paradoxically an arabization of what was an Arabic derived word introduced by the Spaniards since it comes from a Spanish word, itself Andalusi in Arabic origin.
After independence, the Moroccan government established an Arabized name for Alhucemas coming up with Al Hoceima, following standard French spelling. The Spanish started to develop Al Hoceima around 1925. General Sanjurjo landed with his troops on the beach of Al Hoceima during the Rif Rebellion and claimed the territory for Spain, he named the territory Villa Sanjurjo, after himself. Many locals still refer to the city as "Villa"; the Spanish troops built houses and hospitals above the beach, creating the beginnings of the town. In the 1920s and 1930s, the town had no growth in population, its name changed from Villa Sanjurjo to Villa Alhucemas, the few streets above the beach were still occupied by Spanish soldiers and their families. The first mayor was Florian Gómez Aroca. After Morocco gained its independence in 1955, Al Hoceima developed and the Moroccan government changed its name from the Spanish Villa Alhucemas to Al Hoceima, a surprising Arabization of a Spanish word of Arabic origin..
The years from 1956 to 1959 were dark years for the Riffians for the people in Al Hoceima and Nador. Morocco's Hassan II became the military-commander and under his ruling a large number of people were killed in the Rif in the years 1956 to 1959. In the early 1950s and 1960s, when many of the city's inhabitants were poor, the small houses were all painted white and blue; these colors, representing the sky, were considered the city's official colors. When there was financial growth, people began painting their houses in other colors; the town and surrounding villages were hit by two large earthquakes within ten years. The first (Mw 6.0 event occurred on May 26, 1994 and the second event occurred on February 24, 2004, killing more than 560 people. In 2007, Al Hoceima's mayor stated that all new houses would be painted white and blue in an effort to restore the city's traditional appearance. Al Hoceima is now a moderate-size city with a population of 90,000 recorded in the 2014 Moroccan census, it has the second-largest port of the Rif Region.
The first schools built by the Spanish colonials, a Spanish catholic church, still exist today. Playa Quemado, where General Sanjurjo and his troops landed in 1925, is Al Hoceima's most popular beach, it is located just below the luxurious Mohammed V hotel, which includes a tennis court, cocktail bar and nightclub. On October 28, 2016, a fish-seller, Mouhcine Fikri, was crushed to death in a garbage truck while trying to retrieve fish confiscated by the authorities, which led to large anti-government protests in November 2016 known as Hirak Rif. Protests continued into 2017, spreading to other parts of the country; the city's income is based on tourism. Many of its former inhabitants migrated to Europe during the 1960s through 1980s. Many return to Al Hoceima during the summer, encouraging investment. Since the 1990s, many western-oriented businesses have opened in Al Hoceima, including pizza parlors, fast food restaurants and clothing stores; the city is served by the Cherif Al Idrissi Airport.
There is Instituto Español Melchor de Jovellanos. Rif Spanish Morocco Nice, France Tuzla and Herzegovina Almería, Spain Almuñécar, Spain The Hague, Netherlands Schaerbeek, Belgium Nador Rif News. Alhoceima.info Portal de información de la ciudad de Alhoceima'
Conquest of Asilah
The Portuguese conquest of Asilah from the Wattasids took place on 24 August 1471. Continuing with his policy of expansion of the Portuguese territories in Morocco, with the spirit of Crusade against the Muslims always present, King Afonso V of Portugal set plans to conquer Tangier, but subsequently decided to conquer Arzila. Departing from the Portuguese town of Lagos with an army of about 30,000 men and 400 ships, Afonso V arrived at the Moroccan coast on the afternoon of 22 August 1471; the Portuguese King summoned his Council and decided to attack Asilah on the morning of the following day. There was a terrible storm and a number of Portuguese ships were lost, it poured rain the entire three days of the siege. The storm was so severe it prevented the ships from laying down a cannonball bombardment, only two pieces of heavy artillery were brought to shore. After a troubled disembarkation that resulted in the death of more than 200 men caused by strong winds and waves, Afonso's army reached the shore and laid siege to the city of Asilah, conquering it after a hard battle on 24 of August, 1471.
The Count of Valença, Henrique de Menezes, was appointed as the first Portuguese governor of Asilah by King Afonso V. The victory at Asilah paved the way for the conquest of Tangier. In the late 15th century, a set of four large tapestries was commissioned to commemorate the battle, they were woven by Flemish weavers in Belgium. The tapestries are notable for their portrayal of a contemporary event; the works are regarded as among the finest Gothic tapestries in existence. Portuguese Empire Wattasid dynasty House of Avis Battle of Ceuta Edward of Portugal Henry the Navigator Fernando, the Saint Prince
Idrisid dynasty
The Idrisids were an Arab Zaydi-Shia dynasty of Morocco, ruling from 788 to 974. Named after the founder Idriss I, the great grandchild of Hasan ibn Ali, the Idrisids and the Hamroun are considered to be the founders of the first Moroccan state; the founder of the dynasty was Idris ibn Abdallah, who traced his ancestry back to Ali ibn Abi Talib and his wife Fatimah, daughter of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad. After the Battle of Fakhkh, near Mecca, between the Abbasids and a Shiite party, Idris ibn Abdallah fled to the Maghreb, he first arrived in Tangier, the most important city of Morocco at the time, by 788 he had settled in Volubilis. The powerful Awraba Berbers of Volubilis took him in and made him their'imam'; the Awraba tribe had supported Kusayla in his struggle against the Ummayad armies in the 670s and 680s. By the second half of the 8th century they had settled in northern Morocco, where their leader Ishak had his base in the Roman town of Volubilis. By this time the Awraba were Muslim, but lived in an area where most tribes were either Christian, Khariji or pagan.
The Awraba seem to have welcomed a Sharifi imam as a way to strengthen their political position. Idris I, active in the political organization of the Awraba, began by asserting his authority and working toward the subjugation of the Christian and Jewish tribes. In 789 he founded a settlement south east of Volubilis, called Medinat Fas. In 791 Idris I was killed by an Abbasid agent. Though he left no male heir, shortly after his death, his concubine Lalla Kanza bint Uqba al-Awrabi, bore him his only son and successor, Idris II. Idris' loyal Arab ex-slave and companion Rashid brought up the boy and took on himself the regency of the state, on behalf of the Awraba. In 801 Rashid was killed by the Abbasids. In the following year, at the age of 11 years, Idris II was proclaimed imam by the Awraba. Though he had spread his authority across much of northern Morocco, as far west as Tlemcen, Idris I had been dependent on the Awraba leadership. Idris II began his rule with the weakening of Awraba power by welcoming Arab settlers in Walili and by appointing two Arabs as his vizier and qadi.
Thus he transformed himself from a protégé of the Awraba into their sovereign. The Awraba leader Ishak responded by plotting against his life with the Aghlabids of Tunisia. Idris reacted by having his former protector Ishak killed, in 809 moved his seat of government from the Awraba dominated Walili to Fes, where he founded a new settlement named Al-'Aliya. Idriss II developed the city of Fez, established earlier by his father as a Berber market town. Here he welcomed two waves of Arab immigration: one in 818 from Cordoba and another in 824 from Aghlabid Tunisia, giving Fes a more Arab character than other Maghrebi cities; when Idris II died in 828, the Idrisid state spanned from western Algeria to the Sous in southern Morocco and had become the leading state of Morocco, ahead of the principalities of Sijilmasa and Nekor. The dynasty would decline following Idriss II's death and under his son and successor Muhammad the kingdom was divided amongst seven of his brothers, whereby eight Idrisid statelets formed in Morocco and Algeria.
Muhammad himself came to rule Fes, with only nominal power over his brothers. During this time Islamic and Arabic culture gained a stronghold in the towns and Morocco profited from the trans-Saharan trade, which came to be dominated by Muslim traders. So, the Islamic and Arabic culture only made its influence felt in the towns, with the vast majority of Morocco's population still using the Berber languages and adhering to Islamic heterodox and heretical doctrines; the Idrisids were principally rulers of the towns and had little power over the majority of the country's population. The Idrisid family in turn was berberised, with its members aligning itself with the Zenata tribes of Morocco. In the 870s the family was described by Ibn Qutaybah as being berberised in customs. By the 11th century this process had developed to such an extant, that the family was integrated in the Berber societies of Morocco. In the 11th century the Hammudid family arose among these Berber Idrisids, able to gain power in several cities of northern Morocco and southern Spain.
In 868 the Berber Khariji tribes of Madyuna and Miknasa of the Fes region formed a common front against the Idrisids. From their base in Sefrou they were able to occupy Fes, his brother Yahya was able to establish himself as the new ruler. The Idrisids attacked the Kharijis of Barghawata and Sijilmasa, the Sunnis of Nekor multiple times, but were never able to include these territories in their state. In 917 the Miknasa and its leader Masala ibn Habus, acting on behalf of their Fatimid allies, attacked Fes and forced Yahya ibn Idris to recognize Fatimid suzerainty, before deposing him in 921. Hassan I al-Hajam managed to wrest control of Fez from 925 until 927 but he was the last of the dynasty to hold power there. From Fes, the Miknasa began a violent hunt across Morocco for members of the Idrisid family, seeking to exterminate them. Most of the Idrisids settled among the Jbala tribes in North-west Morocco where they were protected by the reluctance of tribal elders to have the local descendants of Muhammad's family be wiped out.
In the Jbala region they had a stronghold in the fortress of Hajar an-Nasar, from where they tried to restore their power base, until the last Idrisid made the mistake of switching allegiances back to the Fatimids, was deposed and executed in 985 by the Cordobans. Idris
Tangier
Tangier is a major city in northwestern Morocco. It is on the Maghreb coast at the western entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar, where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Spartel; the town is the capital of the Tanger-Tetouan-Al Hoceima region, as well as the Tangier-Assilah prefecture of Morocco. Many civilisations and cultures have influenced the history of Tangier, starting from before the 5th century. Between the period of being a strategic Berber town and a Phoenician trading centre to the independence era around the 1950s, Tangier was a nexus for many cultures. In 1923, it was considered as having international status by foreign colonial powers, became a destination for many European and American diplomats, spies and businessmen; the city is undergoing rapid development and modernisation. Projects include new tourism projects along the bay, a modern business district called Tangier City Centre, a new airport terminal, a new football stadium. Tangier's economy is set to benefit from the new Tanger-Med port.
The Carthaginian name of the city is variously recorded as TNG, TNGʾ, TYNGʾ, TTGʾ. The old Berber name was Tingi, which Ruiz connects to Berber tingis, meaning "marsh"; the Greeks claimed that Tingís had been named for a daughter of the titan Atlas, supposed to support the vault of heaven nearby. Latin Tingis developed into Portuguese Tânger, Spanish Tánger, French Tanger, which entered English as "Tangier" and "Tangiers"; the Arabic name of the town is Tanjah, the modern Berber name is Tanja. Tangier was formally known as Colonia Julia Tingi following its elevation to colony status during the Roman Empire, it is sometimes known as Boughaz. The nicknames "Bride of the North" and "Door of Africa" reference its position in far northwestern Africa near the Strait of Gibraltar. Tangier was founded as a Phoenician colony as early as the 10th century BCE and certainly by the 8th century BCE; the majority of Berber tombs around Tangier had Punic jewelry by the 6th century BCE, speaking to abundant trade by that time.
The Carthaginians developed it as an important port of their empire by the 5th century BCE. It was involved with the expeditions of Hanno the Navigator along the West African coast; the city long preserved its Phoenician traditions, issuing bronze coins under the Mauretanian kings with Punic script and others under the Romans bearing Augustus and Agrippa's heads and Latin script obverse but an image of the Canaanite god Baal reverse. Some editions of Procopius place his Punic stelae in Tingis rather than Tigisis; the Greeks knew this town as Tingis and, with some modification, record the Berber legends of its founding. Tinjis, daughter of Atlas and widow of Antaeus, slept with Hercules and bore him the son Syphax. After Tinjis' death, Syphax founded the port and named it in her honour; the gigantic skeleton and tomb of Antaeus were tourist attractions for ancient visitors. The Caves of Hercules, where he rested on Cape Spartel during his labors, remain one today. Tingis came under the control of the Roman ally Mauretania during the Punic Wars.
Q. Sertorius, in his war against Sulla's regime in Rome and held Tingis for a number of years in the 70s BCE, it was subsequently returned to the Mauretanians but established as a republican free city during the reign of Bocchus III in 38 BCE. Tingis received certain municipal privileges under Augustus and became a Roman colony under Claudius, who made it the provincial capital of Mauretania Tingitana. Under Diocletian's 291 reforms, it became the seat of Tingitana's governor. At the same time, the province itself shrank to little more than the ports along the coast and, owing to the Great Persecution, Tingis was the scene of the martyrdoms by beheading of Saints Marcellus and Cassian in 298. Tingis remained the largest settlement in its province in the 4th century and was developed. Invited by Count Boniface, who feared war with the empress dowager, tens of thousands of Vandals under Gaiseric crossed into North Africa in 429 and occupied Tingis and Mauretania as far east as Calama; when Boniface learned that he and the empress had been manipulated against each other by Aetius, he attempted to compel the Vandals to return to Spain but was instead defeated at Calama in 431.
The Vandals lost the rest of Mauretania in various Berber uprisings. Tingis was reconquered by Belisarius, the general of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, in 533 as part of the Vandalic War; the new provincial administration was moved, however, to the more defensible base at Septem. Byzantine control yielded to pressure from Visigoth Spain around 618. Count Julian of Ceuta led the last defences of Tangier against the Muslim invasion of North Africa. Medieval romance made his betrayal of Christendom a personal vendetta against the Visigoth king Roderic over the honour of his daughter, but Tangier at least fell to a siege by the forces of the Arabian convert Musa bin Nusayr sometime between 707 and 711. While he moved south through central Morocco, he had his deputy at Tangier Tariq ibn Zayid launch the beginning of the Muslim invasion of Spain. Under the Umayyads, Tangier served as the capital of the Moroccan district (Maghr
Portuguese Empire
The Portuguese Empire known as the Portuguese Overseas or the Portuguese Colonial Empire, was one of the largest and longest-lived empires in world history. It existed for six centuries, from the capture of Ceuta in 1415, to the handover of Portuguese Macau to China in 1999; the empire began in the 15th century, from the early 16th century it stretched across the globe, with bases in North and South America and various regions of Asia and Oceania. The Portuguese Empire has been described as the first global empire in history, a description given to the Spanish Empire; the Portuguese Empire originated at the beginning of the Age of Discovery, the power and influence of the Kingdom of Portugal would expand across the globe. In the wake of the Reconquista, Portuguese sailors began exploring the coast of Africa and the Atlantic archipelagos in 1418–19, using recent developments in navigation and maritime technology such as the caravel, with the aim of finding a sea route to the source of the lucrative spice-trade.
In 1488 Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope, in 1498 Vasco da Gama reached India. In 1500, either by an accidental landfall or by the crown's secret design, Pedro Álvares Cabral discovered Brazil on the South American coast. Over the following decades, Portuguese sailors continued to explore the coasts and islands of East Asia, establishing forts and factories as they went. By 1571 a string of naval outposts connected Lisbon to Nagasaki along the coasts of Africa, the Middle East and South Asia; this commercial network and the colonial trade had a substantial positive impact on Portuguese economic growth, when it accounted for about a fifth of Portugal's per-capita income. When King Philip II of Spain inherited the Portuguese crown in 1580 there began a 60-year union between Spain and Portugal known to subsequent historiography as the Iberian Union; the realms continued to have separate administrations. As the King of Spain was King of Portugal, Portuguese colonies became the subject of attacks by three rival European powers hostile to Spain: the Dutch Republic and France.
With its smaller population, Portugal found itself unable to defend its overstretched network of trading posts, the empire began a long and gradual decline. Brazil became the most valuable colony of the second era of empire, until, as part of the wave of independence movements that swept the Americas during the early 19th century, it broke away in 1822; the third era of empire covers the final stage of Portuguese colonialism after the independence of Brazil in the 1820s. By the colonial possessions had been reduced to forts and plantations along the African coastline, Portuguese Timor, enclaves in India and China; the 1890 British Ultimatum led to the contraction of Portuguese ambitions in Africa. Under António Salazar, the Second Portuguese Republic made some ill-fated attempts to cling on to its last remaining colonies. Under the ideology of Pluricontinentalism, the regime renamed its colonies "overseas provinces" while retaining the system of forced labour, from which only a small indigenous élite was exempt.
In 1961 India annexed Goa and Dahomey annexed Fort of São João Baptista de Ajudá. The Portuguese Colonial War in Africa lasted from 1961 until the final overthrow of the Estado Novo regime in 1974; the so-called Carnation Revolution of April 1974 in Lisbon led to the hasty decolonization of Portuguese Africa and to the 1975 annexation of Portuguese Timor by Indonesia. Decolonization prompted the exodus of nearly all the Portuguese colonial settlers and of many mixed-race people from the colonies. Portugal returned Macau to China in 1999; the only overseas possessions to remain under Portuguese rule, the Azores and Madeira, both had overwhelmingly Portuguese populations, Lisbon subsequently changed their constitutional status from "overseas provinces" to "autonomous regions". The origin of the Kingdom of Portugal lay in the reconquista, the gradual reconquest of the Iberian peninsula from the Moors. After establishing itself as a separate kingdom in 1139, Portugal completed its reconquest of Moorish territory by reaching Algarve in 1249, but its independence continued to be threatened by neighbouring Castile until the signing of the Treaty of Ayllón in 1411.
Free from threats to its existence and unchallenged by the wars fought by other European states, Portuguese attention turned overseas and towards a military expedition to the Muslim lands of North Africa. There were several probable motives for their first attack, on the Marinid Sultanate, it offered the opportunity to continue the Christian crusade against Islam. In 1415 an attack was made on Ceuta, a strategically located North African Muslim enclave along the Mediterranean Sea, one of the terminal ports of the trans-Saharan gold and slave trades; the conquest was a military success, marked one of the first steps in Portuguese expansion beyond the Iberian Peninsula, but it proved costly to defend against the Muslim forces that soon besieged it. The Portuguese were unable to use it as a base for further expansion into the hinterland, the trans-Saharan caravans shifted their routes to bypass Ceuta and/or used alternative Muslim ports. Although Ceuta proved to be a disappointment for the Portuguese
Piracy
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable items or properties. Those who engage in acts of piracy are called pirates; the earliest documented instances of piracy were in the 14th century BC, when the Sea Peoples, a group of ocean raiders, attacked the ships of the Aegean and Mediterranean civilizations. Narrow channels which funnel shipping into predictable routes have long created opportunities for piracy, as well as for privateering and commerce raiding. Historic examples include the waters of Gibraltar, the Strait of Malacca, the Gulf of Aden, the English Channel, whose geographic structures facilitated pirate attacks. A land-based parallel is the ambushing of travelers by bandits and brigands in highways and mountain passes. Privateering uses similar methods to piracy, but the captain acts under orders of the state authorizing the capture of merchant ships belonging to an enemy nation, making it a legitimate form of war-like activity by non-state actors.
While the term can include acts committed in the air, on land, or in other major bodies of water or on a shore, in cyberspace, as well as the fictional possibility of space piracy, this article focuses on maritime piracy. It does not include crimes committed against people traveling on the same vessel as the perpetrator. Piracy or pirating is the name of a specific crime under customary international law and the name of a number of crimes under the municipal law of a number of states. In the early 21st century, seaborne piracy against transport vessels remains a significant issue in the waters between the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, off the Somali coast, in the Strait of Malacca and Singapore. Today, pirates armed with automatic weapons, such as assault rifles, machine guns and rocket propelled grenades use small motorboats to attack and board ships, a tactic that takes advantage of the small number of crew members on modern cargo vessels and transport ships, they use larger vessels, known as "mother ships", to supply the smaller motorboats.
The international community is facing many challenges in bringing modern pirates to justice, as these attacks occur in international waters. Some nations have used their naval forces to protect private ships from pirate attacks and to pursue pirates, some private vessels use armed security guards, high-pressure water cannons, or sound cannons to repel boarders, use radar to avoid potential threats; the English word "pirate" comes from the Latin term purateivitia and that from Greek πειρατής, "brigand", in turn from πειράομαι, "I attempt", from πεῖρα, "attempt, experience". The meaning of the Greek word peiratēs is "one who attacks"; the word is cognate to peril. The term first appeared in English c. 1300. Spelling did not become standardised until the eighteenth century, spellings such as "pirrot", "pyrate" and "pyrat" occurred until this period, it may be reasonable to assume that piracy has existed for as long as the oceans were plied for commerce. As early as 258 AD, the Gothic-Herulic fleet ravaged towns on the coasts of the Black Sea and Sea of Marmara.
The Aegean coast suffered similar attacks a few years later. In 264, the Goths reached Galatia and Cappadocia, Gothic pirates landed on Cyprus and Crete. In the process, the Goths took thousands into captivity. In 286 AD, Carausius, a Roman military commander of Gaulish origins, was appointed to command the Classis Britannica, given the responsibility of eliminating Frankish and Saxon pirates, raiding the coasts of Armorica and Belgic Gaul. In the Roman province of Britannia, Saint Patrick was enslaved by Irish pirates; the most known and far-reaching pirates in medieval Europe were the Vikings, seaborne warriors from Scandinavia who raided and looted between the 8th and 12th centuries, during the Viking Age in the Early Middle Ages. They raided the coasts and inland cities of all Western Europe as far as Seville, attacked by the Norse in 844. Vikings attacked the coasts of North Africa and Italy and plundered all the coasts of the Baltic Sea; some Vikings ascending the rivers of Eastern Europe as far as the Black Sea and Persia.
The lack of centralized powers all over Europe during the Middle Ages enabled pirates to attack ships and coastal areas all over the continent. In the Late Middle Ages, the Frisian pirates known as Arumer Zwarte Hoop led by Pier Gerlofs Donia and Wijerd Jelckama, fought against the troops of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V with some success. Toward the end of the 9th century, Moorish pirate havens were established along the coast of southern France and northern Italy. In 846 Moor raiders sacked the extra muros Basilicas of Saint Paul in Rome. In 911, the bishop of Narbonne was unable to return to France from Rome because the Moors from Fraxinet controlled all the passes in the Alps. Moor pirates operated out of the Balearic Islands in the 10th century. From 824 to 961 Arab pirates in the Emirate of Crete raided the entire Mediterranean. In the 14th century, raids by Moor pirates forced the Venetian Duke of Crete to ask Venice to keep its fleet on constant guard. After the Slavic invasions of the former Roman province of Dalmatia in the 5th and 6th centuries, a tribe called the Narentines revived the old Illyrian piratical habits and raided the Adriatic Sea starting in the 7th
Ismail Ibn Sharif
Moulay Ismail ibn Sharif, born around 1645 in Sijilmassa and died on 22 March 1727 at Meknes, was the Sultan of Morocco from 1672–1727, as the second ruler of the Alaouite dynasty. He was the seventh son of Moulay Sharif and was governor of the Kingdom of Fez and the north of Morocco from 1667 until the death of his half-brother, Sultan Moulay Rashid in 1672, he was proclaimed sultan at Fez, but spent several years in conflict with his nephew Moulay Ahmed ben Mehrez, who claimed the throne, until the latter's death in 1687. Moulay Ismail's 55 year reign is the longest of any sultan of Morocco; the reign of Moulay Ismail marked a high watermark for Moroccan power. His military successes are explained by the creation of a strong army relying on the'Guichs' and on the Black Guard, black slaves who were devoted to him; as a result, the central power could be less reliant on tribes which rebelled. Moulay Ismail campaigned against the Ottomans in Algiers and their vassals and expelled the Europeans from the ports which they had occupied: Larache, Asilah and Tangiers.
He nearly took Ceuta. Ismail controlled a fleet of corsairs based at Salé-le-Vieux and Salé-le-Neuf, which supplied him with Christian slaves and weapons through their raids in the Mediterranean and all the way to the Black Sea, he established significant diplomatic relations with foreign powers the Kingdom of France, Great Britain, Spain. Compared to his contemporary, Louis XIV, due to his charisma and authority, Moulay Ismail was nicknamed the'bloody king' by the Europeans due to his cruelty and exaction of summary justice, he is known in his native country as the "Warrior King". He undertook the construction of a grand palace at Meknes, monumental gates, more than forty kilometres of walls and numerous mosques, he died following a sickness. After his death, his supporters became so powerful that they controlled the country and dethroning the sultans at will. Born in 1645 at Sijilmassa, Moulay Ismail ben Sharif was the son of Sharif ibn Ali, prince of Tafilalt and first sovereign of the Alaouite dynasty.
His mother was a black slave. He claimed descent from Hassan ad-Dakhil, a 21st generation descendant of Muhammad, from Az-Zakiya, a 17th generation descendant of Muhammad who had installed himself at Sijilmassa in 1266. After the death of the Saadi Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur, Morocco entered a period of unrest, during which his sons fought with one another for the throne, while the country was parcelled up by the different military leaders and religious authorities. From the beginning of the reign of Zidan Abu Maali in 1613, the Saadi sultanate was weak; the Zaouia of Dila controlled central Morocco, the Zaouia of Illigh established its influence from Souss to the Draa River, the marabout Sidi al-Ayachi took possession of the northwestern plains, the Atlantic coast as far as Taza, the Republic of Salé became an independent state at the mouth of the Bou Regreg, the city of Tétouan became a city-state under the control of the Naqsis family. At Tafilalt, the Alouites were appointed by the local people in order to check the influence of the Zaouias of Illigh and Dila.
They were an independent emirate from 1631. Three rulers preceded Ismail ben Sharif: his father, Moulay Sharif his two half-brothers; as the first sovereign of the Alaouite dynasty from 1631, Moulay Sharif succeeded in keeping Tafilalt outside the authority of the Zaouia of Dila. He abdicated in 1636 and his eldest son, Moulay Muhammad ibn Sharif succeeded him. Under the latter's reign, the Alaouite realm expanded into the north of the country, to Tafna and the Draa river, his half-brother, Moulay Rashid rebelled against him and managed to kill him on 3 August 1664, in a battle on the plain of Angad. Moulay Ismail was rewarded by being appointed governor of Meknes. There, Ismail devoted himself to the region's agriculture and commerce, in order to increase his wealth, while Moulay Rashid reigned as Emir of Tafilalt and as Sultan of Morocco after his conquest of Fez on 27 May 1664. Rashid further entrusted Ismail with military control of the North of Morocco and made him feudatory caliph and vice-roy of Fez in 1667, while he fought in the south of Morocco.
Rashid conquered the Zaouia of Dila in 1668 and took two years to overcome rebels at Marrakesh before he broke into the city in 1669. On 6 April 1670, Ismail celebrated his first marriage in the presence of his brother Rashid. On 25 July, he put to death sixty brigands from Oulad Djama, by crucifying them on the wall of the Borj el-Jadid in Fez. While Rashid continued his campaigns against the independent tribes of the High Atlas, he was killed on 9 April 1672 at Marrakesh, after falling off his horse. On 13 April, after he had learnt of Rashid's death, Moulay Ismail rushed to Fez, where he took possession of his brother's treasury and proclaimed himself Sultan of Morocco on 14 April 1672, at the age of twenty-six; this proclamation occurred around 2pm and a grand ceremony followed. The whole population of Fez, including the nobles and sharifs swore to be loyal to the new sovereign, as did the tribes and cities of the kingdom of Fez, who sent embassies and presents to him. Only Marrakesh and the region around it did not send an embassy.
Ismail fixed his capital on account of the water supply and climate of the town. After seizing power, Moulay Ismail faced several rebellions: most significant was the revolt of his nephew Moulay Ahmed ben Mehrez, son of Moulay Murad Mehrez the rebellions of his brothers, including Harran ibn Sharif, who assumed the title of King o
Morocco
