'Drums, Banners and Baraka: Symbols of authority during the first century of Marīnid rule, 1250-1350

A. K. Bennison (ed.), The Articulation of Power in Medieval Iberia and the Maghrib, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2014), pp. 195-216. Chapter 10 Drums, Banners and Baraka: Symbols of authority during the first century of Marīnid rule, 1250-1350. Amira K. Bennison Abstract This chapter will explore the ways in which the Marīnid sultans expressed their authority to their subjects, especially those living beyond Fes, their capital city, during the first century of Marīnid rule. It will begin with analysis of the textual image of kingship presented in Marīnid chronicles and then consider how that image was disseminated to the population. The construction of palatine cities - Dār al-Bayḍāʾ (Fās al-Jadīd), al-Binya (Algeciras) and al-Manṣūra (Tlemcen) - and madrasas were important marks of Marīnid authority in urban space. However, as a dynasty which ruled over a large rural tribal population, the Marīnids also needed to express their power and authority in the countryside and in provincial towns. The Marīnids made their mark on the countryside, populated by frequently recalcitrant tribes, by means of military progresses (ḥarakāt) between their fortresses and towns, and by military engagements in the rural environment during which they carried a number of symbols of monarchy, from the historically resonant Qurʾān of ʿUthmān to generic items such as drums and banners. Key words: Morocco, Marīnids, rural legitimation, banners, drums, symbols of rule, ḥaraka, army, jihād, Qurʾān of ʿUthmān. Introduction 250 Using contemporary Maghribī sources such as the anonymous al-Dhakīra al-saniyya,1 Ibn Abī Zarʿ’s Rawḍ al-qirṭās,2 Ibn al-Aḥmar’s Rawḍ al-nisrīn3 and Ibn Khaldūn’s Kitāb al-ʿibar,4 this chapter traces the monarchical image of the early Banū Marīn amīrs and sultans, a construct that relied on several established dimensions of Islamic kingship. It then considers the ways in which they tried to project their sultanic image during their military progresses across the Maghribī countryside and, to a more limited extent, in al-Andalus. Of particular interest is how Marīnid chiefs made the transition from tribal leaders to Islamic monarchs by adopting existing accoutrements of rule during such troop movements. Their monarchical, as opposed to tribal, 1 al-Dhakīra (al-durra) al-saniyya fī taʾrīkh al-dawla al-Marīniyya al-ʿAbd al-Ḥaqqiyya (The resplendent treasure (pearl) regarding the history of Marīnid rule in the [lineage of] ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq) (Rabat: Dār al-Manṣūr, 1972). (Henceforth al-Dhakīra) As discussed in the introduction to this edition, there is debate about the authorship of this work. Although it is anonymous, many passages are repeated verbatim in Ibn Abī Zarʿ’s Rawḍ al-qirṭās (see note 2), leading many historians to attribute the Dhakīra to Ibn Abī Zarʿ as well. 2 Alī b. Abī Zarʿ, al-Anīs al-muṭrib bi-rawḍ al-qirṭās fī akhbār mulūk al-Maghrib wa-taʾrīkh madīnat Fās, (The delightful companion in the garden of paper concerning the affairs of the kings of the Maghrib and the history of the city of Fes) ed. Abdelwahab Benmansour (Rabat: Imprimerie Royale, 1999). (Henceforth Rawḍ al-qirṭās) 3 Ibn el-Aḥmar, Histoire des Benî Merîn, Rois de Fâs, intitulée Rawḍat En-Nisrîn, ed. and trans. Ghaoutsi Bouali and George Marçais [Publications de la Faculté des Lettres d’Alger, vol. 55] (Paris: Geuthner, 1917). (Henceforth Rawḍ al-nisrīn) 4 Ibn Khaldūn, Kitāb al-ʿibar wa-dīwān al-mubtadaʾ wa’l-khabar fī ayyām al-ʿArab wa’l-ʿAjam wa’l-Barbar (The book of admonitions and the collection of causes and effects in the days of the Arabs, Persians and Berbers), ed. Yūsuf A. Dāghir, 7 volumes (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-Lubnānī, 1956), vol. 7 (henceforth Kitāb al-ʿibar); For the French translation see Ibn Khaldoun, Histoire des Berbères et des Dynasties musulmanes de l’Afrique septentrionale, trans. Baron de Slane, 4 volumes (Paris: Geuthner, 1956), vol. 4. (henceforth Histoire des Berbères) 251 character was signalled by the use of items associated with royalty such as banners, drums, and a luxuriously appointed caravan. Banners (rāyāt, bunūd) in particular were foregrounded as a symbol of monarchical power due to their potential and actual usage in jihād campaigns (ghazwāt) in al-Andalus which transformed tribal military force into Islamic power and acted as a complement to urban and textual paradigms of legitimation. Since the majority of the sources are panegyric chronicles written for fourteenth-century Marīnid patrons, they indulge in a back projection of idealised monarchical attributes to the early decades of the dynasty in the thirteenth century and before. The image of the monarch presented is thus a mature notion of Marīnid kingship which presents a stylised view of the sultan’s image in rural environments rather than the historical reality.5 However, it is an image that the Marīnids sought to live up to in order to legitimise their rule in the countryside, where it was frequently contested, and although the glamour of monarchy may be exaggerated in the accounts of particular events, its consistent parts must have existed as part of the necessary theatre of monarchy, described so well by Geertz in his comparison of Morocco and Indonesia.6 The rise of the Banū Marīn The rise to power of the Zanāta Berber Banū Marīn was largely opportunistic. Pastoral nomads in origin from the Zāb or Figuig region, they gradually moved north towards the Muluwiya basin looking for pasture. Their initial incursions west between the Middle Atlas and Rif mountain ranges occurred during their annual search for summer pasture. Due to their military capabilities, they were co-opted by the Almohads who exploited rivalries between Marīnid clans to tame a portion of the confederation. The most famous example of this co5 A much more critical impression is created by the mystical literature, for instance, which presents a parallel discourse centered on the corrupting nature of power. See Halima Ferhat, “Souverains, saints et fuqahāʾ; le pouvoir en question”, Al-Qanṭara 17: 2 (1996): 375-390. 6 See Clifford Geertz, Islam Observed: religious development in Morocco and Indonesia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968). 252 operation was the participation of the Marīnid chief Maḥyū b. Abī Bakr b. Ḥamāma as a volunteer in the Almohad army at the Battle of Alarcos (al-ʿAraq) in 591/1195 and his subsequent death from the wounds he sustained during the battle, events that figure in later chronicles to enhance the jihād credentials of the dynasty. In 608/1212 the Almohads’ power and prestige were severely dented by their defeat by a Christian coalition at Las Navas de Tolosa (ʿIqāb),7 a defeat which the Dhakīra claims was accompanied by such high mortality that the Maghrib was left depopulated and deserted.8 The Banū Marīn moved into this demographic and political vacuum under their new chief, ʿAbd alḤaqq b. Maḥyū, around 610/1213-14, raiding across what is now northern Morocco like “locusts or a flood”.9 Soon, the Banū Marīn moved to a more sustained conquest of towns and subjugation of tribes. In 613/1216-17 they defeated the Almohad army in battle. At this point internal tensions between the Banū Ḥamāma, led by ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq, and the previously dominant Banū Marīn clan, the Banū ʿAskar, in alliance with the Riyāḥ Arabs, escalated into a conflict which left ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq and one of his sons dead. This could have been the end of Banū Marīn co-operation but the remaining sons of ʿAbd alḤaqq proved to be dynamic and effective leaders of the Marīnid confederation who chastised the Riyāḥ, reintegrated the Banū ʿAskar, and returned to the conquest of urban settlements, capturing Meknes (Shawwāl 643/February-March 1246) then Fes (Rabīʿ I 646/August 1248). As Kably notes, their acquisition of towns made them rulers of a viable swathe of territory from the Rif mountains down to the Umm al-Rabīʿa river.10 To accrue some Islamic legitimacy, they 7 The Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 4: 1 (2012) contains a set of essays which reconsider the impact of Las Navas de Tolosa. 8 al-Dhakīra, p. 26. 9 al-Dhakīra, p. 26. 10 Mohamed Kably, Société, pouvoir et religion au Maroc à la fin du Moyen-Age (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1986), p. 52. 253 claimed to be clients of the prestigious Ḥafṣids in Ifriqīya,11 an Almohad lineage which had proclaimed its independence after the caliph al-Maʾmūn rejected key Almohad doctrines in 626/1229. The south remained in Almohad hands for a further twenty years until the most famous of ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq’s sons, Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb, captured Marrakesh (Muḥarram 668/September 1269) and then Sijilmāsa (Rabīʿ I 672/September 1274), the vital entrepot for the gold trade across the Sahara northwards to Ceuta. This signalled the effective end of Almohad rule and its replacement by the new Marīnid regime across the western Maghrib. The Banū Marīn also secured a foothold in al-Andalus encompassing Algeciras and Ronda but the majority of the Andalusī Almohad empire fell to Castile and to the Naṣrid sultanate of Granada. The establishment and maintenance of Marīnid power and legitimacy was a huge challenge. They did not have a religio-political programme of the Fāṭimid, Almoravid or Almohad kind, therefore their seizure of power did not have an obvious ideological raison d’être. Moreover, the Marīn tribes saw no patent reason why the line of ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq should rule rather than any other Marīn chief. Collateral lineages descended from ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq felt the same. As a result, internecine strife was a constant of the Marīnid era, generating a high level of intra-elite violence. Furthermore, the Marīnids emerged in turbulent political times when old certainties were being brought into question. In al-Andalus, the Christian push forward ended five centuries of Muslim rule in much of the peninsula. In the Mashriq the Mongols killed the last widely recognised ʿAbbasid caliph in Baghdad in 656/1258. As many scholars have noted, these events produced a crisis of legitimacy, but they also created an environment in which everything was ‘up for grabs’ and new political configurations could emerge. The Marīnids responded to these internal and external challenges with verve and vigour. Shatzmiller suggests that although they were not purveyors of a startling religious revolution like Almohad mahdism, the Banū Marīn did see their activities in religious terms and (re)framed them 11 Kably, Société, p. 44. 254 according to Muslim norms.12 For his part, Kably argues that the Marīnids’ extensive intervention in historiography was a product of their awareness of the legitimacy deficit caused by their initial violent seizure of power.13 Other studies have shown how innovative the Marīnids were in their drive to find legitimacy. Beck has painstakingly analysed their rewriting of the history of the Idrīsī dynasty of Fes to legitimise themselves as heirs to an invented tradition, while Gubert explores how they fashioned an epigraphic image of monarchy using vocabulary derived from the mystical lexicon.14 Brown’s chapter in this volume shows their equally inventive co-optation of the mawlid al-nabī. These strategies nurtured their attempted transformation from destructive ‘locusts’ into preservers of the body politic and the society over which they presided. A measure of their success can be found in the anonymous sixteenth century, Taʾrīkh al-Dawla al-Saʿdiyya, a fiercely anti-Saʿdī chronicle which presents the Marīnids and the Waṭṭāsids as true monarchs in comparison to their treacherous, Arab tribal successors.15 The monarchical image of the Banū ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Legitimacy is an amorphous construct with many potential facets which include both inherent features which bestow a right to rule and actual practices of rule which are perceived by society as ‘virtuous’ and thus legitimating. In Arabic terms, legitimation required both lineage (nasab) and individual merit (ḥasab). In pre-modern societies in general, prosperity which 12 Maya Shatzmiller, The Berbers and the Islamic State: the Marinid Experience in pre-Protectorate Morocco (Princeton: Marcus Wiener, 2000), pp. 49-53. 13 Kably, Société, p. 6. 14 Herman Beck, l’Image d’Idris II, ses descendants de Fās et la politique sharīfienne des sultans marīnides (Leiden: Brill, 1989); Serge Gubert, “Pouvoir, sacré et pensée mystique: les écritures emblematiques mérinides (VIIe/XIIIe-IXe/XVe siècles)”, 17: 2 (1996): 391-428. 15 Chronique anonyme de la Dynastie Saʿdienne (Taʾrīkh al-dawla al-Saʿdiyya al-Darʿiyya al- Tāgmādartiyya), ed. Georges S. Colin [Collection de Textes Arabes publiée par l’Institut des Hautes Études Marocaines, vol. 2] (Rabat: Éditions Félix Moncho, 1934). 255 signalled divine approval could also serve to legitimise a dynasty. With respect to the Banū ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq, the chronicles claim Arab ancestry, early conversion to Islam, and inherent baraka as the ‘proofs’ of the dynasty’s right to rule while individual sultans demonstrated their personal merit via military success and generous patronage. In common with other Zanāta, including the Almohad caliph ʿAbd al-Muʾmin,16 the Banū Marīn claimed Arab ancestry via descent from Barr b. Qays b. ʿAylān b. Muḍar.17 Although Arab genealogists such as Ibn Ḥazm considered this individual fictive, this myth of origin was widely cited in fourteenth-century Maghribī chronicles.18 The confederation also included clans who claimed not only to be Arabs but also descendants of the Prophet (shurafāʾ). The Banū ʿAlī, who claimed sharifian ancestry via ʿAlī b. Ṣāliḥ al-Ḥasanī al-Sarāghinī, was such a clan.19 According to the Dhakīra and the Rawḍ al-Nisrīn, Sawṭ al-Nisāʾ, one of ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq’s wives came from the Banū ʿAlī,20 as did one of the wives of his son, Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb.21 Such marriages enabled the Banū ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq to claim maternal sharifian lineage with the aim of enhancing their right to rule. Both ʿAbd al-Muʾmin and Ibn Tūmart had claimed maternal sharifian ancestry and, in a social environment where sharifian ancestry was gaining ground as an indicator of nobility and religious prestige, the Banū Marīn followed suit. This strategy was probably more efficacious in the rural Berber environment than in the urban milieu where the consensus was that sharifian lineage had to be agnatic to be socially valid. In tandem with this genealogical construct, the 16 Maribel Fierro, “Las genealogías de ʿAbd al-Muʾmin, primer califa almohade”, Al-Qanṭara 24 (2003): 77–108. 17 The dependence of the Berbers on fabricated Arab genealogies has been studied by several scholars. See for example, Maya Shatzmiller, “The Myth of the Berbers Origin”, in idem, Berbers and the Islamic State, pp. 17-27; and Fierro, see note 16 above. 18 al-Dhakīra, pp. 14-16; Rawḍ al-Oirṭās, pp. 364-8; Rawḍ al-nisrīn, p. 2 (Arabic); pp. 44-5 (French). 19 al-Dhakīra, p. 21. 20 al-Dhakīra, p. 23; Rawḍ al-nisrīn, p. 10 (Arabic), p. 57 (French). 21 Rawḍ al-qirṭās, p. 493. 256 Marīnid chronicles, almost certainly falsely, attribute to the Marīnid tribes early conversion to Islam based on the reported mass conversion of the Zanāta before Ḥasan b. Nuʿmān c. 80/699-700, glossed in the chronicles as the result of the Zanāta’s ‘brotherhood’ with the Qays Arabs who formed the bulk of Ḥasan’s army.22 This genealogical construct dovetailed with attempts to embue the lineage of ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq with the charisma appropriate to a Muslim ruler. Although Ferhat argues that Islamic monarchs, unlike their Christian counterparts, did not usually have sacred powers and that their might was seen as inherently negative, Azmeh’s view is that religious charisma could inhere in Islamic monarchs.23 In the Maghrib, Ibn Tūmart’s role as the mahdī had endowed him with a charisma which the Almohad caliphs succeeding him had enjoyed to a lesser degree. This had generated a close connection between religiosity and rule, obliging the Marīnids to embue themselves with socially valid religious credentials to complement their (fabricated) genealogy. To do this, the Marīnids had to take into consideration the great social sea-change of the thirteenth century, the spread of urban and rural Sufism across the Maghrib and the entry of Sufis (ṣulaḥāʾ) into the religious elite. The spread of Sufism foregrounded the religious qualities of ascetism (zuhd) and intense piety (waraʿ)24 which were associated in the popular imagination with baraka, a quality which eludes easy definition but which denoted the ability of individuals and sometimes objects to transmit divine beneficence to others. The descendants of the Prophet (shurafāʾ) were another group in whom baraka was perceived to inhere and the Banū ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq were keen to associate 22 al-Dhakīra, p. 17. 23 Ferhat, “Souverains”, pp. 375-6; Aziz al-Azmeh, Muslim Kingship: Power and the Sacred in Muslim, Christian and Pagan polities (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1997), pp. 156-62. 24 See for instance the prevalence of these qualities in al-Jaznāʾī’s list of the preachers (khuṭabāʾ) and imāms of the Qarawiyyīn Mosque. Alī al-Jaznāʾī, Janā zahrat al-ās fī bināʾ madīnat Fās (The freshly-plucked myrtle flower in the construction of the city of Fes), ed. Abdelwahhab Benmansour (Rabat: Imprimerie Royale, 2008), pp. 56-65. 257 themselves with this trend. As Gubert’s research into the development of the Sufi term mawla (lord, master) as a form of sultanic address in the fourteenth century shows, the Marīnid sultans utilised the Sufi lexicon to enhance their religious prestige.25 This strategy was, however, preceded by a sustained attempt to sanctify ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq using characteristics drawn from the repertoire of Sufi holy men in order to infuse the lineage with baraka.26 In a oft-quoted passage found in several Marīnid chronicles, ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq is depicted not just as a successful warrior and tribal chief but also as a rural holy man whose baraka was recognised by the tribes. [ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq] had recognised baraka and his prayers were answered. His conical caps (qalansuwa) and trousers were used for blessed in all the Zanāta tribes. They were taken to women having difficulty giving birth and they made the delivery easier by his baraka. People used to take the water he had used seeking its baraka and they would restore (yunshirūna) their sick using it…He fasted without stopping in the fiercest heat and prayed through the cold nights, only breaking the fast during the festival. He also performed frequent dhikr, wirds and prayed with beads (tasbīḥ)…He was a famous 25 Gubert, “Pouvoir, sacré et pensée mystique”, pp. 402-10. 26 Ferhat, “Souverains”, p. 377. Although Ferhat claims that monarchs did not possess the same magical powers as ‘saints’, her article points more to the struggle between rulers and holy men to claim certain attributes. Texts written by scholars and holy men naturally portray power in negative terms but dynastic chronicles give a different view. Brief mentions of ordinary people visiting the tombs of monarchs such as Abū’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī at Chellah suggest that although the position of the religious elite triumphed, rulers put up a strong struggle to claim baraka for themselves and did secure some support for their claims, creating a constant tension reflected in the accounts of apocryphal meetings between sultans and holy men which would be superfluous if no such tension existed. 258 scholar among the Marīn tribes, they agreed with what he commanded and prohibited.27 Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb, who was probably the originator of this image, is described perpetuating it in his majlis before an audience of shurafāʾ, jurists and mystics from Fes in Ramaḍān 683/NovDec 1284. In addition to rehearsing the previous characteristics, he added, [ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq] fasted and prayed and if he heard about a holy man or scholar, he would visit him and ask for his prayers and hold up his cloak (burnūs) to receive them. When the prayer was finished, he would fold the edges of his cloak, take it to his residence, gather his children and shake out the cloak, saying here is good luck from the prayers of the saints!28 Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb also endeavoured to transform ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq’s grave at Tāfarṭāst in the Gharb into a zāwiya. He had his tomb embellished and a shrine constructed over it, along with a mosque and facilities to feed visitors.29 Given Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb’s role in sanctifying ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq, it is unsurprising that he is the only one of his sons depicted as inheriting his father’s baraka.30 However, his baraka was that of an urban scholar and a king rather than a rural Sufi in keeping with Weber’s paradigm of the ‘routinisation of charisma’. A similar process occurred in the 27 al-Dhakīra, pp. 30-1; Rawḍ al-qirṭās, pp. 372-3. 28 al-Dhakīra, p. 31; Rawḍ al-qirṭās, pp. 375-6. These anecdotes are also reported in Ibn Aḥmar’s Rawḍ al-nisrīn, p. 10 (Arabic), p. 56 (French). 29 al-Dhakīra, p. 34; Kitāb al-ʿibar, vol. 7, p. 435 and Histoire des Berbères, vol. 4, p. 119. 30 According to legend, Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb’s mother, Umm al-Yumn, had a dream when she was still a young virgin in which a moon rose from her chest. A Sufi shaykh interpreted the dream as meaning that she would give birth to a great king who would be famous for his goodness and baraka. Al-Dhakīra, p. 84. 259 adjacent Naṣrid sultanate where Muḥammad I al-Shaykh is depicted as a Sufi holy warrior while his son, Muḥammad II al-Faqīh, exemplified the qualities of an urban scholar. Ibn Abī Zarʿ gives a detailed account of Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb’s punctilious performance of his religious duties during Ramaḍān 683/Nov 1282 which he spent in al-Binya (Algeciras). [Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb] spent Ramaḍān in the qaṣr and performed the Friday prayer in the great mosque and the ṣalāt al-ashfāʿ in the palace courtyard (mashwar) every night. He stood throughout the prayer persevering throughout Ramaḍān and he fasted and praying as much as he was able. The jurists spent each night with him and he talked with them about the arts of knowledge. In the last third of the night he recited litanies (wird) and communed with his Lord.31 This not altogether successful claim to mystical baraka, and by extension sainthood, was the precursor to the Marīnids’ later efforts to garner prestige through association with and patronage of the Idrisi shurafāʾ of Fes and the Shādhiliyya brotherhood.32 The Marīnid chroniclers further assert the inherent baraka of the lineage by referring to their stabilisation of the political situation in the Maghrib after the anarchic last half-century of Almohad rule. Although they had originally contributed to the perilousness of the times, the Banū Marīn were strong enough to keep the peace after their victories over the Almohads who had become negligent and neglectful of Islam.33 This enabled life to return to normal, agriculture and trade to thrive, and prices to fall, 31 Rawḍ al-qirṭās, pp. 475-6. 32 The construction of a Marīnid zāwiya at Chellah and Abū’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī’s burial there, in an area associated with the popular mystics Ibn ʿĀshir and Ibn ʿAbbād of Ronda, shows the continued interest of the Marīnids in creating a cult in which the sultans themselves figured as holy men associated with the Shādhiliyya. 33 al-Dhakīra, p. 24. 260 reversing the consequences of Almohad misrule.34 As Shatzmiller notes in Chapter 2, the economic dimensions of power cannot be underestimated and Marīnid success depended heavily upon rural stability, better nutrition, and a consequent rise in population which provided labour for their building projects and manpower for their armies. Such prosperity appeared God-given and enhanced Marīnid legitimacy. These genealogical and religious qualities justified the Marīnids’ assumption of a range of Islamic titles which located them firmly within the matrix of Maghribī-Andalusī rule and stressed their role as heirs to that tradition. The usual title of the Marīnids was amīr al-muslimīn, an elevated but non-caliphal title, previously used by the Almoravids which implied Marīnid allegiance to the Ḥafṣid ‘caliphs’. As the dynasty consolidated its position, however, more august titles appear. Abū ʿInān Fāris (r. 749-59/1348-58) adopted the caliphal title, amīr al-muʾminīn, and several of his successors followed suit although, as Bouali and Marçais discuss, the rationale for the title’s use is obscure.35 Similarly, the word used for a reign in the Dhakīra al-Saniyya is khilāfa with its obvious caliphal connotations but also a long western pedigree dating back to Umayyad al-Andalus.36 In the Rawḍ al-Qirṭās, Ibn Abī Zarʿ describes Abū Saʿīd ʿUthmān as imām, a title previously used by the Almohads, and the Dhakīra al-Saniyya uses the Qurʾānic phrase, ‘God made them imāms and inheritors’ to describe their assumption of power, a phrase previously used by Ibn Ṣāḥib al-Ṣalā in the title of his chronicle about the Almohads.37 This gathering of weighty titles reflected the religio-political uncertainty created by the demise of the classical caliphate 34 See for instance, al-Dhakīra, p. 89. 35 Rawḍ al-nisrīn, pp. xviii-xix. 36 al-Dhakīra, p. 12; Amira K. Bennison, “The necklace of al-Shifāʾ: ʿAbbasid borrowings in the Islamic West”, Oriens 38 (2010): 249-273, pp. 250-1. 37 Rawḍ al-qirṭās, p. 522; al-Dhakīra, p. 25; Ibn Ṣāḥib al-Ṣalā, Taʾrīkh al-mann bi’l-imāma ʿalā al- mustaḍʿafīn bi-an jaʿalahum Allah aʾimma wa jaʿalahum al-wārithīn, (History of the bestowing of the imamate on the humble whom God makes imams and inheritors [of the earth]) ed. ʿAbd al-Hādī al-Tāzī (Baghdad: Dār al-Ḥurriya, 1979). (henceforth al-Mann bi’l-imāma) 261 and the sense that such titles were available to all but they also added a certain gravitas to Marīnid rule. The Marīnids also evoked the past by choosing personal names, kunyas and laqabs associated with preceding regimes, such as Yaʿqūb, Yūsuf and Tashfīn, Abū Yūsuf, Abū Yaʿqūb and Abū Saʿīd and the laqab Nāṣir al-Dīn used by Yūsuf b. Tāshfīn and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III of Cordoba. The second facet of Marīnid legitimation related to their behaviour as individual rulers. This encompassed the public devotion of each sultan to Islam, the dedication of his military power to defend the faith (jihād), particularly in al-Andalus, and his donation of resources to religious ends. As military men, the Marīnids had to be seen to be devoting their military powers to resisting the ‘infidel’, even if in reality they were simply part of the complex web of alliances binding both Muslim and Christian kingdoms. In the Marīnid chronicles, intervention in alAndalus is presented as jihād to keep the Portuguese, Castilians and Aragonese at bay and perhaps regain the great Muslim cities of Seville and Cordoba so recently lost: Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb’s four interventions in al-Andalus in the last decade of his life figure as jihāds which completed his transformation from a tribal chief into the first Marīnid sultan. Equally importantly, the Marīnid sultans devoted resources to the expansion of the religious infrastructure and the material support of the religious elite of scholars (ʿulamāʾ, fuqahāʾ), Sufis (ṣulaḥāʾ, ṣāliḥīn) and also descendants of the Prophet (shurafāʾ) by offering them gifts and emoluments, inviting them to the palace during religious festivals, and on occasion visiting them. However, the most noteworthy contribution of the Marīnids was their transformation of the urban religious infrastructure in Fes by founding a series of madrasas. Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb introduced this innovation when he founded the Ṣaffārīn madrasa in Fes in 1276. Subsequently constructing madrasas became a central legitimating strategy for several Marīnid sultans, most notably Abū ʿInān Fāris (r. 749-59/1348-58), as well as for the Naṣrids across the Straits of Gibraltar.38 Marīnid sultans also founded madrasas in other towns in their territories with the intention of creating a loyal scholarly class who owed their education to the state.39 38 In this context, Juan Carlos Ruíz Souza’s theory that the Court of the Lions in the Alhambra is a madrasa or zāwiya responding to the rise of the royal Marīnid madrasas is particularly thought262 Marīnid sultans also founded palatine cities and fortresses across their domains, urbanisation projects long associated with Muslim rulers. Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb founded Dār alBayḍāʾ (Fās al-Jadīd) and al-Binya outside Algeciras and his son, Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf, founded alManṣūra outside Tlemcen 698/1299. Although it can be argued that the need to create such separate royal enclaves reflected the deep dislike of existing urban populations for the Marīnids, they were nonetheless physical expressions of wealth and power. Other smaller royal enclaves were constructed outside Ceuta and elsewhere, along with numerous provincial fortresses. Such steps provided the material framework of Marīnid monarchy. The Banū Marīn and the countryside. The textual image of the Banū Marīn purveyed in the chronicles written for them by urban scholars and their patronage of religious buildings were powerful tools in urban and literate environments. Although the general urban population had limited access to the chronicles themselves, they heard the titles of the Marīnid sultans recited in the great mosques at Friday prayer and they saw the beautiful madrasas rising in their midst with their bold calligraphic statements of Marīnid power and prestige. However, these modes of legitimation were not so efficacious in the countryside where the vast majority of the Marīnids’ subjects, including the restive Banū Marīn tribes themselves, lived. Since the Marīnid sultans had to tax the tribes, pass through their territories, and recruit them for military campaigns, it was essential to convert their textual image into a portable, visual, and aural one. provoking. Juan Carlos Ruíz Souza, “El Palacio de los Leones de la Alhambra: ¿Madrasa, zāwiya y tumba de Muḥammad V? Estudio para un debate”, Al-Qantara 22 (2001): 77-120. 39 There is some scholarly debate as to whether the Marīnids intended to co-opt the ʿulamāʾ of Fes by providing them with educational and employment opportunities in the madrasas or whether they hoped to form a new ‘Berber’ scholarly class to replace the existing Fāsī elite. Maya Shatzmiller, “Les premiers Mérinides et le milieu religieux de Fès: l’introduction des Médersas”, Studia Islamica 43 (1976): 109-118. 263 As for many medieval monarchs in the Islamic world and Latin Christendom, a degree of peripatetism was crucial to the Marīnid exercise of power. As Dakhlia and Moudden have separately noted for the later ʿAlawī dynasty, the pre-modern Moroccan military progress (ḥaraka or maḥalla) was an indispensable tool of government which physically manifested the power of the ruler and in so doing enhanced his authority and legitimacy.40 The passage of armed tribesmen and military units through tribal territories offered local auxiliaries the opportunity to join up but also exposed the rebellious to summary punishment by destroying their crops and taking their livestock to impose obedience, a potentially brutal stamping of power on the landscape, described as the ‘eating’ of a tribe. In a similar manner, the early Banū Marīn, uncertain of their status and power, fully understood the need to be seen as rulers in the countryside and to mete out punishment to rebels by devastating their lands, or threatening to do so. The sultans also needed to be on guard from challenges by rival members of their lineage and other Banū Marīn chiefs who often had provincial or rural power bases. They therefore adopted a semi-peripatetic lifestyle which entailed travelling regularly through the countryside to heighten rural awareness of their power as Ibn Khaldūn’s Kitāb al-ʿIbar details. For example, Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb b. ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq (r. 656-85/1258-86) went from Fes to Marrakesh at the beginning of 675 (June 1276). He travelled south to the Sūs then returned to Fes, before proceeding to Rabat. He then headed up the coast to Qaṣr al-Majāz,41 from whence he crossed to Tarifa at the end of Muḥarram 676 (beginning of July 1277). He then proceeded to Ronda via Algeciras. He then spent five months raiding Christian territory from Algeciras. In early 677 (June 1278), he went to Malaga and spent a month there before returning to the 40 Jocelyn Dakhlia, “Dans la mouvance du Prince: la symbolique du pouvoir itinérant au Maghreb”, Annales, Histoire, Science Sociales 43: 3 (1988): 735-760; Abderrahman Moudden, “Etat et société rurale a travers la harka au Maroc du XIXième siècle”, Maghreb Review 8: 5-6 (1983): 141-145. 41 Qaṣr al-Majāz, also known as Qaṣr al-Jawāz and Qaṣr Maṣmūda, was located between Tangier and Ceuta on the Straits of Gibraltar. Histoire des Berbères, vol. 4, p. 499. 264 Maghrib.42 This pattern of regular journeys taking at least a month and usually more through tribal territories was by no means exceptional and functioned to show the population their monarch in all his glory. The Marīnids also sent their male relatives to various parts of their domain or appointed them as regional governors to represent the dynasty.43 As they moved through the countryside, the early Marīnid sultans had to differentiate their progresses as monarchs from their earlier movements as pastoral nomads and raiders. They therefore needed to supplement the Banū Marīn tribes with a military force possessing the characteristics of a royal army. This provides an additional dimension to Ibn Khaldūn’s observation that the longevity of a dynasty depended in part on its ability to augment its original tribal following with other types of fighter more responsive to authority.44 In the Marīnid case, army diversification occurred well before it was militarily necessary and it can be argued that its main function was to distinguish the Banū ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq from other tribesmen, including other Banū Marīn, rather than to strengthen their military capabilities. The process began in earnest in 646/1248 a few years after Abū Bakr b. ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq conquered Meknes on the cusp of the transformation of the lineage into sultans.45 When the Almohad caliph al-Saʿīd was assassinated outside Tlemcen, the Marīnids hastened to pillage his 42 Kitāb al-ʿibar, vol. 7, pp. 403-5, 408 and Histoire des Berbères, vol. 4, pp. 85-8, 91. 43 This could be a double-edged sword as Marīnid princes often used their provincial bases as a platform for rebellion against the ruling sultan. In fact, the greatest challenge to the rule of Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb’s descendants was opposition from collateral lineages descended from ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq and other Marīnid lineages, many of whom sought refuge in or were exiled to Naṣrid Granada or ʿAbd al-Wādid Tlemcen where they acted as vectors of cultural exchange and competition. 44 Ibn Khaldūn, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, trans. Franz Rosenthal, 3 volumes (New York: Pantheon Books, 1958), vol. 1, p. 342. 45 There are a few earlier references to Christian ‘renegades’ (ʿilj) in the Marīnid camp, most notably the killing of ʿUthmān b. ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq by such an individual. Al-Dhakīra, p. 37; Kitāb alʿibar, vol. 7, p. 351 and Histoire des Berbères, vol. 4, p. 32. 265 caravan and incorporate the leaderless Almohad units of Ghuzz,46 Andalusīs and Christians into their army.47 Over the next decades, Christian units of primarily Iberian origin became so numerous that an entire quarter of their palatine city Dār al-Bayḍāʾ (Fes al-Jadīd), the Rabaḍ alNaṣārā (Suburb of the Christians), was built for them.48 The Marīnids also supplemented their Zanāta Berber tribal following with other auxiliary tribes, notably Arab tribes who had been moved west during the Almohad era, creating further continuity with the Almohad imperial army and obviating the dangers of alliance between such Arab tribes and renegade Marīnid clans. Links with the Arabs were consolidated by marriage: for instance, Abū Saʿīd ʿUthmān’s (r. 710731/1310-1331) mother was ʿĀʾisha bint Abī’l-Aṭiyya of the Khulṭ, who had previously served as Almohad auxiliaries.49 The adoption of new machines of war also played a role in augmenting Marīnid power and status. In 660/1262 Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb used battering rams against Sijilmasa,50 and just over a decade later in 672/1273-74, he used catapults and some kind of “fire engine” which used flaming powder to expell shot.51 This is a passage of great interest to historians of science who are concerned with early forms of artillery but the key point here is the Marīnids’ possession of firepower quite out of the economic reach of ordinary tribes which identified them as the new monarchs of the area. Moreover, the transfer of such items through the countryside marked the sultan’s maḥalla as qualitatively different to a tribal cavalcade. Similarly, Ibn Khaldūn refers to the 46 The term Ghuzz or Aghzāz is used in the Maghribī chronicles to denote mercenaries of eastern origin usually coming from Egypt. They may have been either Turks, as the name Ghuzz suggests, or Kurds. 47 Kitāb al-ʿibar, vol. 7, p. 456 and Histoire des Berbères, vol. 4, p. 37. 48 According to the Dhakīra, the removal of Christians from Fes al-Balī to the Rabaḍ al-Naṣārā was one of the many meritorious acts of Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb. al-Dhakīra, p. 91. 49 Rawḍ al-qirṭās, p. 522. 50 al-Dhakīra, p. 97. 51 Kitāb al-ʿibar, vol. 7, p. 388 and Histoire des Berbères, vol. 4, p. 69-70. 266 great catapults (manjānīq) which Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf mustered during his seige of Nedroma in Shawwāl 695/August 1296.52 Taken together, the recruitment of foreign, culturally diverse soldiers and the acquisition of expensive weaponry enabled the ruling dynasty to create an exotic and clearly monarchical military progress that differentiated it from the wider rural tribal population from whence it had come, including rivals within the Banū Marīn confederation. The chroniclers are all careful to note these various military components and their participation in campaigns as statements of the Marīnids’ royal power and status.53 Military diversification also provided the Marīnid sultans with a broader range of military specialisms and somewhat obviated the likelihood of a mutiny of the entire army. In this their strategy was similar to that of many other Islamic regimes of tribal origin including the Saljūqs, the Almoravids and the Almohads. Nonetheless, it is vital to understand the army not just as a fighting machine but as part of the performance of monarchy. The Symbols of Marīnid Monarchy Another important dimension of the Marīnids’ projection of a monarchical image in the countryside was their conveyance of recognisable symbols of monarchy with them as they travelled. By the early thirteenth century, a clear set of royal appurtenances had emerged that included banners, drums, magnificently decorated tents and pavilions, and finely caparisoned thoroughbred horses. They also carried an artefact of substantial religio-political significance, the so-called Qurʾān of ʿUthmān, associated with the third caliph, ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān. This artefact was believed to have been used in Umayyad ceremonial in the Great Mosque of Cordoba. It then appeared briefly in Almoravid times before being acquired by the first Almohad caliph, ʿAbd alMuʾmin, who gave it a central place in Almohad military progresses.54 According to the somewhat 52 Kitāb al-ʿibar, vol. 7, p. 455 and Histoire des Berbères, vol. 4, p. 140. 53 For example, Rawḍ al-qirṭās, pp. 340, 403, 449, 459. 54 Amira K. Bennison, “The Almohads and the Qurʾān of ʿUthmān: The Legacy of the Umayyads of Cordoba in the Twelfth Century Maghrib”, Al-Masaq 19: 2 (2007): 131-54, pp. 149-52. See also 267 contradictory legends, the Almohads lost the Qurʾān of ʿUthmān in the chaos following the caliph al-Saʿīd’s assassination outside Tlemcen in 646/1248, after which it turned up in the book market of Tlemcen and was acquired by its ruler, Yaghmurāsan b. Zayyān.55 According to Ibn Marzūq, his descendants lost it to the Marīnids when they captured Tlemcen in 737/1337 but Ibn Abī Zarʿ and Ibn Khaldūn suggest that it came into the possession of the Naṣrids and that Muḥammad II gave it to the Marīnids as a gift when he came to confirm a treaty with them in Tangier in Dhu’l-Qaʿda 692/October 1293.56 The sources agree that the Marīnids then lost the Qurʾān at the Battle of Rio Salado (Ṭarīf) in Muḥarram 741/June 1340, only to regain it from Christian territory through the mediation of a merchant from Azzamūr four years later. Several sources state that it was then deposited in the Marīnid treasury for safekeeping.57 Although Abū’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī (r. 731-752/1331-1351) seems to have briefly used the Qurʾān Travis Zadeh, “From Drops of Blood: Charisma and Political Legitimacy in the translatio of the ʿUthmanic Codex of al-Andalus”, Journal of Arabic Literature 39 (2008): 321-346; Pascal Buresi, “Une relique Almohade: l’utilisation du coran de la grande mosquée de Cordoue (attribué à ʿUtman b. ʿAffān (644-654)” in Lieux des cultes: aires votives, temples, églises, mosquées (Paris: Editions CNRS, 2008), pp. 273-280. 55 Bennison, “Qurʾān of ʿUthmān”, p. 153. 56 Rawḍ al-qirṭās, pp. 505-6; Kitāb al-ʿibar, vol. 7, p. 449 and Histoire des Berbères, vol. 4, p. 133. Although Ibn Khaldūn says that the Marīnids acquired it from Tlemcen elsewhere. See note 57 below. 57 In his excellent article on the Qurʾān’s history, Zadeh says that it was lost when one of Abū ʿInān Fāris’s ships (they were actually Abū’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī’s ships) went down off the coast near Bijāya in 750/1349 but the passage from Ibn Khaldūn which he quotes actually says that the Qurʾān, acquired as part of the booty from Tlemcen, was put in the Marīnid treasury while a necklace, known as ‘The Serpent’, also acquired from Tlemcen was lost at sea. Zadeh, “Charisma and Political Legitimacy”, p. 340. Kitāb al-ʿibar, vol. 7, p. 170. The origin of the Tlemcen necklace has not been researched to the best of my knowledge but it evokes the famous ʿAbbāsid necklace 268 of ʿUthmān in state pageantry in a similar manner to the Almohads, its chequered and confused Marīnid history and the discussions about its authenticity that abound, suggest a gradual decline in its symbolic power during the first Marīnid century as the memory of Cordoba faded. Instead, Marīnid sultans produced their own maṣāḥif which were placed in expensive, finely crafted jewelencrusted boxes and carried across the Maghrib to Egypt and the Hijaz as a mark of their piety and power.58 With respect to the more generic accessories of rule favoured by the Banū Marīn, the item which takes centre stage is not a distinctive royal tent such as the red Umayyad surādiq or Almohad qubba but banners. This was in keeping with Almohad precedent and for both dynasties the raising of victorious standards and conversely the loss of standards are used as synonyms for the victories and defeats themselves. The Marīnid chroniclers frequently refer to the loss of the Almohad standards at La Navas de Tolosa (ʿUqāb) in 609/1212 which they contrast with the ‘fact’ that the standards of the first Marīnid sultan, Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb, were always victorious. The Muslims had not raised their banner since the Battle of ʿUqāb in 609 (1212) until [Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb] crossed with his banners in 674 (1275-6) for his famous campaign. He was known for his virtue, religion, justice and care for Muslims but [he was] firm against enemies. His banner (rāya) was always victorious.59 Frustratingly, flags and standards are rarely described in any detail and we are left to ponder what, if any, the difference was between rāyāt, aʿlām or bunūd. In general, however, bunūd and aʿlām are used in the plural to indicate the massed banners of the army while rāya is used for of the same name (ʿiqd al-thuʿbān), said to have been purchased by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III of Cordoba for one of his concubines. See Bennison, “Necklace of al-Shifāʾ", pp. 263-4. 58 Rawḍ al-qirṭās, p. 512; Kitāb al-ʿibar, vol. 7, pp. 468, 551-2, 553-4 and Histoire des Berbères, vol. 4, pp. 153, 240, 242. 59 al-Dhakīra, p. 91. 269 the royal standard of the sultan himself or his representative. The colour and design of these banners is equally problematic to determine. Although white is cited as the colour of the Umayyads, of the Almohad caliphal standard, and of the Marīnid sultan’s banner,60 it is not clear whether such white banners included religious inscriptions and designs or not. The Marīnid sources simply refer to white as the dynasty’s colour,61 while the Libro del Conoscimiento de Todos los Reinos, written in the last quarter of the fourteenth century by a Franciscan monk, distinguishes between the ‘kingdoms’ of Fes and Marrakesh and also attributes flags to other cities such as Ceuta and Sijilmāsa. I went left Çepta (Ceuta) and went to see the noble city of Fez, where the kings of the Benemarin always reside…Its king has an entirely white flag as his insignia.62 And know that in this province is the very noble city of Marruecos…and the king of Marruecos has as his insignia a vermilion flag with black and white checky (sic).63 60 J. David-Weill, “ʿAlam”, EI 2; al-Mann bi’l-imāma, pp. 155, 467. 61 The naming of the Marīnid palatine city, Madīnat al-Bayḍāʾ, the White City, reflects their use of white as a dynastic colour which, of course, contrasted with the naming of the Naṣrid capital, Madīnat al-Ḥamrāʾ, the Red City, and their flag, described as vermilion with Arabic inscriptions in gold. 62 Libro del Conoscimiento de Todos los Reinos y señorios que son por el mundo, ed. Nancy F. Marino (Temple: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1999), p. 45. 63 Libro del Conoscimiento, p. 47. It has been assumed that this flag is Almohad but by the late fourteenth century when the Libro was composed, the Almohads had not ruled for over a century. It is, however, possible that an Almohad design had remained the insignia of the city rather than of a particular dynasty. 270 If we consider the scanty textile remains, the majority of Maghribī banners are colourful, richly woven silks. The most famous extant textile is the so-called ‘Almohad’ banner from Las Navas de Tolosa preserved at Huelgas. However, it is more likely that this piece is actually a Marīnid banner, as Ali-de-Unzaga convincingly argues, due to its close affinities with the banners of the Marīnid sultans Abū Saʿīd ʿUthmān (712/1312) and Abū’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī (739/1339), preserved in the Cathedral of Toledo.64 These three banners, probably produced by the same Marīnid atelier, are not only colourful, sporting red, yellow and green backgrounds with embroidered silk calligraphy in black and other colours, they also have distinctive reversible calligraphic panels which allowed fighters to read some parts of the Qurʾanic inscription from both sides.65 Banners of this type identified the royal tent during military progresses and may also have been displayed at court to mark the ruler’s space.66 However, their written content focuses on success in battle by the grace of God, suggesting that such banners were not simply markers of royalty but, in a sense, gifts from the monarch to his army, conveying his baraka to protect them during the course of the battle. Christian armies, of course, carried their own banners depicting saints for a comparable apotropaic purpose.67 It is evident from the chronicles that the systematic use of banners and also drums was widely understood as a sign of monarchy and they are therefore mentioned to make that point even in contexts well before the Banū Marīn were actually rulers. One such instance occurs in the Dhakīra’s account of al-Mukhaḍḍab b. ʿAskar’s campaign against the Almoravids which states that, 64 Miriam Ali-de-Unzaga, “Quranic inscriptions on the so-called ‘Pennon of Las Navas de Tolosa’ and three Marīnid banners”, in Word of God, Art of Man: The Quran and its Creative Expressions, ed. Fahmida Suleman (Oxford: Oxford University Press and the Institute for Ismaili Studies, 2007), pp. 239-270. 65 For a full translation of the surviving Qurʾanic inscriptions on these banners, see Ali-de-Unzaga, “Three Marīnid banners”, pp. 256-61. 66 Ali-de-Unzaga, “Three Marīnid banners”, p. 261. 67 Ali-de-Unzaga, “Three Marīnid banners”, p. 240. 271 “he beat the drums and brought out the banners and led his fighters who made the Ṣanhāja kings of the Lamtūna and Taklāta endure great evil”.68 Conversely, when the Almohads defeated him subsequently, “they took his drums and banners. They pillaged his wealth and took his head to ʿAbd al-Muʾmin in Jumādā II 540/Nov-Dec 1145”.69 In a similar vein, the Dhakīra says that ʿUthmān b. ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq “prayed over his banner (rāya) then hoisted it and marched out of his camp with it before him” on his way to subjugate the tribes of the Maghrib in 615/1218-19 and halt the anarchy created by ineffectual Almohad rule.70 In these cases, the mention of banners and drums highlights political actions which are to be understood as a prelude to the later rise to power of the Banū Marin, and their aspirations to become rulers of the Maghrib. This becomes explicit in accounts about Abū Bakr b. ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq. After he took Meknes in 643/1245-6, the first town captured by the Banī Marīn and therefore an important moment on their route to power, the Banū Marīn “banged the drums and waved the banners”, in this case in celebration of imminent power.71 Mohamed Kably considers these items “royal insignia” but notes that not all the sources mention them at this point when the Banū Marīn were actually posing as clients of the Ḥafṣids, suggesting their later insertion into Marīnid historiography to give a sense of a pre-meditated and even pre-ordained Marīnid rise to power.72 Ibn ʿIdhārī’s Bayān al-Mughrib suggests that Abū Bakr first used banners and drums, possibly stolen from the Almohad camp, later after his capture of Taza 645/1248.73 Ibn Abī Zarʿ directly states that “[Abū Bakr] was the first king (malik) of the Banū Marīn to order his army, to beat the drums and wave the banners, and to possess fortresses and towns”.74 68 al-Dhakīra, p. 20. 69 al-Dhakīra, p. 21. 70 al-Dhakīra, p. 36. 71 al-Dhakīra, p. 66. 72 Kably, Société, p. 41. 73 Kably, Société, p. 47. 74 Rawḍ al-qirṭās, p. 380. 272 As the young Marīnid polity came into being, banners also played a role in identifying those acting on the ruler’s behalf and with his authority when they were moving through the Maghribī countryside or campaigning in al-Andalus. In 662/1263-4 a contingent of Banū Marīn and volunteer fighters crossed to al-Andalus led by Muḥammad b. Idrīs b. ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq, the nephew of Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb, who gave them “his victorious banner” to enhance their prestige and protect them from defeat.75 In 673/1274-5 as a prelude to his own crossing to al-Andalus, Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb gave his son Abū Zayyān drums, banners, money and supplies in addition to “his own victorious standard (rāyatahu al-manṣūra) to be carried in front of him” as a sign that he was acting on behalf of the Marīnid sultan.76 Within the Maghrib, when the Almohad Abū Dabbūs defected to Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb, the latter sent him drums and banners so he could publicly demonstrate his new allegiance, as well as troops, horses, weapons and money.77 These are a handful of examples among many. In the absence of detailed accounts, it is difficult to ascertain exactly how banners were carried and arranged in the Marīnid military progress and battle line-up. There are some precise reports from the Almohad era, notably in the contemporary chronicle of Ibn Ṣāḥib al-Ṣalā, who witnessed several Almohad military progresses in the Maghrib and al-Andalus. According to Ibn Ṣāḥib al-Ṣalā, the Almohad banners were carried at the head of the column with the drummers immediately behind the ruler.78 It is probable that the Marīnid sultans adopted similar practices in view of brief references to the practice of Abū’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī in Ibn Marzūq’s Musnad.79 On the battle field, the Marīnids allocated banners to identify the ruler and individual military tribal contingents and to facilitate order as descriptions of the campaigns of Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb against 75 al-Dhakīra, p. 98. 76 al-Dhakīra, p. 143. 77 al-Dhakīra, p. 109. 78 al-Mann bi’l-imāma, pp. 467. 79 Ibn Marzūq, El Musnad: hechos memorables de Abū l-Ḥasan Sultan de los Benimerines, ed. and trans. Maria J. Viguera (Madrid: Instituto Hispano-Arabe de Cultura, 1977), p. 377. 273 Yaghmurāsan b. Zayyān of Tlemcen intimate. The following two descriptions refer to the Battle of Isly in 670/1271, The Commander of the Muslims placed his son ʿAbd al-Wāḥid on his right and his son Yūsuf on his left and gave each of them drums and banners (ṭubūl, bunūd). He gave each of the Banī Marīn tribes a standard (rāya) to gather around and reinforce their determination.80 The Commander of the Faithful stood in the rear guard under the shadow of the standards with the Marīn auxiliaries and tribes. .... The amīr Yūsuf advanced on the left and his brother ʿAbd al-Wāḥid advanced on the right and boldly engaged. The Commander of the Muslims and the masses (al-dahmā) came behind them in the centre and rear with the Marīn tribes and warriors all around him while he stood under the shadow of the standards and banners as if he were the full moon rising.81 This rather poetic reference to Marīnid white in a metaphor of the ruler as the full moon rising, shows the deployment of banners to mark royal space and create a focus on the battle field and also as functional identifiers of particular tribal contingents. A similarly evocative account occurs in the Rawḍ al-Qirṭās when Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb met King Sancho of Castile in Shaʿbān 684/October 1284 in which the white-clad Muslim troops are contrasted with the black-garbed Christian cohort. The Commander of the Muslims prepared to meet [Sancho] by ordering all his army to wear white with full armour (bi-libās al-abyaḍ wa’l-ʿudda al-kāmila) and the ground 80 al-Dhakīra, p. 130. 81 al-Dhakīra, p. 131. 274 became white with the white of the Muslims while he received Sancho in a black knot of polytheists.82 A tangential point here is that one article in the treaty which Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb agreed with Sancho, provided for the retrieval of Muslim texts from Christian and Jewish hands and their return to the Maghrib. According to the Rawḍ al-Qirṭās and the Kitāb al-ʿIbar, Sancho returned thirteen loads of Qurʾāns and other written materials which were given as pious endowments (ḥubūs) to the madrasa the sultan was building.83 The transportation of such items from the ports on the Mediterranean coast to Fes also contributed to building an image of the ruler as pious and devoted to Islam, as well as successful in his dealings with the Christian enemy. In the Marīnid sources, banners are indissolubly linked to drums (ṭubūl) and in most contexts both appear although the Marīnid sultan does not seem to have possessed a personal royal drum of the kind associated with Ibn Tūmart, the Almohad mahdī who was supposed to have had a huge square drum.84 Like banners, drums were visible equipment carried by the army through the countryside in keeping with several centuries of royal practice. They had the added advantage of being audible from long distances and signalling the army’s presence even when it was not visible. The great drums of the Almoravids were said to have put fear into the hearts of the Castilians before the Battle of Zallāqa in 479/1086 and the Almohads used drums extensively to announce and accompany movements of the army, to signal the presence of the caliph, and to celebrate victory. Ibn Ṣāḥib al-Ṣalā describes three days of drumming in Seville to celebrate the Almohad conquest of al-Mahdiyya in Ifrīqiya and two weeks of drumming in Marrakesh to celebrate the quelling of revolts in southern Morocco and al-Andalus.85 82 Rawḍ al-qirṭās, p. 474. 83 Rawḍ al-qirṭās, p. 475; Kitāb al-ʿibar, vol. 7, pp. 434-5 and Histoire des Berbères, vol. 4, p. 118. 84 al-Mann bi’l-imāma, p. 459. 85 al-Mann bi’l-imāma, pp. 119, 300. 275 While there are not specific references to the Banū Marīn using drumming to signal routine movement across the countryside, their use of drums to announce and celebrate victories is well attested. As mentioned above, drums may have been beaten after the capture of Meknes in 643/1245-6. They were also beaten prior to the victorious Marīnid entry into Tangier in Rabīʿ I 672/Sept 1273.86 After Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb’s first campaign in al-Andalus in 673-4/1275, described as a “true jihād”, announcements of his victory were sent all over his domains and publicised using drums and Christian banners seized during the fighting. The drums were struck as customary in celebration following the sunna God laid down for conquests. Alms were distributed, and the standards (rāyāt) of the ‘infidels’ were hung upside down from the top of the minaret (manār) of the Qarawiyyīn and the minaret of the Kutubiyya in Marrakesh so that the townsman and the countryfolk and those coming and going would notice them.87 The reference to the sunna here is an interesting Islamisation of the use of drums, as well as giving insight into the use of drums and flags - of the conquered enemy in this case - to remind people of the monarch even in his absence. There was also a celebration using drums when the bayʿa given to Abū Saʿīd ʿUthmān at Taza after the death of Abū’l-Rabīʿa Sulaymān in Jumāda II 710/Nov 1310) was conveyed to Fes by his son, Abū’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī. The prince entered Fes al-Jadīd, took control of the palace, treasury and arsenal and then he ordered the beating of drums and celebrations.88 This formed the prelude to Abū Saʿīd’s own arrival from Taza and his ceremonious receipt of the bayʿa of the army and of the people of Fes outside the city, dressed in a splendid outfit (zayy ʿajīb).89 86 al-Dhakīra, p. 137. 87 al-Dhakīra, p. 160. 88 Rawḍ al-qirṭās, p. 524. 89 Rawḍ al-qirṭās, p. 524. 276 This allusion to the fine garments worn by Abū Saʿīd ʿUthmān to receive the bayʿa draws attention to another aspect of parading monarchy in the countryside, the deployment of luxury items such as textiles, jewellery, richly embroidered tents, and finely caparisoned horses. Such practices were fairly ubiquitous, demonstrating a monarch’s command of resources and confidence in his ability to protect his wealth and secure victory, but a distinctive aspect of the Marīnids parading of material wealth was the role played by Marīnid women in its display. This practice, shared by the ʿAbd al-Wādids of Tlemcen, originated in tribal warfare when women frequently appeared on the battlefield to urge on their men and provide ancillary support. In previous centuries, the Ṣanhāja Almoravids had allowed substantial female participation in public and military life and the citadel of Marrakesh was said to have been defended against the Almohads by a woman, Fānnū bint ʿUmar, whose gender was only revealed after the Almohads killed her.90 It was, however, contrary to Almohad royal practice, at least as it is recounted, which tends to elide women from the historical record. In contrast, the Zanāta seem to have accepted a degree of public female participation and given them a role in their demonstration of power and prestige. At the battle of Talāgh between Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb b. ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq and Yaghmurāsan b. Zayyān of Tlemcen in 666/1267 both sides mustered their women and possessions, Each side prepared his army and arrayed his contingents (katāʾib). The women of each lined up behind the armies in their howdahs, carriages, and tents, finely dressed and bare-faced wearing jewellery and embroidered fabric to urge on the champions against the champions. Like mixed with like and the riders intermingled. Songs came from the tents and the armies advanced on each other and each sought his opponent.91 90 Abū Bakr b. ʿAlī al-Ṣanhājī (Al-Baydhaq), Kitāb Akhbār al-Mahdī Ibn Tūmart, ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Ḥājiyāt (Algiers: al-Sharika al-Waṭaniyya li’l-Nashr wa’l-Tawzīʿ, 1975), p. 117. 91 al-Dhakīra, p. 115. 277 Four years later at the Battle of Isly 670/1271, [Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb] ordered all the Banū Marīn tribes to set out with their women and their noble families in their finest clothes to demonstrate their power and anger their enemies. So the Marīn tribes went forth for this campaign with ornamented camels and mounts draped with brocade, decorated tents, and girls of their blood whom the men led forth, beautiful in their finest outfits.92 It is well-known that women tended to be more prominent when Muslim regimes were of tribal origin such as the Saljuqs and the Mongols. The Maghribī sources hint at a similarly powerful role for women among the Berber tribes and these accounts suggest that the early Marīnid sultans enhanced the normal tribal practice of women encouraging their men in battle to signal their new monarchical status. The women sported rich clothes and jewellery, they sat in fine litters carried by splendid animals, and they camped in magnificent tents all of which signalled the new material wealth of the Marīnid sultans and their confidence in their ability to win. The ʿAbd al-Wādid lineage of Tlemcen, also of Zanāta origin, behaved in a comparable way. Conversely, the loss of the ḥaram and its tents ranked with the loss of battle standards as one of the most humiliating signs of defeat. The triumphant Marīnid chroniclers dwell on Yaghmurāsan’s frequent loss of his ḥaram in battle. However, the Marīnid sultans were not immune from loss themselves. The most traumatic occurrance of this was the despoilation of the Marīnid ḥaram tents at the Battle of Rio Salado (Ṭarīf) in Jumāda I 741/October 1340 by a Christian contingent that had breached the blockade of Tarifa and attacked from the rear. Ibn Khaldūn reports that the women who resisted were killed including the sultan’s cousin, ʿĀʾisha, and his Ḥafṣid wife, Fāṭima.93 According to Ibn Khaldūn, it was this shameful incident which shattered the 92 al-Dhakīra, p. 129. 93 Kitāb al-ʿibar, vol. 7, pp. 545-46 and Histoire des Berbères, vol. 4, p. 233. 278 nerve of the Muslims and led to defeat. In addition to ending Marīnid jihād pretensions in alAndalus, it also led to a decline in the Marīnid practice of taking women into the field. Conclusion To conclude, the Banū Marīn stepped into a political vacuum created not only by the collapse of the Almohad empire but also by the subsequent termination of the ʿAbbasid caliphate at Mongol hands. As rural Zanāta Berber tribesmen who came to power through successful pillaging, they had little inherent legitimacy and they had to strive hard to transform themselves into classic Islamic monarchs while also appealing to contemporary notions of religious legitimacy which increasingly inhered in mystics and shurafāʾ alongside scholars. By means of a series of panegyric chronicles, the Marīnid sultans constructed an image of kingship which attributed to them genealogical ‘nobility’ and inherent charisma (baraka), enabling them to take on the mantle of rule. They promoted their image in towns by generous patronage of the religious infrastructure but in the countryside they used other tactics. As tribesmen, it was crucial to differentiate themselves from other tribesmen, including their own relatives and the other Marīn tribes, and to achieve military superiority. They did this by diversifying their army to give it a monarchical and indeed imperial flavour derived from Almohad precedents. In this spirit they also inherited the Qurʾān of ʿUthmān which had been paraded through the countryside by the Almohads and briefly used it in a similar way. At the same time, they adopted generic symbols of monarchy such as banners and drums, and showed their power and wealth by parading their women in fine textiles and jewellery and housing them in luxurious tents. Together these tactics helped to convey an image of Marīnid rule that distracted attention from the violence of their rise to power and legitimised them as mujāhidīn, patrons of religion, and guarantors of prosperity. 279