NORTH AFRICA

The three dynastic successors to the empire of the Almohads in North Africa (Maghrib)—the Hafsids of Tunis, the Zayyanids of Tlemcen, and the Marinids/Wattasids of Fez—continued to experience internal political and economic fragmentation in the fifteenth century as a result of the decline of their established trade routes and the extension of the Reconquista to Muslim North Africa. The Treaty of Alcaçovas of 1479 recognized the exclusive rights of Portugal over the Atlantic coast of Morocco and its hinterland as far as Fez and of Castile over the Mediterranean coastline from Melilla to Tunis. Portuguese and Castilian efforts to dominate the Maghrib and its commerce intensified after the fall of Granada in 1492 and culminated with the establishment of a number of naval bases on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts. The "African Crusade" provoked a powerful military response from the rising Ottoman Empire, which further threatened the survival of Maghribi polities already in the midst of profound social transformations.

The eclipse of Almohad power in the late thirteenth century unsettled the traditional solidarities between state and society in Andalusia and the Maghrib and mobilized a religious resurgence that challenged local governing elites. As the Almohad state deteriorated politically and economically, provincial Sufi notables and confraternities assumed essential sociopolitical functions in order to meet the needs of their communities and organize the defense of the collapsing Muslim frontier. The history of the Maghrib from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries was thus dominated by the regional confrontations between Europeans, Ottomans, and local Muslim dynasties and impressed by the varying degrees of contest and accommodation between the rulers of the post-Almohad states and fractious Sufiled forces.

THE SHARIFIAN DYNASTIES OF MOROCCO

The Portuguese offensive concentrated on the Atlantic Straits and coastline of Morocco, and by 1495, six maritime enclaves (fronteiras) had been established in the realm of the Wattasids. The attacks aggravated the dire economic condition of the Wattasid regime, and the latter invariably submitted to tributary arrangements with the fronteiras. Local Sufi leaders condemned the manner in which the war against the Christians was being waged. They exhorted their followers to transfer their allegiance from the Wattasid sultan to revered descendants of the Prophet (sharifs) who, by virtue of their saintly lineage and moral rectitude, were more certain to conduct a successful war against Portugal. Between 1515 and 1537, the domestic balance of power shifted irreversibly in favor of the Saadi sharifs as their coalition scored a succession of military victories against the Portuguese and the Wattasids. By 1554 the Saadis had captured the Wattasid seat of Fez and reduced the Portuguese presence to the garrisons of el-Ksar as-Saghir, Tangiers, Asila, and Ceuta.

With the Saadis, prophetic descent became a pillar of political legitimacy in Morocco. Henceforth, the authority of Moroccan sovereigns was confirmed by investing their political practices with symbols and rituals of divine grace (baraka). The Saadi claim to sharifian descent was contested by the Ottoman Empire. Firmly established in Egypt after 1517, the Ottomans' continuing expansion in the western Mediterranean carried them to the Moroccan border by 1545. The Ottoman threat remained a determining factor in Saadi politics for the rest of the century. Encircled by Ottomans, Spaniards, and Portuguese, Morocco grew isolated from the larger Muslim world, and its rulers survived by playing off their regional rivals, often allying themselves with the Christian powers against the Ottomans. The divisive politics of the Saadis culminated in August 1578, when the Ottomans defeated the Saadi caliph and his Portuguese allies in the Battle of the Three Kings. However, the confrontation also eliminated the Ottoman contender to the Saadi throne, thereby providing al-Mansur, the new sovereign, with respite to consolidate his authority and reduce his dependence on any regional power.

Al-Mansur modernized his army and, in 1591, launched a military expedition targeting the salt and gold mines of Songhay. With the influx of Sudanese gold, al-Mansur promoted commercial and diplomatic ties with Europe, joining briefly with England in a compact against Spanish interests in the western Mediterranean. Finally, he established alliances of patronage and service with "tribal" confederations in order to extend the reach of his central administration (al-makhzan) to the remoter provinces (alsiba). His death in 1603 marked a turning point in the history of Morocco as internecine battles fragmented the country into several contending entities. Still, the political commitment to sacred authority remained steadfast, and in 1631, a realignment of provincial Sufi forces carried another sharifian family to power. The Alawi sharifs reunited Morocco between 1659 and 1677, and under Mawlay Ismail (ruled 1672–1727) further reduced the influence of Portugal and Spain by developing diplomatic and commercial relations with Italy, France, Holland, and England. At the death of Ismail, the generals of his self-perpetuating army of slaves seized power, and much of provincial Morocco broke away from government control anew. The Alawi rulers regained political autonomy from the slave generals by 1757, largely as a result of their sustained efforts to reform the tax system, reestablish commercial contacts with Europe, and conscript "native" elements into the army. The unrelenting opposition of provincial Morocco to the centralizing tendencies of the state after 1727 would provide the main thrust of anticolonial resistances in the nineteenth century and would contribute to the colonial division of Morocco after 1912 into "useful" makhzan and "unruly" siba.

THE OTTOMAN REGENCY OF ALGIERS

The Habsburgs began their military offensive in the central Maghrib in 1505 with the capture of Mers al-Kabir, followed by Oran, Bougie, and Tripoli (1509–1510). Algiers agreed to pay tribute to the Spaniards, who built a presidio (el Peñón) on the largest of the four islets outlining the city's harbor. In 1516, the notables of Algiers solicited the succor of the privateer brothers Aruj and Khayr al-Din. Khayr al-Din Barbarossa took control of the city in 1519 and swore allegiance to the Ottoman sultan, who named him regent (Beylerbey) of North Africa, and sent him a military contingent of two thousand artillerymen and four thousand janissaries. With the reinforcements, Barbarossa consolidated his hold over the surrounding territories and towns, defeated a Habsburg counteroffensive, razed the Peñón in 1529, and established Algiers as his base for naval operations in the Mediterranean. By the time he was promoted to admiral-in-chief of the Ottoman navy in 1533, Barbarossa had erected the primary institutions that governed the regency until the French conquest of 1830.

Given the paucity of resources in the middle Maghrib, the political and economic viability of the Regency of Algiers depended on the Ottoman capital for the continued renewal of its administrative personnel and military contingent, and on external sources of revenue (namely, maritime trade, piracy, and privateering) for the replenishment of its state coffers. Sociopolitical stability was thus tied to the activities of two military institutions: the corps of janissaries that was committed to the defense of the Sultan's territorial possessions, but was also central to the tax-collecting operations of the local government, and the corporation of the captains of the fleet that protected Algerian commerce and merchant ships, and raided European harbors and vessels in search of captives and spoils. The janissary corps was a highly restricted ethnic military caste that safeguarded its privileges through the executive council (diwan). By 1556, the corps and council constituted the most cohesive political institution in the regency. Yet the overall economic welfare of Algiers hinged upon the continued success of the privateer captains in ensuring the inflow of supplementary revenue and capital. The ability of the regent to remunerate his janissaries and exercise authority depended on the effectiveness of the privateer captains in pouring wealth and plunder into the local economy.

The janissaries exercised direct control over the city and environs of Algiers, and delegated the administration of the provinces to governors (beys) who were instructed to maintain order and collect taxes in their districts (beyliks) with the help of local Sufi and tribal notables. The central administration rarely extended beyond the district governorates and was regularly checked at the boundaries by pastoral and seminomadic communities that did not submit to Ottoman sovereignty. By relying heavily on native intermediaries and clients, the provincial administration gradually acquired an "Algerian" character. Beys intermarried locally and founded hereditary Turco-Algerian dynasties. In 1586, Istanbul started appointing its own governors (pashas) to Algiers in an unsuccessful attempt to curtail the growing political autonomy of the diwan. In 1659, the janissaries secured the consent of the imperial government in selecting their commanding officer (agha) as head of state. With the aghas, the political power of the janissaries reached its apogee, but its success coincided with the repeated inability of the state to remunerate its troops due to the growing importance of European navies and mercantile concessions in the Mediterranean.

The subordination of political considerations to the economic predicament of Algiers culminated in 1671 when the janissary corps transferred executive power to the admiral of the fleet and conferred upon him the title of dey. The deys attempted to enforce more balanced policies of fiscal extraction, and attained a modicum of equilibrium between 1710 and 1750 by exploiting Tunisian resources and commerce, and reducing the size of the janissary contingent and the corporation of captains. Still, deteriorating relations with European states and a series of inadequate agricultural harvests and fatal epidemics after 1787 deepened the structural imbalances in the political economy. Unprecedented encroachments by official tax collectors were met in the impoverished provinces with Sufi-led insurgencies that paralyzed their levying operations and forced the dey to develop alternative sources of political support. A fundamental realignment in the urban politics of the regency was effected in 1817 when Dey Ali Khodja broke free from the hold of the janissaries and transferred the public treasury to the citadel (al-qasbah) of Algiers. After the defeat of the janissaries, the reign of Husayn Dey (1818–1830) heralded the emergence of social and political structures that reflected the more equitable distribution of power between Algiers and the provinces. The decade preceding the French conquest in 1830 was thus marked by a gradual "de-Turkification" of the administration, driven by the ascendance of the native-born Turco-Algerians, and by the greater avenues of participation for provincial notables.

HAFSID AND HUSAYNID TUNIS

Unlike Morocco or Algeria, Hafsid Tunis could rely on its productive urban agricultural economy, lucrative commerce with Europe, and competent rulers to weather the political crises of the post-Almohad period. In 1510, Spain began to control Hafsid trade from its enclaves in Bougie and Tripoli. For the next half-century, Tunis remained at the center of the strategic struggle between Habsburgs and Ottomans for hegemony in the western Mediterranean. When the Ottomans finally dislodged the Spaniards from Tunis in 1574, they organized their new possession along the same lines as the regency of Algiers: a central authority in Tunis headed by an appointed pasha, assisted by beys in the provinces, and supported by a corps of janissaries under the command of deys. Senior military officers formed a diwan that acted as executive council. Yet the janissary contingent in Tunis did not grow overly dependent on privateering and continued to derive its main income from agricultural surpluses and international trade. Despite its incorporation into the Ottoman realm, Tunisia preserved its traditional institutions, and local notables remained involved in administrative decision making.

In 1590–1591, the janissaries reacted to the "nativization" of the administration and forced the pasha to recognize their dey as chief executive. This, however, did not impede or restrict the access of provincial beys to local resources, and they continued to recruit and employ Tunisian elements in their administration and army. Sufi and mainstream religious establishments also resisted bureaucratic centralization and united with the beys. Gradually, there emerged a Turco-Tunisian dynasty of beys that was widely regarded as "native" to Tunisia. The devolution of power to the provinces was confirmed in 1612 when the Ottoman sultan recognized Murad Bey as pasha, and granted him the right to transmit the title to his descendants. In 1671, the Muradids deposed the dey and transferred their seat to Tunis. They were themselves overthrown in 1702, following a military coup that reinstated temporarily the office of dey. The restored regime soon collapsed in defeat at the hands of invading Algerian troops. In the provinces, resistance to the Algerians was led by a coalition of Sufi elements and the remnants of the Turco-Tunisian notability. Husayn ibn Ali repelled the invaders and invested Tunis in 1705, thereby instating a dynasty that would rule Tunisia until 1957. Political stability under the Husaynids generated economic prosperity, and commercial treaties were concluded with France, England, Spain, Holland, and Austria. After 1784, however, Tunisia was again weakened by military incursions from Algeria and, more importantly, by a considerable deterioration of its terms of trade with Europe, a process that would reorient its economy in the next century toward cash-crop exports and dependence on European markets.

See also Habsburg Dynasty: Austria ; Ottoman Empire ; Spain .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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O. W. Abi-Mershed