In 1803 Mawlay Sulayman had given
"Ali Bey" a copy in Arabic of his lineage
tracing his ancestry back to the Prophet.
| link to M. Sulayman's Arabic genealogy link to Alawi family tree |
Mawlay Abd al-Rahman's lineage differed form this only slightly he was: Mawlay Abd al-Rahman bin Mawlay Hisham bin Sidi Mohammed bin Mawlay Abd Allah bin Mawlay Ismail." because Mawlay Hisham had not been a sultan. Mawlay Abd al-Rahman succeeded his uncle Mawlay Sulayman in 1822.
Descent from the prophet was an important part of the Alawi family's legitimacy. It had come to power in the middle of the seventeenth century when it replaced the Saadi dynasty that had ruled Morocco since 1511. Both these dynasties made the same claim of sharifian descent (that is from Muhammad through Ali and Fatima). But it was not the only basis of legitimacy.
Mawlay Abd al-Rahman was more than a ruler, he was Amir al-Mu`minin, the Commander of the Faithful, the head of the Islamic community, the umma. That meant he had also to be a scholar and a religious expert. His task was to protect the "Abode of Islam", the Dar al-Islam, by ensuring that the shari`a, the holy law, was obeyed, that irreligious forces, inside and outside Morocco, were checked and that Muslims lived in peace and security.
Since this function could not be could not be carried out without order and security, there was but a short step to justifying his untrammelled power. Some legal scholars argued that order was so important that no challenge to the sultan's rule could be licit. No matter how unjust the ruler, rebellion was a far worse evil. The community had to have a head. This explains Ahmad bin Tuwayr's eagerness to swear allegiance to him.
But the claim to absolute power never went unchallenged, because the shari`a also held that the Islamic community should choose its leader on the basis of ability and suitability. In Morocco this was expressed in the oath of allegiance, the bay`a, that was given to a sultan at the beginning of his reign. When a city or a tribe swore allegiance it was usually simply recognising the status quo - the sultan had already taken power. But the word used for the oath, bay`a, is etymologically connected with contracts and sales and the contractual relationship sometimes became explicit. When the community had a real choice, the bay`a might contain conditions(1).
Suitability, then not only meant an ability to rule, by to understand and interpret the law. Most sultans were very highly educated in Islamic sciences - they studied the Qura`an, commentaries on it, and were well acquainted with the law.
These considerations are reflected in the Sultan's behaviour. Many European accounts (of which Edward Drummond-Hay's is typical) present him as a remote figure who said very little. Protocol, ceremonial, shouted prayers, and indirect conversation all kept him apart. His person was holy. In general that was true of his relationship with Moroccans as well. But he was also a scholar and those whom he considered brother scholars were treated less formally: Ibn Tuwayr held a long conversations with Abd al-Rahman.
Yet his public remoteness towards Europeans did not mean that Mawlay Abd al-Rahman was uninterested in Europe. In particular he was inclined towards European trade. Mawlay Sulayman his uncle who had been bankrupt when his reign began, opened his ports to trade, although neither he nor the `ulama much liked commerce with Europe. They believed that the shari`a forbade Muslims to trade with Christians, because horses, for example, or sulphur, might make the Christians stronger and the inhabitants of the cities loathed the grain trade, fearing that exports in years of plenty would mean that none was kept in reserve for years of want. Worried about the effects of European trade had led to a rebellion against in Fez, in 1820 which Talib bin Jallun, the richest merchant in town had supported because European trade threatened his control of trans-Saharan trade. Mawlay Sulayman made him wazir in order to win him over, and he quickly became a supporter of European trade. Mawlay Abd al-Rahman, was an enthusiastic advocate of foreign trade as governor of Essaouira when his uncle was Sultan. He had encouraged European merchants, and after he became sultan, consul after consul trekked down to Marrakesh; the Portuguese in 1823, the British in 1824, the French and the Sardinian in 1825.(2) Each signed a trade treaty , although Morocco had little to export because in 1825 the country began another cycle of poor rainfall and famine. When Edward Drummond-Hay visited Marrakesh in 1829/30 he found both the wazir (as represerntative of the Sultan sympathetic to the idea of trade.
Mawlay Abd al-Rahman did not trade himself, but relied on agents, the tujjar al-sultan ("Merchants of the sultan"), most of them concentrated in Essaouira, or Mogador, the southern port city that Mohammed III had built to funnel foreign trade into the Makhzan's hands. He encouraged merchants to settle there and act as his agents. Many were Jews, and by the time Drummond-Hay visited Morocco, there was a Jewish trading elite in Essaouira, and in other ports.(3)
To recoup his expenses Mawlay Abd al-Rahman flirted with the idea of re-founding his corsairing fleet. In 1828 it captured some British ships - which were soon returned - and an Austrian one. The Austrian navy retaliated with force. In June 1829 they landed at Larache and burned Moroccan ships.(4) Trading was much safer than corsairing.
1. Hammoudi, Master and Disciple, 66.
2. Jean-Louis Miège, Le Maroc et L'Europe (1830-1894), 4 vols. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1961-1963), 2:31-32.
3. Daniel Schroeter, Merchants of Essaouira: Urban Society and Imperialism in South-western Morocco 1844-1886 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 21-24.
4. Al-Nasiri, Kitab al-Istiqsa, 9:24-26; J-L Miège, "La Marine marocaine au XIXè siècle," Bulletin du comité marocain de documentation historique de la marine , no. 2 (1956): 2-4.