They took Fez, Meknez, Sale, Rabat and Sidjilmassa
in the Tafilelt; and their second Sultan, Abou-Youssef,
built New Fez (Eldjid) on the height above the old
Idrissite city. The Merinids renewed the struggle
with the Sultan of Tlemcen, and carried the Holy War
once more into Spain. The conflict with Tlemcen
was long and unsuccessful, and one of the Merinid
Sultans died assassinated under its walls. In
the fourteenth century the Sultan Abou Hassan tried
to piece together the scattered bits of the Almohad
empire. Tlemcen was finally taken, and the whole
of Algeria annexed. But in the plain of Kairouan,
in Tunisia, Abou Hassan was defeated by the Arabs.
Meanwhile one of his brothers had headed a revolt
in Morocco, and the princes of Tlemcen won back their
ancient kingdom. Constantine and Bougie rebelled
in turn, and the kingdom of Abou Hassan vanished like
a mirage. His successors struggled vainly to control
their vassals in Morocco, and to keep their possessions
beyond its borders. Before the end of the fourteenth
century Morocco from end to end was a chaos of antagonistic
tribes, owning no allegiance, abiding by no laws.
The last of the Merinids, divided, diminished, bound
by humiliating treaties with Christian Spain, kept
up a semblance of sovereignty at Fez and Marrakech,
at war with one another and with their neighbours,
and Spain and Portugal seized this moment of internal
dissolution to drive them from Spain, and carry the
war into Morocco itself.
The short and stormy passage of the Beni-Merins seems
hardly to leave room for the development of the humaner
qualities; yet the flowering of Moroccan art and culture
coincided with those tumultuous years, and it was
under the Merinid Sultans that Fez became the centre
of Moroccan learning and industry, a kind of Oxford
with Birmingham annexed.
VI
THE SAADIANS
Meanwhile, behind all the Berber turmoil a secret
work of religious propaganda was going on. The
Arab element had been crushed but not extirpated.
The crude idolatrous wealth-loving Berbers apparently
dominated, but whenever there was a new uprising or
a new invasion it was based on the religious discontent
perpetually stirred up by Mahometan agents. The
longing for a Mahdi, a Saviour, the craving for purification
combined with an opportunity to murder and rob, always
gave the Moslem apostle a ready opening; and the downfall
of the Merinids was the result of a long series of
religious movements to which the European invasion
gave an object and a war-cry.
The Saadians were Cherifian Arabs, newcomers from
Arabia, to whom the lax Berber paganism was abhorrent.
They preached a return to the creed of Mahomet, and
proclaimed the Holy War against the hated Portuguese,
who had set up fortified posts all along the west coast
of Morocco.
