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Islam Stays, but Umayyads Must Go
The admiration between the Berbers and the Arab Umayyads was not always mutual, however.
While the Umayyads respected Jews and Christians as fellow believers in the word of a
singular God, they had no compunction about compelling polytheist Berbers to pay special
taxes and serve as infantry (read: cannon fodder). The Umayyads greatly admired Berber
women for their beauty, but this wasn’t necessarily advantageous; many were conscripted into
Umayyad harems.
Even the Berbers who converted to Islam were forced to pay tribute to
their Arab overlords. A dissident school of Islamic thought called Kharijism
critiqued the abuses of power of the Umayyads as a corruption of the faith,
and called for a new moral leadership. In the mid-8th century, insurrections
erupted across North Africa. Armed only with slings, a special force of
Berbers defeated the elite Umayyad guard. The Umayyads were soon cut
off from Spain and Morocco, and local leaders took over an increasingly
lucrative trade in silver from the Western Sahara, gold from Ghana and
slaves from West Africa.A DEATH-DEFYING DYNASTY: THE IDRISSIDS
Looking back on early Berber kingdoms, the 14th-century historian Ibn
Khuldun noted a pattern that would repeat throughout Moroccan dynastic
history. A new leadership would arise determined to do right, make
contributions to society as a whole and fill the royal coffers, too. When the pursuit of power and
royal comforts began to eclipse loftier aspirations, the powers that be would forfeit their claim
to moral authority. A new leadership would arise determined to do right, and the cycle would
begin all over again.
So it was with the Idrissids, Morocco’s first great dynasty. A descendant of the Prophet
Mohammed’s daughter Fatima, Idriss I fled Arabia for Morocco in AD 786 after discovering
ambitious Caliph Haroun ar-Rashid’s plan to murder his entire family. But Idriss didn’t exactly
keep a low profile. After being proclaimed an imam (religious leader) by the local Berbers, he
unified much of northern Morocco in the name of Islam. Just a few days after he’d finally settled
into his new capitol at Fez in 792, Haroun ar-Rashid’s minions finally tracked down and
poisoned Idriss I. Yet death only increased Idriss I’s influence; his body was discovered to be
miraculously intact five centuries later, and his tomb in the hillside town of Moulay Idriss remains
one of the holiest pilgrimage sites in Morocco.
His son Idriss II escaped Haroun’s assassins and extended Idrissid control across northern
Morocco and well into Europe. In perhaps the first (but certainly not the last) approximation of
democracy in Morocco, Idriss II’s 13 sons shared power after their father’s death. Together
they expanded Idrissid principates into Spain and built the glorious mosques of Fez: the
Kairaouine and the Andalous.
WHEN PURPLE WAS PURE GOLD
The port that is today called Essaouira was hot property in ancient times, because it had one thing everyone wanted: the
colour purple. Imperial purple couldn’t be fabricated, and was the one colour strictly reserved for Roman royalty. This helps