Berber
explain the exorbitant asking price, which according to Aristotle was 10 to 20 times its weight in gold. The natural dye came
from the spiky murex marine snails that clung to the remote Purpuraire (Purple) Islands – as though that could save them from
the clutches of determined Roman fashionistas.
Technically the Phoenicians were there first and discovered the stuff, but everyone wanted purple power. Savvy King Juba II
established a coastal dye works in the 1st century BC to perform the tricky task of extracting murex dye from the vein of the
mollusc, and kept his methods a closely guarded secret. The hue became wildly popular among royal celebrities of the day;
Cleopatra loved the stuff so much that she dyed the sails of her royal barge purple to meet Mark Antony.
But violet soon turned to violence. Legend has it that Juba’s son Ptolemy was murdered by Emperor Caligula for having the
audacity to sport a purple robe, making trendy Ptolemy possibly the world’s first fashion victim. The bright, nonfading dye was
never successfully produced commercially, and the secret extraction methods were assumed lost in the siege of
Constantinople in 1453. But in Essaouira the stuff is mysteriously still available, for a price. The mysteries of the colour purple
are still passed down from one generation of murex collectors to the next, and jealously guarded.WARRIORS UNVEILED: THE ALMORAVIDS
With religious leaders and scholars to help regulate trade, northern Morocco began to take
shape as an economic entity under the Idrissids. But the south was another story. A dissident
prophet emerged near Salé brandishing a Berber version of the Quran, and established an
apocryphal Islam called Barghawata that continued to be practised in the region for centuries.
The military strongmen who were left in control of trading outposts in the Atlas Mountains and
the Sahara demanded what they called ‘alms’ – bogus religious nomenclature that didn’t fool
anyone, and stirred up resentments among the faithful.
From this desert discontent arose the Sanhaja, the pious Saharan Berber tribe that founded
the Almoravid dynasty. While the Idrissid princes were distracted by disputes over Spain and
Mediterranean Morocco, the Sanhaja swept into the south of Morocco from what is today
Senegal and Mauritania. Tough doesn’t do justice to the Sanhaja; they lived on camels’ meat
and milk instead of bread, wore wool in the scorching desert and abstained from wine, music
and multiple wives. Their manly habit of wearing dark veils is still practised today by the few
remaining Tuareg, the legendary ‘blue men’ of the desert (and the many tourists who imitate
them in camel-riding photo-ops). When these intimidating shrouded men rode into Shiite and
Barghawata outposts under the command of Yahya ibn Umar and his brother Abu Bakr, they
demolished brothels and musical instruments as well as their opponents.
From Marrakesh to Barcelona, the Ultimate Power
Couple
After Yahya was killed and Abu Bakr was recalled to the Sahara to settle Sanhaja disputes in
1061, their cousin Yusuf bin Tachfin was left to run military operations from a camp site that
would become Marrakesh the magnificent. To spare his wife the hardships of life in the Sahara,
Abu Bakr divorced brilliant Berber heiress Zeinab en-Nafzawiyyat and arranged her remarriage
to his cousin. Though an odd romantic gesture by today’s standards, it was an inspired match.
It would be Zeinab’s third marriage: before marrying Abu Bakr, she was the widow of one of
the leading citizens of Aghmat, and had considerable fortune and political experience at her
command. Between bin Tachfin’s initiative and Zeinab’s financing and strategic counsel, the
Almoravids were unstoppable.
The Almoravids took a while to warm up to their new capitol of
Marrakesh – too many mountains and rival Berbers around, and too few
palm trees. To make themselves more at home, the Almoravids built a mud