Marīnid dynasty

Marīnid dynasty, Amazigh (Berber) dynasty that replaced Almohad rule in Morocco and, temporarily, in other parts of northern Africa during the 13th–15th century.

The Marīnids were a tribe of the Zanātah group—traditional allies of the Umayyad caliphs of Córdoba in Spain. The Marīnids had been established in eastern Morocco for more than a century when, in 1248, their ruler, Abū Yaḥyā, captured Fès (Fez) and made it the Marīnid capital. With the defeat of the last of the Almohads and the capture of Marrakech in 1269, the Marīnids, under Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb, became masters of Morocco. In order to fulfill what they viewed as the duty of Muslim sovereignty and to acquire religious prestige, they declared a jihad (holy war) in Spain until the mid-14th century. Although the war helped the Muslim Naṣrid dynasty of Granada to consolidate its position and the fighting slowed down the Christian advance toward the Strait of Gibraltar, no territory was recaptured from the Christians, nor were any permanent conquests made in Africa, where the Marīnids tried to reestablish the Almohad empire. The greatest of the Marīnid sultans, Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī, captured the ʿAbd al-Wādid capital of Tilimsān (Tlemcen) in 1337, but neither he nor his successor, Abū ʿInān, were able to shake Ḥafṣid rule in Tunisia. The campaigns, however, depleted the resources of the dynasty, and by the 15th century the Marīnid realm was in a state of anarchy. A collateral branch of the Marīnids, the Waṭṭāsids (Banū Waṭṭās), assumed rule over Morocco in 1465, but it collapsed when the Saʿdī sharifs took Fès in 1548.