Mulai Ismail

Mulai Ismail - Illustration from John Windus' Journey to Mequinetz, the resident of today's Käyser von Fetz and Marocco , 1726

Mulai Ismail ( Arabic مولاي إسماعيل, DMG Mūlāy ʾIsmāʿīl , French Moulay Ismaïl , also Ismaïl ben Chérif , completeمولاي إسماعيل بن الشريف ابن النصر / Mūlāy Ismā'īl bin aš-Šarīf ibn an-Naṣr , * around 1645 in Sidschilmasa ; † March 22, 1727 in Meknes ) was the second sultan of the Alavid dynasty of Morocco, which ruled to this day . Because of his unpredictable nature, his arbitrary torture and death sentences, Mulai Ismail is also nicknamed "the bloody" or "the bloodthirsty".

Mulai Ismail aimed to develop Morocco into a political heavyweight that could negotiate on an equal footing with influential European countries. To force European countries to the negotiating table, he used European prisoners enslaved in Morocco as pledge. Most of these European slaves came from raids by the barbarian corsairs who deliberately attacked merchant ships of European trading powers and sold their prisoners on North African slave markets or handed them over to the sultan. Another part of the European prisoners came from European settlements and fortresses on the Moroccan coast, which Mulai Ismail conquered with his troops. The extensive building work that was left over from his rule was only possible thanks to the forced labor of thousands of enslaved Europeans.

Life

Meknes: coffin of Mulai Ismail with protective grating ( maqsūra ) . The construction of the grave ( qubba ) was probably started during the ruler's lifetime and renovated in the 1950s.

Mulai Ismail ruled from 1672 to 1727 after his older half-brother and predecessor Mulai ar-Rashid united Morocco and defeated the Dila Brotherhood . Mulai ar-Rashid's death came unexpectedly: he died at the end of Ramadan when he fell from his horse. The succession of Moulai Ismail was by no means certain: 83 brothers and half-brothers as well as numerous nephews and cousins ​​had no less claim to a succession to the throne. Moulai Ismail's first action was the seizure of the state treasury in Fez , but he had to put down several revolts of his relatives and oppositional tribes over a period of five years before he could devote himself to the expansion of the empire.

He restructured the military system and created an army of around 40,000 Sudanese slaves . With this army he succeeded in keeping in check the various Berber and Bedouin tribes who opposed the unified state he had forced. He also conquered the English base Tangier (1684) and the Spanish one at Larache (1689) and Asilah as well as the coastal region there (1691). To consolidate his religious authority, he initiated the pilgrimage cult of the Seven Saints of Marrakech in 1691 .

The pacification of the empire led to an economic boom. Trade with Europe was particularly encouraged, with France initially being the preferred trading partner, but later Great Britain . Today his remains lie in the mausoleum of Moulay Ismail in Meknes , which can also be visited by non-Muslims.

character

Mulai Ismail was nicknamed "Mulai Ismail the Bloody" or "Mulai Ismail the Bloodthirsty". All the Europeans who met him described him as a cruel, sadistic, unpredictable and unpredictable ruler who was out to spread fear and terror. He arbitrarily pronounced death sentences, and when he felt like it, he carried them out himself. The color of his clothes reflected his mood: yellow was his "killing color" in which he ordered executions.

Moroccan historiography recognizes other features of his rule as well. His unconditional will to rule enabled him to put down numerous uprisings and rebellions. The country was first unified under his regime. The Moroccan historian Mohammed al-Ifrani stated that this alone was a reason to celebrate him.

European slaves and negotiations with European powers

The Moroccan Ambassador Ben Hadou in London , painting by an unknown painter supposed to represent Ben Hadou riding in Hyde Park , 1682

Mulai Ismail was one of the North African rulers with whom European powers repeatedly entered into negotiations in order to obtain the ransom and exchange of Christian prisoners or slaves. Attacks on the English base of Tangier, for example, had already led to 65 English prisoners in 1678 and a further 70 garrison soldiers were taken prisoner in later attacks. The English King Charles II sent an embassy to Morocco at the end of 1680 to obtain the release of these prisoners and to negotiate a long-term peace with Morocco. This mission failed because Mulai Ismail considered the gifts he had brought with them ridiculous and demanded unrealistic sums for the ransom of the prisoners. Sir James Lesley, who headed the legation, was only able to get Morocco to send an ambassador to London to continue negotiations there for the release of the English prisoners.

That ambassador was Mohammed ben Hadou , a Moroccan nobleman, rumored to have alleged that his mother was one of the enslaved Europeans. Ben Hadou and his company left Tangier for London in December 1681. The Moroccan embassy in London was received with great honor, as King Charles hoped, through direct negotiations, not only to be able to achieve the release of at least the English prisoners, but also an end to the hostilities that had lasted for years. Ben Hadou was celebrated in London for half a year. Despite his extensive powers, the result of the negotiations with the English royal court was meager: the English crown was supposed to pay the high sum of 200 Spanish dollars for every Englishman to be bought free, and the agreement was subject to Mulai Ismail's approval. The embassy returned to Morocco in September 1682, where Mulai Ismail received them with characteristic unpredictability: accused of having socialized with prostitutes and drank alcohol in London, he threatened them with severe punishment and only allowed himself to be appeased with great effort. There was no release of English prisoners who were living in miserable conditions in Morocco, although the English crown, as a token of its goodwill, released Moroccan prisoners who were detained in Tangier.

Moulai Ismail receives the French ambassador François Pidou de Saint Olon. Painting by Pierre-Denis Martin, 1693

William III successfully negotiated the release of English subjects enslaved in Morocco. Painting by Godfrey Kneller , around 1690

When the English King Charles II died in 1685, several hundred English prisoners and thousands of French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and Italians were in Moroccan slavery. They were used as slave labor in the Sultan's construction projects, were repeatedly exposed to attempts to convert them to Islam, and were threatened with torture if they resisted these attempts at conversion. However, adherence to the Christian creed was a prerequisite for the small chance of escaping the Moroccan captivity, since the European powers only advocated the release of Christian prisoners.

There were also negotiations with other European powers. Mohammad Temim was the Moroccan ambassador to the French court in 1682. In 1689, the French ambassador François Pidou de Saint Olon stayed in Morocco for a short time. Abdallah ben Aisha was ambassador to the French royal court in 1699. The background to the relationship between Morocco and France was their mutual hostility to Spain. Here, too, the mutual release of prisoners played an important role.

Under the English King James II no further negotiations with the Sultan took place. It was not until William III. resumed negotiations that dragged on for five years and resulted in the release of 194 English prisoners against payment of 15,000 British pounds and 1,200 kegs of gunpowder. In 1702, all remaining English prisoners who had not converted to Islam were released after Queen Anne had surprisingly declared that she could imagine an Anglo-Moroccan alliance attacking the Spanish city of Ceuta , which was on North African soil. However, the peace did not last very long. Just three years later, various English merchant ships were captured in the Mediterranean, and again 55 English seamen were held captive in the slave quarters of Meknes.

Buildings during the rule of Mulai Ismail

The Bab Mansour in Meknes , part of the unfinished palace city of Mulai Ismail.

Kasbah of Boulaouane , built around 1710

Meknes

The economic prosperity of the Alawid Empire made extensive building work possible. In addition to fortifying cities and relocating the capital from Fès to Meknes , he had a palace complex of gigantic proportions built there. Windus and Stuart (see below) describe the complex as larger than that of Versailles . The workforce for this provided thousands of white slaves from all parts of Europe and North America, who had to toil under appalling conditions. The high losses were supplemented by new raids by the corsairs from Salé . The two British Windus and Stuart were able to ransom 293 British slaves and bring them home. Mulai Ismail's palace complex was destroyed in the Lisbon earthquake in 1755 . Its mausoleum and parts of its imperial architecture, including the city and palace walls with the Bab Mansour gate or the granaries and stables of Heri es-Souani , have been preserved to this day.

outside

Moulai Ismail's background and character are also evident in the construction of numerous fortresses ( kasbahs ) spread across the country - the best known are the kasbahs of Settat and Boulaouane .

progeny

Contemporaries claim that he had no fewer than 888 children with 500 women. Like Ahmad al-Mansur (1578–1603), Mulai Ismail had made no provisions for the succession to the throne. So after his death violent power struggles broke out between seven of his sons, which led to the collapse of the unitary state created by Ismail and to the anomie . Fez was again the capital of the empire. Only under Mulai Muhammad (1757–1790) was the country pacified again.

Trivia

One of the best-known Europeans enslaved under Mulai Ismail is Thomas Pellow , one of the few Europeans who converted to Islam and who managed to return to his home country. He was enslaved at the age of 11 after the fishing boat he was working on was seized by barbarian corsairs . He managed to escape back to England after 23 years.

The evolutionary biologists Karl Grammer and Elisabeth Oberzaucher researched the sultan's reproductive behavior and received the Ig Nobel Prize for this in 2015 .

literature

• Dominique Busnot: The History of the Reign of Muley Ismael, the present king of Morocco, Fez, Tafilet, Sous & c. A. Bell et al., London 1715.
• Michael Graupner: He had the weekend off , FAZ September 20, 2015.
• Giles Milton: White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa's One Million European Slaves . Hodder & Sloughton, London 2005, ISBN 0-340-89509-8 .
• Nabil Matar: In the Land of the Christians Routledge, New York / London 2003, ISBN 0-415-93228-9 .
• Stephan Ronart, Nandy Ronart: Lexicon of the Arab World. A historical-political reference work. Artemis Verlag, Zurich et al. 1972, ISBN 3-7608-0138-2 .
• John Windus: Journey to Mequinetz The resident of today's Käyser von Fetz and Marocco. Which the Lord Commandeur, Carl Stuart, as ambassador to Great Britain, filed in 1721. To dispose of the prisoners there . Nicolaus Förster und Sohn, Hannover 1726 (German first edition of Windus' A Journey to Mequinez. The Residence of the Present Emperor Of Fez and Morocco. On The Occasion of Commodore Stewart's Embassy thither for the Redemption of the British Captives in the Year 1721. Jacob Tonson, London 1725).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Milton: White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa's One Million European Slaves. P. 37.
2. ^ Milton: White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa's One Million European Slaves. P. 30.
3. ^ Milton: White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa's One Million European Slaves. P. 31 and p. 34.
4. ^ Milton: White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa's One Million European Slaves. P. 155.
5. ^ Milton: White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa's One Million European Slaves. P. 38.
6. ^ Milton: White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa's One Million European Slaves. P. 39.
7. ^ Milton: White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa's One Million European Slaves. P. 42.
8. ^ Milton: White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa's One Million European Slaves. P. 43.
9. ^ Milton: White Gold. P. 47.
10. ^ Milton: White Gold. P. 49.
11. ^ Milton: White Gold. P. 50.
12. ↑ Giles Milton: White Gold. The extraordinary story of Thomas Pellow and the fate of white slaves in Africa. Theiss, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-8062-2247-0 .
13. ^ Elisabeth Oberzaucher , Karl Grammer : The case of Moulay Ismael - fact or fancy? In: PloS one . tape 9 , no. 2 , 2014, p. e85292 , doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0085292 .
14. ^ Giles Milton. There is also more literature there
15. ↑ Father of 888 children: He had the weekend off http://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft/menschen/arbeit-ueber-sultan-mit-888-kinderl-ig-nobelpreis-fuer-karl-grammer-13812551 .html