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Idrissid Caliphate

By the 7th Century AD the Arabs were in full expansion. They were inspired primarily by their fierce desire to spread their own religion of Islam throughout the World. but they were doubtless particularly attracted to North Africa by the endless stretches of desert sand which were to them like home. It was in 670 that the first Arab invasions of the North African coastal plain took place under Oqba Ben Nafi, commander of the Umayed dynasty in Damascus. He is best known for having founded the city of Kairwan (S of Tunis) and for having built the first ever mosque in North Africa, He swept with his army into what is now Morocco in the year 683. Which he called this Maghreb al Aqsa or farthest West.

When a second Ummayed leader, Musa lbn Nouasser, arrived in 703,the Berbers were not unwilling to participate in the Islamic expansion into southern Spain and into the more southerly areas of Morocco, However, the progress of Islam remained patchy and small enclaves of Christians still existed in the interior though many fled to Spain). This lack of national unity persisted until the arrival of ldriss Ben Abdallah, a descendant of the prophet Mohammed, in 788.

There are very few original Arab sources available for reference about this early period but that which is most frequently cited by historians is the Raoud El Kartas, a chronicle by the 13C writer from Fez, Ibn Abi-Zar-El-fasi: from this it is reported that ldriss Ben Abdallah fled into Egypt from the Abbasides. He arrived by way of Kairwan, first in Tangier and then in the former Roman city of Volubilis where was received by Berbers already fully converted to Islam by the earlier Arab arrivals. The Berbers chief proclaimed Idriss King and pledged the support of his own and neighboring tribes. It seems that the arrival of an assured leader who would guide the country out of the spiritual uncertainties which had increased since the death of Oqba ben Nafi was welcome. Idriss II was born after his father's death and was educated and prepared for his awesome task. He became King at the age of 12, in 804.

He founded Fez which in his time was well prospered. In 818, 8000 Arab families arrived after being expelled by Christians from the Emirate of Cordoba in Spain. Seven years 2000 families came from Kairwan. These 'refugies' were welcomed and installed, respectively, on the right and left banks of the river which divides the town. It was very largely as a result of the of these people, with their refinements and skills, that Fez became a great spiritual and intellectual center whose influence very much reached to the far north of the country and, later, beyond. Idriss II who died in 828. In Morocco came the next dynasty, from the south, the Almoravides.

They were camel-riding Berber of the Sanhaja group of tribes, to whom cultivation of the soil was unknown. For a century or more they Have been conquering and converting to Islam the black countries of the Sahara, inspired by their search for the source of gold which had been flowing into Morocco from somewhere in the region of the Niger river.

The Idrissite rule is a welter of obscure struggles between rapidly melting groups of adherents. Its chief features are: the founding of Moulay Idriss and Fez, and the building of the mosques of El Andalous and Kairouiyin at Fez for the two groups of refugees from Tunisia and Spain. Meanwhile the Caliphate of Cordova had reached the height of its power, while that of the Fatimites extended from the Nile to western Morocco, and the little Idrissite empire, pulverized under the weight of these expanding powers, became once more a dust of disintegrated tribes.

It was only in the eleventh century that the dust again conglomerated. Two Arab tribes from the desert of the Hedjaz, suddenly driven westward by the Fatimites, entered Morocco, not with a small military expedition, as the Arabs had hitherto done, but with a horde of emigrants reckoned as high as 200,000 families; and this first colonizing expedition was doubtless succeeded by others.

To strengthen their hold in Morocco the Arab colonists embraced the dynastic feuds of the Berbers. They inaugurated a period of general havoc which destroyed what little prosperity had survived the break-up of the Idrissite rule, and many Berber tribes took refuge in the mountains; but others remained and were merged with the invaders, reforming into new tribes of mixed Berber and Arab blood. This invasion was almost purely destructive; it marks one of the most desolate periods in the progress of the "wasteful Empire" of Moghreb.

The campaigns fought by the Almoravides were violent and successful and they soon controlled the whole of the south, under the leadership of Ibn Tachafine ( the founder of Marrakech in 1062, along with Al Koutoubia Mosque). Much of Spain became part of the Almoravide empire. A period of peace and prosperity followed, enriched by the refined culture of the Andalucian courts to which had been added a healthy dose of Berber virility and discipline.