Wattasid dynasty

The Wattasids were a Zenata Berber family who first ran the Marinid sultanate of Morocco as viziers and then, from 1472 to 1554, ruled from Fez as sultans in their own right. Their era was one of weakness: Portuguese and Spanish forces seized much of the Moroccan coast, the south slipped from their control, and they were finally swept aside by the Saadians. Our 1492 and 1500 maps label their state the Wattasid Caliphate, although its rulers used the title of sultan.

The Wattasids were kin to the Marinids and had governed the eastern Rif, from a base at Tazouta near today's Nador, since the late thirteenth century. They supplied many of the Marinid state's officials, and the vizier was the most powerful office below the sultan. From 1420 Wattasid viziers acted as regents for the infant sultan Abd al-Haqq II and, even after he came of age, they would not give up power, making them the real rulers for almost four decades.

In 1459 Abd al-Haqq II turned on his viziers and had most of the family killed. His own rule ended in 1465, when the appointment of a Jewish vizier provoked a revolt in Fez and the sultan was killed. Muhammad ibn Ali Amrani-Joutey, leader of the city's sharifs, was proclaimed sultan. In 1472 one of the few Wattasid survivors, Muhammad al-Sheikh, took Fez and founded the new dynasty.

Muhammad al-Sheikh held only northern Morocco; the south was divided among local powers. Under a 1485 agreement he promised not to aid the Emirate of Granada in return for Spain leaving Moroccan ships alone in the Alboran Sea, and after the Christian conquest of Granada in 1492, at the end of the Granada War, Muslim and Jewish refugees from Spain arrived in Morocco. Meanwhile the Portuguese Empire took Safi in 1488, Mazagan in 1502 and Agadir in 1505, while Spain captured Melilla in 1497. His son Muhammad al-Burtuqali, who reigned from 1504 to 1526, tried and failed to recover Asilah and Tangier.

Resistance to the Portuguese gave rise to a new power in the south. In 1510 the tribes of the Sous valley chose the Saadian chief Muhammad al-Qa'im as their leader, and his sons took Marrakesh by about 1525. Ahmad al-Wattasi failed to retake the city, and under a treaty usually dated 1527 Morocco was split roughly along the Oum Er-Rbia river. The Saadians routed a Wattasid army in 1536 and in 1541 drove the Portuguese from Agadir, winning prestige that the Wattasids, who had sought coexistence with the Portuguese, could not match.

In 1545 the Saadian Muhammad al-Shaykh captured Ahmad al-Wattasi in battle, and after a long siege he took Fez in January 1549. The Ottoman Empire, now established in Algeria, tried to reverse this: in January 1554 an Ottoman army defeated the Saadians and installed a Wattasid, Ali Abu Hassun, in Fez as an Ottoman vassal. Muhammad al-Shaykh retook the city that September and Abu Hassun was killed, ending Wattasid rule.

Historians generally regard the Wattasid period as one of crisis, with towns impoverished, trade with the far south cut off by Portuguese control of the ports, and intellectual life in decline. Their coins, rare gold pieces and square silver dirhams, followed the old Almohad weight standard.

Our 1492 and 1500 maps show the Wattasid Caliphate in northern Morocco, with the Zayyanid realm to the east and Castile across the Strait of Gibraltar. The 1530 and 1600 maps label it Watassid Morocco, the second well after the dynasty's fall in 1554.