IV. The Early Modern Period, 1500–1800 > C. The Middle East and North Africa, 1500–1800 > 3. North Africa, 1504–1799 > a. Morocco > 1662
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  The Encyclopedia of World History.  2001.
 
 
1662
 
Britain inherited from Portugal part of the Moroccan port of Tangier.  1
 
1664–72
 
MAWLAY AL-RASHID, FOUNDER OF THE ALAWI DYNASTY. He began the reunification of Morocco and the rule of a family that remains in power to this day. In 1666 he took Fez as his capital.  2
 
1672–1727
 
MAWLAY ISMA‘IL. A powerful ruler, he succeeded in reunifying Morocco with the help of a professional army drawn largely from black slaves taken from the Sudan. Mawlay Isma‘il came close to asserting central authority throughout almost all of Morocco. In order to do this he also destroyed the power of the Sufi brotherhoods. Piracy provided the state with major sources of income in the form of a piracy tax levied on goods and captives. The port of Salé formed the privateering center of Morocco. Meknes became a new capital built largely by Christian slave labor. Once a provincial town, it was improved and restructured with new mosques and a palace with a garden city reserved for the use of high government officials.  3
 
1682, Jan. 29
 
Treaty of peace and commerce with France. The agreement was not effectively executed because of continued piratical warfare. Mawlay Isma‘il made piracy a state monopoly and Moroccan corsairs harried shipping in the Atlantic and the entrance to the Mediterranean. French pirates turned over their Muslim captives to their government for impressment as galley slaves in the French navy. French-Moroccan relations deteriorated steadily and were finally broken in 1718, not to be resumed until 1767.  4
 
1684
 
Mawlay Isma‘il expelled the British from Tangier.  5
 
1691
 
Death of Hasan al-Yusi (b. 1631), one of the most learned religious scholars of 17th-century Morocco. He addressed an epistle to Mawlay Isma‘il denouncing the repression of the population.  6
 
1694
 
Death of Muhammad al-Arbi, a historian and genealogist who wrote al-Durr al-sani, a study of the sharifian families of Fez. The work is considered a major source for Moroccan history.  7
 
1704
 
The British captured Gibraltar. Opposed by the government of Spain, they received supplies from Morocco. Gibraltar became a point of sale for English goods to Morocco.  8
 
1707
 
Death of Muhammad al-Wazir Ghassani, a statesman and diplomat who served Mawlay Isma‘il. He undertook a diplomatic mission to Spain to ransom Moroccan corsairs and find Arabic manuscripts abandoned after the final Muslim expulsion from 1609 to 1614. He wrote about the mission and detailed life at the Spanish court.  9
 
1721, Jan. 23
 
Treaty of peace and commerce with Britain, providing British shipping with protection from Moroccan pirates and official extortion.  10
 
1735–45
 
Period of civil war, with power contested by various usurpers and pretenders to the Alawi caliphate. Sultan Abdallah (r. 1729–57) was deposed five times.  11
 
c. 1743
 
Death of Muhammad al-Ifrani, a historian and biographer whose famed chronicle of the Sa‘di dynasty, Nuzhat al-hadi, remains the most important historical work for the period from 1511 to 1670.  12
 
 
 
The Encyclopedia of World History, Sixth edition. Peter N. Stearns, general editor. Copyright © 2001 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Maps by Mary Reilly, copyright © 2001 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

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