Excerpt from the Nupedia Website (Translated from French).
"The Smerwick Martyrs were 3,600 Papal troops captured by English troops on the way to Ireland and executed for piracy[1]. Though not officially recognised as Martyrs by the Catholic Church in the manner of the 400 martyrs of England and Wales, their execution was greeted with outrage by catholics at the time and is often said to have contributed to the routine execution of prisoners by both English and Spanish troops in the Anglo-Islamic/Spanish War."
Excerpt from "A history of Timbuktu" By Salim Zafrani
@ Université de Paris, 1995.
"Timbuktu, and its neighbouring cities of Jenne and Gao, had been centres of Islamic wealth and learning for centuries. And the rulers of those centres, whether Mali or Songhai, had long sent trade and gifts north to Morocco. Eventually someone was going to want to cut out the middleman and that someone was Ahmad al-Mansur who after several raids on the salt mines declared himself Caliph in 1586, argued that the Songhai were therefore his rightful subjects and sent Judar Pasha across the Sahara with an army to claim the gold mines there.[2]
Judar arrived while the Songhai were fighting a civil war and quickly defeated any armies sent against him before his enemies could properly organise themselves before being summoned back home to help with the war against Spain.
His successors were left to organise control of three hostile cities in territory miles from their home which was by no means as rich as their sultan thought it was and from which trade caravans regularly didn't make it to Marrakech. Their answer was to make up for the shortfalls in salt and gold by increasing shipments of black songhai slaves. In return they needed goods they could trade with the sub saharan empires and enough weapons to hold off attacks from the neighbouring Mali and Dendi kingdoms.
This trade was their lifeline and so when Morocco fell into chaos, the Pashalik of Timbuktu remained loyal to the Sultan of Marrakech even when much closer cities did not. The Moroccans in the Sahel elected their own Pasha rather than having him appointed and a lot of them had never seen Morocco but they were loyal because they needed someone to buy their slaves and send them guns."
Excerpt from the Website 'Ask an Historian.'
"Q: Did the Spanish win or lose the Anglo-Islamic/Spanish War?
A: That is a very complicated question, largely because what exactly Spain wanted out of the war depends on who you were asking and when. It is entirely true that the Spanish did not succeed in many of their more ambitious aims, they did not replace Elizabeth with a Catholic Monarch, they did not retake Constantinople, they did not succeed in making puppet states out of Brittany or Ireland. But it is also true that Spain's enemies failed in most of their goals too, they couldn't take any of Spain's territory, they couldn't break the union with Portugal and they couldn't plant a Protestant King on the throne of France.
The treaties that Philip II signed with Henry of Navarre and Philip III signed with James I, Ahmad al-Mansur, and Mehmed III were essentially conservative ones. Spain would leave them alone and they would leave Spain alone. But implict in all of them was the recognition that 'Spain' included Portugal, the New World, Southern Italy and the Low Countries. In that way Spain emerged from a war with four major powers as, theoretically at least, the most powerful country in the world. And of those powers Morocco and arguably also the Ottomans were reduced to the extent that they would never be a serious challenge again.
The downside to that was the huge losses in money, ships and men Spain endured. It is not an exageration to say that an entire generation of Spain's most talented sailors and soldiers died in that war, their private merchant marine was devastated and their economy was sent into a tailspin it never really recovered from. And without those twenty three years of war to drain spanish manpower the dutch revolt, which Spain unambiguously did lose, would have faced much stiffer opposition.
Which brings us to one of the great, true, cliches of 16th and 17th century Europe. No matter who the war was actually between, the real winners were the Dutch.
And the real losers were the Irish."
Excerpt from an Irish Song.
"A curse upon you Kenny Mackenzie[3],
You who raped our Motherland,
I hope you're suffering immensley,
For the horrors that you sent,
To our misfortunate forefathers,
Whom you robbed of their birthright,
May you burn in hell tonight!"
Excerpt from "Africa in the 17th Century" by G.R. Pennell
@Bristol Pamphlets, 1981.
"The death of Ahmad al-Mansur of the plague in many ways was also the death of the Moroccan state. His empire instead splintered into seveneral different states all led by Sultans that claimed control over all of Morocco.
In Marrakech the Sultan was al-Mansur's eldest son and heir, Muhammed al-Shaykh al-Mamun, who had been governor of Fes upon his father's death[4] and had killed his two brothers in the first round of the civil war. Al-Mamun was incredibly unpopular among his Arabic and Berber subjects and so ruled thanks to an elite bodyguard of Songhai slaves known as the Black Guard. His Sultanate is therefore often known as Songhai Morocco and was limited to the area around Fes and Marrakech, with it's economy being built around the slave ran sugar plantations in the Sous Valley.
At Al-Mamun's death the nominal power passed to his son, Abd el Malek. But the real power in Songhai Morocco fell into the hands of the Grand Vizier, a position modelled after the Ottomans, which was original held by the Spanish eunuch Judar Pasha but later came to be almost exclusively held by men from the Black Guard.
To the south-east of this sultanate, the areas around the Middle Atlas mountains were held by a sufi brotherhood known as the Dila. Unique among the various sultanates, the Brotherhood of Dila were dominated by an elite that were Berber and not Arabic and commonborn and not noble. Their rule was contested by two sources, the self proclaimed mahdi Ahmed ibn ali Mahalli, who died after leading his followers in an ill fated crusade against Songhai Morocco and, later, the Alaouites who were the governors of Tafilalt, a famous oasis and fig farm located to the east of Songhai Morocco.
The Alaouites in particular grew in power by keeping the trade routes between Timbuktu and Marrakech open and feeding new slaves into Songhai Morrocco. Which in return meant that Marrakech relied on the Alaouites without actually commanding their loyalty. The fight to keep the trans saharan trade running was the one that al-Mamun and his successors was most invested in.
The one they were least invested in was the fight against the Spanish, which cost them a lot of support from the religious thinkers. The capture of Melilla had been the greatest achievement of al-Mansur's religious war. But the governor in charge of Melilla, Ahmad Hurra, had supported the dead Abu Faris Abdallah rather than his brother and so feared death at the hands of al-Mamum unless he could find a powerful patron.
The deal he made with the Spanish at Ceuta horrified most of Morocco. He would accept as his Sultan Muley Xeque[5] who's father had fled to Portugal upon losing his throne to al-Mansurs's brother. This would create a buffer zone around Melilla in the north of Morocco ruled by Spanish Islamic vassals which would protect the Christian Spanish ports (which rapidly increased in number from 2 back to 7). It also would take in the Moriscos from southern Spain who Philip III did not want[6].
'Spanish Morocco' had been the region worst hit by the plagues and famines that surrounded the civil war and the sudden addition of numerous new mouths to feed was catastrophic and provoked even further resentment against the Spanish. However Marrakech had no desire to go to war with Spain all over again.
Rabat however did. Zidan al-Masir, al-Mamun's other brother, had worked with the English and Dutch during the war with the Spanish and so had their tacit support. His powerbase then, not surprisingly, was among the navy and the corsairs and when Zidan was killed by his brother and the Spanish reappeared along the coasts, Zidan's followers at Rabat were not prepared to follow either the Songhai Sultan or the Spanish one.
Rabat, unique among the various Moroccan states, was not a Sultanate but a Republic[7]. Each ship's captain, there was no difference between whether the ship has a corsair one or an ex naval one, had a vote. And they picked from their numbers, a governor, and head admiral who became the cities civilian and military leaders. Their first choice for the latter was obvious, Sidi al-Ayachi, the jihadist. His sole aim was to use every ship and every man at his disposal to drive the Spanish in to the sea. The result was Morocco in the north turned into one long running battle between the Corsairs and the Spanish with every Moroccan or Morisco who wanted to fight coming to Rabat or the burned out port of Sale to join al-Ayachi's Jihad.
Despite that, Rabat was also a meeting of faiths and cultures unlike anywhere else in Morocco, with a large jewish population, and was the site of many conversions as european pirates adopted Islam to work with the corsairs and Moroccans adopted Christianity so they could get jobs for the Dutch and English navies.
The second head admiral of Rabat was himself born a Christian in Holland before converting[8]."
[1] In OTL, Stukley's diversion to Morocco meant only 1,000 Papal Troops made it to Ireland. They were likewise massacred.
[2] 4 years earlier than in OTl thanks to earlier delivery of english cannons due to an earlier English-Spanish war.
[3] Kenneth Mackenzie in OTL was one of the principle actors in James VI's attempt to paciify and anglicise the western isles and highlands. The song is based on one in OTL about Oliver Cromwell, it doesn't really rhyme there either.
[4] In OTL he was removed from this position for being a brutal drink, in TTL the war with the Spanish distracts the Sultan long enough for him to remain there.
[5] In OTl he converted to christianity but ITTL his father doesn't die in a failed attempt to conquer Morocco and so his political use as a friendly muslim ruler outweighs the religious use of converting him.
[6] This means that the expulsion of the Moriscos happens in a slightly more organised fashion as there is a clear destination.
[7] The Republic of Sale in OTL was a very short lived state. That seemed a shame.
[8] That's from OTL.
