Charles II, King of England a descendant of the Moorish Medici bloodline

In his account of captivity in Morocco in the 1680s, Thomas Phelps recalled meeting with an “ancient Moor, who formerly had been a slave in England and spoke good English, and who was set at liberty by our late Gracious King Charles the 2d.” Another captive/slave was the corsair  Abdallah bin Aisha, who spent three years in England and was released by King Charles without ransom upon the intercession of James II.”

Source: Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery Nabil Matar

“Moors have been present in Europe from classical times. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries Roman soldiers of [African] origin served in Britain, and some stayed after their military service ended.”

Source: Black Moors in Scotland.

The Restoration of the monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under King Charles II, “the Moor” after the republic that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. There are several historical references referring to Charles II as having a “Black Complexion” or as a “Black Boy“. “It was a nickname for him (coined by his mother) because of the darkness of his skin and eyes.”

Source: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Charles II and his Reign.

“Pubs across England called The Black Boy are generally named after Charles“. “Since the early 16th Century, The Black Boy Inn hotel in Caernarfon has been welcoming weary travelers and visitors to the Town of Caernarfon and region of Snowdonia.” Source: Black Boy Inn

According to Black Boys Inn B&B in Berkshire

“The word “Stuart” comes from the old nordish root Svart which means “black”. Stuart is the same word as Swarthy, which means black in old English. There was once a Stuart line of Kings in England. The name of the founding ancestor was Stuart which means Black man. Stuart Kings of England and Scotland, King Charles II, also lovingly known as the “black boy” of England by his subjects. He is commemorated in the celebrated name of the Black Boy Inn, found all over the British Isle. King Charles II was a black man.”

Source: Welcome to The Black Boys Inn B&B in Berkshire

At this time we disagree with Black Boys Inn B&B in Berkshire that “Stuart” comes from the old nordish “Svart“. “Svart” is the root of “Swarthy” and Charles II is described as having a “Swarthy Complexion” and alternatively a “Black Complexion“. Thus, we do not need “Stuart” to derive from “Svart” in order to authenticate the descriptions that Charles II’s complexion was “Black“.

“Stuart is the French form of the Scottish surname Stewart. The French form of the name was brought to Scotland from France by Mary Stuart, in the 16th century.”

Source: Hanks, Patrick; Hodges, Flavia (2006). Hardcastle, Kate (ed.). Oxford Dictionary of Names (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 253. ISBN 978-0-19-861060-1.

Stewart Family History

Stewart Name Meaning Scottish: “originally an occupational name for an administrative official of an estate, from Middle English stiward, Old English stigweard, stiweard, a compound of stig ‘house(hold)’ + weard ‘guardian’. In Old English times this title was used of an officer controlling the domestic affairs of a household, especially of the royal household; after the Conquest it was also used more widely as the native equivalent of Seneschal for the steward of a manor or manager of an estate.”

Source: Dictionary of American Family Names ©2013, Oxford University Press

“swart (adj.) Old English sweart “black, dark,” of night, clouds, also figurative, “wicked, infamous,” from Proto-Germanic *swarta- (source also of Old Frisian, Old Saxon, and Middle Dutch swart, Dutch zwart, Old Norse svartr, German schwarz, Gothic swarts “dark-colored, black“), from PIE root *swordo- “dirty, dark, black” (source of sordid). The true Germanic word, surviving in the Continental languages but displaced in English by black. Of skin color of persons from late 14c. Related: Swartest.” Source: Swart.  “Swarthy” alteration of swarty, from swart +‎ -y, from Old English sweart (“black”).” Source: Swarthy “SVART” means “Black” Source: Nordic Names

Stuart Kings of England and Scotland, King Charles II

In addition to those references noted above there are others referring to his heirs as well as having a Black Complexion like Charles II. Following the references, I came upon the source of Charles II’s black complexion, which based upon the following references I believe to be inherited from his Medici ancestry. The Medici produced four Popes of the Catholic Church—Pope Leo X (1513–1521), Pope Clement VII (1523–1534), Pope Pius IV (1559-1565) and Pope Leo XI (1605)—and two queens of France—Catherine de’ Medici (1547–1589) and Marie de’ Medici (1600–1630).

During his escape after the Battle of Worcester, he was referred to as ‘a tall, black man’ in parliamentary wanted posters. The “wanted poster” for Charles II of England, 7 September 1651. Published 4 days after the Battle of Worcester while Charles was trying to escape to France and about the time he famously hid in the Royal Oak in Boscome Wood. Source Click Here

In 1550 William Thomas, in his Principal rules of the Italian grammar, defined ‘Moro’ as ‘ a Moore or blacke man’, as if the two were synonymous.” 

Source: Black Tudors: The Untold Story by Miranda Kaufmann

“As late as 1398 we find the following reference to the ‘Moors’: “Also the nacyn (nation) of Maurys (Moors) theyr blacke colour comyth of the inner partes.”

Source: A New English dictionary on historical principles: founded mainly on the materials collected by the Philological society / edited by James A. H. Murray … with the assistance of many scholars and men of science.

Alessandro de’ Medici, Duke of Florence, husband to a daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor and half-brother to the Queen of France. Ancestor to King Charles II

“Charles II of England came of this stock. G. F. Young says of the latter, “His dark hair and swarthy complexion showed traces of the Medici blood.”12* One of the Medicis, Alessandro, “The Moor,” [was] first reigning Duke of Florence. “

Source: Sex and Race: The old world J. A. Rogers Helga M. Rogers, Jun 15, 1970

“Charles Lenos, Duke of Richmond,”He is….. well shaped, Black Complexion, much like King Charles; not Thirty Years old.” (Page 36)

“Charles, Duke of St. Albans, Is Son to King Charles the Second, by Mrs. Gwyn;…. He is of a Black Complexion, not so tall as the Duke of Northumberland, yet very like King Charles. Turned of Thirty Years old.” (Page 40.) 

Source: Memoirs of the Secret Services of John Macky, Esq: During the Reigns of King … By John Macky, Gilbert Burnet, A. R.

“Alessandro’s purported mother, and indeed Alessandro himself, was sometimes referred to as a “Moor.”

Source: Was the Black Prince Black? And Other Historical Questions By John T. Scott

Black Boy Inn – Caernarfon

“He is of a black complexion, not so tall as the Duke of Northumberland [Charles’s son by the famous Lady Castle- maine],..There are also portraits, few of any artistic merit, of the fair and frail Louise do Querouailles, whom created Charles II [ portrait].”  

Source: London society

Black Boy wearing a bejeweled-feathered turban in use in Killay, Swanse before 1974 ad.

“Charles II, King of England, who was referred to by such labels as “Black Boy” (Harvey, 1 976, 20), and as possessing “unaesthetic swarthiness “

Source: Weird Maryland: Your Travel Guide to Maryland’s Local Legends and Best Kept … By Matthew Lake, Mark Moran, Mark

“Charles II (1630-85), otherwise known as the Merry Monarch, was a gargantuan baby. At four months he already looked, his mother complained, like a one-year-old. From the age of 12 he took part in English civil war battles and was described as “a tall, black man” in parliamentary wanted posters. His appearance was anything but English, the dramatic height and darkness most probably inherited from Danish and Italian grandmothers. At 6ft 2in, he was almost a foot taller than his father, and he increased it with towering high heels.”

Source: Charles II: Art and Power review – the original king of bling

“Charles’ appearance was anything but English, with his sensuous curling mouth, dark complexion, black hair and dark brown eyes, he much resembled his Italian maternal grandmother, Marie de Medici’s side of the family. During his escape after the Battle of Worcester, he was referred to as ‘a tall, black man’ in parliamentary wanted posters. One of the nick-names he acquired was the black boy His height, at six feet two inches, probably inherited from his Danish paternal grandmother, Anne of Denmark, also set him apart from his contemporaries in a time when the average Englishman was far smaller than today.”

Source: Charles II 1660-85 Early Life

Louis XIV is that he was first cousin to none other than king Charles II. Lady Antonia Fraser’s book “King Charles II” provides:

Antonia Fraser is the author of many widely acclaimed historical works which have been international bestsellers. She was awarded the Medlicott Medal by the Historical Association in 2000 and was made a DBE in 2011 for services to literature.

“First of all, he had an abnormal darkness of complexion, a truly saturnine tint. This darkness was the subject of comment from the first. His mother wrote jokingly to her sister-in-law that she had given birth to a black baby and to a friend in France that ‘he was so dark that she was ashamed of him’. She would send his portrait ‘as soon as he is a little fairer’. But Charles never did become fairer. Later the sobriquet ‘the Black Boy’ would be used, still commemorated in English inn signs.”

“There was definitely a strain of very dark, swarthy Italian blood in the French royal family, inherited through Marie de Medici, which might and did emerge from time to time. Anne of Austria, wife of Henrietta Maria’s brother Louis XIII, was said to have given birth to a baby having the ‘colour and visage of a blackamoor‘, which died a month after its birth. In 1664 another Queen of France, wife of Charles’ first Cousin Louis, was supposed to have given birth to a black child. There was even a ‘fanatic’ fantasy at the time of the Popish Plot in the 1670s, that Charles had been fathered on Henrietta Maria by a ‘black Scotsman‘ – a neat combination of the two prejudices of the time, against the Catholics and the Scots. So it became convenient to refer to the then King as that ‘black Bastard‘.”

“Of the many grandchildren of Marie de Medici, Charles was the only one to look purely Italian; the rest being in general both frailer and paler. But his appearance was certainly a complete throwback to his Italian ancestors, the Medici Dukes of Tuscany. Directly descended as he was from Lorenzo the Magnificent there is a striking resemblance in their portraits. Bishop Burnet, alluding to Charles’ Italianate appearance and intending to make a political point concerning tyranny, comparing the King to a statue of Tiberius. Marvell was presumably describing the same phenomenon when he described Charles as Of a tall stature and of sable hue Much like the son of Kish, that lofty Jew..”

“Anne of Austria, wife of Henrietta Maria’s brother Louis XIII, was said to have given birth to a baby having the ‘colour and visage of a blackamoor’ was the mother of Louis XIV, making the baby with the ‘colour and visage of a blackamoor‘ the older brother of Louis XIV. So, to put it another way, the older brother of Louis XIV who died a month after birth had the ‘colour and visage of a blackamoor‘ . He probably isn’t called a “brother” because some cultures require a child to live to a certain age to become a “person”. The black child supposed to have been born to another Queen of France, wife of Charles’ first cousin Louis is the woman below.”

Source: King Charles II Front Cover Antonia Fraser Macdonald Futura, 1979 – Great Britain 

Black Moors in Scotland
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/early_times/moors.htm

The Black Moors in Scotland exhibit states:  King James IV (1473-1513) and the Black Moors of his Court

“James was a popular, fun-loving king with many interests. Many Black Moors were present at his court. Some worked as servants or (possibly) slaves, but others seem to have been invited guests or musicians. We know that he courted Margaret with lute and clavichord recitals and took her out hunting and playing sports.”

Source: Black Moors in Scotland

“From 1642, Charles fought the armies of the English and Scottish parliaments in the English Civil War. After his defeat in 1645, he surrendered to a Scottish force that eventually handed him over to the English Parliament. Charles refused to accept his captors’ demands for a constitutional monarchy, and temporarily escaped captivity in November 1647. Re-imprisoned on the Isle of Wight, Charles forged an alliance with Scotland, but by the end of 1648 Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army had consolidated its control over England. Charles was tried, convicted, and executed for high treason in January 1649. The monarchy was abolished and the Commonwealth of England was established as a republic. The monarchy would be restored to Charles’s son, Charles II, in 1660.“

Source: Charles I of England

The Black Nun of Moret, Louise Marie-Thérèse (1664–1732), was a Benedictine nun in the abbey of Moret-sur-Loing. She was called the “Mauresse de Moret” (“Mooress of Moret”), and a portrait of her exists in the Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève in Paris.

“Louise Marie-Thérèse, also known as The Black Nun of Moret (c. 1658 – 1730), was a French nun and the subject of accounts from the 18th century in which she was dubiously claimed to be the daughter of the Queen of France, Maria Theresa of Spain. Her existence is mentioned in several different sources. The Black Nun of Moret, Louise Marie-Thérèse (1664–1732), was a Benedictine nun in the abbey of Moret-sur-Loing. She was called the “Mauresse de Moret” (“Mooress of Moret”), and a portrait of her exists in the Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève in Paris. Research done by the Société de l’histoire de Paris et d’Ile-de-France, published in 1924 by Honoré Champion éditions, concluded that this pastel portrait was painted around 1680 by the same hand which painted the series of 22 pastel portraits of Kings of France, from Louis IX to Louis XIV, between 1681 and 1683 on the initiative of Father Claude Du Molinet (1620–1687), librarian of Sainte Geneviève abbey. Several writers from the time have devoted paragraphs to her: she is mentioned in the memoirs of Madame de Maintenon, the Grande Mademoiselle, Madame de Montespan, Duke of Saint-Simon, Voltaire, Cardinal Dubois, and in the Journal of the Duc de Luynes.”

La Mauresse de Moret (vers 1658-1730) daughter of Louis XIV

Shortly after the death of the French Queen Maria Theresa of Spain, wife of Louis XIV, in 1683, courtiers said that this woman could be the daughter, allegedly black, to whom the Queen gave birth in 1664. The nun herself seemed convinced of her royal birth, and Saint-Simon states that she once greeted the Dauphin as “my brother”. A letter sent on 13 June 1685, by the Secretary of the King’s Household to M. De Bezons, general agent of the clergy, and the pension of 300 pounds granted by King Louis XIV to the nun Louise Marie-Thérèse on 15 October 1695, “to be paid to her all her life in this convent or everywhere she could be, by the guards of the Royal treasure present and to come”[ suggest that she may, indeed, have had royal connections. The duc de Luynes claimed that she was the daughter of two black gardeners, too poor to educate her, who applied to Mme. de Maintenon for patronage. She died at Moret-sur-Loing.

Moret-sur-Loing is a former commune in the Seine-et-Marne department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France.

Source: Louise Marie Thérèse (The Black Nun of Moret)

This painting is by Sir Peter Lely, principal painter to Charles II. Lady Charlotte, aged eight, is alleged to be seen with her Indian page, who appears to be no more than six or seven years old. This boy has the same face as a whitewashed portrait alleged to be Charles II, it is one of the earliest representations of art in Britain. Charlotte was the illegitimate daughter of Charles II and his mistress, Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland.
Perhaps the boy could have been sired by Charles II

“In the case of Charles II are we supposed to believe that the boy who was so dark his own mother said “he was so dark that she was ashamed of him” and never got lighter is the boy portrayed here”

Painting by Jacques d’Agar of Louise de Keroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth, mistress of Charles II, and former lady-in-waiting for the sister of Charles II, Henrietta of England, wife of Phillipe (younger brother of Louis XIV).

“Note the boy in front wearing the semblance of a crown on his head, holding the crown pointing upwards “through the hole” so to speak, below a part of the gown made to resemble or concealing an outstretched leg of the duchess. And behind is another boy spying on from behind the pillar which has a fleur-de-lis wrapped around it. You can rest assured that this not the only painting of a mistress of Charles II or Louis XIV featuring a black boy in it.”

“Another interesting fact concerning Louis XIV, the Sun King, and first cousin to yours truly. When the tombs of the French kings were desecrated during the French revolution, guess what was noted? The body of Louis XIV was described as black like ink, all over, and what was notable about it was that it was remarkably well preserved. Yes, yes, yes. The last time the person of Louis XIV was observed, it was that of a Negro male. I suggest doubters do some research on this one before assuming that the notion that Europe’s nobility were black is a totally unfounded one. As the saying goes, denial is not a river in Egypt.”

Source: Frank Church Where is the evidence king Charles II was a black man?

“DNA from one of Britain’s fist people, Cheddar Man, shows that he was very likely to have dark brown skin and blue eyes. And, despite his eponym, we also know from his DNA that he couldn’t digest milk. While it’s fascinating, and perhaps surprising, to learn that some of the first people to inhabit the island that is now known as Britain had dark skin and blue eyes, this striking combination is not altogether unpredictable given what we’ve learnt about Paleolithic Europe from ancient DNA. Dark skin was actually quite common in hunter gatherers such as Cheddar Man who were living in Europe in the millenia after he was alive – and blue eyes have been around since the Ice Age.”

Source: Five surprising things DNA has revealed about our ancestors

 

The Moors Were Targets For Portuguese, Spaniard and English Slave Markets

Initial Q: Two Soldiers Leading Two Moors before a King (detail), from Feudal Customs of Aragon, Huesca (Spain), about 1290-1310, artist unknown. The J. Paul Getty Museum
 

 “Pope Urban II, 1088–1099, granted Spanish crusaders the same papal indulgences that were granted for making pilgrimages to Jerusalem. Urban thereafter issued the first call for crusades to the holy lands in 1095, and he continued to link crusades with pilgrimages by granting indulgences for crusaders, just as he had done for participants in the holy war with the Moors. The Knights were an infamous, crusading, priestly order, who believed Christians could attack pagans at will and deprive them of their property and lordship. The sources of this power were the papal bulls that had been directed at the Holy Lands. The Knights argued that their territorial and jurisdictional claims could be traced to papal bulls from the Crusading era, which had authorized the complete confiscation of the property and sovereignty of non-Christians. In 1455, Pope Nicholas V granted Portugal title to lands in Africa that were already “acquired and that shall hereafter come to be acquired” and authorized Portugal “to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans” and to place them into perpetual slavery and seize all their property. The Portuguese, for example, erected stone crosses all along the coast of West Africa to symbolize their possession, and Columbus did the same “with appropriate words and ceremony” on the Caribbean islands he found. See, e.g., MILLER, NATIVE AMERICA, supra note 1, at 12–23, 44–48, 120–26, 131–36 (discussing the European powers dividing up the New World and Africa).

Source: The International Law of Discovery, Indigenous Peoples

Panel of azulejos by Jorge Colaço (1864-1942) at the São Bento railway station, depicting Prince Henry the Navigator during the conquest of Ceuta

“Portugal, ever since the capture of Ceuta in 1415 (the event which had set Prince Henry of Portugal thinking on West African discovery), had been striving to conquer for herself an empire over Morocco.”

Source: Liberia Vol. I: Portuguese Assisted break up of Moorish dynasty of Beni-Marin

Portuguese possessions in Magreb (1415–1769)

“Possession of Ceuta would indirectly lead to further Portuguese expansion. The main area of Portuguese expansion, at this time, was the coast of Morocco, where there was grain, cattle, sugar, and textiles, as well as fish, hides, wax, and honey.“

Source: Payne, Stanley G., A History of Spain and Portugal, Vol. 1, Chap. 10 “The Expansion”

“When the Portuguese started their colonial expansion by taking Ceuta in retribution for its piracy ( Source: Finlayson (1992), p. 26) “in 1415,” (Source: B. W. Diffie, Prelude to Empire, Portugal Overseas before Henry the Navigator, University of Nebraska Press, Ann Arbor, 1960, pp. 83–90.)

“Tangier was always a major goal. They failed to capture it in 1437, 1458, and 1464, (Lévi-Provençal (1936), p. 651.) but occupied it unopposed on 28 August 1471 after its garrison fled upon learning of the conquest of Asilah.”

Source: Elbl, Martin Malcolm (2013), Portuguese Tangier (1471–1662): Colonial Urban Fabric as Cross-Cultural Skeleton, Peterborough: Baywolf Press

“As in Ceuta, they converted its chief mosque into the town’s cathedral church; it was further embellished by several restorations during the town’s occupation.”

Source: Lévi-Provençal, Évariste (1936), “Tangier”, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. IV (1st ed.), Leiden: E.J. Brill, pp. 650–652

“In addition to the cathedral, the Portuguese raised European-style houses and Franciscan and Dominican chapels and monasteries.”

Source: Finlayson, Iain (1992), Tangier: City of the Dream, London: Tauris Parke, p. 26

“The Wattasids assaulted Tangier in 1508, 1511, and 1515 but without success. In the 17th century, it passed with the rest of Portugal’s domains into Spanish control as part of the personal union of the crowns  but maintained its Portuguese garrison and administration.”

Source: Lévi-Provençal, Évariste (1936), “Tangier”, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. IV (1st ed.), Leiden: E.J. Brill, pp. 650–652

“In 1458, the Portuguese, led by Duarte de Meneses, captured the city and built a fortress there. Their domination lasted for over a century before the Moroccans reconquered the city.”

Source: Ricard, R., “Evacuation of Portuguese places from Morocco under Jean III: Ksar es Seghir ( 1549-1550 )”, in unpublished sources of the history of Morocco, Portugal, 1951, t. IV.

Source: Vasco de Carvalho, V., Portuguese domination in Morocco: from the 1415-1769th to the 1415-1769th century (1415-1769), Lisbon, 1942, S.P.N.

“In 1486 the Moroccan coastal city Azemmour’s inhabitants became vassals and tributaries of João II of Portugal. Portuguese control of the city lasted only for a short period; it was abandoned by João III of Portugal in 1541 due to his court’s economic difficulties.”

Source: Lhoussain Simour (19 November 2014). Recollecting History beyond Borders: Captives, Acrobats, Dancers and the Moroccan-American Narrative of Encounters. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 55. ISBN978-1-4438-7142-6.^

Source: EPUB 2-3 (23 October 2013). Ferdinand Magellan. Infobase Learning. ISBN 978-1-4381-4851-9.

Leonor Freire Costa; Pedro Lains; Susana Münch Miranda (3 May 2016). An Economic History of Portugal, 1143–2010. Cambridge University Press. p. 43. ISBN 978-1-107-03554-6.

“Iberian rule lasted until 1661, when it was given to England’s King Charles II as part of the dowry of the Portuguese infanta Catherine of Braganza.” Source: Winston S. Churchill, Marlborough: His Life and Times, Book I (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1933) p. 35.

“A squadron under the admiral and ambassador Edward Montagu arrived in November. English Tangier, fully occupied in January 1662,” was praised by Charles as “a jewell of immense value in the royal diadem” despite the departing Portuguese taking away everything they could, even—according to the official report—”the very fflowers, the Windowes and the Dores”.

Source: Elbl, Martin Malcolm (2013), Portuguese Tangier (1471–1662): Colonial Urban Fabric as Cross-Cultural Skeleton, Peterborough: Baywolf Press, ISBN 9780921437505

Source: Finlayson, Iain (1992), Tangier: City of the Dream, London: Tauris Parke, ISBN 9781780769264

Source: Elbl, Martin Malcolm (2013), Portuguese Tangier (1471–1662): Colonial Urban Fabric as Cross-Cultural Skeleton, Peterborough: Baywolf Press, ISBN 9780921437505

“Tangier received a garrison and a charter which made it equal to other English towns, but the religious orders were expropriated, the Portuguese residents nearly entirely left, and the town’s Jews were driven out owing to fears concerning their loyalty.”

Source: Finlayson, Iain (1992), Tangier: City of the Dream, London: Tauris Parke, ISBN 9781780769264 p. 26-27

“Meanwhile, the Tangier Regiment were almost constantly under attack by locals who considered themselves mujahideen fighting a holy war. Their principal leader was Khadir Ghaïlan (known to the English as “Gayland” or “Guyland”) of the Banu Gurfat, whom the Earl of Peterborough attempted to buy off. Ultimately, the truce only lasted for part of 1663 and 1664; on May 4 of the latter year, the Earl of Teviot and around 470 members of the garrison were killed in an ambush beside Jew’s Hill. Khadir Ghaïlan hoped to support a pretender against the new Alawid sultan Al-Rashid and things subsequently went so badly for him that he was obliged to abide by its terms until his death in 1673.”

Source: Lévi-Provençal, Évariste (1936), “Tangier”, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. IV (1st ed.), Leiden: E.J. Brill, pp. 650–652 p. 651.

“Lord Belasyse happened to secure a longer-lasting treaty in 1666”

Source: Articles of Peace Concluded and Agreed between His Excellency the Lord Bellasyse, His Majesties Governour of His City and Garrison of Tangier in Affrica, &c. and Cidi Hamlet Hader Ben Ali Gayland, Prince of VVest-Barbary, &c.”, London, 2 April 1666.

Ceuta, a Spanish possession in North Africa.

 

“The English, lagging behind for about half a century, cashed in on the slave trade as early as the 1480s. Various records kept in several Spanish archives disprove the received view that the English as a slaving nation was late coming in the 1550s. Moors and Mooresses of Morocco constituted colonial targets only for the Portuguese and the Spaniards, they were also victims of the English who bought the captured slaves at the slave markets of Andalusia. The trade with enslaved Moroccans led to a serious depopulation of the coastal regions of Morocco.”

Source: Shakespeare Studies, Volume 31 edited by Leeds Barroll, Susan Zimmerman

Vista de Ceuta y la península de Almina desde el mirador de Isabel II

“On the Moroccan side, there was considerable enthusiasm for expelling the Spanish and Portuguese from the several Moroccan coastal cities they had conquered.”

Source: An “Extremely Civile” Diplomacy Written by Caroline Stone

São Tomé, Africa

“In the mid-1400s, Portuguese King Dom Manuel colonized the African coastal islands of Sao Tome and Principe in order “to whiten the race,” as he put it. 

Source: Echoes of Mr. Yakub After Patmos By Tingba Muhammad

“One of the principal motives behind Portuguese interest in West Africa and the Canaries was the desire to tap into the trans-Saharan gold traffic. Fernandez-Armesto, Before Columbus, 140-48, 189-92.”

Source: Moors” Of West Africa And The Beginnings Of The Portuguese Slave Trade

   Mauretania Nuova Tavola Southwest

“Gradually the Christian reconquest drove them back until the only Moorish stronghold in Spain, Granada, fell in 1492.“The Iberian Moors, who had considerably intermarried, returned to Africa where they were known as Andalusians, and scattered over the enormous range of the Moors, from the Mediterranean to the Senegal river, and from the Atlantic to Timbuktu.” 

Source: Iberian Moors migrated into West Africa 1492

Brotherhood of St George. A Leugemeete Fresco, Flanders, 14th century. The Andalusia Company

“English trade with Morocco was a natural extension of the existing trade established by the Andalusia company in Spain and in the Levant. Individual voyages can be traced as far back as the 1520s or 1530s. All the evidence is that the English merchants were rugged individuals and rivals. Trading together in one small town, they must have known one another, but during the days of prosperity, there is no hint of any combination or organization. Only in adversity did they combine together and then not very effective. They did so once in order to petition the duke. To give coherence to their organization and standing in the eyes of the English government they petitioned King Henry VIII and in September 1530 he granted them a constitution.”

Source: The English “Andalusia Company” was the “Brotherhood of St George”

“Slavery had long been known in Iberia, but slaves never constituted more than a small percentage of society. By 1492, although more than 35,000 black slaves had been introduced in Portugal, most of them were intended to be reexported to other European markets and to the Americas. By 1550, there were 9,500 African slaves in Lisbon–comprising nearly 10 percent of the total population–and 32,370 slaves and 2,580 freedmen in Portugal as a whole. Black slaves increasingly replaced slaves from other racial origins as the Portuguese became less involved in the wars against the Turks in the Mediterranean and in general against Muslims. The Moors were visible in Portugal in the most southern part of the country, where a relatively large population of Christianized Moors (Moriscos) toiled the fields and worked as artisans in towns and cities.”

Source: Iberia and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History (Transatlantic Relations)

“The English under Elizabeth now deemed the time opportune for gaining a foothold in West Africa. Forts were built at the mouth of the River Gambia in 1588, and towards the close of the sixteenth century English trading-settlements were erected at or near Sierra Leone, and during the seventeenth century, Great Britain became one of the leading Powers of the Gold Coast.”

Source: Liberia Vol. I: Portuguese Assisted break up of Moorish dynasty of Beni-Marin

“The early Portuguese explorers sent out by Prince Henry at first took every opportunity of Kidnapping the Moors whom they met on the coast of the Sahara, and these people were dispatched as slaves to Portugal. Prince, Henry, however, came in time to realize the iniquity of this proceeding and its bad policy on the part of a nation which at that time was aspiring to colonize and rule Morocco. The Portuguese learned in this way that by pursuing their journeys father south they might come to a land where it was possible to obtain “black Moors” as slaves. In fact, a slang term, “Panyar (from the Portuguese Apanhar, to seize, catch, kidnap), had sprung up in the coast jargon to illustrate the English methods. Even English travelers such as William Smith (who went out as a surveyor to the Gold Coast early in the eighteenth century) admit that the English had become very unpopular on the Gold Coast, owing to these aggression’s on the natives; and William Smith and his companions endeavored to pass as Frenchmen when they visited Eastern Liberia and the Ivory Coast, ‘because of the bad name the English had acquired.”

Source: Portuguese Explorers took every opportunity of kidnapping Moors on Saharan Coast

In 1704 a Willem Bosman of the Dutch West India company describing the “Gold Coast” wrote:

“Here the Portuguese received a small quantity of gold dust, as well as some ostrich eggs; and, as Gonçalves had always desired, his men also seized some black Africans, twelve in number, to take back to Portugal (“What a beautiful thing it would be,” this commander told his men, ‘if we could capture some of the natives to lay before the face of our Prince’). These people were nearly all Azanaghi, as had been most of those sold in Lagos in 1444. They seem not to have been carried off to serve as slaves—though one of them, a woman, was a black slave, presumably from somewhere in the region of Guinea. They were taken as exhibits to show Prince Henry, much as Columbus would bring back some Indians, fifty years later, from his first journey to the Caribbean”

Source: Historical References on the Black African Skin color of the original Berber Tribes

“All the concerns of this essay begin in Andalusia. Slavery was a matter, raised by Shylock at his trial, in the Merchant of Venice narrative. This topic is of cultural relevance to early modern English audiences. The bottom lines become clear in the earliest records of the English slave trade to which [English American] historiographers often omit from the discussion. Records show that the first English slaveholders and traders of “enslaved Moors” were the English merchant’s resident in Andalusia in the last decades of the fifteenth and early decades of the sixteenth centuries, and further, that the English were the pioneers of the English slave trade with Morocco”

Source: Portia & the Prince of Morocco Essay By Ungerer, Gustav

“The (De)slaving history: Mostafa al-Azemmouri, the sixteenth-century Moroccan captive in the tale of conquest article attempts to revisit one of the most spectacular odysseys in Moroccan-American history, that of the encounters started from the shores of a Moorish town in the sixteenth century by Mostafa Al-Azemmouri, the Moroccan captive and adventurer. Al-Azemmouri was captured by the Portuguese, sold in Spain and then shipped across the Atlantic to the New World around 1527. His narrative has consistently been displaced and subjected to various forms of exclusion in history; his experience in historiographical writing has been distorted by the culturally and historically essentialised forms of knowledge and power. In order to re-orient the debate on Al-Azemmouri’s emblematic journey, this work offers a rereading of sixteenth-century Morocco in its connections with the Atlantic, focuses on the Spanish historical perspective about the reconquista overseas, and spotlights the Portuguese-Azemmour nexus against the background of the Portuguese presence in Morocco to shift the focus into the Other’s Atlantic as a site of complex history that criss-crosses the boundaries of nationality and extends beyond mere geographical locations. It also interrogates the representation of Al-Azemmouri in some sixteenth-century Spanish accounts, which consigned the Moorish slave to textual shadows and obstructed his visibility in the narrative of colonial conquest.”

Source: (De)slaving history: Mostafa al-Azemmouri, the sixteenth-century Moroccan captive in the tale of conquest

Ignatius Sancho Oil painting by Thomas Gainsborough, 1768, National Gallery of Canada

“Indeed Sancho’s life in England was an immediate result of the English involvement with slavery. ‘Dear sir,’ he beseeched Sterne, ‘think in me you behold the uplifted hands of thousands of my brother Moors.’”

Source: Black and white: the Negro and English society, 1555-1945

“Hamet Tanjawi, for instance, was captured and enslaved during the Restoration period; he became a servant of the duke of York, from whom he learned a wide variety of naval lore, and later escaped back to Tangier where he put his English warfare training into Muslim use as held the attack on the English fort in Tangier in 1676. In his account of captivity in Morocco in the 1680s, Thomas Phelps recalled meeting with an “ancient Moor, who formerly had been a slave in England and spoke good English, and who was set at liberty by our late Gracious King Charles the 2d.” Another captive/slave was the corsair  Abdallah bin Aisha, who spent three years in England and was released by King Charles without ransom upon the intercession of James II.”

“Kim F. Hall agreed that “English traders went to the markets of Guinea and Barbary, but African traders rarely went to England.” Only Bernard Harris, Eldred Jones, and Jack D’Amicohave alluded to Muslim ambassadors and “blackmoors” in England..”

“During the period under study, thousands of Turks and Moors visited and traded in English and Welsh ports; hundreds were captured on the high seas and brought to stand trial in English courts; scores of ambassadors and emissaries dazzled the London populace with their charm, cuisine and “Araby” ,,,”from the Elizabethan to the early Caroline periods, Britons undertook another venture as they entered into an extensive commercial, diplomatic, and social engagement with the Turks and Moors of the Muslim empires.”

“In all the surviving records of captured Moors and Turks, there is not a single reference to a Muslim woman. While numerous British women were recaptured and sold in North Africa, no Muslim woman seems to have ever set foot on English soil, either as a refugee or a prisoner. Britons also met Moorish and Turkish captives of Spain in the Caribbean.”

“In March of 1586 some Moors deserted to join Sir Francis Drake during the English attack on Cartegena, and later during the attack on Santo Domingo. In June of that year Drake captured hundreds of “Turks and Moors, who do menial service” in Havana. Although the Moors,  the English encountered in the Caribbean were slaves who projected weakness and despair, they were subjects of rulers whom England’s queen wanted to befriend, and whose assistance she sought against Spain. There must have been so many of these Moors in the American Spanish dominions that in 1617, Purchas mentioned that Islam had spread as far as America. Purchas was probably thinking of these captives, some of whom had been freed by their Spanish masters and were settled in the colonies.”

“In September 1630, the Moroccan ruler, Sidi Alibin Mohammad, sent a letter to King Charles in which he demanded that the king release all Muslim captives and send them back to the lands of Islam (“li-bilad al-Islam”) regardless of whether or not they were Sidi’s subjects. After doing so, Charles could be assured that no captive from the “English tribes”(“qaba’il al-Ingleez”) would remain in North Africa.”

“there are numerous indications that Britons hauled Muslim captives to the Barbary Coast and exchanged them for English captives. In 1635 Robert Blake was authorized to take forty-five Moors to Barbary to exchange them for English captives. But he immediately ran into difficulty. There were more English than Moorish captives.

“In September 16 36, two Moors were captured—one “Mahammet aged twentie seven or thereabout” and “Hammet aged fortie foure yeares or there-about”—from Salee. They had been sailing with “foure Moores, eighteen[sailors] of Sallie, five Renegadoes Dutch one English their Pilott.” When their ship reached the English coast the renegades turned against the Moors after being called “to stand up for their lives & liberties” whereupon “they drove the Moores into the hold, hoisted saile, and brought their Barque into the first [English] port. Writing to the Lords of the Admiralty, the earl of Portland included “copies of the examinations of two of the moores.”

“In 1658, William D’Avenant wrote The Play-House to be Let, in 100 The Renaissance Triangle which which he included a scene about “the Symerons,” a Moorish people brought formerly to Peru by the Spaniards.) Purchas could also have been thinking of an ethnological theory that described the American Indians as descendants of the Moors of North Africa.”

Source: Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery Nabil Matar

“Muhammad notes that “Moors” from the Barbary Coast—captured by the Portuguese and enslaved—successfully. “Freeland traces how slavery became racialized as slaves became Christians. citing Allan Austin’s estimation that there may have been at least eighteen thousand Muslim slaves imported from 1771 to 1775). Ghanea Bassiri notes that a Moorish identity may have captured the public imagination, the public having heard tales of white slavery coming out of the exotic and well-known Barbary Wars. Eight Moors [enslaved-Muslims] successfully petitioned the South Carolina House of Representatives for their freedom in 1790, describing the perfidy of the English captain who promised to redeem them back to Morocco as captives of war but sold them as slaves in the New World instead. Capet, supra note 8, at 556. One of those eight Muslim slaves was named Fatima.”

Source: Islam in the Mind of American Courts: 1800 to 1960 By Marie A. Failinger

“The Mohammedan Africans remaining of the old stock of importations, although accustomed to hear the Gospel preached, have been known to accommodate Christianity to Mohammedanism. “God,” say they, “is Allah, and Jesus Christ is Mohammed–the religion is the same, but different countries have different names.”

Source: The Religious Instruction of the Negroes. In the United States: Jones, Charles Colcock, 1804-1863

“Clearly it seems that the “Barbares” or Soninke of the Sahel and Sudan were the “Mauri Bavares” or Babars of Mauritania in what is now Morocco and Algeria possibly pushed down by the Tuareg “the second race of Berbers” and/or Arab Sulaym/Hilal peoples like the Trarza or Hassaniya. They were direct ancestors of the black merchants known as Soninke, Sughai (Isuwaghen or Zawagha) or Wangara who are called “whites” in early African manuscripts.” “The Bafour, in fact, is considered by some to be the same as the Zenagha or Znaga Berbers who came to be subject to the Almoravid (Tuareg) nobles. In Mauritania by the 15th century, they were referred to as “tawny and squat” by a slave trader from Venice named Alvice Ca’da Mosto (Thomas, Hugh, 1997, p. 22). They then fell into low caste status under the Hassaniyya or Hassan “Moors” (a group formed from the mixture of Arab/Berber peoples) which might explain how they came to be the first Africans sold out of Lagos to the Portuguese that were brought to Europe.”  

Source: FEAR OF BLACKNESS SERIES – PART II Andalusia and the Mauri: An Exploration of the Original Berbers of Early Sources and their Settlements in Spain

“Most Americans are unaware of the special relationship between Morocco and the U.S.A. that developed subconsciously through the trans‐Atlantic conquests of Moorish‐impregnated Spain and consciously through contacts between our early Republic and this old, dilapidated kingdom. Even fewer Americans seem aware of the complex contacts between Morocco, at Africa’s northwest corner, and the ancestors of our Negro community. Slave traders from the Moorish feudal society raided southward into Senegal and delivered slaves to European traders who, in turn, sold them across the Atlantic. The descendants of these slaves are U.S. citizens today. But more rarely discussed is the vaguely discernible link between Morocco and the American Negro minority. This U.S. knowledge gap is perhaps partially if inaccurately being filled by American Negro teachers, notably Black Muslims.”

Source: The Moroccan, or Moorish ties of U.S. Negroes

“Morocco also has an extensive history of slavery. Like the United States, Morocco traded in enslaved black West Africans, who came to Morocco across the Sahara. Slavery in Morocco took other forms, too. Morocco was one of the so-called Barbary States, where for centuries European and American sailors captured by pirates were enslaved and ransomed. In his 1853 book “White Slavery in the Barbary States,” the radical abolitionist senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts depicted North Africa as a disturbing analog to the American South, which he called the “Barbary States of America.”

The Moroccan Front BY JAMIE L. JONES SEPTEMBER 18, 2013

“It difficult to know from available information if this is a massive understatement or fails to give due respect to the comparative few who did make the journey. Though it is well-known that the Iberian powers took slaves from Morocco for service in Spain and Portugal, it is unknown how many of these may ultimately have also been sent across the Atlantic. Spain and Portugal overwhelmingly dominated the transatlantic slave trade in the first century of the Atlantic World, with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database documenting approximately 275,000 slaves sent during that period to the Americas (a paltry sum compared to later centuries). But the database shows no voyages to or from Morocco – understandable for a location that was not a major source of slaves for work in the Americas – and nothing to suggest that a substantial numbers of slaves first taken to Portugal or Spain ended up across the ocean. Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, http://www.slavevoyages.org (for estimates and maps; accessed September 4, 2017). By the second half of the sixteenth century the slave population in Portugal appears to have been made up predominantly of people from sub-Saharan Africa. Bovill asserts that the decline of the peasant population in Portugal had resulted in their replacement by so many blacks from Africa that the southern part of Portugal had become predominantly black. Subjective evaluations of color and the multiethnic makeup of Morocco might make the assumption that these “blacks” are sub-Saharan suspect. But Bovill’s remark is consistent with Portugal having begun the importation of sub-Saharan slaves in 1444. There was also an apparent preference for sub-Saharan African slaves over North African Muslims slaves, as the former were deemed more open to conversion to Christianity, had no nearby places to which to escape, and were considered more compliant. This made them far less threatening than Muslims, the last of who were forcibly expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in the early seventeenth century. Bovill, The Battle of Alcazar, 5; Joachim Romero Magalhães, “Africans, Indians and Slavery in Portugal,” Portuguese Studies 13 (1997): 143-151, 143.”

Source: MOROCCO IN THE EARLY ATLANTIC WORLD, 1415-1603 A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History By Earnest W. Porta, Jr., J.D.

 

Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam Chouki El Hamel

“Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race and Islam chronicles the experiences, identity, and agency of enslaved black people in Morocco from the sixteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century. It demonstrates the extent to which religion orders society but also the extent to which the economic and political conditions influence the religious discourse and the ideology of enslavement. The interpretation and application of Islam did not guarantee the freedom and integration of black Moroccan ex-slaves into society.” 

“It starts with the Islamic legal discourse and racial stereotypes that existed in Moroccan society leading up to the era of Mawlay Isma’il (r. 1672-1727), with a special emphasis on the black army during and after his reign. The first part of the book provides a narrative relating the legal discourse on race, concubinage and slavery as well as historical events and developments that are not well known in printed scholarship and western contexts”.  

“The second part of the book is conceptually ambitious; it provides the reader with a deeper sense of the historical and sociological implications of the story being told across a long period of time, from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries.  Though the strongest element of theses chapters concerns the “black army,” an important component of the discussion is the role of female slaves.  One of the problems the historian faces with this kind of analysis is that it must rest on a limited “evidentiary base.” This book has broadened this base and clarified the importance of female slaves in relation to the army and Moroccan society at large.”


“Black Morocco redefines the terms of the scholarly debate about the historical nature of Moroccan slavery and proposes an original analysis of issues concerning race, concubinage and gender, with a special focus on their theoretical aspects.  The Moroccan system of racial definition was clearly “racialist” and was in fact a curious inversion of the Western racist model.  Whereas in the western model “one drop” of black blood identifies one as black, in the Moroccan model, “one drop” of white blood identifies one as Arab (i.e., privileged).” 

“This process helped create a “nationalist” Moroccan Arab majority and at the same time subjugated black ancestry (i.e., those without the “one drop” of Arab blood), seen as having more bearing on the historical antecedents of slavery.  It offers a new paradigm for the study of race in the region that will transform the way we approach and understand ethnicity and racial identities in North Africa and most crucially, it helps eliminate the culture of silence — the refusal to engage in discussions about slavery, racial attitudes, and gender issues.”

For more information, see www.cambridge.org/9781107651777

Source: Click Here 

                   Chouki El Hamel (CEH)

“Written history about Morocco is generally sillent regarding slavery and racial attitudes, discrimination, and marginalization, and paints a picture of Morocco as free from such social problems. Such problems are usually associated more with slavery and its historical aftermath in the United States. 
Slavery and racial questions are issues that were previously taboo in academic work on Morocco.”
“The objective of my book is to fill a gap in the scholarship concerning slavery and race in North Africa and to demonstrate the role that Morocco played in slavery’s history in the African diaspora and the Islamic world. The history of slavery in Morocco cannot be considered separately from the racial terror and horrors of the global practice of slavery.”
“For ethnic groups such as the blacks in Morocco, the problems of slavery, cultural and racial prejudices, and marginalization are neither foreign nor introduced by European colonial discourse. Blacks in Morocco have been marginalized for centuries, with the dominant Moroccan culture defining this marginalized group as ‘Abid (slaves), Haratin (a problematic term that generally meant freed black people or formerly enslaved black persons), Sudan (black Africans), Gnawa (black West Africans), Sahrawa (from the Saharan region), and other terms which make reference to the fact that they were black and/or descendants from slaves. My book poses new questions that examine the extent to which religion orders a society, and the extensive influence of secular conditions on the religious discourse and the ideology of enslavement in Morocco.”
“The interpretation and application of Islam did not guarantee the freedom and integration of Black Moroccan ex-slaves into society. The book starts with the legal discourse and racial stereotypes that existed in Moroccan society leading to the era of Mawlay Isma‘il (r. 1672-1727), with a special emphasis on the black army during and after the Mawlay Isma‘il era. I have written the story of the “black army” to inform readers beyond those with narrow specialist knowledge. Hence, the first part of my book provides a narrative relating the legal discourse on race, concubinage, and slavery, as well as historical events and developments that are not well known in printed scholarship and western contexts.”
“The second part of the book, and especially chapters four, five, and six, oscillates between narrative and analysis in order to give the reader a deeper sense of the historical and sociological implications of the story being told across along period of time, from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Though the strongest element of these chapters concerns the “black army,” an important component of my discussion was the role of female slaves. The short comings of this analysis rest on a limited “evidentiary base.” My goal was to broaden this base and make clear the importance of female slaves in relation to the army and Moroccan society at large.”
Source: New Texts Out Now: Chouki El Hamel, Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam

The Moroccan, or Moorish ties of U.S. Negroes

Foreign Affairs; Our Strongest African Link? By C.L. SULZBERGER; April 25, 1964,

“FEZ, Morocco—Morocco has a special relationship with the United States that is generally unfamiliar both to Americans and Moroccans.”

“The country’s complicated history stretches geographically from France into mid‐Africa. Also, through Spain, original colonizing and missionary influence in the Americas, Morocco’s cultural impact on our continent is perceptible if indirect. Slave traders from the Moorish feudal society raided southward into Senegal and delivered slaves to European traders who, in turn, sold them across the Atlantic. The descendants of these slaves are U.S. citizens today.”

“The traditional teaching of history in the United States does not omit mention of ties between our early Republic and contemporary Morocco.“

“But more rarely discussed is the vaguely discernible link between Morocco and the American Negro minority. This U.S. knowledge gap is perhaps partially if inaccurately being filled by American Negro teachers, notably Black Muslims. In discussing this I am indebted to Prof. Morroe Berger of Princeton, who explores the question in “Horizon.”

“The Black Muslims and antecedent organizations like Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association stressed the Moroccan, or Moorish, ties of U.S. Negroes. Morocco, while African, is not a Negro state, although some of its famous leaders were Negroid. Morocco was also a channel in the terrible slave trade that fathered our Negro community.”

“In evolving U.S. Negro tradition, this fact is mixed with Morocco’s grandiose Islamic past which produced so great an impact on Europe. In a deliberate reaction. against the inferior status imposed on them by slavery, certain American Negroes seek to connect Islam with the little‐known tales of West African civilizations that, in times past, occasionally met in Morocco.”

“Garvey, a predecessor of the contemporary Black Muslims, attacked Christianity for failing to protect Negroes against the depredations of slavery and stressed their African heritage with particular reference to the Moors. Subsequent U.S. Negro leaders created a Moorish Science Temple of America whose practices were substantially adopted by, the Black Muslims.”

“As the white American has consciously sought proud antecedents in Europe, ranging from Irish kings to Polish patriots and English religious rebels, the Negro American now seeks to fill in his missing African past, a past deliberately withheld from him by slavery’s anonymity. One acute Negro leader protested; “Africa was no integral part of the world, because the world which raped it had to pretend that it had not harmed a man but a thing.”

“Some American Negro movements paradoxically take pride in vague Islamic connections while denigrating Christianity for slaving. Yet Moslem slave traders supplied Christian shippers in the ghastly trans‐Atlantic human commerce. Moslem traders were more brutally honest; unlike some Christians, they never pretended God had ordained slavery for black men. They simply preferred Mammon to God and also profited from the sale of white slaves in Levantine markets.”

“Mohammedan slaves in the Americas seemed to have had a special community consciousness. Some African tribes found it possible to elude Arab traders by embracing Islam. Moslem slaves, especially in Brazil, mounted serious insurrections against their white owners, and this is a source of pride to propagandists of the Black Muslim movement, which, despite aberrational deviations, claims kinship with Islam’s main stream.”

“Most Americans are unaware of the special relationship between Morocco and the U.S.A. that developed subconsciously through the trans‐Atlantic conquests of Moorish‐impregnated Spain and consciously through contacts between our early Republic and this old, dilapidated kingdom. Even fewer Americans seem aware of the complex contacts between Morocco, at Africa’s northwest corner, and the ancestors of our Negro community.”

“When one ponders this subject in Fez, lovely, perplexing and fanatical, famed for an Occidental headgear we consider Oriental, one wonders how much more we will learn about ourselves by uncovering that portion of our national past originating here.”

Source: New York Times Foreign Affairs; Our Strongest African Link? April 25, 1964

The Moroccan Conquest of the Songhay Empire

“Every year [prior to 1591], on the order of the king of Timbuktu [the askiya]… two hundred quintals of gold were sent to the Barbary; the war so upset everything that once could not produce four [quintals of gold], because the gold washers had fled for they did not want to work for others; and gold from the deserts of the interior came virtually no more, and this did not suffice for the price of the merchandise in the kingdom from where they came.”

“Ahmad al-Mansur’s invasion of Sudan created fresh illusions, but neither the circus of Marrakech nor even the vast curtain of the Sahara could long hide the truth. The conquistadors of the Red City destroyed everything in their path, real and otherwise–the heyday of the Saharan caravans, the glory days of Timbuktu, the empire of the Songhay, and the Island of Gold. Behind, they left only wistfulness.”

“Ghana was the first of the West African empires. A Soninke ethnic state that emerged around the fourth century, Ghana eventually came to control the area of present western Mali and southeastern Mauritania. Its power lay in the gold fields of Boure and Bambouk, and it was the first black African state to benefit from the camel-powered trans-Saharan trading system. This empire grew and flourished largely in anonymity until Berber and Arab raiders came calling.”

“By the eleventh century, the Ghanaians had been weakened by attacks from a Moroccan Berber dynasty, the Almoravids. The empire quietly disappeared a few decades later. The cause of this collapse is not known, but the Almoravids probably hastened its end. Gradually, over the next century, a successor state began to take shape from the ruins, Mali.”

“The Mandinka kingdom of Mali gradually extended its control over the gold fields through conquest and tribal alliances and by the early thirteenth century, it had crowned its first emperor, Sundiata Keita. In the decades that followed, the Malians embarked on conquest in Senegal, Guinea, and against the tribes of the eastern Niger, amassing a near monopoly on the West African gold trade.”

“By the middle of the fourteenth century, the empire reached from the Atlantic Ocean to Gao and spanned the modern-day countries of Senegal, southern Mauritania, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Mali, northern parts of Burkina Faso, the Ivory Coast, Ghana, and western niger. The Malian Empire dominated West Africa, extending over 1,300,000 square kilometers, more than any Western European state, but it took a new religion and a larger-than-life character to make anyone outside the region take notice.”

“The religion was, of course, Islam. Mali was the first of the great West African empires to embrace Islam, though in its own distinct and limited way. Some Arab Scholars claimed it was Ghana, but the ruling class never adopted the new religion. Though the Malian nobility gradually converted to Islam, the faith was not imposed upon the populace. Islam remained confined to the capital and the desert “ports” where it had arrived centuries earlier with Berber traders. Many more years would elapse before Islam would start to dissipate from these points to the villages and towns of the savanna and the forest belt.”

“Islamic teaching and law became prestigious metiers and, and in the words of one historian, a “cult of the aristocracy. But, in the end, in West Africa, Islam was for the ruling elite and the tiny literate class, and it was a distinctly urban phenomenon. In the countryside, the majority lived as they had for centuries, with their nature gods, black magic and witch doctors.”

“The twenty-year Morocco-Songhay war seriously undermined the caravan trade networks and economic triad. Salt and gold were no longer meetings in abundance along the river. The salt mines were not secure, and that traffic slowed considerably. Gold traders began to prefer the Guinea coast, where the Portuguese coastal trading posts offered closer and more stable trading partners. However, this alternative provided only temporary relief. Line the Moroccan sugar industry, the West African gold market would soon plummet under competition from the Americas.”

Source: Conquistadors of the Red City: The Moroccan Conquest of the Songhay Empire By Comer Plummer

“When analyzing al-Mansur’s Songhay effort we are fortunate to possess the work of authors unattached to al-Mansur’s court, through which we have an opportunity to evaluate events presumably unencumbered by the flattering official portrayals that are so often the product of official dynastic secretaries and chroniclers. The work of the Arab historian and native of Timbuktu, Abd al-Rahman al-Sa’di, is one example. Al-Sa’di eventually secured employment in the Moroccan administration at Timbuktu, but his loyalties lay with the native elites of the Middle Niger. From him we gain a local perspective on the Moroccan invasion and conquest of the Songhay Empire, and well as on the Moroccan administration of the Middle Niger up until the middle of the seventeenth century”

“Early Sa’di attempts to control the salt resources of the desert date from at least 1526, when a Moroccan force temporarily occupied the Tuwat Oasis. Over the next thirty years al-Mansur’s predecessors launched additional expeditions against Tuwat, Taghaza, and into Mauritania. But the importance of salt was too great for the Songhay to consider relinquishing control. According to al-Sa’di, in the early 1540s the Songhay rulers responded to one Moroccan request by ordering a raid of two thousand Tuareg on Morocco’s Dra’a Valley.998 Later, they foiled an otherwise successful Moroccan conquest of Taghaza by simply redirecting traders to another location.999 Al-Mansur’s first effort, however, fared much better. Al-Sa’di reports that the Sultan requested of the Songhay one year’s worth of tax from the mines of Taghaza, and received instead a goodwill gift of more than ninety pounds of gold, the generosity of which allegedly led to a great friendship between the sultan and the Songhay Askiya (emperor) Dawud.1000 Some see the rivalry with the Ottoman Empire as an important factor in al-Mansur’s Songhay venture. Ottoman agents were indeed active in sub-Saharan Africa. Bornu, a central Sudanic empire in the area adjacent to Lake Chad, attracted Ottoman mercenaries and technology with a series of aggressive jihads. In the middle of the century the Ottomans themselves extended their reach into Fezzan, a territory also claimed by Bornu. The latter sent an embassy to the Ottomans, but negotiations came to naught.1001 It is unclear whether or not military conflict ensued, though the anonymous Spaniard claims that the Turks marched through Egypt to conquer Bornu, but so weakened by thirst could not defend themselves.1002 Whatever may have occurred, the Ottoman supply of arms to Bornu dried up, and in 1582-83 its leaders turned to al-Mansur to meet their needs.  Al-Sa’di identifies a Songhay slave imprisoned at Taghaza, Wuld Kirinfil, as the impetus. According to al-Sa’di it “was God’s decree and His destiny that he [the slave] should break out from that prison and flee to the Red City, Marrakesh….”1014 There he wrote a letter to al-Mansur describing the difficult circumstances under which the Songhay were living and the resulting ease with which they could be conquered.1015 The anonymous Spaniard asserts that the ostensibly same escapee claimed to be the brother of the Songhay ruler, Askiya Ishaq, that his throne had been usurped, and that in return for support in regaining his kingdom he would acknowledge al-Mansur’s suzerainty and reward him with great wealth. “Account of the Anonymous Spaniard,” in Hunwick, Timbuktu, 318-319”

“Al-Mansur adopted the Ottoman practice of incorporating non-Turkish and non-Muslim elements into the army. Among the most prominent were European Christian renegados and Muslim Andalusians. Unlike the tribal corps these two groups often carried firearms, often filled senior posts in the army, guarded the sultan when he led campaigns, and received their pay before all others.1032 Neither group, as their names imply, were fully integrated into Maghribi society, and thus their allegiance to the ruler could be more readily ensured since it was through him alone that they enjoyed special status. The comparatively sizeable contingent of renegados and Andalusians in the Sa’di expedition is open to several possible interpretations. They were certainly among the best of the sharīf’s troops, and in this sense it is no surprise to see them in the invasion force. At the same time, dispatching some of his most loyal forces on an uncertain mission across nearly a thousand miles of desert also held special risks for al-Mansur’s domestic position. Revolts had under his predecessors been commonplace in sixteenth-century Morocco. In fact, al-Mansur was returning from the suppression of a rebellion in Fez when Wuld Kirinfil arrived and spurred renewed consideration of a Saharan venture.1033 Consequently, the extended absence and potential loss of loyal, effective troops was not a light matter.”

Source: MOROCCO IN THE EARLY ATLANTIC WORLD, 1415-1603 A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History By Earnest W. Porta, Jr., J.D