Ahmad al-Mansur (, Ahmad Abu al-Abbas al-Mansur, also al-Mansur al-Dahabbi (the Golden), ; and Ahmed al-Mansour; 1549 in Fes – 25 August 1603, Fes) was the Saadi Sultan of Morocco from 1578 to his death in 1603, the sixth and most famous of all rulers of the Saadis. Ahmad al-Mansur was an important figure in both Europe and Africa in the sixteenth century. His powerful army and strategic location made him an important power player in the late Renaissance period. He has been described as "a man of profound Islamic learning, a lover of books, calligraphy and mathematics, as well as a connoisseur of mystical texts and a lover of scholarly discussions."
Early life
Ahmad was the fifth son of Mohammed ash-Sheikh who was the first Saadi sultan of Morocco. His mother was Lalla Masuda. After the murder of their father, Mohammed in 1557 and the following struggle for power, the two brothers Ahmad al-Mansur and Abd al-Malik had to flee their elder brother Abdallah al-Ghalib (1557–1574), leave Morocco and stay abroad until 1576. The two brothers spent 17 years among the Ottomans between the Regency of Algiers and Constantinople, and benefited from Ottoman training and contacts with Ottoman culture. More generally, he "received an extensive education in Islamic religious and secular sciences, including theology, law, poetry, grammar, lexicography, exegesis, geometry, arithmetics and algebra, and astronomy."
Battle of Ksar el Kebir
In 1578, Ahmad's brother, Sultan Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik I, died in battle against the Portuguese army at Ksar-el-Kebir. Ahmad was named his brother's successor and began his reign amid newly won prestige and wealth from the ransom of Portuguese captives.
Rule (1578–1603) Al-Mansur began his reign by leveraging his dominant position with the vanquished Portuguese during prisoner ransom talks, the collection of which filled the Moroccan royal coffers. Shortly after, he commissioned the great architectural symbol of this new birth of Moroccan power, the El Badi Palace in Marrakesh, a huge and lavish riad-style palace which he used to receive ambassadors and to host celebrations. Construction began in December 1578 and was only finished in 1593 or 1594.
Eventually the coffers began to run dry due to the great expense of supporting the military, extensive spy services, the palace and other urban building projects, a royal lifestyle and a propaganda campaign aimed at building support for his controversial claim to the Caliphate.
Relations with Europe
Morocco's standing with the Christian states was still in flux. The Spaniards and the Portuguese were seen as the infidel, but al-Mansur knew that the only way his sultanate would thrive was to continue to benefit from alliances with other Christian economies. To do that, Morocco had to control sizeable gold resources of its own. Accordingly, al-Mansur was drawn irresistibly to the trans-Saharan gold trade of the Songhai in hopes of solving Morocco's economic deficit with Europe.
Al-Mansur developed friendly relations with England in view of an Anglo-Moroccan alliance. In 1600 he sent his Secretary Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud as ambassador to the Court of Queen Elizabeth I of England to negotiate an alliance against Spain.
Al-Mansur also wrote about reconquering al-Andalus for Islam back from the Christian Spanish. In a letter of 1 May 1601 he wrote that he also had ambitions to colonize the New World and settle it with Moroccans. He envisioned that Islam would prevail in the Americas and the Mahdi would be proclaimed from the two sides of the oceans.
Al-Mansur had French physicians at his court. Arnoult de Lisle was physician to the sultan from 1588 to 1598. He was then succeeded by Étienne Hubert d'Orléans from 1598 to 1600. Both in turn returned to France to become professors of Arabic at the Collège de France, and continued with their diplomatic endeavours.
Relations with Ottoman Empire
Al-Mansur had ambivalent relations with the Ottoman Empire. At the very start of his reign he formally recognized the suzerainty of the Ottoman sultan, as Abd al-Malik had done, while still remaining independent in practice. However he quickly alienated the Ottoman sultan when he favorably received the Spanish embassy in 1579, who brought him lavish gifts, and then reportedly trampled the symbol of Ottoman suzerainty before a Spanish embassy in 1581. He also suspected that the Ottomans were involved in the first rebellions against him in his early reign. As a result, he minted coins in his own name and had Friday prayers and the khutba delivered in his name instead of in the name of Murad III, the Ottoman sultan.