ABSTRACT
When M.Isma‘il ibn al-Sharif ascended the throne in 1672, the ‘Alawite regime which his half-brother, M.al-Rashid (reg. 1668-1672) had founded (mainly with tribal support) was barely six years old. With determination and political astuteness, the young monarch (M.Isma‘il was then twentysix) directed his energies towards the consolidation of his power, the expansion of the state, the suppression of internal dissent and the repulsing of the European and Ottoman threat. To achieve these aims, he recognized the need for a strong stable army that was intensely loyal to him and dedicated to the preservation of the regime. Tribal support and loyalties, had essentially proven to be unreliable. In a letter addressed to Sidi Muhammad ibn ‘Abdal-Qadir al-Fasi (d. 1704/5), the great sage and scholar of Fas (Fez), M.Isma‘il spelt out the reasons that motivated him to establish a professional army. He wrote:
the Khilafa must have an instrument to prop it up. This is a (standing) army…that protects the Muslim Community, guards its ports, keeps security on its roads and repulses whomever covets it. And when Allah charged us with this responsibility (the Khilafa) we re-examined the composition of the state armies, which are the mainstay of the Khilafa’s authority. We do not know of a civilization that depended on factional loyalties, nor did we find a single tribe in the Maghrib that was devoted and strong enough to provide the main prop of the regime.1
