You can pretty much figure out the general attributes of a leader by the epithet that is tagged to his/her name. So when we hear of England’s King Richard the Lionheart, we can almost envision the bravery that earned him the title, and when we hear of his younger brother’s title John Softsword, we can almost visualize his enemies handing him mighty defeats.
Clearly, Mulai the Bloodthirsty was certainly a despot, but in addition to that, he managed to achieve a thing or two that was beneficial to the Alaouite Dynasty that ruled what is now Morocco and parts of Mauritania and Algeria.
Born Mulai (also Moulay) Ismail Ibn Sharif in 1645, he ascended to the throne in 1672 after his brother, Moulay Rashid, the reigning sultan, succumbed to injuries from after falling off a horse. He ruled until his death in 1727. Shortly after his ascension, he transferred the capital from Fez to Meknes.
He inherited a sultanate that was fraught with both internal and external strife, but he managed to put down all rebellions by Berbers and Bedouin tribes that were opposed to a central rule, and managed to keep Morocco a united nation. He also fended off aggression from the Ottoman Empire, and after successfully beating them in three major engagements, the Ottomans recognized Morocco as an independent nation and didn’t try subjugating it again.
Mulai Ismail’s military conquests were successful because he chose to develop a slave army of black, Sub-Saharan Africans; this army, estimated by some to have had as many as 150,000 soldiers, was more unified than the previous army that was comprised of people from different Bedouin tribes, whose allegiances lay with their tribes first.
He also managed to wrest the ports of Mamurah and Tangiers from Spanish and English control, respectively.
He was also close to France’s King Louis IV, who seconded to him military assistances who also assisted in planning several public works projects in the Sultanate. These projects were built on the sweat of a large slave force, most of them taken from Europe by Barbary pirates. The Sultan himself had 25,000 slaves at his disposal, and he occasionally ransomed highborn slaves.
But Mulai Ismail is more notorious for his cruelty and his children.
He was called the Bloodthirsty because even members of his court could be executed as he so desired. It is said that he once killed a member of a captured Portuguese vessel with a hatchet because he wanted to confirm if the (hatchets) were any good. It is also said that he once threw Christian workers off a high wall they were working on because he had observed they were not working in synchrony. One account even states that he killed two of his former nurses for hiding pieces of bread.
Even though he had only four wives, he had about 500 concubines who were guarded by eunuchs. The number of children sired by him earned him a spot in the Guinness World Records; 1042 children! This is the largest verifiable number of children one man has ever had.
For all his misgivings, Ismail was able to keep the nation united, and is respected for his successful repulsion of Ottoman forces. He is interred in Meknes.
By Matengo Chwanya
Africa Global News Publication
