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This chapter explores how the Marīnid sultans expressed their authority to their subjects, especially those living beyond Fes, their capital city, during their first century of rule. The construction of palatine cities and madrasas were important marks of Marīnid authority in urban space but, as a dynasty ruling over a large rural tribal population, the Marīnids also needed to express their power and authority beyond the city. The chapter begins with analysis of the textual image of kingship presented in Marīnid chronicles and then considers how that image was disseminated to the population. It looks at Marīnid military progresses (ḥarakāt) between their fortresses and towns and Marīnid military engagements in the rural environment and shows how they used a number of symbols of monarchy, from the historically resonant Qurʾān of ʿUthmān to generic items such as drums and banners to make their power manifest.

Marīnid Morocco is intriguing because it displays an economic efflorescence and a political and military drive similar to the northern Atlantic empires at a moment when Islamic societies are assumed to have been in a period of economic decline. This chapter applies recent theories on economic growth in pre-industrialised societies to the Marīnid case in order to revisit this assumption of decline. It provides evidence of population growth, increased urbanisation, new crops and new technologies in agriculture, greater manufacturing capacity, strong institutions, in particular legal institutions, trade and capital formation, both physical and human. It then surveys the structural changes in the Maghribī and Mediterranean economies to see how they were linked to Moroccan developments and uses the evidence and analysis presented to question the representation of an uninterrupted economic decline in premodern Islamic societies and the ‘great divergence’ thesis.

Although the fourteenth century Marīnids openly acknowledged their Berber identity, by the end of the sixteenth century, sharīfian descent had become a requirement for Moroccan rule. This chapter examines the political propaganda of the Marīnid sultan Abū’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī (r. 731–752/1331–1351) and the Saʿdī sultan Aḥmad al-Manṣūr al-Dhahabī (r. 986–1012/1578–1603). It considers similarities and differences between their political propaganda in light of their differing historical circumstances, particularly the relative power of sharīfian movements during their respective reigns, as well as the importance of holy lineages, monarchical treatment of the shurafāʾ, and the role of ceremonies in political legitimation. It argues that the Saʿdī ability to convince Moroccans of their sharīfian lineage connected with a larger trend to equate political power with descent from the Prophet and reinforced their authority. In contrast, the Marīnids contributed to their own downfall through their inconsistent policies towards honouring the shurafāʾ.

This chapter assesses the development of mawlid al-nabī as a public ceremony in Morocco in the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries, from its origin in Ceuta to its subsequent adoption by the Marīnids. Although it is often assumed that the Marīnids adopted existing religious norms to achieve greater religiopolitical credibility, in this case the meaning and significance of mawlid were contested, showing that the development of understandings of legitimacy are not transferred simply from one group to another, but are formed by the process of interaction. Although the adoption of the mawlid is often associated with the growth of Sufism and sharīfism, the development of the festival was also closely related to the reassertion of Mālikī orthodoxy around this period, and was therefore useful for the Marīnids to symbolise their support for a spectrum of religious tendencies. It also allowed for a symbolic assertion of Islamic identity when the reality of growing Christian power created increasing challenges for Muslim rulers.