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The Berbers and the Islamic State: The Marinid Experience in Pre-Protectorate Morocco

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A welcome addition to Berber and western Islamic history. It follows up on Bovill's GOLDEN TRADE OF THE MOORS and fills out Berber history in association with Richard Fletcher's MOORISH SPAIN. The author's stated objective is to examine the Banu Marin's contributions to the development of the Islamic Berber state.

This interesting, if sometimes dry, book is divided into 3 main parts, according to the author's Introduction: (1) the Berbers' search for their place in Islamic history, (2) the development of an Islamic State, and (3) the implementation of Islamic Institutions.

The first part of the book studies the acculturation and resistance of the Berbers to the society of the conquering Arabs: original physical - and continued social - opposition toward the conquerors; the development of the myth that Berbers were originally of Arabic stock (in opposition to Arab ideas of superiority); and the praise of Berber culture and society during the taifa period of al-Andalus (Islamic Spain) after the fall of the caliphate and the rise of small, ethnic kingdoms & conflicts.

The second part of the book deals with the rise of the Banu Marin (or Marinid dynasty of 1250 to 1465) of Zanata Berber stock after the fall of the Almohads. It looks at Arabic and popular opposition to the legitimacy of the Marinids and of the backlash against the Jewish population associated with the Banu Marin regime and the attempt to gain control of appointments in religious and social institutions as the State continued to be reformed along Islamic lines.

The 3rd part of the book looks at the evolution of tribal customs as they are integrated into the developing Islamic culture, as well as the development of numerous endowments for religious and other education - especially of the Medresas - and the conflict between the religious schools and the religious leadership. The Conclusion touches on the "importance of history in the creation of national identity" and the problem of historical accuracy in this context.

This book is very much so a scholarly paper - probably developed from an earlier Master's thesis or Doctoral dissertation - complete with a mild style and copious end notes.

"For deep background of contemporary problems, "The Berbers and the Islamic State" is a good place to start. Shatzmillers work explains skillfully, based on much original research, the uneasy relations of Berbers to Islam and the state over the course of a millennium already by the eleventh century, she(Shatzmiller) notes, the Berbers have taken over the state in North Africa, but they also experienced a cultural alienation from what she calls the "intellectual onslaught of the Islamic and Arabic norms."--Middle East Forum


"This book represents one of the first attempts to reconsider Berber resistance and acculturation in the Islamic period. . . . An extremely important contribution to the study of North Africa in the Islamic period that consciously confronts enduring historical biases. Shatzmiller offers extraordinarily detailed research as well as admirable charts and appendices, which are invaluable guides to other scholars." --Arab Studies Journal

From the International History Review:
"BOOKS OF AN interpretive nature written in European languages and focusing on Moroccan history between 650 and 1500 are relatively few. If one narrows one's compass to works in English, the number shrinks to the merest handful. Thus, the name of the Mannid family that dominated the Moroccan political scene from 1259 to 1550 is largely unknown beyond the fraternity of historians specializing on Muslim North Africa and'Spain.
Unlike their immediate predecessors, the religiously assertive Almoravids and Almohads, the Marinids have been seen as lacking the charisma of religious legit-imacy that resumed with the Sharifian dynasties that succeeded them, and there-fore not to fit well into the master narrative of Moroccan history that weds Islam with monarchy. Rather, they have been portrayed as unsophisticated Berber-speaking tribesmen conveniently filling the time between their charismatic pre-decessors and successors. That they are the last important Berber dynasty in Moroccan history has not been thought important.
Against this background, Maya Shatzmiller's insightful and provocative studies of Mannid history and Berber historical identity constitute a welcome new depart-ure in the interpretation of North African history. Rarely does a collection of previously published articles flow so smoothly as to give the impression of being conceived together to be read in the current order; this is one of those rare com-pilations. However, the easy and logical transitions from chapter to chapter con-ceal a deeper structure that contributes to the book's excellence.
The three essays making up part l, 'The Berbers' Search for Their Place in Islamic History', were published between 1983 and 1989, well after four of the six subsequent articles on particular aspects of Marinid rule, which appeared between 1976 and 1979. The reader benefits, therefore, from Shatzmiller's leisurely reflections on her detailed research on the Marinids. How many scholars wish they could add to their published books the afterthoughts of a decade later! Though the particular accounts of Jewish courtiers and Muslim divines, of religious schools and pious endowments, and of royal taxation and urban institu-tions are all of substantial interest to specialists, the thematic direction imparted in part l provides a cohesion they could not have had as independent journal articles.
Morocco is today an integral part of the Arab world and the Muslim world. From time immemorial, however, its indigenous population spoke one or another Berber language or dialect, as a substantial proportion still does today; and it took several centuries for Islam to supplant the country's pre-existing faiths. The formation of Berber, Arab, and Muslim identities forms the theme of part l. Shatz-miller presents three different approaches, primarily genealogical, to establishing Berber historical identity in written sources from the Middle East, Spain, and North Africa itself, each of them carrying different implications for the relationship of the Berbers to the Arabs and to the Islamic religion.
Thus, Shatzmiller sets the stage for her examination of the Marinid practice of government in the following two parts, sparing us in the process a tedious narration of Marinid political history and military campaigns. Not surprisingly, though not as dramatically charismatic in its foundation as earlier and later Moroc-can dynasties, the Marinid polity proves to have relied much more on Islamic values and themes than one would have surmised from a conventional reading of Moroccan history. And its introduction of madrasas, or colleges for the higher study of Islam, furthers a transition to more conventional Islamic institutions. Thus, Shatzmiller turns what was previously a near void in the interpretation of Morocco's history into a complex period of transition.
North African history in general, and Moroccan history in particular, have received far less attention in anglophone scholarship than the heartland of the caliphate from Egypt to Iran and Islamic Spain, with its connections to medieval Europe. This has encouraged largely separate interpretations of these two seemingly disconnected wings of medieval Islamic civilization. Shatzmiller has performed a valuable service in helping to fill in the space between those wings, and she has done so with an interpretive flare that should encourage more com-parative study of Islamic societies, not to mention more study of Morocco in particular. Against the value of what she has accomplished in this short book, her sometimes capricious transliteration weighs as nothing."
Columbia University
RICHAKO W. BULLIET