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Mawlāy al-Rashīd b. al-Sharīf b. ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. ʿAlī was the first ʿAlawī sultan (r. 1069–82/1659–72) of Morocco. As in the case of the Saʿdī dynasty (r. 916–1069/1510–1659), the ʿAlawī claim to the sultanate was founded on their sharīfian lineage, that is, as descendants of the prophet Muḥammad. In the inland trading town of Sijilmāsa, Mawlāy al-Rashīd’s ancestor, Ḥasanī Shurafāʾ (or al-Ḥasan al-Dākhil; d. 676/1277), had founded a Ṣūfī lodge (zāwiya) several generations before the ʿAlawī ascension to power. In the power vacuum left by the fractured Saʿdī stat…

Mawlāy Ismāʿīl b. al-Sharīf Abū l-Naṣr was the second ʿAlawī ruler of Morocco (r. 1082–1139/1672–1727). During his reign, Mawlāy Ismāʿīl first solidified ʿAlawī control by unifying the sultanate against internal and external forces and then established a wide-reaching and high-functioning bureaucratic network to implement military reforms—most notably through a self-perpetuating slave army by bringing up the soldiers’ offspring in the service of the army—and tightened state control over administr…