which
all Oriental rule seems destined. In Spain, the Berber forces were
beaten in the great Christian victory of Las-Navas-de Tolosa, and in
Morocco itself the first stirrings of the Beni-Merins (a new tribe from
the Sahara) were preparing the way for a new dynasty.

V

THE MERINIDS

The Beni-Merins or Merinids were nomads who ranged the desert between
Biskra and the Tafilelt. It was not a religious upheaval that drove them
to the conquest of Morocco. The demoralized Almohads called them in as
mercenaries to defend their crumbling empire; and the Merinids came,
drove out the Almohads, and replaced them.

They took Fez, Meknez, Sale, Rabat and Sidjilmassa in the Tafilelt; and
their second Sultan, Abou-Youssef, built New Fez (Eldjid) on the height
above the old Idrissite city. The Merinids renewed the struggle with the
Sultan of Tlemcen, and carried the Holy War once more into Spain. The
conflict with Tlemcen was long and unsuccessful, and one of the Merinid
Sultans died assassinated under its walls. In the fourteenth century the
Sultan Abou Hassan tried to piece together the scattered bits of the
Almohad empire. Tlemcen was finally taken, and the whole of Algeria
annexed. But in the plain of Kairouan, in Tunisia, Abou Hassan was
defeated by the Arabs. Meanwhile one of his brothers had headed a revolt
in Morocco, and the princes of Tlemcen won back their ancient kingdom.
Constantine and Bougie rebelled in turn, and the kingdom of Abou Hassan
vanished like a mirage. His successors struggled vainly to control their
vassals in Morocco, and to keep their possessions beyond its borders.
Before the end of the fourteenth century Morocco from end to end was a
chaos of antagonistic tribes, owning no allegiance, abiding by no laws.
The last of the Merinids, divided, diminished, bound by humiliating
treaties with Christian Spain, kept up a semblance of sovereignty at Fez
and Marrakech, at war with one another and with their neighbours, and
Spain and Portugal seized this moment of internal dissolution to drive
them from Spain, and carry the war into Morocco itself.

The short and stormy passage of the Beni-Merins seems hardly to leave
room for the development of the humaner qualities; yet the flowering of
Moroccan art and culture coincided with those tumultuous years, and it
was under the Merinid Sultans that Fez became the centre of Moroccan
learning and industry, a kind of Oxford with Birmingham annexed.

VI

THE