Mohammed ben Abdallah

Sidi Muhammad bin Abdallah al-Khatib, commonly known as Muhammad III (c. 1710 – 9 April 1790), was the Alawite sultan of Morocco from 1757 to 1790 ¹. He had been governor of Marrakesh under his father, Sultan Abdallah bin Ismail, and briefly sultan in 1748 ¹. Abdallah Laroui described him as "the architect of modern Morocco" ¹.

On his accession in 1757, after the long succession crisis that followed the death of Moulay Ismail, peace and stability were restored ¹. Aware of the harm the Black Guard had done, he reduced its power — dispersing its contingents to garrisons in Tangier, Larache, Rabat, Marrakesh and the Sous after it tried to proclaim his son Yazid in 1775 — restored the standing of the Arab guich tribes, and pacified the Berbers of the mountains ¹. His reign had to weather drought and severe famine between 1776 and 1782 and a plague in 1779–1780, during which he imported wheat, reduced taxes and distributed food and funds ¹. He was interested in scholarly pursuits and cultivated a productive relationship with the ulama, who supported some of his initiatives and reforms ¹. The Arabic article records that he was raised by his grandmother Khannatha bint Bakkar, herself a jurist, performed the Hajj with her in 1143 AH, and studied with teachers including the muhaddith Abu al-Ala Idris al-Iraqi ².

In June 1765 a French fleet bombarded Larache; Moroccan vessels encircled it and inflicted heavy losses, defeating the expedition ¹. In 1769 the Portuguese, threatened by his advance, evacuated Mazagan, which was renamed al-Jadida ¹. His siege of Spanish Melilla in 1774–1775 failed after a hundred days, and the Treaty of Aranjuez of 1780 left Melilla Spanish while Spain ceded territories to Morocco ¹. After the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 he rebuilt Casablanca, renaming it al-Dar al-Bayda, and he employed the French architect Théodore Cornut to build the model port city of Essaouira, developed from 1769 as the principal port for external trade; Rabat too was made an imperial city, with the Dar al-Makhzen palace and the As-Sunna Mosque ¹. The Arabic article credits him with some sixty institutions — mosques, schools and other foundations — and with devoting a third of the state's budget to freeing captives, Muslim, Christian and Jewish, counting it a religious duty ².

On 20 December 1777 Morocco became the first nation to recognise the United States of America as an independent nation, the sultan instructing the Dutch consul in Salé to notify the merchants and consuls of Tangier, Salé, Larache and Essaouira that vessels under the American flag could freely enter Moroccan ports ¹. When American negotiations lagged, Moroccan forces seized the Philadelphia merchant ship Betsey in October 1784, and the sultan announced that ship, cargo and crew would be released once a treaty was concluded ¹. The Moroccan–American Treaty of Friendship, the Treaty of Marrakesh, was signed on 28 June 1786 — the first treaty between the United States and any Muslim, Arab or African country — and remains the longest unbroken treaty relationship in American history ¹. George Washington wrote to the sultan on 1 December 1789 in appreciation; the letter arrived after the sultan's death ¹.

Muhammad bin Abdallah died on 9 April 1790, and was buried in a small qubba near the Dar al-Makhzen of Rabat ¹. He was succeeded by his son Yazid, who died in 1792 and was succeeded in turn by his brother Sulayman ^{1 3}.

The Arabic article devotes a section to the sultan's creed and quotes his own reported saying: "I am Maliki in madhhab, Wahhabi in creed" ². The saying is transmitted by the French historian Charles-André Julien, and al-Shuway'ir's monograph on the Wahhabi call quotes it from Julien in the same form; that is a single historiographical origin, so under the museum's rulings the Maliki naming is recorded but his faith is not settled on it. What is documented in full is his practice: influenced by the Salafi call that reached him through Meccan pilgrims, he fought religious innovations and the branching of the Sufi orders, called to ijtihad and the Sunna, and in Julien's account authorised the destruction of books that permitted the Ash'ari school and the demolition of some zawiyas ². As a young prince at Marrakesh he had taken the Nasiri tariqa from Shaykh Abu al-Abbas al-Sharadi ². The English article's infobox files him as Sunni Islam, and Wikidata carries no religion value ^{1 4}.

His birth is given only as c. 1710; the English article, the Arabic article's biographical section and the Urdu article place it at Fez, while the Arabic article's lead names Meknes against its own body ^{2 3}. The Arabic infobox pairs the birth year with 1134 AH, which falls in 1721–1722 and cannot pair with 1710, so his record omits a birth Hijri year. His death place is disputed three ways — Meknes in the English article and the Arabic infobox, Ain Atiq near Rabat in the Arabic death section, and Salé in Wikidata ⁴; the record's edge follows Meknes as the best-attested reading, and his death date, 9 April 1790, paired by the Arabic article with 24 Rajab 1204 AH, is unanimous ².