أحمد المنصور الذهبي السعدي

أحمد المنصور الذهبي السعدي

Abd al-Malik's brother and right hand in all state affairs; he fled with him to the Ottoman sultan and was acclaimed on the field of Wadi al-Makhazin, 30 Jumada II 986/4 August 1578, having concealed his brother's death with the chamberlain Ridwan and led the vanguard into the Portuguese rear. He continued his brother's programme: building institutions, holding ministers to office hours, a cipher alphabet for secret correspondence, separation of the judiciary with his own mazalim council at the Qasba mosque of Marrakesh, guarded stations every twenty kilometres for caravans, the flexible Diwan council, an army on the Ottoman model with merit-based commands, field hospitals, a gun foundry, the Larache and Salé fleets — then extended Sa'di sway over the western Sudan and played Spain, England and the Ottomans off one another ¹. When Uluj Ali reached Algiers to annex Morocco in 989/1581, al-Mansur camped at the Tensift, sealed his passes, fortified the shores and sent an embassy to Istanbul — after a near-agreement with Spain trading Larache for military aid — and the Ottomans backed off. Embassies shuttled between Istanbul and Fez in 997–999/1588–1590 and he received an Ottoman envoy in 998/1589, yet the al-Andalus alliance never materialised, the Porte busy with Safavids, Habsburgs and the Hejaz ².