Legitimacy in a Power State: Moroccan Politics in the Seventeenth Century During the Interregnum

Extract

The sixteenth century may be regarded as the “turning point” in the evolution of the murābiūṭūn tradition in the Maghrib.² The crisis of Iberian imperialism in the Maghrib brought to the surface, by way of reaction, latent forces within the Maghribian social womb; the result was a social revolution which may be characterized as the “murabitun revolution” because of the rise to prominence of the murabitun in Maghribian society from the sixteenth century onward. Integral to the murabitun revolution was the religious ferment or renaissance generated by the anti-Christian reaction, a renaissance that was expressed in the effervescence of maraboutism, the characteristic Maghribian variety of oriental sufism.