The Zenata Berber dynasty (1244–1465) that made Fez Morocco's golden-age capital.
The Marinids were the Berber dynasty that ruled Morocco from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century (1244–1465). From their capital at Fez, the Zenata sultans reunified the country after the Almohads and gave Morocco its golden age of architecture and learning — the madrasas they raised, above all the Bou Inania, still define Moroccan art.
The Banu Marin were Zenata Berbers from the highlands between Taza and Algeria, first hired as mercenaries by the crumbling Almohads, then their supplanters. In 1269 they took Marrakech and made Fez their capital. Under Abu Yusuf Yaqub (1259–1286) and above all Abu al-Hasan (1331–1348), who briefly held Tlemcen and Tunis, the Marinid sultanate was the greatest power of the western Mediterranean — until the defeat at Río Salado in 1340 closed the door to Iberia.
No Moroccan dynasty built for learning like the Marinids. Beginning with the Saffarin madrasa in 1271, they raised schools across the country — the Attarine (1323–25), the Sahrij (1321–28), and the masterpiece, the Bou Inania (1350–55), built by Abu Inan Faris. They were the first dynasty in Morocco to build madrasas at all, and by the end of the reign every major city had at least one. Fez became the scholarly capital of the Maghreb.
Abu al-Hasan dreamed of restoring the Almohad empire: he took Tlemcen, then Tunis, ruling from the Atlantic to Ifriqiya. But in 1340, at Río Salado in Andalusia, a Castilian-Portuguese coalition destroyed the Marinid host — the last great Muslim invasion of Iberia. The empire shrank back to Morocco, and the Black Death and endless succession wars did the rest.
The last Marinid sultan, Abd al-Haqq II, was killed in a Fez uprising in 1465. Power passed to the Wattasid viziers who had long ruled in the sultans' name — a twilight that lasted until the Saadians rose from the south. The Marinids left no empire, but they left Fez: its madrasas, its walls, and its place as Morocco's spiritual capital.
