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The English Merchant and the Moroccan Sufi: Messianism and Mahdism in the Early Seventeenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2013

NABIL MATAR
NABIL MATAR*
Affiliation:
Department of English, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus, 207 Lind Hall, 207 Church Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA; E-mail: matar010@umn.edu
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Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between an English factor, John Harrison, and a Moroccan Sufi rebel, Abu Maḥilli, in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. Although the two men never met, the revolt that Abu Maḥilli led against the Sa'dian rulers promoted mahdist/messianic goals which intersected with the commercial and eschatological strategies that Harrison was pursuing in Morocco.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 65 , Issue 1 , January 2014 , pp. 47 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

1 Greene, Molly, ‘Beyond the northern invasion: the Mediterranean in the seventeenth century’, Past & Present clxxiv (2002), 42–71.Google Scholar As Greene argues, Braudel's ‘northern invasion’ did not extend to the eastern Mediterranean.

2 Braudel, Fernand, ‘Preface to the first English edition’, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world in the age of Philip II, trans. Reynolds, Siân, Berkeley 1995, i. 21.Google Scholar

3 The most complete manuscript of this text is at the Royal Library, Rabat, ms 100. Two more manuscripts survive (mss 442, 4009), but in a damaged condition. All references in this paper are to ms 100. Abu Maḥilli left other treatises as well, Sufi and polemical, at the same time that he was mentioned in the writings of his supportive or detractive coreligionists. Most of his manuscripts, only one of which has been edited, remain in the Royal Library and the National Library in Rabat, Morocco: numerous copies attest to his prolific output and popularity.

4 For an analytical biography of Abu Maḥilli see ‘Abd al-Majīd Qaddūrī, Ibn Abi Maḥilli al-faqīh al-tha'ir, Rabat 1991. See also Mercedes García-Arenal, Messianism and puritanical reform, trans. Beagles, Martin, Leiden 2006.Google Scholar, ch. xii.

5 The invasion ended in failure at the famous battle of Wādī al-Makhāzin/Alcazar.

6 Aḥmad ibn ‘Abdallah ibn Abu Maḥilli, Al-Iṣlīt al-khirrīt fī qaṭ’ bul‘ūm al-‘ifrīt, fo. 33r.

7 Berque, Jacques, Ulémas, fondateurs, insurgés du maghreb: XVIIe siècle, Paris 1982, 22.Google Scholar

8 Quoted in Muḥammad Ḥajji, Al-Zāwiya al-dilā'iyya, Rabat 1964, 132.Google Scholar

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10 Abu Ḥasan'Ali ibn Muḥammad ibn 'Ali Muḥammad Al-Tamjrūti, Al-Nafḥa al-miskiyya fī-l-sifārah al-turkiyya, ed. ‘Abd al-Laṭīf al-Shadhilī, Rabat 2002, 136–7.

11 Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ṣiddīq, Ibrāz al-wahm al-maknūn min kalām Ibn Khaldūn, aw al-murshid al-mahdi li-raddi ṭa‘n Ibn Khaldūn bi aḥādīth al-mahdi, National Library, Rabat, ms Dal 1878.

12 See Matar, Nabil, ‘The Maliki imperialism of Ahmad al-Mansūr: the Moroccan invasion of Sudan, 1591’, in Rajan, Balachandra and Sauer, Elizabeth (eds), Imperialisms, New York 2004, 147–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Abu Maḥilli, Iṣlīt, fo. 23v.

14 Ibid. fo. 21r.

15 Idem, Al-Manjanīq, National Library, Rabat, ms Qaf 338, fo. 235r, and Al-Sayf al-bāriq, fo. 441v. There are various treatises in this manuscript.

16 Idem, Islīt, fo. 115r.

17 Ibid. fos 26r, 46v. It may be that what Abu Maḥilli heard was the reiteration of many Iberians who were were waiting for O Encoberto (the Hidden One), Sebastian, king of Portugal, who had been killed in the battle of Wadī al-Makhāzin in 1578, to ‘return from the sea’ and fulfill the mystical vocation of Europe: Cardini, Franco, Europe and Islam, trans. Beamish, Caroline, Oxford 1990, 162.Google Scholar

18 Abu Maḥilli, Iṣlīt, 26.

19 Idem, Mihrās al-ru’ūs al-jahala, National Library, Rabat, ms Kaf 192, fo. 7r.

20 Muḥammad, al-Saghīr al-Ifrānī, Nuzhatal-hādī, ed. ‘al-Shadhili, Abd al-Laṭīf, Casablanca 1998, 299.Google Scholar

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22 Aḥmad Ibn Qāsim, al-Ḥajarī, Kitāb nāsir al-dīn ‘alā ‘l-qawm al-kāfirīn, ed. Van Koningsveld, P. S., Al-Samarrai, Q., and Weigers, G. A., Madrid 1997Google Scholar, ch i.

23 Anon., Kitāb mafahīm thawāb ḥaqiqat al-injīl, BL, ms Harleian 3507, fos 12–13. All references in parentheses are to this manuscript. See also Kendrick, St James in Spain, 76.

24 Al-Ifrānī, Nuzhat al-ḥādī, 296.

25 Abu Maḥilli, Iṣlīt, fo. 22r.

26 de Cenival, Pierre and Philipe, de Cossé Brissac published many of Harrison's longer letters in Les Sources inédites de l'histoire du Maroc: archives et bibliothèques d'Angleterre, Paris 1936, iii.Google Scholar See Nabil Matar, ODNB s.v. Harrison.

27 Les Sources inédites de l'histoire du Maroc … archives et bibliothèques d'Angleterre, ed. Henry de Castries, Paris 1918–36, ii. 449.

28 Descripción de los reinos de Marruecos: 1603–1613, trans. Abdal-Wahid Akmir, in Wasf al-mamālik al-maghribyya, Rabat 1997, 150–1. Although there were many converts to Islam in this period, I was unable to find further information about this ‘Martin’.

29 A century later, the historian, al-Ifrānī, wrote that ‘his followers and supporters increased, and his admirers were manifold, and multitudes went to see him’: Nuzhat al-ḥādī, 303.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid. 301.

32 John, Harrison, Late newes out of Barbary in a letter written of late from a merchant there, to a gentl. not long since imployed into that counrtrie from his maiestie, 2nd edn, London 1613Google Scholar (STC 12857/2), C2v; De Castries identifies the two men as Ralph Sidderon and George Blowe, factors resident in Safi: Les Sources d'Angleterre, ii. 465 n. 2.

33 Abu Maḥilli, Iṣlīt, fo. 62r.

34 Harrison, Late newes out of Barbary, B3r.

35 Ibid. B3v.

36 Ibid. C2v.

37 Ibid. Cr, C2r.

38 Cited in García-Arenal, ‘Mahdi, murabit, sharif’, 82, no. 17.

39 Harrison, Late newes out of Barbary, B3r–v.

40 Les Sources inédites de l'histoire du Maroc: archives et bibliothèques des Pays-Bas, ed. Henry de Castries, Paris 1907, ii. 117. It is interesting that other Dutch agents in Morocco were helping Zaydān: Frank, Engelien, ‘The influence of Dutch military technology on the Morocco of Mawlay Zaydān (1603–1627)’, in Le Maroc et la Holland, Rabat 1990, 21–8Google Scholar at p. 22.

41 Abu Maḥilli, Iṣlīt, fo. 31v.

42 Les Sources des Pays-Bas, ii. 123.

43 Abu Maḥilli, Mihrās al-ru'ūs al-jahala, fo. 26v.

44 Idem, Iṣlīt, fos 43v, 22v.

45 In 1607 he wrote that ‘Malta was between al-Gharb [Maghrib] and Egypt and like a snake, captures pilgrims’: quoted in ‘Abd al-Majīd Qaddūri, Ibn Abi Mahilli al-faqīh al-thā'ir, Rabat 1991, 83.

46 Quoted in Ḥasan, Ḥāfizi ‘Alawi, ‘Tawzīf Ibn Khaldūn li-manhaj al-naqd fī-l-ta'kīd min ṣi ḥḥat al-riwāya at-tarikhiyya: akhbār al-mahdi al-muntazar namūdhajan’, in Mutanawa‘āt Muḥammad Ḥajji, Beirut 1998, 325–50Google Scholar at p. 338.

47 Harrison, Late newes out of Barbary, C2r.

48 Frazee, Charles A., Catholics and sultans: the Church and the Ottoman Empire, 1453–923, Cambridge 1983, 72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 In the thirteenth century Abu ‘Abdallah al-Qurṭubī (d. 1272) wrote in his Kitāb al-tadhkira about the mahdi who appeared in the occident/Maghrib, fought the Christians, passed Gibraltar, seized Seville, sacked kanīsat al-dhahab (church of gold) and settled in the Holy Land: Bernard Rosemberger, ‘Y a-t-il un Millenarisme dans le monde musulmán occidental? Le Maroc au xvi siècle’, in Kaddouri, Mahdisme, 71–94.

50 The play was written in about 1592 and was repeatedly performed in London. It was first published in 1604: Doctor Faustus with the English Faust book, ed. David Wootton, Indianapolis–Cambridge 2005. The reference is to act 1, scene 3, lines 352–4.

51 ‘An aduertisement to the reader’, Late newes out of Barbary, A3r.

52 Ibid. A3v.

53 Ibid. A3r.

54 Ibid. A4r.

55 John, Harrison, The new prophetical king of Barbary: the last newes from thence, in a letter written of late from a merchant, to a gentleman not long since imployed into that countrie from his majestie, 2nd edn, LondonGoogle Scholar 1613 (STC 1392.24).

56 Idem, The new prophetical king of Barbary, 2nd edn, London 1613Google Scholar (STC 12857.6).

57 See the pamphlet describing the disasters: anon., The wonders of this windie winter, 2nd edn, London 1613Google Scholar (STC 25950).

58 The first text was Andrew Willet's De vniversali et novissima Ivdeaorum vocationes, 2nd edn, Cambridge 1590Google Scholar (STC 25675), esp. fos 32v–33v. For a survey of some of these eschatological treatises in the context of Jewish and Muslim conversion see Nabil, Matar, Islam in Britain, 1558–685, Cambridge 1998.Google Scholar, ch. iv.

59 Anon., A most strange and wonderfull prophesie upon this troublesome world, 2nd edn, London 1595Google Scholar (STC 5324.7). See Jennifer, Forster, ‘Anticipating the apocalypse: an Elizabethan prophecy’, The Historian lxiii (2001), 600–17.Google Scholar

60 W. W., Newes from Rome of two mightie armies, aswell footemen as horsmen: the first of the great Sophy, the other of an Hebrew people, till this time not discouered, coming from the mountaines of Caspij, who pretend their warre is to recover the Land of Promise, &expel the Turks out of Christendome, translated out of Italian into English, 2nd edn, London 1606 (STC 4102.5).

61 Thomas, Draxe, The worlds resurrection, or The generall calling of the Iewes, 2nd edn, London 1608Google Scholar (STC 7187.5).

62 English merchants had been delivering European-printed Hebrew Bibles to the Jews since 1561: Caille, J., ‘Le Commerce anglais avec le maroc pendant la seconde moitie du xvi siècle’, Revue africaine lxxxiv (1940), 186–219Google Scholar at p. 196.

63 Kitāb al-tawārīkh, trans. ‘Abd al-‘Azīz Shahbar, Tetouan 2002, 26. The authors are given on the title page as ‘aḥbār min ‘āilat ibn Dannān’: rabbis of the Ibn Dannan family.

64 Harrison, John, The messiah alreadie come, Or proofs of Christianitie, 2nd edn, Amsterdam 1613Google Scholar (STC 12857.8, 18). Both editions have the same STC number.

65 Ibid. 19.

66 Ibid. 30.

67 See the brief discussion of Harrison and Pallache in Mercedes García-Arenal with Gerard Wiegers, A man of three worlds: Samuel Pallache, a Moroccan Jew in Catholic and Protestant Europe, Baltimore 2003, ch. iii.

68 Les Sources des Pays-Bas, ii. 33.

69 Harrison, Late newes out of Barbary, 4Cv.

70 For Ainsworth see ODNB Ainsworth, s.v., and Johnson, A. F., ‘The exiled English church at Amsterdam and its press’, The Library v (1951), 219–42.Google Scholar

71 Harrison admitted taking the conversionary arguments of The messiah alreadie come from an English book that he found in ‘Barbarie’ titled Christian directorie or resolution. This book, by Robert Parsons (1546–1610), A Christian directorie guiding men to their saluation, 2nd edn (STC 19354.1) had first appeared in 1585 and had been repeatedly augmented and reprinted, which may help to explain why it had found its way to North Africa.

72 Harrison, The messiah alreadie come, sig 2v.

73 Ibid.

74 Ibid. sig 3r–v.

75 Ibid. A3r.

76 John, Harrison, ‘An aduertisement to the reader’, in The new prophetical king, London 1613Google Scholar, A4r.

77 Les Sources des Pays-Bas, ii. 440–2.

78 Les Sources d'Angleterre (de Castries), ii. 480.

79 As al-Ifrānī confirmed even a century later: Nuzhat al-ḥādī, 308.

80 John, Harrison, The Messiah alreaie come, Or profes of Christianitie, 2nd edn, Amsterdam 1619Google Scholar (STC 12858), A3r.

81 See Nabil, Matar, ‘The 1609 expulsion of the moriscos in early modern British thought’, Explorations in Renaissance Culture xxxv (2009), 132–49.Google Scholar

82 Although the letters are published in Les Sources d'Angleterre, ii. 567–8, I have preferred to use the manuscript sources because they preserve the chronology that de Castries ignored: TNA, SP 71/1/92–101.

83 SP 71/1/93.

84 SP 71/1/103.

85 Les Sources d'Angleterre (de Castries) ii. 578.

86 ‘With the help of God, the Moors and the English will take Spain and will cook their meals with saints' images and crosses and tear Spain apart; and they will all be brothers and God will help those who are for his commandments. And God above all’: ibid. ii. 582.

87 SP 71/1/140. There are numerous copies of this letter.

88 Les Sources d'Ang leterre (Ceneval and Brissac), iii. 65.

89 Ibid. iii. 143 (25 July 1631).

90 Ibid. iii. 127–8 (8 Oct. 1630). It is interesting that a very similar episode was mentioned in A most strange and wonderfull prophesie about a ‘dismall blacke Dogge’ that comes out of the east; ‘this dog doth signifie the Turke’, A4v.

91 See a discussion of eschatological similarities in Nabil, Matar, ‘Political thought in early modern Morocco’, in Lloyd, Howell A., Burgess, Glenn, and Hodson, Simon (eds), European political thought, 1450–1700: religion, law and philosophy, New Haven 2007, 256–66.Google Scholar

92 After the fall of Constantinople, Ottoman writers described in apocalyptic terms the end of time and the final victory over the ‘blond people’: Kaya, Şahin, ‘Constantinople and the end time: the Ottoman conquest as a portent of the last hour’, Journal of Early Modern History xiv (2010), 1–38Google Scholar, esp. pp. 25ff. See also Robert, Finlay, ‘Prophecy and politics in Istanbul: Charles v, Sultan Suleyman and the Habsburg embassy of 1533–1534’, Journal of Early Modern History ii (1998), 1–31.Google Scholar

93 David, Armitage, Introduction to theories of empire, 1450–800, Aldershot 1998, pp. xxvi–xxvii.Google Scholar