After the murder of Mohammed in 1557 and the following struggle for power, two of his sons, Ahmad al-Mansur and Abd al-Malik, had to flee their elder brother Abdallah al-Ghalib (1557–1574), leave Morocco and stay abroad until 1576.

[10] More generally, Ahmad al-Mansur "received an extensive education in Islamic religious and secular sciences, including theology, law, poetry, grammar, lexicography, exegesis, geometry, arithmetics and algebra, and astronomy.

"[11] In 1578, Ahmad's brother, Sultan Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik I, died in battle against the Portuguese army at Ksar-el-Kebir.

Ahmad was named his brother's successor and began his reign amid newly won prestige and wealth from the ransom of Portuguese captives.

Al-Mansur began his reign by leveraging his dominant position with the vanquished Portuguese during prisoner ransom talks, thus collecting enough to fill the Moroccan royal coffers.

The Spaniards and the Portuguese were seen as the infidel, but al-Mansur knew that the only way his sultanate would thrive was to continue to benefit from alliances with other Christian economies.

Accordingly, al-Mansur was drawn irresistibly to the trans-Saharan gold trade of the Songhai in hopes of solving Morocco's economic deficit with Europe.

In 1600 he sent his Secretary Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud as ambassador to the Court of Queen Elizabeth I of England to negotiate an alliance against Spain.

At the very start of his reign he formally recognized the suzerainty of the Ottoman sultan, as Abd al-Malik had done, while still remaining independent in practice.

[26]: 196  Despite the limits of his power, he officially proclaimed himself caliph in the later part of his reign, seeing himself as rival, rather than subordinate, of the Ottomans, and even as the rightful leader of the Muslim world.

On October 16, 1590, Ahmad took advantage of the recent civil strife in the empire and dispatched an army of 4,000 men across the Sahara desert under the command of converted Spaniard Judar Pasha.

Well-known writers at his court were Ahmed Mohammed al-Maqqari, Abd al-Aziz al-Fishtali, Ahmad Ibn al-Qadi and Al-Masfiwi.

He attempted to expand his holdings through conquest, and although initially successful in their military campaign against the Songhai Empire, the Moroccans found it increasingly difficult to maintain control over the conquered locals as time went on.