In 1465 the last Marinid sultan, Abd al-Haqq II, was finally overthrown and killed by a revolt in Fez, which led to the establishment of direct Wattasid rule over most of Morocco.

[17] The Almohad caliph, Sa'id, managed to reassert his authority briefly in 1248 by coming north with an army to confront them, at which point Abu Yahya formally submitted to him and retreated to a fortress in the Rif.

In 1337 the Abdalwadid kingdom of Tlemcen was conquered, followed in 1347 by the defeat of the Hafsid empire in Ifriqiya, which made him master of a huge territory, which spanned from southern present-day Morocco to Tripoli.

The Marinids had already suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of a Portuguese-Castilian coalition in the Battle of Río Salado in 1340, and finally had to withdraw from Andalusia, only holding on to Algeciras until 1344.

After the death of Abu Inan Faris in 1358, the real power lay with the viziers, while the Marinid sultans were paraded and forced to succeed each other in quick succession.

To the south of Marrakesh, Sufi mystics claimed autonomy, and in the 1370s Azemmour broke off under a coalition of merchants and Arab clan leaders of the Banu Sabih.

[45] To maintain their control over the provinces beyond the capital of Fez, the Marinids mostly relied on appointing their family members to governorships or on securing local alliances through marriage.

[51] Historian Michel Abitbol writes:[52]When the morning light shines, the Sultan mounts his horse and the white standard which is the flag of the dynasty, called al-Mansur (the Victorious) is carried next to him.

[54] Contemporary historian Charles-André Julien references the small white flag as a miniature version of the royal standard that was given to the main commander on the battlefield as a mark of authority to lead the troops.

[45][57] The regular standing army, which also formed the sultan's personal guard, consisted of between 2000 and 5000 Christian mercenaries from Aragon, Castile, and Portugal, as well as Black Africans and Kurds.

[45][57] While the Marinids did not declare themselves champions of a reformist religious ideology, as their Almohad and Almoravid predecessors had, they attempted to promote themselves as guardians of proper Islamic government as a way to legitimize their rule.

[47] After establishing themselves in Fez, the Marinids insisted on directly appointing the officials in charge of religious institutions and on managing the waqf (or habus) endowments that financed mosques and madrasas.

[63][64][65]: 141  Additionally, the Marinids were prolific builders of madrasas, a type of institution which originated in northeastern Iran by the early 11th century and was progressively adopted further west.

They used this patronage to encourage the loyalty of Fes's influential but fiercely independent religious elites and also to portray themselves to the general population as protectors and promoters of orthodox Sunni Islam.

One of their most important functions seems to have been to provide housing for students from other towns and cities – many of them poor – who needed a place to stay while studying at these major centers of learning.

[45] The oldest surviving historical chronicle from the Marinid period is considered to be al-Dhakhîrah as-Sanîyya probably composed by Ibn Abi Zar[73][74] (first published by Professor Mohamed Bencheneb, Algiers, 1920).

Ibn al-Khatib, the Andalusi poet and writer from Granada, also spent time in Fes and North Africa when his Nasrid master Muhammad V was there in exile between 1358 and 1362.

[79] The Marinid chandelier in the Great Mosque of Taza, with a diameter of 2.5 metres and weighing 3 tons, is the largest surviving example of its kind in North Africa.

The only reliably-dated Marinid textiles extant today are three impressive banners which were captured from Sultan Abu al-Hasan's army in the Battle of Rio Salado in 1340 by Alfonso XI.

The banner measures 280 by 220 cm and is made of predominantly green silk taffeta, along with decorative motifs woven in blue, white, red, and gold thread.

The central part of the banner is filled with a grid of sixteen green circles containing short religious statements in small cursive inscriptions.

At the four corners of the rectangular band are roundels containing golden cursive letters against a deep blue background, whose inscriptions attribute victory and salvation to God.

Finally, the bottom edge of the banner is occupied by a longer inscription, in small cursive letters again, which gives the full titles and lineage of Abu al-Hasan.

This tradition of sovereigns practicing calligraphy and copying the Qur'an themselves was well-established in many Islamic elite circles by the 13th century, with the oldest surviving example in this region dating from the Almohad caliph al-Murtada (d.

The fourth copy, one of the finest preserved Marinid manuscripts, is a thirty-volume Qur'an which he donated to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem in 1344–45 and is now kept at the Islamic Museum of the Haram al-Sharif.

[87] Aside from Qur'an manuscripts, many other religious and legal texts were copied by calligraphers of this time, especially works related to the Maliki school such as the Muwatta' by Malik ibn Anas.

Preserved in various historic Moroccan libraries today, these manuscripts also show that, in addition to the capital of Fes, important workshops for production were also located in Salé and Marrakesh.

Its two flanks are covered with an example of the elaborate geometric decoration found in the artisan tradition dating back to the 12th-century Almoravid minbar of the Kutubiyya Mosque (in Marrakesh).

[97][98] Starting with Abu Yusuf Ya'qub (d. 1286), the Marinid sultans began to be buried at a new necropolis in Chellah (the site of the former Roman city called Sala Colonia).

Important Marinid graves in these necropolises were typically surmounted by a maqabriyya, a marble tombstone shaped like a triangular prism, laid horizontally and carved with funerary inscriptions.