It was founded by the Alaouite sultan Moulay Abdallah (ruled intermittently between 1729 and 1757) who is buried in the adjoining necropolis along with later members of the dynasty.

In the 17th century the Alaouite sultan Moulay Rashid built the large Kasbah Cherarda north of Fes el-Jdid in order to house his tribal troops,[1] which in turn liberated new space in the city.

This included the northwestern area of Fes el-Jdid which then became the Moulay Abdallah neighbourhood from the early 18th century onward.

[3] His immediate successors, however, were buried in other locales: Mohammed III (d. 1790)[8] and Hassan I (d. 1894) in Rabat,[9] Yazid (d. 1792) at the Saadian Tombs in Marrakesh,[10] Abd al-Rahman (d. 1859) at the Mausoleum of Moulay Ismail in Meknes,[11] and Muhammad IV (d. 1873) in the Alaouite ancestral home of Tafilalt.

[12] The use of the Moulay Abdallah Mosque as a necropolis of the Alaouite dynasty was revived when Sultan Youssef was buried here in 1927,[3] followed by his deposed predecessors Abdelhafid in 1937 and Abdelaziz in 1943 and his wife Lalla Yacout in 1953 respectively.