Abu Yaqub Yusuf an-Nasr

Abu Yaqub Yusuf an-Nasr (أَبُو يُوسُف يَعقُوب الناصر abū yūsuf ya`qūb an-nāṣr) (died 13 May 1307) was a Marinid ruler of Morocco. Son of Abu Yusuf Ya'qub, whom he succeeded in 1286. He was assassinated in 1307.

History

Abu Yaqub Yusuf succeeded his father Abu Yusuf Ya'qub in March, 1286, shortly after the latter's expedition to Spain and peace treaty with Sancho IV of Castile. The accession was contested by several relatives, including his brother, some of whom were backed and shielded by the Abdalwadid rulers of Tlemcen. To concentrate on this threat, one of Abu Yaqub's first acts was to strike a fresh treaty with the Nasrid ruler Muhammad II of Granada, ceding all Marinid possessions in Spain, with the exception of Algeciras, Tarifa, Ronda and Guadix. (Guadix will however pass over to the Granada in 1288).

In November, 1288, Abu Yaqub's own son Abu Amir, hatched a conspiracy to depose him. The plot was soon nipped, but Abu Amir and his advisors took refuge in the court of the Abdalwadid ruler Abu Said Othman of Tlemcen. Abu Yaqub was soon reconciled with his son, but demanded that his fellow conspirators be handed over for justice. Othman refused to extradite them. A Marinid fleet blockaded Tlemcen through much of 1290, but to little effect.

In 1291, the truce with Sancho IV of Castile expired, hostilities in Spain renewed. While Abu Yaqub was busy against Tlemcen, Sancho IV conspired with the Nasrid sultan Muhammad II of Granada to seize the three remaining Marinid citadels in Spain - Tarifa, Algeciras and Ronda - for themselves. With Granadine assistance, the Marinid citadel of Tarifa fell to Sancho IV of Castile in October, 1292. But Sancho refused to honor his agreement to hand it over to Granada and instead decided to keep Tarifa for himself.

A repentant Muhammad II immediately tried to repair relations with the Marinids. At a meeting in Tangiers in early 1293, Abu Yaqub assented to assist Muhammad II recover Tarifa from Castile, but on the condition that Tarifa will be turned over to Marinids, in return for which the Marinids will write over their rights to Algeciras and Ronda to Granada. As part of the deal, Muhammad II handed over to the Abu Yaqub four valuable 7th C. copies of the Qur'an, drafted by the Caliph Uthman himself, which the fleeing Umayyads had brought from Damascus to Cordoba back in the 750s and had since been held by the royal treasury of Granada. The estranged Castilian prince Infante Don Juan (uncle of Sancho IV), then in exile, participated in this discussion and agreed to partake in the expedition.

Marinid sultan Abu Yaqub undertook his first crossing of the straits in 1293 (or 1294) to lay siege of Tarifa. But the citadel, held by the Castilian noble Alonso Perez de Guzman (stem of the house of Medina-Sidonia) refused to fall. As legend has it, when Infante Don Juan threatened to kill Guzman's son which he was holding prisoner, Guzman only response was to toss a knife from the walls, and tell him to proceed.

Around 1294, while still in Spain, Abu Yaqub received word of the break out of a revolt among the Berber Wattasids of the Rif, fomented by the Abdalwadids of Tlemcen. Plans for the resumption of the siege of Tarifa were shelved, as Abu Yaqub spent much of the year dealing with the Rif uprising.

The failed siege of Tarifa persuaded the Marinid sultan Abu Yaqub to abandon his pretensions on the peninsula. In 1295, he formally handed over the last two remaining Marinid citadels, Algeciras and Ronda, to Muhammad II of Granada.

Siege of Tlemcen

The abandonment of Spain gave Marinid sultan Abu Yaqub a free hand to pursue a war against the Abdalwadids of Tlemcen in 1295. Marinid forces moved systematically and painfully along the coast, taking Taourirt (1295), Oujda (1296), Taount and Nedroma (1297) before finally arriving at the suburbs of Tlemcen in May, 1299. Settling down for a long siege, Abu Yaqub erected a siege camp which turned into a veritable city, known as al-Mahalla al-Mansura ('Camp of Victory'), with markets, public baths, palaces and mosques of its own. From here, he conducted the siege against Tlemcen, while dispatching detachments to seize the remaining coast of the Abdalwadid sultanate, all the way to Algiers.

Nonetheless, the besieged city of Tlemcen refused to fall. The death of the Abdalwadid sultan Othman in 1303 prompted the city to contemplate capitulation, but his successor Abu Zayyan I rallied the resistance and ensured it continued to hold out.

In an eye to relieve the siege, Abdalwadid agents persuaded the new Nasrid sultan Muhammad III of Granadato land a Marinid pretender, a certain Othman Ibn Idris, in Ceuta in 1306. Othman landed with Granadan help and immediately proclaimed himself ruler of Morocco. But the Marinid emir Abu Yaqub, sensing his siege was finally having an effect, that Tlemcen was on the verge of falling, decided to ignore the threat in his rear and press on with the siege. Unchallenged, Othman ibn Idris's partisans added the neighboring towns of Asilah, Larache and much of the Ghomara region to his cause.

In May, 1307, the Marinid sultan Abu Yaqub Yusuf was assassinated in the Tlemcen siege camp by a eunuch over an obscure harem affair. He was succeeded by his son (or grandson), Abu Thabit Amir as Marinid sultan of Morocco, who opted to abandon the siege of Tlemcen and to confront Othman ibn Idris in Ceuta. Abu Yaqub's twelve-year war against Tlemcen ended up yielding no fruit.

Sources

• Julien, Charles-André, Histoire de l'Afrique du Nord, des origines à 1830, édition originale 1931, réédition Payot, Paris, 1961