The Wahhabi Siege of Tafilalt: Morocco Versus Saud

In 1813, a shocking letter arrived in Marrakech: the Sultan of Morocco, Moulay Slimane, had been defeated in a holy war—not by Europeans, but by fellow Muslims. This is the story of the Wahhabi siege of Tafilalt, when the puritanical forces of the First Saudi State pushed into Morocco's southeastern oasis. We follow the journey of the Moroccan emissary, the scholar Muhammad al-Du'ayyif, who was sent to parley with the Saudi commander and left a rare eyewitness account of the Wahhabi army and its ideology. We explore the clash between two Islamic powers: the traditional Maliki sultanate of the Alaouites, rooted in saint veneration and Sufi brotherhoods, and the austere reformism of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, which rejected tombs, talismans, and intercession. We trace how the Saudis sacked Sijilmasa, destroyed domed tombs, and forced the sultan to flee, and why this forgotten frontier war reveals the deep tensions within 19th-century Islam—tensions that still reverberate today.

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