Alluvial gold loot financed Morocco’s military modernization under Ahmad

Evidence

Morocco failed to keep control of the vast territory Jaudar and his largely Morisco harquebusiers had subdued for it. Perhaps it lost interest when he heard that the gold mines that had attracted its army southward across such inhospitable country could not be found. (They were, as we know now, very much further away.) But although there were no mines, the local treasuries were full of gold, and this was captured. Jaudar ordered the transport northward of a great quantity of it (described as tibar, “gold dust,” i.e., “alluvial gold,” a clear indication that it had not been produced by smelting from any mine). A train of sixteen camels brought the booty north, sufficient to earn for Jaudar’s master the epithet of al-dhahabi, “the man of gold,” “el dorado,” as the Spaniards would have said. Ahmad got the gold he so desired. And by stripping in this way the assets of the kingdoms of the blacks, accumulated by them over many years, he now had the means of buying the military, naval, and scientific equipment for which he hankered. Dutch and English merchants, arms dealers (among others) hastened to his court to offer to satisfy his needs. The Barbary Company had been set up in London in 1585 at a time when Morocco was already awash with funds derived from the ransoms the Portuguese aristocracy had paid after Alcazarquivir. Its great days were those of Ahmad’s affluence. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1606

Categorization

• XREF: The Morisco harquebusiers’ role here parallels the mercenary/army dynamics seen in the gunpowder literature and the earlier Morisco campaigns described in this book.
• ADDENDUM: This gold-looting pattern resembles how looted treasure becomes the means of military procurement — resonates with the Armada-led military-finance logic in the reader’s reading list.