About Graham Cornwell is a writer and historian who specializes in the history of modern Morocco. He has a PhD in History from Georgetown University, and is currently working on a book about the history of Moroccan mint tea.
In this series of posts, I dive into key figures in Moroccan history, especially names that travelers are likely to encounter on their Moroccan adventures. We start with Ba Ahmed, the most powerful figure in Morocco at the turn of the 19th century.
Ahmed ben Musa, more commonly known as Ba Ahmed, was the grand vizir under Sultan Moulay Hassan (Hassan I), who ruled from 1873 to 1894. Most travelers will encounter Ba Ahmed through his former palace, the Bahia, in Marrakesh. A sprawling series of immaculately decorated rooms featuring the best Moroccan zellij, molded plaster, and carved and painted wood, it's a must-see sight in Marrakesh. But to really appreciate it, it helps to know who Ba Ahmed was.
It was a pivotal time in Moroccan history. From the mid-19th century onwards, European powers like Britain, France, Spain, and, eventually, Germany had their sights on Morocco. They were scrambling to carve up Africa into their own imperial dominions, and Morocco had managed to maintain its independence, even though Algeria next door was colonized by the French in 1830 and Tunisia in 1881.
Morocco would eventually be colonized by France and Spain in 1912, but in those few decades prior, the Moroccan government tried to balance the European powers off each other and so to maintain its independence through rivalry: if country A couldn't have Morocco, then country A would make sure countries B, C, and D didn't have it either.
Moulay Hassan, sultan from 1873 to 1894, was perhaps the most effective at this. But while on a military campaign he fell ill and on his deathbed, gathered Ba Ahmed and his other top advisors and named his 13 year-old son, Abdelaziz, as his successor. He died overnight, but because they were in hostile territory among rebellious tribes and his death would cause chaos, Ba Ahmed ordered the army to pack up camp and head for Rabat. They kept the sultan's death secret, and because as a sacred figure, very few people actually saw the sultan on a day-to-day basis, they got away with it (stories about the odor of the rotting corpse are famous).
This time was crucial for Ba Ahmed because he had his own rivals in the inner circles of government, and his access to the sultan had allowed him to maneuver into the perfect position to seize power. The new teenage sultan would need a regent to hold power until he was an adult, and that was Ba Ahmed. From 1894 until his death at 1890, Ba Ahmed ruled.
But he inherited a country with major debts owed to European powers, with an agricultural economy still very dependent on unpredictable rainfall, and a big trade imbalance. There was also the issue of legitimacy: Moulay Hassan had dozens of children from 8 different wives and a handful of concubines, so Abdelaziz had many brothers who very much also wanted to be sultan. Several tribes declared Moulay Mohammed as the rightful sultan and rose up in revolt. And because Ba Ahmed was pulling all the levers of power, when he died in 1900 and Abdelaziz formally took over the reins of power, he had little experience and was easily manipulated.
Thinking about all this puts the Bahia Palace in a whole new light. It was built at great expense at a time when the country was literally falling apart, when masses of poor rural Moroccans flocked to the cities to beg for food and when much of the rest of the country was in open revolt. Indeed, in 1908, one of these revolts would engulf basically the entire country and result in another of Hassan's sons, the older Abdelhafid, kicking his brother Abdelaziz off the throne.
The palace itself was built gradually over time. As new adjacent properties went up for sale, Ba Ahmed purchased them and added on, hence the sort of piecemeal feel of the layout. His brother also built an expensive and exquisite palace nearby, Dar Si Said, which you can also tour today.
