La semantique politique du jeu de couleurs merinide: pureté et clarté, blancheur et verdeur (xiiie–xve siècles)

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article highlights the establishment of political legitimacy of Marīnid Sultan authority (1265–1465) using their symbolic colours, white and green. In order to examine the significance of these colours, we use the available historical material so that we are able to interpret colour in the context of this legitimacy. We consider literature as presented in ̛genres such as historiography, poetry and political and religious texts and demonstrated in the symbolic aspects of the new sultan's power within a ceremonial space. Marīnid scholars have studied such symbolic politics and have composed a ‘poetics of royalty’ – a metaphorical arrangement linking colours and emblems of royalty that are purified and regenerated. These are embodied in certain emblems: norias, water-clocks, white flags (or lanterns) indicating the hour of prayer and the sword of the caliphate as a shining light on the summit of the mosque in al-Qarawiyyīn. The arrangement of the colours has a political dimension developed by sultans and their scholars that demonstrates the legitimacy of a dynasty emerging from nowhere, heir to a missing imām, that of Idrissid, the founder of regenerated monarchy. Finally, the white colour of the Marīnids is a symbolic re-appropriation of the Almohad white. Tīnmal, ‘the one who belongs to the Whites, to the Pure’, also known as the White City (al-madīna al-bayḍā') – founded by the Marīnid sultans on what became the city of Fes.