Wattasid dynasty

In Ibn Khaldun's material the Wattasids are the chiefs of the Banu Wattas among the Marinid tribes; he reports that "they held their lineage to be grafted onto the Banu Marin, and that they descend from the stock of Ali ibn Yusuf ibn Tashfin, having joined the nomads and settled among the Banu Wattas until their roots sank in and they wore their skin" ¹.

Ibn Khaldun describes their chiefs as having pride seated between their eyes and lordship high at their noses, ever seeking to strike at the Marinid princes of the Banu Abd al-Haqq but unable to. He recounts how the brothers Umar and Amir, sons of Yahya ibn al-Wazir, seized the fortress of Tazuta from the Rif side in 691 AH, and how the sultan brought it down from them after a siege ¹. Among their later notices in his work: when Abu Inan took Bijaya he appointed over it Umar ibn Ali al-Wattasi, "the shaykh of the Banu Wattas among the Banu al-Wazir, their shaykhs", whom some reckless Sanhaja conspired to kill ².

• Ibn Khaldun (d. 808 AH) portrays the Banu Wattas as viziers and emirs under the Marinids (Ibar, Heliopolis edition, pp. 1935 and 2056); their seizure of the sultanate of Fez in 877/1472 and their rule until the Sa'dis overthrew them in 961/1554 postdate him, and are carried on the card from the filed Bosworth reference — a later Moroccan chronicle (such as Nuzhat al-Hadi) is still needed when one is extracted.