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

This 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-bay?ā') – founded by the Marīnid sultans on what became the city of Fes.     

“Et sachiez qu’il se repenti fort quant yl y envoia” (Jean de Joinville,Vie de saint Louis). Par-delà la désillusion mongole. Mœurs et légendes “tartares” au temps du roi Saint Louis

The passage that John of Joinville, faithful companion of Louis IX, devotes to the Mongols in his chronicle of the Seventh Crusade, known as “La Vie de Saint Louis”, cross-conceives two structures under the sign of hope: historical facts and legends on the one hand, and Christian sensibilities on the other, giving way to a set of “ethnological” observations about what are presented as “barbarian” customs. The text gives a faithful reflection on sentiments which agitated the Crusaders and their King: hope and disillusion. But Joinville's testimony goes far beyond that: it is first and foremost a testimony of love upon which history could be re-written.