Black Guard

The Black Guard ( Arabic: عبيد البوخاري‎, meaning "slaves of al-Bukhari"), were the corps of black-African slave-soldiers assembled by the Alaouite sultan of Morocco, Moulay Ismail (reigned 1672–1727). The Black Guard descended from black captives brought to Morocco from sub-Saharan Africa, who were settled in a special colonies with their families to work as slave-laborers (Haratine) and to provide soldiers who would start military service at age 16. Considered more loyal and obedient than Arab or Berber warriors because of their lack of tribal affiliation, Ismail's black soldiers formed the bulk of his standing army and numbered 50,000 at their peak.

The Black Guard were mainly in charge of collecting taxes and patrolling Morocco's unstable countryside; they crushed rebellions against Ismail's rule not only by dissident tribes but also by Ismail's seditious sons, who defected from service as his provincial governors to insurrection as would-be usurpers of his throne. The Black guard were the personal guard and servants of Sultan Ismail, they might have also participated in campaigns against the European-controlled fortress enclaves dotting his empire's coast (such as Tangier, taken over after the English withdrew from it and distressed it in 1684 in response), although these kind of tasks were often allocated to European slaves (called Aluj Arabic: العلوج‎ plural of Alj, meaning "white christian slave") and loyal Moroccan tribal soldiers, considered more military and cavalry-able.

Moulay Ismail always went about his court surrounded by a bodyguard of eighty black slave-soldiers, with muskets and scimitars at the ready in case of any attempt on the sultan's life. At his throne, Ismail was attended by a slave charged with twirling a parasol above the sultan at all times (a legend says that on at least one occasion, Ismail pulled out his sword and murdered an attendant who had allowed the sun to briefly fall upon his skin). Two more slaves fanned the flies away from his face, while a third held a napkin beneath his chin to collect his spittle.

Though the Black guard were fiercely loyal, they remained just as vulnerable to their commander's fits of rage as his European slaves and Moorish subjects. When the French ambassador Pidou de Saint-Olon was granted an audience with Moulay Ismail, the latter arrived at this meeting with his sleeves drenched in blood up to the elbows, after having slit the throats of two of his favorite black attendants on a whim. When Ismail's Barbary pirates brought in a Portuguese ship they had just captured, Ismail was presented a beautiful handcrafted hatchet found on board: the sultan immediately struck and killed a Black Guard for no other reason than to test the blade.

Despite endless civil wars and civil slaughter, the Black Guard remained brutally loyal and disciplined through the turmoil of Ismail's reign. More than any other factor did they enable the sultan to remain on Morocco's throne for half a century.

Immediately after the end of the reign of Moulay Ismail, most of these Black Guard were massacred, when Moroccan tribes surrounded the villages and barricades in which they were settled. Later European ambassadors, reported accounts of phantom-vilages that once belonged to the Black Guard soldiers. Morocco entered then a succession war, every tribe wanting to enthrone their favorite son of Moulay Ismail. Many of those Black Guard who worked inside the Sultan's place and the Haratine slave laborers managed to escape these massacres by staying out of the succession war.

The Black Guard name was changed to Moroccan Royal Guard after Morocco gained its independence in 1956 but this unit is not composed of descendents of the black slave since its members are selected from elite units within the Moroccan Army. The descendents of the Black Guard still work as servants at the King's palace, and were considered personal possession of the king inherited from father to son until Morocco abolished slavery at the start of the 20th-century.