Ahmad al-Mansur came to power immediately after the Battle of the Three Kings in August 1578 — a catastrophic engagement that killed the King of Portugal, two rival Moroccan claimants, and effectively ended Portuguese ambitions in West Africa in a single afternoon. The silver for his coinage was not incidental: al-Mansur's 1591 conquest of the Songhay Empire gave him direct control of the Saharan gold and salt trade routes, flooding his treasury and earning him the epithet "al-Dhahabi" — the Golden.
The half-dirham denomination was the workhorse of small commercial exchange across Moroccan markets during his reign.
Ahmad al-Mansur came to power immediately after the Battle of the Three Kings in August 1578 — a catastrophic engagement that killed the King of Portugal, two rival Moroccan claimants, and effectively ended Portuguese ambitions in West Africa in a single afternoon. The silver for his coinage was not incidental: al-Mansur's 1591 conquest of the Songhay Empire gave him direct control of the Saharan gold and salt trade routes, flooding his treasury and earning him the epithet "al-Dhahabi" — the Golden.
The half-dirham denomination was the workhorse of small commercial exchange across Moroccan markets during his reign.