death_date successor death_place religion title birth_date image article_title name reign
22 january 1574 abdallah mohammed marrakesh islam sultan of morocco 1517 flag of morocco 1258 1659 . svg abdallah al-ghalib
 abdallah al-ghalib 1557 -- 74
abdallah al-ghalib

abdallah al-ghalib billah -lrb- 1517 -- 22 january 1574 , reigned 1557 -- 74 -rrb- was the second saadian sultan of morocco .
he came to power to the throne as the legal heir of mohammed ash-sheikh .
from his first wife this first saadian sultan , mohammed ash-sheikh had had three sons , but the two oldest had died -lrb- in 1550 and in 1551 -rrb- .
abdallah , the third , was 40 years old when he became sultan and received the name al-ghalib billah .
before that he had been vice-king of marrakesh and governor of fes .
shortly thereafter three of his younger brothers fled the country and joined the ottoman turks : abd al-malik and ahmad , both future sultans of morocco , spent 17 years in exile in the ottoman empire , between the regency of algiers and constantinople , where they received ottoman training .
during a relatively peaceful reign abdallah succeeded in warding off both the spanish and the turks and in consolidating the sovereignty of saadians over morocco .
he fought the invading turks in 1558 at the battle of wadi al-laban and drove them out of the country .
the moroccan ruler had formed an alliance with the spanish against the ottomans .
after his victory he even occupied tlemcen for a short period .
in 1568 he supported the insurrection of the moriscos in spain .
abdallah al-ghalib billah died on 22 january 1574 of an asthma attack .
after his reign a period of civil war was to follow that lasted four years .
marrakech had been his residency .
he gave the city the muassin mosque , a maristan -lrb- a hospital usually attached to a mosque -rrb- and the ben youssef medrassa .
he also reconstructed the al-mansouria mosque .
he was succeeded by his son abdallah mohammed , despite a saadian inheritance rule that attributed the throne to his younger brother next in line , the exiled abd al-malik .
