THE KINGS AND I
By midafternoon on Aug. 4, 1578, three monarchs lay dead on a battlefield near the Moroccan town of Ksar el-Kebir. Two of the royals were Muslim, the third Christian, and the consequences of their deaths would resonate throughout Europe and North Africa for decades. At the heart of the regicidal misadventure was a theretofore irksome English opportunist who left his own legacy.
Best known in the English-speaking world as the Battle of Alcazar, the fight at Ksar el-Kebir is for obvious reasons also referred to as the Battle of the Three Kings.
The Christian monarch, Portugal’s King Sebastian I, was supporting deposed Moroccan Sultan Moulay Mohammed (Abu Abdallah Mohammed II), who had been ousted by his uncle, Abdelmalek (Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik). A son of Mohammed ash-Sheikh, founder of Morocco’s Saadi dynasty, Abdelmalek himself had fled to the Ottoman Ottoman empire with his younger brothers in 1557 when their eldest brother, Abdallah al-Ghalib, became sultan and sought to eliminate them. Though Abdelmalek was the legitimate successor, on Abdallah al-Ghalib’s 1574 death from asthma his son Moulay Mohammed claimed the throne. The tribal country erupted in civil war. Supported by an Ottoman army, Abdelmalek invaded in 1576, forcing Moulay Mohammed to flee the capital, Marrakesh, and wage a guerrilla war against his uncle. It was then the sultan in exile sought Sebastian’s help in restoring him to the throne.
By the time Stukeley’s ship anchored off Cadiz, the Italians were on the verge of mutiny
The Portuguese king, a dashing and childless 24-year-old with visions of a Moroccan crusade and outmoded ideals of chivalric kingship and
