blue field. During the Middle Ages, Tlemcen not only served as a trading city connecting the "coastal" route across the Maghreb with the trans-Saharan caravan routes, but also housed a European trading center (funduk) which connected African and European merchants. In particular, Tlemcen was one of the points through which African gold (arriving from south of the Sahara via Sijilmasa orTaghaza) entered the European hands. Consequently, Tlemcen was partially integrated into the European financial system. So, for example, Genoese bills of exchange circulated there, at least among merchants not subject to (or not deterred by) religious prohibitions.
At the peak of its success, in the first half of the fourteenth century, Tlemcen was a city of perhaps 40,000 inhabitants. It housed several well-known madrasas and numerous wealthy religious foundations, becoming the principal intellectual center of the central Maghreb. At the souq around the Great Mosque, merchants sold woolen fabrics and rugs from the East, slaves and gold from across the Sahara, local earthenware and leather goods, and a variety of Mediterranean maritime goods "redirected" to Tlemcen by corsairs -- in addition to the intentional European imports available at the funduk. Merchant houses based in Tlemcen, such as the al-Makkari maintained regular branch offices in Mali and the Sudan.
Later in the fourteenth century, the city twice fell under the rule of the Marinid sultan, Abu al-Hasan Ali (1337–48) and his son Abu 'Inan. In both cases, the Marinids found that they were unable to hold the region against local resistance. Nevertheless, these episodes appear to have marked the beginning of the end. Over the following two centuries, Zayyanid Tlemcen was intermittently a vassal of Irfiqiya(then governed by the Hafsid dynasty) , Maghrib al-Aksa (then governed by the Marinid dynasty), or Aragon. When the Spanish took the city of Oran from the kingdom in 1509, continuous pressure from the
