Conflicts between the Regency of Algiers and Morocco

The conflicts between the regency of Algiers and the Cherifian dynasties or Algerian-Sherifian conflicts are, within the framework of the conflicts opposing Morocco to the Ottoman Empire and its dependencies, a series of wars between, on the one hand, the regency of Algiers and its allies - the local sultanates or tribal confederations - and, on the other hand, the Cherifian Saadian and Alawite dynasties that have ruled Morocco since the 16th century.

The origins of these conflicts are multiple and overlapping. The state-owned enterprise of the regency of Algiers in the central Maghreb around Algiers as a new political center and its integration with the Ottoman Empire (in 1520) was at the expense of the Zayyanids of Tlemcen in the west. The latter in recurrent conflicts at the beginning of the sixteenth century with the regency on the one hand and the Spaniards on the other end up seeing their domain integrated with the regency. Their weakening stirred the Saadian lusts and their claim on the western Algerian. If the regency of Algiers confirms its control over Tlemcen and Orania it does not have the means to launch long campaigns in the Saharan confines that it delegates to various tribal confederations like the Ouled Sidi Cheikh. The Saadians were blocked to the north by the Spanish Empire and the Regency of Algiers then find a South-Saharan outlet for the extension of their Empire.

These conflicts and the resulting agreements foreshadow the borders and delimitations between the modern nation-states of the Maghreb.