Black Guard (in Arabic, Abid, from a root meaning "slave") were the corps of negro slave-soldiers assembled by the Alaouite sultan of Morocco, Mawlay Ismail (reigned 1672-1727). The Black Guard descended from negro captives brought to Morocco from sub-Saharan Africa, who were settled in a special colony and given wives; their male offspring would be pressed into military careers at the age of sixteen. Considered more reliable than Arab or Berber warriors because of their lack of tribal loyalties, Ismail's black soldiers formed the bulk of his standing army and numbered 150,000 at their peak. Alawite is a Middle Eastern Syria. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...  Northern Africa (UN subregion)  geographic, including above North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent. ... The Arabs (Arabic: عرب) are a heterogenous ethnic group who are predominantly speakers of the Arabic language, mainly found throughout the Middle East and North Africa. ... The Berbers (also called Imazighen, free men, singular Amazigh) are an ethnic group indigenous to Northwest Africa, speaking the Berber languages of the Afroasiatic family. ...

The Black Guard were charged with fighting Ismail's campaigns against the European-controlled fortress enclaves dotting his empire's coast (such as Tangier, captured from the English in 1688) and with patrolling Morocco's unstable countryside: They crushed rebellions against Ismail's rule not only by Moroccan Berber clans but also by Ismail's seditious sons, who defected from service as his provincial governors to insurrection as would-be usurpers of his throne. Tangier, Morocco Tangier (Tanja طنچة in Berber and Arabic, Tánger in Spanish, and Tanger in French), is a city of northern Morocco with a population of 669,685 (2004 census). ...

Moulay Ismail always went about his court surrounded by a bodyguard of eighty black slave-soldiers, with muskets and scimitars at the ready in case of any attempt on the sultan's life. At his throne, Ismail was attended by a slave charged with twirling a parasol above the sultan at all times (on at least one occasion, Ismail pulled out his sword and murdered an attendant who had allowed the sun to briefly fall upon his sacred skin). Two more slaves fanned the flies away from his face, while a third held a napkin beneath his chin to collect his sacred spittle.

Though the Black Guard were fiercely loyal, they remained just as vulnerable to their commander's fits of rage as his European slaves and Moorish subjects. When the French ambassador Pidou de Saint-Olon was granted an audience with Moulay Ismail, the latter arrived at this meeting with his sleeves drenched in blood up to the elbows, after having slit the throats of two of his favorite black attendants on a whim. When Ismail's Barbary pirates brought in a Portuguese ship they had just captured, Ismail was presented a beautiful handcrafted hatchet found on board: the sultan immediately struck and killed a Black Guard for no other reason than to test the blade. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

Despite endless civil wars and civil slaughter, the Black Guard remained brutally loyal and disciplined through the turmoil of Ismail's reign. More than any other factor did they enable this sadistic tyrant to remain on Morocco's throne for half a century.

Recommended Reading:

Wilfrid Blunt, Black Sunrise: The Life and Times of Mulai Ismail, Emperor of Morocco 1646-1727

Giles Milton, White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and Islam's One Million White Slaves