ruled over southern Morocco. In 1524, they established control over Marrakesh and made the city their capital. Their reign over the entirety of Morocco began with Sultan Mohammed ash-Sheikh in 1554, when he vanquished the last Wattasids at the Battle of Tadla. Saadian rule ended in 1659 with the end of the reign of Sultan Ahmad el Abbas. In Marrakesh, a Sa'di ruler established a Mellah, or Jewish quarter, in the mid-16th century. In Arabic, mellah refers to a salty marsh area. The use of the word "mellah" for a Jewish quarter originates from the area of the first Moroccan Jewish quarter in Fez. In Marrakesh, the mellah was created in the area of the sultan's stables. Current scholars and Jewish oral tradition debate the exact year of the Marrakesh mellah's creation. According to the oral tradition of the Jews of Marrakesh, a Moroccan king created the mellah in 1557. Scholar Emily Gottreich argues, however, that the creation of the mellah of Marrakesh was not a singular event, but rather a process that took place over several years. Gottreich proposes that this process, referred to as mellahization, occurred between 1553 to 1562. In practice, the mellah of Marrakesh never served as an exclusively Jewish quarter. Non-Jews frequently traveled to and from the mellah and elite foreigners even stayed in the mellah during their visits to Marrakesh in the early years of the mellah. Gottreich argues that the Sa'di dynasty established the mellah of Marrakesh following the unification of northern and southern Morocco to legitimize their rule of Morocco through the creation of a lavish capital that mirrored Fez and included a defined space for dhimmi. When, in 1578, the young king Sebastian with almost his whole army met death, and Portugal saw the end of her glory, in the Battle of Alcazarquivir, the few nobles who remained were taken captive and sold to the Jews in Fez and Morocco. The Jews received the Portuguese knights, their former countrymen, into their houses very hospitably and let many of them go free on the promise that they would send back their ransom from Portugal. Samuel Pallache of the Sephardi Pallache family, having earned the confidence of Zaydan An-Nasser, had a significant role in Morocco–Netherlands relations, serving as the interpreter for his ambassador Hammu ben Bashir in a journey to the Dutch Republic, then again with Ahmad ben Abdallah al-Hayti al-Maruni, which led