Introduction
Mohammed Ben Abdellah al-Khatib (c. 1710 – 9 April 1790) (Arabic: محمد الثالث بن عبد الله الخطيب) was Sultan of Morocco from 1757 to 1790 under the Alaouite dynasty. He was the governor of Marrakech around 1750. He was also sultan briefly during 1748.
Rule
He was the son of Sultan Abdallah IV who reigned 1745–1757. A more open-minded ruler than many of his forebears, he signed numerous peace treaties with the European powers, and curtailed the power of the Barbary corsairs. He revived the city of Essaouira and invited Jews and English to trade there. He also built the old medina of Casablanca (Derb Tazi) and renovated the kasbah of Marrakesh. Mohammed III used numerous European technicians and architects for his projects, such as Théodore Cornut and the Englishman Ahmed el Inglizi.
Mohammed ben Abdallah also took steps to remove the foreign presence on Moroccan coasts. He repulsed the French in the 1765 Larache expedition. In 1769 the Portuguese prime Minister Marques Pombal decided to abandon their last outpost in MoroccoMazagan. The Portuguese evacuated the residents of Mazagan to South Brazil and return the outpost to Morocco.Allowing for establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries for first time. However, the Siege of Melilla (1774) against the Spanish ended in defeat in 1775 when British aid failed to materialize.
In 1777, under the rule of Mohammed ben Abdallah, the Sultanate of Morocco became the first nation to recognize the United States of America as an independent nation.