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Almohad dynasty
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The Almohad Dynasty (From Arabic الموحدون al-Muwahhidun, i.e. "the monotheists" or "the Unitarians," the name being corrupted in Iberian Romance languages) were a Berber Muslim religious power which founded the fifth Moorish dynasty in the 12th century, and conquered all northern Africa as far as Egypt, together with Al-Andalus (Moorish Iberia).
Contents
- 1 Origins
- 2 The Dynasty
- 3 Muwahhadi (Almohad) Caliphs, 1145–1269
- 4 Bibliography
- 5 See also
- 6 External links
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Origins
The dynasty originated with Ibn Tumart, a member of the Masmuda, a Berber tribe of the Atlas Mountains. Ibn Tumart was the son of a lamplighter in a mosque and had been noted for his piety from his youth; he was small, and misshapen and lived the life of a devotee-beggar. As a youth he performed the pilgrimage to Mecca (or "Makkah"), whence he was expelled on account of his strictures on the laxity of others, and thence wandered to Baghdad, where he attached himself to the school of the orthodox doctor al-Ash'ari. But he made a system of his own by combining the teaching of his master with parts of the doctrines of others, and with mysticism imbibed from the great teacher Ghazali. His main principle was a strict Unitarianism which denied the independent existence of the attributes of God, as being incompatible with his unity, and therefore a polytheistic idea. Ibn Tumart in fact represented a revolt against what he perceived as anthropomorphism in the Muslim orthodoxy.
The Dynasty
After his return to Morocco at the age of twenty-eight, he began preaching and heading attacks on wine-shops and on other manifestations of laxity. He even went so far as to assault the sister of the
Almoravid (Murabit) amir `Ali III, in the streets of
Fez, because she was going about unveiled after the manner of Berber women. Ali III allowed him to escape unpunished.
Ibn Tumart, who had been driven from several other towns for exhibitions of reforming zeal, now took refuge among his own people, the Masmuda, in the Atlas. It is highly probable that his influence would not have outlived him, if he had not found a lieutenant in Abd al-Mu'min al-Kumi, another Berber, from Algeria, who was undoubtedly a soldier and statesman of a high order. When Ibn Tumart died in 1128 at the monastery or ribat which he had founded in the Atlas at Tinmel, after suffering a severe defeat by the Almoravids, Abd al-Mu'min
kept his death secret for two years, till his own influence was established. He then came forward as the lieutenant of the Mahdi Ibn Tumart. Between 1130 and his death in 1163, 'Abd-el-Mumin not only rooted out the Murabits, but extended his power over all northern Africa as far as Egypt, becoming amir of Marrakech in 1149. Al-Andalus followed the fate of Africa, and in 1170 the Almohads transferred their capital to Seville, a step followed by the founding of the great mosque, now superseded by the cathedral, the tower of which, the Giralda, they erected in 1184 to mark the accession of Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur. From the time of Yusuf
II, however, they governed their co-religionists in Iberia and Central North Africa through lieutenants, their dominions outside Morocco being treated as provinces. When their amirs crossed the Straits it was to lead a jihad against the Christians and to return to their capital, Marrakech.
The Almohad princes had a longer and a more distinguished career than the Murabits (or Almoravids). Yusuf II or "Abu Ya'qub" (1163–1184), and Ya'qub I or "al-Mansur" (1184-1199), the successors of Abd al-Mumin, were both able men. Initially their government drove many Jewish and Christian subjects to take refuge in the growing Christian states of Portugal, Castile and Aragon. But in the end they became less fanatical than the Almoravids, and Ya'qub al Mansur was a highly accomplished man, who wrote a good Arabic style and who protected the philosopher Averroes. His title of al-Mansur, "The Victorious," was earned by the defeat he inflicted on Alfonso VIII of Castile in the Battle of Alarcos (1195). But the Christian states in Iberia were becoming too well organized to be overrun by the Muslims, and the Almohads made no permanent advance against them. In 1212 Muhammad III, "al-Nasir" (1199–1214), the successor of al-Mansur, after an initially successful advance north, was defeated by an alliance of the four Christian princes of Castile, Aragón, Navarre and Portugal, at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in the Sierra Morena. The battle destroyed Almohad dominance. Nearly all of the Moorish dominions in Iberia were lost soon after, with the great Moorish cities of Córdoba and Seville falling to the Christians in 1236 and 1248 respectively. All that remained, thereafter, was the Moorish state of Granada, which after an internal Muslim revolt, survived as a tributary state of the Christian kingdoms on Iberia's southern periphery, until it too fell in 1492.
The Almohads encouraged the establishment of Christians even in
Fez, and after the
Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa they occasionally entered into alliances with the kings of
Castile. In
Africa they were successful in expelling the garrisons placed in some of the coast towns by the
Norman kings of
Sicily. The history of their decline differs from that of the
Almoravids, whom they had displaced. They were not assailed by a great religious movement, but lost territories, piecemeal, by the revolt of tribes and districts. Their most effective enemies were the Beni Marin (
Marinids) who founded the next Moroccan dynasty. The last representative of the line, Idris II, "El Wathiq"' was reduced to the possession of
Marrakesh, where he was murdered by a slave in 1269.
Muwahhadi (Almohad) Caliphs, 1145–1269
Bibliography
- History of the Almonades, Reinhart Dozy, (second edition, 1881)
- Conquest of Spain by the Arab-Moors, Coppée, (Boston, 1881)
- Le livre d'Ibn Tumart, Luciani, (1903)
- Les Benou Ghanya, Bel, (1903)
See also
