THE ALMORAVIDES EPOPEA

An Amazigh tribe from the Sahara which, in the 11th century, founded the fourth dynasty in Morocco. By this dynasty the Moorish empire was extended over Morocco, Mauritania, Gibraltar, Tlemcen (in modern Algeria) and a great part of what is now Senegal and Mali in the south, and Spain and Portugal in the north. This was a confederation of 3 Imazighen tribes (Lamtuna, Gudula, Massufa) of the Sanhaja clan. The name Almoravide is derived from the Arab. Murabit, a religious ascetic ( Marabout). The most powerful of the invading tribes was the Lamtuna ("veiled men") from the upper Niger, whose best-known representatives now are the Tuareg. They had been converted to Islam in the early times of the Arab conquest, but their knowledge of Islam did not go much beyond the formula of the creed - "there is no god but God, and Mahomet is the apostle of God," - and they were ignorant of the law.

THE RISE OF THE FAITH

About the year 1040 or a little earlier, one of their chiefs, Yahya ibn Ibrahim, made the pilgrimage to Mecca. On his way home he attended the teachers of the mosque at Kairawan, in Tunisia, who soon learnt from him that his people knew little of the religion they were supposed to profess, and that though his will was good, his own ignorance was great. By the good offices of the theologians of Kairawan, one of whom was from Fez, Yahya was provided with a missionary, `Abd-Allah ibn Yazin, a zealous partisan of the one of the four Madhhab; orthodox legal schools of Islam. His preaching was for long rejected by the Lamtunas, so on the advice of his patron Yahya, who accompanied him, he retired to an island in the Niger, where he founded a ribat or Moslem monastery, from which as a centre his influence spread. There was no element of heresy in his creed, which was mainly distinguished by a rigid formalism and strict obedience to the letter of the Koran and the orthodox tradition or Sunna.

MILITARY TRAINING

`AbdAllah imposed a penitential scourging on all converts as a purification, and enforced a regular system of discipline for every breach of the law, even on the chiefs. Under such directions the Almoravides were brought to excellent order. Their first military leader, Yahya ibn Omar, gave them a good military organization. Their main force was infantry, armed with javelins in the front ranks and pikes behind, formed into a phalanx and supported by camelmen and horsemen on the flanks.

THE FIRST SUCCESSES

From the year 1053, the Almoravides began to impose their orthodox and puritanical religion on the Amazigh tribes of the desert, and on the pagan black Africans. They converted Takrur (a small state in modern Senegal) to Islam, and after winning over the Sanhaja Amazigh tribe, they quickly took control of the entire desert trade route, seizing Sijilmasa from Morocco at the northern end in 1054, and Aoudaghost from the Ghana Empire at the southern end in 1055. Yahya ibn Ibrahim was killed in a battle in 1056, but Abd-Allah ibn Yasin, whose influence as a religious teacher was paramount; named his brother Abu-Bakr Ibn-Umar as chief. Under him, the Almoravides soon began to spread their power beyond the desert, and subjected the tribes of the Atlas Mountains.

They then came in contact with the Berghouata, an Amazigh people of central Morocco, who followed a "heresy" founded by Salih ibn Tarif, three centuries earlier. The Berghouata made a fierce resistance, and it was in battle with them that Abdullah ibn Yasin was killed. They were, however, completely conquered by Abu Bakr Ibn-Umar, who took the defeated chief's widow, Zainab, as a wife.

In 1061, Abu Bakr Ibn-Umar made a division of the power he had established, handing over the more-settled parts to his cousin Yusuf ibn Tashfin, as viceroy; resigning to him also his favourite wife Zainab, who had the reputation of being a sorceress. For himself, he reserved the task of suppressing the revolts which had broken out in the desert, but when he returned to resume control, he found his cousin too powerful to be superseded; so he had to go back to the Sahara, where-in 1087, having been wounded with a poisoned arrow, he died fighting the pagan black Africans. Yusuf ibn Tashfin had in the meantime brought what is now known as Morocco and the former Western Sahara into complete subjection; and in 1062, had founded the city of Marrakech. In 1080, he conquered the kingdom of Tlemcen (in modern-day Algeria) and founded the present city of that name, his rule extending as far east as Oran. In 1075, the Almoravides declared "jihad" ("holy war") on the Ghana Empire. The ensuing war pushed Ghana over the edge, ending the kingdom's position as a commercial and military power by 1100, as it collapsed into tribal groups and chieftaincies, some of which later assimilated into the Almoravides.

RULING AL-ANDALUS

In 1086 Yusuf ibn Tashfin was invited by the Muslim princes in Spain to defend them against Alphonse VI, King of Castile and León. In that year, Yusuf ibn Tashfin passed the straits to Algeciras, inflicted a severe defeat on the Christians at the az-Zallaqah. He was prevented from following up his victory by trouble in Africa, which he had to settle in person. When he returned to Spain in 1090, it was avowedly for the purpose of deposing the Muslim princes, and annexing their states. He had in his favour the mass of the inhabitants, whom had been worn out by the oppressive taxation imposed by their spend-thrift rulers. Their religious teachers, as well as others in the east, (most notably, al-Ghazali in Persia and al-Tartushi in Egypt, who was himself a Spaniard by birth, from Tortosa), detested the native Muslim princes for their religious indifference, and gave Yusuf a fatwa -- or legal opinion -- to the effect that he had good moral and religious right, to dethrone the heterodox rulers, who did not scruple to seek help from the Christians, whose habits they had adopted. By 1094, he had removed them all; and though he regained little from the Christians except Valencia, he reunited the Muslim power, and gave a check to the reconquest of the country by the Christians.

YUSUF IBN TASHFIN

After friendly correspondence with the caliph at Baghdad, whom he acknowledged as Amir al-Mu'minin (Prince of the Faithful), Yusuf ibn Tashfin in 1097 assumed the title of Amir al Muslimin (Prince of the Muslims). He died in 1106, when he was reputed to have reached the age of 100. The Almoravide power was at its height at Yusuf's death, and the Moorish empire then included all North-West Africa as far as Algiers, and all Spain south of the Tagus, with the east coast as far as the mouth of the Ebro, and included the Balearic Islands.

THE FALL OF THE DYNASTY

Three years afterwards, under Yusef's son and successor, Ali ibn Yusuf, Madrid, Lisbon and Porto were added, and Spain was again invaded in 1119 and 1121, but the tide had turned; the French having assisted the Aragonese to recover Zaragoza. In 1138, Ali ibn Yusuf was defeated by Alphonse VII of Castile and León, and in the Battle of Ourique (1139), by Afonso I of Portugal, who thereby won his crown; and Lisbon was recovered by the Portuguese in 1147. Ali ibn Yusuf was a pious non-entity, who fasted and prayed while his empire fell to pieces under the combined action of his Christian foes in Spain and the agitation of Almohades in Morocco. After Ali ibn Yusuf's death in 1142, his son Tashfin ibn Ali lost ground rapidly before the Almohades, and in 1146 he was killed by a fall from a precipice, while endeavouring to escape after a defeat near Oran. His two successors Ibrahim ibn Tashfin and Is'haq ibn Ali are mere names. The conquest of the city of Marrakesh by the Almohades in 1147 marked the fall of the dynasty, though fragments of the Almoravides (the Banu Ghanya), continued to struggle in the Balearic Islands, and finally in Tunisia.

A.M.

sources: Histoire de l'afrique du nord

Last updated 18/12/2006