Almoravid dynasty

لمرابطون (ar) ← 1040 – 1147 ↓ Capital Aoudaghost (1040-1062), Marrakech(1062-1147) & Córdoba Language(s) Classical Arabic (predominant), Berber languages, Mozarab, Hebrew language, African Romance & Andalusian Arabic Religion Sunni Islam (predominant), Roman Catholic, Ibadi, Judaism & Sufism Government Caliph  - 1040-1059 Abdallah Ibn Yasin  - 1146–1147 Ishaq ibn Ali History  - Established 1040  - Disestablished 1147 Area 3,885,000 km² (1,500,007 sq mi) Currency Dinar & Maravedi Preceded by Succeeded by Lamtuna Majorca Almería Emirate of Badajoz Beja (Portugal) Córdoba, Spain Guadix Almohad Málaga Mértola, Silves Niebla, Spain

The Almoravids, was a Berber dynasty from the Sahara that spread over a wide area of North-Western Africa and the Iberian peninsula during the 11th century. They were invited by the Muslim rulers in Iberia to aid them against the Christians. As well as holding back the Christian advance, they overthrew the Muslim princes whom they denounced as religiously lax, thus extending the Moorish empire over present-day Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Gibraltar, Tlemcen (in Algeria) and a great part of what is now Senegal and Mali in the south, and Spain and Portugal to the north in Europe. At its extent, the empire stretched 3,000 kilometres north to south (an all-time latitude spanner until Spanish America).

The exact meaning of "Murabit" (from which Almoravid is derived). is a matter of controversy. The name may be derived from the Arabic ribat (meaning tie or fortress (a term with which it shares the root r-b-t). This was the common opinion some time ago, however most historians now believe that it refers to ribat, meaning "tied to Horses" (ready for battle). Having ousted the earlier Muslim rulers in the name of a purer form of Islam, they were themselves ousted by the Almohad Dynasty, who claimed that their interpretation of Islam was even purer. The early Emirs were charismatic and battle-proven, and so they were able to maintain their power. Their heirs, born to rule, may well have been as pious as their ancestors but their authority was inherited rather than gained on the field of battle. Ruling conquered people, they did not have enough support to maintain power,

Beginnings

The most powerful of the tribes of the Sahara, south of the Draa River to the Sénégal River was the Lamtuna, whose region of origin was 'Wadi Noun' (Nul Lemta). They later spread as far as the upper Niger River region, where they founded the city of Aoudaghost. They had been converted to Islam in the 7th century.

Influence of orthodox Islam

About the year 1040 (or a little earlier) one of their chiefs, Yahya ibn Ibrahim, made the pilgrimage to Makkah. On his way home, he attended the teachers of the mosque at Kairouan, in Tunisia, who soon learnt from him that his people knew little of the religion they were supposed to profess. The theologians of Kairawan, one of whom was from Fez, provided Yahya with a missionary, Abdallah ibn Yasin, a devout follower of the Malikis, one of the four legal schools of Sunni Islam.

On returning to his own area, Yahya started to preach that Muslims should follow the teachings of the Quran, and the orthodox tradition or Sunnah. He soon found himself opposed by the Lamtunas and, on the advice of ibn Yasin, he retired to Saharan regions where he found a more sympathetic audience. His influence spread. His followers, gathered from a variety of Berber clans, became known as the Almoravids,

Military training

Abd-Allah ibn Yasin 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 this regime, the Almoravids were transformed into a formidable fighting force. While ibn Yasin acted as spiritual mentor, Yahya was the military and political leader. Their main force was infantry, armed with javelins in the front ranks and pikes behind, which formed into a phalanx; and was supported by camelmen and horsemen on the flanks.

Military successes

Almoravid Dynasty in its Greatest Extent

From the year 1053, the Almoravids began to spread their reformist teaching to the Berber areas of the Sahara, and to the regions south of the desert. They converted Takrur (a small state in modern Senegal) to Islam, and after winning over the Sanhaja Berber tribe, they quickly took control of the entire desert trade route, seizing Sijilmasa at the northern end in 1054, and Aoudaghost at the southern end in 1055. Yahya ibn Ibrahim was killed in a battle in 1056. Abd-Allah ibn Yasin, whose influence as a religious teacher was paramount, named Yahya's brother Abu-Bakr Ibn-Umar as chief. Under him, the Almoravids 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, a branch of the Zenata of central Morocco, who followed a "heresy" founded by Salih ibn Tarif, three centuries earlier. The Berghouata made a fierce resistance, and Abdullah ibn Yasinin was killed while fighting them. They were, however, completely conquered by Abu-Bakr Ibn-Umar, who took the defeated chief's widow, Zainab, as a wife.

In 1059, Abu-Bakr Ibn-Umar reorganized the administration of his territory, appointing his cousin, Yusuf ibn Tashfin as viceroy over the more-settled parts. He also gave him his favorite wife, Zainab (after divorcing her). For himself, he reserved the task of suppressing the revolts which had broken out in the desert. In 1060, when he returned to resume control, he found his cousin too powerful to be superseded and instead went back to the Sahara, where, in 1087, following a wound from a poisoned arrow, he died (in 1087). He is reputed to have spread Islam in the southern Sahara. He may have attacked Ghana in 1076.

Yusuf ibn Tashfin had in the meantime brought what is now known as Morocco, Western Sahara and Mauretania into complete subjection and in 1062, had founded the city of Marrakech as his capital. In 1080, he conquered the kingdom of Tlemcen (in modern-day Algeria) and founded the present city of that name, extending his rule as far east as Oran.

Ghana Empire

In 1075, the Almoravids conquered Ghana Empire. According to Arab tradition, the ensuing war ended 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 Almoravids while others founded the Mali Empire. The Almoravid religious influence was gradual and not heavily involved in military strife, as Almoravids increased in power by marrying among the nation's nobility.

Iberian Peninsula

Map of Iberia at the time of the Almoravid arrival

In 1086 Yusuf ibn Tashfin was invited by the Muslim princes in the Iberian Peninsula (Al-Andalus) to defend them against Alfonso VI, King of Castile and León. After the collapse of the Umayyads of Cordoba, Muslim Spain had split into small states, or taifa, each under an Emir or Prince. After the Fall of Toledo in 1085, the princes turned to the Maghrib for help. In 1086, Yusuf ibn Tashfin crossed 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.

Muslim taifa following the collapse of the Umayyads in 1031.

When he returned to Iberia in 1090, it was avowedly for the purpose of deposing the Muslim princes as corrupt, 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 an Iberian 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 rulers, whom he saw as heterodox and who did not scruple to seek help from the Christians, whose habits he claimed they had adopted. By 1094, he had removed them all, except for the one at Zaragoza. Athough he regained little from the Christians except Valencia which was then under the rule of El Cid, he re-united the Muslim power, and gave a check to the reconquest of the country by the Christians. Valencia eventually fell in 1102.

The Commander of the Muslims

After friendly correspondence with the caliph at Baghdad, whom he acknowledged as Amir al-Mu'minin (Commander of the Faithful), Yusuf ibn Tashfin in 1097 assumed the title of Amir al Muslimin (Commander of the Muslims). He died in 1106, when he was reputed to have reached the age of 100.

The Almoravid 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 of Iberia south of the Tagus, with the east coast as far as the mouth of the Ebro, and included the Balearic Islands.

Decline

Three years afterwards, under Yusef's son and successor, Ali ibn Yusuf, Sintra and Santarém were added. The tide, however, was turning against the Muslims in Spain. With French help, the Christian re-took Zaragoza in 1118. In 1138, Ali ibn Yusuf was defeated by Alfonso VII of Castile and León, and in the Battle of Ourique (1139), by Afonso I of Portugal, and Lisbon was recovered by the Portuguese in 1147. The Almoravids ruled as a military elite, enjoying little popular support. They wore a distinctive face-mask, or muffler, which easily identified them in the street. Towards the end of their rule, they employed Christian guards in Andalusia as well as Christian soldiers elsewhere in their territory.

Ali ibn Yusuf, the third Emor, was reputedly pious but did not have the experience, or enjoy the respect, of his father, Yusuf ibn Tashfin and is said to have fasted and prayed while his empire fell to pieces under the combined action of his Christian foes in Iberia and the agitation of Almohads (the Muwahhids) in Morocco. It was during his rule, though, that exchange between Spain and the Maghrib developed to such an extent that not only merchants but also artists regularly crossed between the straits between the two. After Ali ibn Yusuf's death in 1142, his son Tashfin ibn Ali lost ground rapidly before the Almohads, and in 1146 he was killed by a fall from a precipice, while endeavoring to escape after a defeat near Oran.

His two successors were Ibrahim ibn Tashfin and Is'haq ibn Ali, but their reign was only short. The conquest of the city of Marrakech by the Almohads in 1147 marked the fall of the dynasty, though fragments of the Almoravids (the Banu Ghaniya), continued to struggle in the Balearic Islands, and finally in Tunisia.

Legacy

The Almoravid's despised the decorative architectural style of their Umayyad predecessors in Spain and did not engage in extensive building activity. What they did build was characteristically puritan in style, with little decoration. Like the Almohads who succeeded them both in the Maghrib in Iberia, they began as a zealous reforming religious movement that frowned upon moral and spiritual laxity and on collaboration with Christians. Once they had gained an empire, however, their outlook changed. When their survival depended on employing Christian soldiers, they did so. The first emirs, who became leaders more or less on the field of battle, were accomplished soldiers and skilled commanders. However, their successors, born to rule, though perhaps equally pious lacked the skill needed to stem the tide of revolt. What began as a type of charismatic leadership was later routinized into an hereditary dynasty that lost its vitality. The Almohads, who ousted them from power, began in a remarkably similar way, also tracing their origin to a pilgrim who traveled to Mecca, then spent time at a Religious Academy and began to preach a reformist message upon returning home. They, too, were in the end ousted by other revivalists, whose religious vigor was strong at a time when theirs had weakened.

Family names such as Morabito, Murabito and Mirabito are common in western Sicily, the Aeolian Islands and southern Calabria in Italy. These names may have appeared in this region as early as the 11th century, when Robert Guiscard and the Normans defeated the Saracens (Muslims) in Sicily. In addition to southern Italy, there are also sizable populations of Mourabit (also spelled Morabit or Murabit) in modern-day Morocco, Tunisia and Mauritania.

Emirs

• Abdallah Ibn Yasin (1040-1059)
• Yusuf ibn Tashfin (1061–1106)
• Ali ibn Yusuf (1106–42)
• Tashfin ibn Ali (1142–46)
• Ibrahim ibn Tashfin (1146)
• Ishaq ibn Ali (1146–47)

Culture

• Isaac Alfasi (m. 1103) - rabbis and writer

External links

• Almoravids Dynasty Berber dynasty
• Almoravids at LookLex Encyclopaedia

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Chejne, Anwar G. 1974. Muslim Spain, its history and culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press ISBN 9780816606887
• Clancy-Smith, Julia Ann. 2001. North Africa, Islam, and the Mediterranean world: from the Almoravids to the Algerian War. Cass series—history and society in the Islamic world. London: Frank Cass ISBN 9780714651705
• Glick, Thomas F. 2005. Islamic and Christian Spain in the early Middle Ages. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill ISBN 9789004147713
• Hrbek, Ivan and Devisse,Jean. 1988. "The Almoravids" 336-366) in Fāsī, Muḥammad, and Ivan Hrbek. General history of Africa. 3, Africa from the seventh to the eleventh century. London: Heinemann Educational Books; Paris: UNESCO. ISBN 9780520039148
• Kennedy, Hugh. 1996. Muslim Spain and Portugal: a political history of al-Andalus. London: Longman ISBN 9780582495159
• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

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