Ibn Tumart

Template:Moroccan literature Abu Abd Allah Muhammad Ibn Tumart (also Ibnu Tuwmart) (Berber:amghār / Arabic: أبو عبدالله محمد ابن تومرت) (c. 1080 - c. 1130), was a Berber religious teacher and leader from the Masmuda tribe who spiritually founded the Almohad dynasty. He is also known as El-Mahdi (المهدي) in reference to his prophesied redeeming. In 1125 he began open revolt against Almoravid rule.

The name "Ibn Tumart" comes from the Berber language and means "son of the earth."

Life

Ibn Tumart was a member of the Masmuda, a Berber tribe of the Atlas Mountains. The Berber's were a somewhat crude bunch that managed to avoid adopting the culture of the Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals and Byzantines who had in the past conquered Barbary. Ultimately, however, the Berbers succumbed to the militant missionization of the Muslims, and adopted Islam.

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. He would light many candles at the tombs of saints and earned the appelation "lover of light." As a youth he first travelled to Cordova, then he performed the pilgrimage to Mecca (or "Makkah"), whence he was expelled on account of his severe 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 rigid 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, but he was a rigid predestinarian and a strict observer of the law. He also laid blame in these "theological flaws" of the nation upon the ruling dynasty, and declared a Holy War against them. He also blamed them for the public sale of wine in the markets, something that the Koran forbids.

Political activities

After his return to Morocco at the age of twenty-eight, he began preaching teachings that went against the teachings of Sunnah and Ijma which caused agitation within the ruling circles. The Almoravid sultan at that time, Ali ibn Yusuf, put him to test through a debate with the scholars of Fez. The result of the debate was that the scholars reached the conclusion that Ibn Tumart's views were radical and that he should be put in jail. The sultan, however, 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. Although persecuted by the authorities, he enjoyed a wide popularity on account of his ascetic life style, and his one-minded zeal in destroying every jug of wine in sight. His popularity soon affected his mind, and he developed subtle signs of megalomania, as often occurs among popular religious leaders. He declared himself a meyuchasdika descendant of Mohammed and set himself up as a Mahdi, calling his followers to arms. It is highly probable that his influence would not have outlived him, if he had not found a lieutenant in Abd al-Mu'min, 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 Tin Mal, after suffering a severe defeat by the Almoravids, Abd al-Mu'min kept his death secret for two years, until his own influence was established. He then came forward as the lieutenant of Ibn Tumart. Between 1130 and his death in 1163, Abd al-Mu'min not only defeated the Almoravids, but extended his power over all northern Africa as far as Egypt, becoming emir of Morocco in 1149. Al-Andalus followed the fate of Africa, and in 1170 the Muwahhids transferred their capital to Seville, a step followed by the founding of the great mosque, now superseded by the cathedral, the tower of which they erected in 1184 to mark the accession of Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur. From the time of Yusuf II, however, they governed Al-Andalus and Central North Africa through lieutenants, their dominions outside Morocco being treated as provinces.

The Almohads after Ibn Tumart

The Almohad princes had a longer career than the 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. They were fanatical, and their tyranny drove numbers of their 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 Murabits, 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 Iberian Peninsula were becoming too well organized to be overrun by the Muslims, and the Muwahhids made no permanent advance against them. In 1212 Muhammad III, "al-Nasir" (1199-1214), the successor of al-Mansur, was utterly defeated by the allied five Christian princes of Castile, Navarre and Portugal, at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in the Sierra Morena. All the Moorish dominions in the Iberian Peninsula were lost in the next few years, partly by the Christian conquest of Andalusia, and partly by the revolt of the Muslims of Granada, who put themselves under the protection of the Christian kings and became their vassals.

The orthodoxy of the Almohads did not prevent them from encouraging 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 Murabits, whom they had displaced. They were not assailed by a great religious movement, but destroyed 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 Marrakech, where he was murdered by a slave in 1269.

External links

• Understanding Is the Mother of Ability: Responsibility and Action in the Doctrine of Ibn Tumart, by

Vincent J. Cornell, in: Studia Islamica, No. 66 (1987), pp. 71-103, JSTOR: [1]

• Biography on 'muslim philosophy': [2]
• Introduction to "Livre de Mohammed Ibn Toumert, Mahdi des Almohades", text arabe, ed. Goldziher, 1903 (PDF-file, in French)[3]

Bibliography

Writings by Ibn Tumart

• Le livre de Mohammed Ibn Toumert, mahdi des Almohades / [Ed.] p. I. Goldziher ; [Avant-propos de J.D. Luciani]

Auteur: Abū Abd Allāh Muhammad b. Abd Allāh Ibn Tūmart (1092-1130); Ignaz Goldziher (1850-1921), 1903

• Documents inédits d'histoire almohade : fragments manuscrits du "Legajo" 1919 du fonds arabe de l'Escurial / publ. et trad. avec une introduction et des notes par E. Lévi-Provençal (Kitāb Akh-bār al-Mahdī Ibn Tūmart wa'-btidāʾ Dawlat al- Muwaidīn li-Abī Bakr a-anhāğī al-Bai.aq), ed. by Évariste Lévi-Provençal (1894-1956), 1928

Publications about Ibn Tumart

• Allen J. Fromherz, The Almohad Mecca locating IGLI and the cave of Ibn Tumart, in Al-Qantara (Al-Qantara) ISSN 0211-3589, 2005, vol. 26, no1, pp. 175-190
• A propos de la date de naissance d’Ibn Tumart, Revue d’Histoire et de Civilisation du Maghreb (Alger, Faculté des Lettres, 1 January, 1966), pp.19– 25.
• The Masmuda Berbers and Ibn Tumart : an ethnographic interpretation of the rise of the Almohad movement

García, Senén A. / In: Ufahamu, Ufahamu : A Journal of African Studies, ISSN 0041-5715, vol. 18, no. 1, p. 3-24 1990

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• 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, UK: Frank Cass. ISBN 9780714651705.

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