Ibn Tumart

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. The name "Ibn Tumart" comes from the Berber language and means "son of the earth." He is also known as El-Mahdi (المهدي) a title he claimed, indicating that he aimed to establish the perfect society.

In 1125, he began open revolt against Almoravd rule. He established a reformist state high in the Atlas mountains, from where his followers later conquered all northern Africa as far as Libya, together with Al-Andalus (Moorish Iberia), where they ruled until 1212.

Life

Ibn Tumart was a member of the Masmuda, a Berber tribe of the Atlas Mountains. He is said to have been a descendant of Muhammad. The Berbers had avoided incorporation into the cultural spheres of the Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals and Byzantines who had in the past conquered Barbary. Ultimately, however, the Berbers succumbed to the evangelization 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 nick-name "lover of light." As a youth he first traveled to Cordoba in Spain, then under Muslim, rule then performed the hajj pilgrimage atMecca (or "Makkah"). He then studied in Baghdad at the school founded by Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari. He soon began to call for a return to the principles of Islam as set out in the Quran and the traditions of the prophet Muhammad, and to stress God's Unity. He is said to have met al-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 was therefore a polytheistic idea. He denounced the Almoravids, who controlled Andalusia and North Africa, whom his successor would defeat, as anthropomorphists. The Almoravids paid attention to the minutiae of Islamic law; Ibn Tumart was interested in morality. Repudiating the notion that the four schools of Sunni jurisprudence were definitive interpretation of Islamic law, he claimed the right of ijtihad. Yellen and Abrahams reproduce Ibn Tumart's "Confession", which has, they comment, "striking points of similarity with the medieval synagogue hymn of Adon Olam/"

Political activities

After his return to Magreb at the age of 28, Ibn Tumart began preaching and heading attacks on wine-shops and on other manifestations of immorality. 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. In 1121 he declared himself to be the Mahdi "the one who was sent to reestablish faith.", openly claiming that he was sinless.

Driven from several towns for his reforming zeal, which did not please everyone, around about 1122, he took refuge among his own people, the Masmuda, in the Atlas, where he emerged as leader of his own community, or state, based on the town of Tin Mal, in the center of what is now Morocco. He attracted followers from various clans, whose leaders gathered in an Assembly consisting of 50 members. Above this, a Privy Council of ten "directed the affairs of the movement." Yellin and Abrahams describe Ibn Tumart as "a man of great spiritual and personal magnetism" whose strict monotheism was completely free from "anthropomorphic expressions."

He died in 1128 and was succeeded by an able deputy, Abd al-Mu'min who may have kept his death secret for two years, until his own influence was established. 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 Almohads transferred their capital to Seville. This step was followed by the founding of the great mosque, subsequently superseded by the cathedral. The Giralda tower-minaret, which survives, was erected in 1184 to mark the accession of Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur. From the time of Yusuf II (the sixth caliph), they governed Iberia and Central North Africa through lieutenants, treating dominions outside Morocco 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 zealousness drove a numbers of their Jewish and Christian subjects to take refuge elswhere, some moving to areas of Spain and Portugal under [[Christianity}Christian]] rule but many also migrated elsewhere in the Muslim world, including Maimonides who went to the Court of Saladin in Egypt. Yellen and Abrahams comment, though, that those Jews who chose conversion to Islam rather than migration did not regard this apostasy as disgraceful because of the uncompromising monotheism taught by Ibn Tumart's disciples. In the end, though, the Almohads became less fanatical and Ya'qub al Mansur (3rd Almohad caliph) 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). The Christian states in Iberian Peninsula 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, was 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 reconquista of Andalusia, and partly by the revolt of the Muslims of Granada, who put themselves under the protection of the Christian kings, bercoming their vassals.

The history of their decline differs from that of the Almoravides, whom they had displaced. They were not defeated by a zealous religious movement but were 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"' only held their capital, Marrakech, where he was murdered by a slave in 1269.

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.
• Fage, J. D., and Roland Anthony Oliver. 1975. The Cambridge history of Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521209816
• Ibn Khaldūn, Franz Rosenthal, N. J. Dawood, and Bruce B. Lawrence. 2005. The Muqaddimah: an introduction to history. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• al-Marrakushi, 'Abd al-Wahhab. 1997. "The Admirable in Abridgment of News from the West (1224)" in Olivia Rene Constable, Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources. 185-189. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0812233336.
• David Yellin, Israel Abrahams. 1903. 2002. Maimonides.

Published by Published for the Jewish Historical Society of England by Macmillan; Skokie, Ill: Varda Books. ISBN 9781590456910

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]

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