Almohad Caliphate
The Almohad Caliphate or Almohad Empire was a North African empire ruled by a Berber Muslim dynasty in the 12th and 13th centuries. At its height, it controlled much of the Maghreb and the Iberian Peninsula.
The Almohad movement was founded by Ibn Tumart among the Berber Masmuda tribes, but the Almohad caliphate and its ruling dynasty, known as the Mu'minid dynasty, were founded after his death by Abd al-Mu'min. Around 1121, Ibn Tumart was recognized by his followers as the Mahdi, and shortly afterwards he established his base at Tinmel in the Atlas Mountains. Under Abd al-Mu'min, they succeeded in overthrowing the ruling Almoravid dynasty governing the western Maghreb in 1147, when he conquered Marrakesh and declared himself caliph. They then extended their power over all of the Maghreb by 1159. Al-Andalus followed, and all of Muslim Iberia was under Almohad rule by 1172.
The turning point of their presence in the Iberian Peninsula came in 1212, when Almohad Caliph Muhammad al-Nasir was defeated at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in the Sierra Morena by an alliance of the Christian forces from Castile, Aragon and Navarre. Much of the remaining territories of al-Andalus were lost in the ensuing decades, with the cities of Córdoba and Seville falling to the Christians in 1236 and 1248 respectively.
The Almohads continued to rule in Africa until the piecemeal loss of territory through the revolt of tribes and districts enabled the rise of their most effective enemies, the Marinids in 1215. The last representative of the line, Idris al-Wathiq, was reduced to the possession of Marrakesh, where he was murdered by a slave in 1269; the Marinids seized Marrakesh, ending the Almohad domination of the Western Maghreb.
History
Origins
The Almohad movement originated with Ibn Tumart, a member of the Masmuda, an Amazigh tribal confederation of the Atlas Mountains of southern Morocco. At the time, present-day Morocco, Mauritania, western Algeria and parts of Spain and Portugal were under the rule of the Almoravids, a Sanhaja Berber dynasty. Early in his life, Ibn Tumart went to Spain to pursue his studies, and thereafter to Baghdad to deepen them. In Baghdad, Ibn Tumart attached himself to the theological school of al-Ash'ari, and came under the influence of the teacher al-Ghazali. He soon developed his own system, combining the doctrines of various masters. Ibn Tumart's 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 represented a revolt against what he perceived as anthropomorphism in Muslim orthodoxy. His followers would become known as the al-Muwaḥḥidūn, meaning those who affirm the unity of God.After his return to the Maghreb c. 1117, Ibn Tumart spent some time in various Ifriqiyan cities, preaching and agitating, heading riotous attacks on wine-shops and on other manifestations of laxity. He laid the blame for the latitude on the ruling dynasty of the Almoravids, whom he accused of obscurantism and impiety. He also opposed their sponsorship of the Maliki school of jurisprudence, which drew upon consensus and other sources beyond the Qur'an and Sunnah in their reasoning, an anathema to the stricter Zahirism favored by Ibn Tumart. His antics and fiery preaching led fed-up authorities to move him along from town to town. After being expelled from Bejaia, Ibn Tumart set up camp in Mellala, in the outskirts of the city, where he received his first disciples – notably, al-Bashir and Abd al-Mu'min.
In 1120, Ibn Tumart and his small band of followers proceeded to Morocco, stopping first in Fez, where he briefly engaged the Maliki scholars of the city in debate. He even went so far as to assault the sister of the Almoravid emir Ali ibn Yusuf, in the streets of Fez, because she was going about unveiled, after the manner of Berber women. After being expelled from Fez, he went to Marrakesh, where he successfully tracked down the Almoravid emir Ali ibn Yusuf at a local mosque, and challenged the emir, and the leading scholars of the area, to a doctrinal debate. After the debate, the scholars concluded that Ibn Tumart's views were blasphemous and the man dangerous, and urged him to be put to death or imprisoned. But the emir decided merely to expel him from the city.
Image:Almohad Masmuda tribes.png|thumb|300px|left|Approximate locations of the main Masmuda tribes that adhered to the Almohads
Ibn Tumart took refuge among his own people, the Hargha, in his home village of Igiliz, in the Sous valley. He retreated to a nearby cave, and lived out an ascetic lifestyle, coming out only to preach his program of puritan reform, attracting greater and greater crowds. At length, towards the end of Ramadan in late 1121, after a particularly moving sermon, reviewing his failure to persuade the Almoravids to reform by argument, Ibn Tumart 'revealed' himself as the true Mahdi, a divinely guided judge and lawgiver, and was recognized as such by his audience. This was effectively a declaration of war on the Almoravid state.
On the advice of one of his followers, Omar Hintati, a prominent chieftain of the Hintata, Ibn Tumart abandoned his cave in 1122 and went up into the High Atlas, to organize the Almohad movement among the highland Masmuda tribes. Besides his own tribe, the Hargha, Ibn Tumart secured the adherence of the Ganfisa, the Gadmiwa, the Hintata, the Haskura, and the Hazraja to the Almohad cause. Sometime around 1124, Ibn Tumart established his base at Tinmel, a highly defensible position in the valley of the Nfis in the High Atlas. Tinmal would serve both as the spiritual center and military headquarters of the Almohad movement. It became their , emulating the story of the hijra of Muhammad's to Medina in the 7th century.
For the first eight years, the Almohad rebellion was limited to a guerilla war along the peaks and ravines of the High Atlas. Their principal damage was in rendering insecure the roads and mountain passes south of Marrakesh – threatening the route to all-important Sijilmassa, the gateway of the trans-Saharan trade. Unable to send enough manpower through the narrow passes to dislodge the Almohad rebels from their easily defended mountain strong points, the Almoravid authorities reconciled themselves to setting up strongholds to confine them there, while exploring alternative routes through more easterly passes.
Ibn Tumart organized the Almohads as a commune, with a minutely detailed structure. At the core was the Ahl ad-dār, composed of Ibn Tumart's family. This was supplemented by two councils: an inner Council of Ten, the Mahdi's privy council, composed of his earliest and closest companions; and the consultative Council of Fifty, composed of the leading sheikhs of the Masmuda tribes. The early preachers and missionaries also had their representatives. Militarily, there was a strict hierarchy of units. The Hargha tribe coming first. This was followed by the men of Tinmel, then the other Masmuda tribes in order, and rounded off by the black fighters, the ʻabīd. Each unit had a strict internal hierarchy, headed by a mohtasib, and divided into two factions: one for the early adherents, another for the late adherents, each headed by a mizwar ; then came the sakkakin, effectively the money-minters, tax-collectors, and bursars, then came the regular army, then the religious corps – the muezzins, the hafidh and the hizb – followed by the archers, the conscripts, and the slaves. Ibn Tumart's closest companion and chief strategist, al-Bashir, took upon himself the role of "political commissar", enforcing doctrinal discipline among the Masmuda tribesmen, often with a heavy hand.
In early 1130, the Almohads finally descended from the mountains for their first sizeable attack in the lowlands. It was a disaster for their opponents. The Almohads swept aside an Almoravid column that had come out to meet them before Aghmat, and then chased their remnant all the way to Marrakesh. They laid siege to Marrakesh for forty days until, in April 1130, the Almoravids sallied from the city and crushed the Almohads in the bloody Battle of al-Buhayra. The Almohads were thoroughly routed, with huge losses. Half their leadership was killed in action, and the survivors only just managed to scramble back to the mountains.
Caliphate and expansion
Ibn Tumart died shortly after, in August 1130. That the Almohad movement did not immediately collapse after such a devastating defeat and the death of their charismatic Mahdi, is likely due to the skills of his successor, Abd al-Mu'min. Ibn Tumart's death was kept a secret for three years, a period which Almohad chroniclers described as a ghayba or "occultation". This period likely gave Abd al-Mu'min time to secure his position as successor to the political leadership of the movement. Although a Zenata Berber from Tagra, and thus an alien among the Masmuda of southern Morocco, Abd al-Mu'min nonetheless saw off his principal rivals and hammered wavering tribes back to the fold. Three years after Ibn Tumart's death he was officially proclaimed "Caliph".After 1133, Abd al-Mu'min quickly expanded Almohad control across the Maghreb, while the embattled Almoravids retained their capital in Marrakesh. Various other tribes rallied to the Almohads or to the Almoravids as the war between them continued. Initially, Almohad operations were limited to the Atlas mountains. In 1139, they expanded to the Rif mountains in the north. One of their early bases beyond the mountains was Taza, where Abd al-Mu"min founded a citadel and a Great Mosque circa 1142.
The Almoravid ruler, Ali ibn Yusuf, died in 1143 and was succeeded by his son, Tashfin ibn Ali. The tide turned more definitively in favour of the Almohads from 1144 onwards, when the Zenata tribes in what is now western Algeria joined the Almohad camp, along with some of the previously Almoravid-aligned leaders of the Masufa tribe. This allowed them to defeat Tashfin decisively and capture Tlemcen in 1144. Tashfin fled to Oran, which the Almohads then attacked and captured, and he died in March 1145 while trying to escape. The Almohads pursued the defeated Almoravid army west to Fez, which they captured in 1146 after a nine-month siege. They finally captured Marrakesh in 1147, after an eleven-month siege. The last Almoravid ruler, Ishaq ibn Ali, was killed.
In 1151, Abd al-Mu'min launched an expedition to the east. This may have been encouraged by the Norman conquests along the coast of Ifriqiya, as fighting the Christian invaders here gave him a pretext for conquering the rest of the region. In August 1152, he captured Béjaïa, the capital of the Hammadids. The last Hammadid ruler, Yahya ibn Abd al-Aziz, fled by sea. The Arab tribes of the region, the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym, reacted to the Almohad advance by gathering an army against them. The Almohads routed them in the Battle of Sétif in April 1153. Abd al-Mu'min nonetheless saw value in their military abilities. He persuaded them by various means – including taking some families as hostages to Marrakesh and more generous actions like offering them material and land incentives – to move to present-day Morocco and join the Almohad armies. These moves also had the corollary effect of advancing the Arabisation of future Morocco. They were specifically settled into the Atlantic plains of Morocco which was previously depopulated by the Almohads. Without the Almohad recruitment of Arabs and resettling into the Atlantic plains, Morocco would have avoided the rural Arabisation that came with the Hilalian migrations into the Maghreb. The settlement added to the ethnic complexity of the Maghreb and the Arabs became the most powerful force in the Moroccan plains when the Almohad army declined. The Berbers who previously inhabited these plains were either Arabized or displaced to nearby mountains. There was also a significant amount of Arab and Berber intermarriage which led to the spread of Arabic language and restructuring of tribal structures. These plains are inhabited today by the descendants of these Arab tribes known as the ʕroubiya – a name that literally means "Bedouins".
Abd al-Mu'min spent the mid-1150s organizing the Almohad state and arranging for power to be passed on through his family line. In 1154, he declared his son Muhammad as his heir. In order to neutralise the power of the Masmuda, he relied on his tribe of origin, the Kumiyas, whom he integrated into the Almohad power structure and from whom he recruited some 40,000 into the army. They would later form the bodyguard of the caliph and his successors. In addition, Abd al-Mu'min relied on Arabs, the great Hilalian families that he had deported to Morocco, to further weaken the influence of the Masmuda sheikhs. These Arabs became embedded in the Almohad elite to the point that they became partners in giving the bay‘a to a new caliph. These Arabs formed the most important contingents in the Almohad military in Ifriqiya, al-Andalus and the provinces and they were used on a regular basis in larger military expeditions within the empire. According to Andalusian historian Ibn Sahib al-Salat, the Arabs had a higher rate of pay than other soldiers in the Almohad military.
With his son appointed as his successor, Abd al-Mu'min placed his other children as governors of the provinces of the caliphate. His sons and descendants became known as the sayyids. To appease the traditional Masmuda elites, he appointed some of them, along with theirs sons and descendants, to act as important advisers, deputies, and commanders under the sayyids. They became known as the or "Sons of the Almohads". Abd al-Mu'min also altered the Almohad structure set up by Ibn Tumart by making the huffaz or reciters of the Quran into a training school of the Almohad elite. They were no longer described as "memorisers" but as "guardians" who learned riding, swimming, archery, and received a general education of high standards.
Abd al-Mu'min thus transformed the Almohads from an aristocratic Masmuda movement to a dynastic Mu'minid state. While most of the Almohad elites accepted this new concentration of power, it nonetheless triggered an uprising by two of Ibn Tumart's half-brothers, 'Abd al-'Aziz and 'Isa. Shortly after Abd al-Mu'min announced his heir, towards 1154–1155, they rebelled in Fez and then marched on Marrakesh, whose governor they killed. Abd al-Mu'min, who had been in Salé, returned to the city, defeated the rebels, and had everyone involved executed.
In March 1159, Abd al-Mu'min led a new campaign to the east. He conquered Tunis by force when the local Banu Khurasan leaders refused to surrender. Mahdia was besieged soon after and surrendered in January 1160. The Normans there negotiated their withdrawal and were allowed to leave for Sicily. Tripoli, which had rebelled against the Normans two years earlier, recognized Almohad authority right after.
In the 1170s and 1180s, Almohad power in the eastern Maghreb was challenged by the Banu Ghaniya and by Qaraqush, an Ayyubid commander. Yaqub al-Mansur eventually defeated both factions and reconquered Ifriqiya in 1187–1188. In 1189–1190, the Ayyubid sultan Salah ad-Din requested the assistance of an Almohad navy for his fight against the crusaders, which al-Mansur declined.