After the Arabs completed the conquest of Egypt in 642, they started to raid the Berber (Amazigh) territory to its west, which they called Bilād al-Maghrib (“Lands of the West”) or simply the Maghrib. In 705 this region became a province of the Muslim empire then ruled from Damascus by the Umayyad caliphs (661–750). The Arab Muslim conquerors had a much more durable impact on the culture of the Maghrib than did the region’s conquerors before and after them. By the 11th century the Berbers had become Islamized and in part also Arabized. The region’s indigenous Christian communities, which before the Arab conquest had constituted an important part of the Christian world, ceased to exist. The Islamization of the Berbers was a consequence of the Arab conquest, although they were neither forcibly converted to Islam nor systematically missionized by their conquerors. Largely because its teachings became an ideology through which the Berbers justified both their rebellion against the caliphs and their support of rulers who rejected caliphal authority, Islam gained wide appeal and spread rapidly among these fiercely independent peoples.
Arab raids to the west of Egypt concentrated at first on the area of Cyrenaica in present-day Libya. Tunisia was raided several times after 647, but no attempt was made to establish Arab rule there before 670. Conflicts among the Muslim leaders, especially after the assassination of the third caliph, ‘Uthmān ibn ‘Affān, in 656, hindered Muslim territorial expansion. Only after the Umayyads had consolidated their authority as a caliphal dynasty in the 660s and had come to view the conquest of the Maghrib in the context of their confrontation with the Byzantine Empire did they systematically undertake this conquest. ‘Uqbah ibn Nāfi‘ (Sīdī ‘Uqbah) commanded the Arab army that occupied Tunisia in 670. Before his recall in 674, ‘Uqbah founded the town of Kairouan, which became the first centre of Arab administration in the Maghrib.
Two Berber women hand-spin fibres in Morocco, c. 1950. Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
When the conquest of the Maghrib west of Tunisia was initiated by ‘Uqbah’s successor, Abū al-Muhājir Dīnār al-Anṣārī, the Arabs had to fight semisettled Berber communities that had developed some tradition of centralized political authority. In the course of his campaign, Abū al-Muhājir Dīnār prevailed on the Berber “king” Kusaylah to become Muslim. From his base in Tlemcen, Kusaylah dominated a confederation of the Awrāba tribes living between the western Aurès Mountains and the area of present-day Fès. Since Kusaylah’s profession of Islam implied his recognition of caliphal authority, it served as a basis for coexistence between him and the Arabs. However, when ‘Uqbah was reinstated as commander of the Arab army in the Maghrib in 681, he insisted on imposing direct Arab rule over the whole region. In 682 he led his troops across Algeria and northern Morocco, reaching the Atlantic Ocean and penetrating south to the areas of the Sūs (Sous) and Drâa rivers in southern Morocco. On his way back to Kairouan, ‘Uqbah was attacked near Biskra (in present-day Algeria), on orders from Kusaylah, by Berbers supported by Byzantine contingents. Through his death in this battle and his extended campaign, ‘Uqbah became the legendary hero of the Muslim conquest of the Maghrib.
By the 680s the Arabs had gone too far in the conquest of the Maghrib to be willing to accept defeat at the hands of a Berber leader, albeit one professing Islam. Two large armies had to be sent from Egypt, however, before organized Berber resistance could be suppressed. The first, commanded by Zuhayr ibn Qays al-Balawī, reoccupied Kairouan, then pursued Kusaylah westward to Mams, where he was defeated and killed. The dates of these operations are uncertain, but they must have occurred before 688 when Zuhayr ibn Qays himself was killed in an attack on Byzantine positions in Cyrenaica. The second Arab army, commanded by Ḥassān ibn al-Nu‘mān, was dispatched from Egypt in 693. It faced stiff resistance in the eastern Aurès Mountains from the Jawāra Berbers, who were commanded by a woman whom the Arabs referred to as Kāhinah (al-Kāhinah, “the Priestess”). After Kāhinah was defeated in 698, Ibn al-Nu‘mān occupied Carthage, the centre of Byzantine administration in Tunisia, and began constructing the town of Tunis nearby. These successes and Arab naval supremacy in the Mediterranean forced the Byzantines to evacuate their remaining positions on the Maghribi coast. Under Ibn al-Nu‘mān’s successor, Mūsā ibn Nuṣayr, the Maghrib—at least its eastern portion—was made into a province of the Umayyad Caliphate in 705—the wilāyah of Ifrīqiyyah, thus separated from the wilāyah of Egypt, to which it had been administratively attached until that time.
Political life of the Maghrib in the 8th century was dominated by the contradiction in the position of the Arab rulers who, while posing as the champions of a religion recognizing the equality of all believers, emphasized their ethnic distinctiveness and exercised authority with little regard for Islamic religious norms. This contradiction surfaced in their relations with the Berbers after the latter became Muslim in large numbers—especially through serving in the Arab army, which is known to have included Berber contingents when it was commanded by Ḥassān ibn al-Nu‘mān and his successor Mūsā ibn Nuṣayr. Many Berber warriors participated in the conquest of Spain in 711. Though professing Islam, they were treated as mawālī (“clients”) of the Arab tribes and consequently had a status inferior to, and received less pay than, the Arab warriors. Furthermore, the Arab ruling class alone reaped the fruits of conquest, as was clearly the case in Spain. The grievances of the warriors highlighted the resentment of Berbers in general, caused by such practices as levying human tribute on the Berber tribes, through which the Arab ruling class was provided with slaves, especially female slaves. ‘Umar II (717–720) was the only Umayyad caliph who is known to have condemned the levying of human tribute and ordered that it be discontinued. He also sent 10 tābi‘ūn (“followers”; disciples of the Prophet Muhammad’s companions) to teach Islam to the Berbers. The enlightened policy of this pious caliph did not survive his short reign, however. Rather, it contributed toward confirming the conviction of Muslims in the Maghrib that Islam could not be equated with Umayyad caliphal rule.
The Muslim Khārijite sect exploited this revolutionary potential in their struggle against Umayyad rule. Khārijite doctrine apparently appealed to the Berbers because it rejected the Arab monopoly on political leadership of the Muslim community, stressed piety and learning as the main qualifications of the head of the community, and sanctioned rebellion against the head when he acted unjustly. In 740 a major Berber rebellion broke out against Arab rule in the region of Tangier. Its first leader was a Berber called Maysara who had come to Kairouan under the influence of the Ṣufriyyah, the extremist branch of the Khārijite sect. The Berber rebels achieved an astounding military success against the Arab army. By 742 they had taken control of the whole of Algeria and were threatening Kairouan. In the meantime the Ibāḍiyyah, who constituted the moderate branch of the Khārijite sect, had taken control of Tripolitania by converting the Berber tribes living there, especially the Hawwāra and Nafusa, to their doctrine. Ibāḍī domination in Tripolitania resulted from the activities of dā‘īs (“propagandists”) sent from the main centre of the group, in Iraq, after the Khārijite rebellion there had been suppressed by the Umayyad army in 697.
Umayyad caliphal rule in the Maghrib came to an end in 747 when the Fihrids, the descendants of ‘Uqbah ibn Nāfi‘—taking advantage of the Umayyads’ preoccupation with the ‘Abbāsid rebellion that led to their downfall—seized power in Ifrīqiyyah. The Fihrid dynasty controlled all of Tunisia except for the south, which was dominated at the time by the Warfajūma Berber tribe associated with the Ṣufrī Khārijites. Fihrid rule came to an end in 756 when the Warfajūma conquered the north and captured Kairouan. Immediately thereafter, however, the Ibāḍiyyah in Tripolitania proclaimed one of their religious leaders as imam (the Khārijite equivalent to the Sunni caliph) and in 758 conquered Tunisia from the Ṣufriyyah. An Ibāḍī state comprising Tunisia and Tripolitania thus came into being, which lasted until the ‘Abbāsids, having consolidated their authority as caliphs in the Middle East, sent an army to the region in 761 to restore caliphal rule in the Maghrib.
The ‘Abbāsids could impose their authority only on Tunisia, eastern Algeria, and Tripolitania. The authority of their governors of the reconstituted wilāyah of Ifrīqiyyah was hampered because they depended on an army that was recruited predominantly from among the unruly Arabs of the province. After Arab troops mutinied against the ‘Abbāsid governor in 800, Ifrīqiyyah was transformed into an Arab kingdom ruled by the Aghlabid dynasty in the name of the ‘Abbāsid caliphs. The founder of the dynasty, Ibrāhīm ibn al-Aghlab, had commanded until then the Arab army in eastern Algeria. After using his troops to restore order in Tunisia, he established himself as ruler of the province. The acquiescence of the caliph, Hārūn al-Rashīd, to Ibn al-Aghlab’s usurpation of authority was linked to the latter’s continued recognition of ‘Abbāsid suzerainty and payment of tributes to Baghdad.
Through their rebellion against caliphal rule in the name of Islam, the Berbers forged religious bonds with other Muslim opponents of the caliphs, and Islamic political concepts and religious norms gained favour in Berber society. Their rebellion also led to the rule of caliphs being replaced by four separate Muslim states dominated by dynasties that either nominally recognized caliphal authority, as was the case with the Aghlabids, or totally rejected it, as was the case with the three other states. Only the smallest and most politically insignificant state, the principality of the Banū Midrār in Sijilmāssah (southern Morocco), was ruled by a Berber dynasty. The survival of the four states depended on the balance of political forces within the region itself.
The ‘Abbāsid conquest of Ifrīqiyyah in 761, which precipitated the collapse of the Ibāḍī state in Tunisia and Tripolitania, also caused important Ibāḍī tribes from Tripolitania and southern Tunisia to migrate to western Algeria. There they were led in attacks on ‘Abbāsid positions by ‘Abd al-Raḥmān ibn Rustam, an Ibāḍī of Persian origin, born and brought up in Tunisia. Ibn Rustam had acquired prominence among the Ibāḍiyyah as governor of Tunisia between 758 and 761. In 776 or 777 he was proclaimed imam by the Ibāḍī tribes of Algeria, and immediately afterward he started constructing his own capital, Tāhart (modern Tiaret, Alg.), in the area where the most important Ibāḍī tribes of Algeria were settled. Until the 760s the Berber tribes affiliated with the Ṣufrī branch of Khārijīsm were the major forces opposing caliphal rule in Algeria. After the foundation of the Rustamid state, these tribes became subordinate allies of the Ibāḍiyyah.
The imamate of Tāhart was inherited within the family of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān ibn Rustam. This breach of Khārijite doctrine led to a split within the Ibāḍī leadership, which, however, had little effect on the position of the Rustamid imams as leaders of Berber opposition to ‘Abbāsid authority. The tribes that recognized the religio-political leadership of and paid tribute to the imams of Tāhart lived in western Algeria, southern Tunisia, and Tripolitania. The imams maintained contacts with them by encouraging tribal chiefs to visit Tāhart and by sending emissaries that toured their areas. The Rustamid imams maintained especially close contacts with the Nafusa of Tripolitania—who had been associated with the Ibāḍī movement in the Maghrib since the beginning of the 8th century—and entrusted important state offices to them. Tāhart became prosperous and developed a cosmopolitan character both by serving as a meeting place for numerous trade caravans connecting the various parts of the Maghrib and by playing an important role itself in Maghribi and trans-Saharan trade. The Rustamids’ readiness to live in peace with their neighbours, including the Aghlabids, caused discontent among the Ibāḍī tribes of Tripolitania and southern Tunisia but enabled the Rustamids to retain power until Tāhart was conquered by the Fāṭimids in 909.
The principality of the Banū Midrār came into existence after the 740s, when Miknāsah Berbers (a group affiliated with the Ṣufriyyah) migrated from northern Morocco to the oasis of Tafilalt in the south. The principality was named after Abū al-Qāsim ibn Wāsūl, nicknamed Midrār, the Miknāsah chief who founded the town of Sijilmāssah there in 757. Tafilalt had played a role in trans-Saharan trade before the influx and settlement of the Miknāsah. After the establishment of Sijilmāssah, however, it became the foremost centre of trans-Saharan trade in the western Maghrib. At the zenith of its power during the reign of Yasa’ ibn Midrār (790–823), the principality controlled the entire region of Drâa in southern Morocco. Nevertheless, the state remained primarily a trading principality, playing almost no role in the political life of the rest of the Maghrib until it, too, was conquered by the Fāṭimids in 909.
The Idrīsid state of Fez (modern Fès, Mor.) originated in the desire of Isḥāq ibn ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd, chief of the powerful tribal confederation of the Awrāba, to consolidate his authority in northern Morocco by giving his rule an Islamic religious character. For that purpose he invited Idrīs ibn ‘Abd Allāh, a sharif (descendant of the Prophet Muhammad) living in Tangier, to settle at his seat of government in Walīla (Oulili). Idrīs moved to Walīla in 788 and was recognized Imam Idrīs I of the Awrāba the following year, but he was assassinated by agents of the ‘Abbāsids in 791. His son, born a few months later and also called Idrīs, was proclaimed imam of the Awrāba in 803, when he was still a young boy. Idrīs II founded the state—called, for himself, Idrīsid—with the help of Arab refugees coming from both Spain and Aghlabid territory. By moving the seat of his authority in 809 to Fez, the capital city he had started to build a year earlier, he made it clear he was establishing a state that was distinct from the Awrāba confederation. The arrival of more Arabs from Spain and Aghlabid territory in the following two decades gave the Idrīsid state a distinctly Arab character.
Although Idrīs I had Shī‘ite sympathies, the state founded by his son was Sunni in matters of religious doctrine. Its rulers, however, identified themselves with Berber rejection of caliphal rule and stressed their own descent from the Prophet as a means of legitimizing their authority. During Idrīs II’s reign (809–828) the state included the greater part of present-day Morocco. From the 860s, however, the authority of the Idrīsids started to decline, and the tribes of northern Morocco that had previously followed them allied themselves with the Umayyad rulers of Spain. Nevertheless, the Idrīsids continued to rule in Fez until they were deposed by the Fāṭimids in 921. Under the Idrīsids, Islamic urban culture began to appear in Morocco. The foremost urban centre was Fez, which continued to exercise a dominant influence on the religious and cultural as well as the political life of Morocco until the French protectorate was imposed in 1912.
After they usurped power in 800, the Aghlabids adapted their government to the requirements of political survival in a land still dominated by an Arab class of large landowners, who also provided the government with its regular troops. The urban, ethnically mixed communities resented the domination of the state by the old Arab families and the heavy taxes that they and the peasant communities had to pay. Emphasizing Islamic religious norms was the means by which these groups articulated their grievances against the state and the Arab ruling class. By the beginning of the 9th century such grievances could be expressed formally when two of the four Sunni schools of Islamic religious law, the Ḥanafiyyah and the Mālikiyyah, had become established in the Maghrib. The Ḥanafī school developed in Iraq; as it was recognized by the ‘Abbāsid caliphs, it also was adopted by the Aghlabids. Most of the religious scholars in Tunisia, however, adhered to the simpler and stricter teachings of the Mālikī school. By teaching the religious law and admonishing the rulers to adhere to its provisions when administering justice and in such matters as taxation and the prohibition of alcohol, Mālikī scholars have emerged since the 820s as defenders of the rights of the common people against the state.
An offering of coins being tossed through an opening in the Mosque of Mullah Idrīs in Fès, Mor., c. 1950. Evans/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Political life in the Aghlabid state reflected the rulers’ constant fear that their Arab troops would rebel and preoccupation with the need to allay the grievances of the religious scholars. They tried to placate the Mālikī scholars by appointing many of them to the office of qāḍī (“judge”) and by instituting a program of sacred building construction. The Grand Mosque of Tunis (the Zaytūnah), among others, was built in the Aghlabid period. In order to reduce the threat of Arab troop rebellions, the Aghlabids channeled their energies into conquering Sicily. Initiated in 827, the conquest of Sicily was given a religious character by entrusting the command of the army to the qāḍī Asad ibn al-Furāt.
The grievances that the inhabitants of Ifrīqiyyah harboured against Aghlabid rule were transformed into a revolutionary movement by the Ismā‘īliyyah, an extremist branch of the Shī‘ite sect. From the mid-9th century Ismā‘īlī leadership, operating from Salamyah in northern Syria, sent out dā‘īs to organize opposition to the ‘Abbāsid caliphs. One of these, Ḥusayn ibn Zakariyyā’, better known as Abū ‘Abd Allāh al-Shī‘ī, operated among the Kutāma of the Little Kabylia region in eastern Algeria from 901. The sedentary Kutāma were pious and unsophisticated Muslim Berbers living in small village communities. Aghlabid rule in the region was represented by fortified garrison posts manned by Arab troops, by whom the Kutāma were constantly harassed. Through patient preaching, Abū ‘Abd Allāh molded the Kutāma into a highly motivated and disciplined militant movement. After defeating the Arab troops in the Little Kabylia, he conquered the rest of the Aghlabid territory in Algeria between 904 and 907 and then conquered Tunisia itself. Raqqādah, the fortified residence of the Aghlabids near Kairouan, was conquered in March 909. The head of the Ismā‘īliyyah in Salamyah, ‘Ubayd Allāh Sa‘id, entered Raqqādah in January 910.
The state that ‘Ubayd Allāh then founded was intended to be completely Shī‘ite in character. He styled himself as the imam who, according to Shī‘ite doctrine, was the only legitimate head of the Muslim community and the final authority on religious law. The state he founded, known as Fāṭimid (Al-Dawlah al-Fāṭimiyyah) for the Prophet Muhammad’s daughter Fāṭimah, was viewed as a stepping-stone to the overthrow of the ‘Abbāsids. Nevertheless, ‘Ubayd Allāh was intent on consolidating Shī‘ite rule first in the Maghrib itself. He built a fortified capital, Al-Mahdiyyah, on the Tunisian coast and initiated the conquest of the western Maghrib in 917. The Fāṭimids soon ended Idrīsid rule in Fez, but after 40 years of campaigning in western Algeria and Morocco they were unable to impose their authority on the powerful Berber tribes living there. The Umayyads of Spain, moreover, occupied the enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta on the northern coast of Morocco in 927 and 931, respectively, and from there organized tribal resistance to the Fāṭimids. In eastern Algeria, however, the Fāṭimids were loyally supported by Zīrī ibn Manād, chief of the Takalata branch of the Ṣanhājah confederation, to which the Kutāma Berbers belonged. The parts of the Maghrib that the Fāṭimids controlled therefore consisted only of the former province of Ifrīqiyyah, ruled before them by the Aghlabids.
In Ifrīqiyyah itself the Arab aristocratic families, previously affiliated with the Ḥanafī school of law, all converted to Shī‘ism and, consequently, preserved under Fāṭimid rule some of their former privileges. The Mālikī scholars, however, opposed the Fāṭimids, who, accordingly, resorted to repression and had several of them tortured. Differences in ritual and religious law, and the exorbitant system of taxation made necessary by the large army that the Fāṭimids had to maintain, were the main causes of Mālikī opposition. Out of desperation, the Mālikī leaders of Kairouan in 944 even supported rebellion by one of their Khārijite rivals, Abū Yazīd, against the Fāṭimids.
Direct Fāṭimid rule in the Maghrib effectively came to an end in 973, when the Fāṭimid imam, al-Mu‘izz, whose armies had conquered Egypt four years earlier, took up residence in Cairo. Al-Mu‘izz appointed the Berber chief Buluggīn, son of the Fāṭimids’ chief ally in Algeria, Zīrī ibn Manād, as his viceroy in the Maghrib. In the 70 years during which the Zīrid dynasty (Banū Zīrī) ruled Ifrīqiyyah in the name of the Fāṭimids, they fell progressively under the influence of the Arab Islamic culture of the region. In this period the Mālikī school of Islamic law reasserted itself in Ifrīqiyyah and produced one of its most prominent scholars, Ibn Abī Zayd al-Qayrawānī (died 996), whose Risālah is one of the most widely used and discussed expositions of Mālikī law. Mālikī riots broke out between October 1016 and March 1017, in which a large number of Shī‘ites—estimated at some 20,000—were killed and their property looted. These developments resulted in the renunciation of Fāṭimid authority by the Zīrids in 1044.
The Fāṭimids reacted to this by unleashing two large nomadic Arab tribes on the Maghrib, the Banū Hilāl and the Banū Sulaym (Sulaim), both of which had until then lived in Upper Egypt. This Arab invasion introduced unruly tribal groups who would remain a source of political instability in the eastern Maghrib until well into the 15th century. The Zīrids were overwhelmed by the sheer number of the invaders, who are said to have included 50,000 warriors when they crossed into Cyrenaica in 1050. After the Zīrids suffered defeat at the hands of these nomads in 1052 in southern Tunisia, they vacated Kairouan and retreated to the well-fortified former Fāṭimid capital of Al-Mahdiyyah on the coast. The Banū Hilāl ravaged the Tunisian countryside and then infiltrated eastern Algeria. There they ended the rule of the Banū Hammād, a dynasty related to the Zīrids that had made itself independent of them in 1015.
The fragmentation of political life in the Maghrib, following both the Arab invasion and a general decline in the authority of the Fāṭimids, was arrested by the Almoravids. They were the founders of the first of two empires that unified the Maghrib under Berber Islamic rule.
The Almoravid empire came into being through the success of a militant Islamic movement that was initiated among the Ṣanhājah confederation of tribes in Mauretania by one of its chiefs about 1035. Religious reform was a means of cementing the unity of the Ṣanhājah tribes at a time when the control that they previously had on trans-Saharan trade had become threatened, from the south by the Soninke state of Ghana and from the north by the infiltration of Zanātah Berbers into southern Morocco. The movement’s leader, ‘Abd Allāh ibn Yāsīn, was a Ṣanhājah religious scholar from southern Morocco. Before joining the Ṣanhājah tribes, Ibn Yāsīn was attached to a centre of religious learning, Dār al-Murābiṭīn, in Sūs (southern Morocco), then headed by a scholar who had studied previously in Kairouan. Two theories have been proposed to explain the name al-Murābiṭūn (i.e., Almoravids), meaning inmates of a ribāṭ (fortified monastery), a term by which Ibn Yāsīn’s followers were known. The first is that he founded a ribāṭ somewhere in Mauretania to train his followers. The other relates the name to Dār al-Murābiṭīn in Sūs, suggesting that the Almoravid movement was under the direct influence of this centre of learning. Whatever the case, the Almoravids were strict adherents of the Mālikī school of law as it had developed in Ifrīqiyyah since its introduction to the Maghrib in the 9th century.
The Almoravids began the invasion of Morocco after consolidating their control over Sijilmāssah in 1056. When Ibn Yāsīn was killed in 1059 in an attack on the Barghawāṭah tribal confederation on the Moroccan coast, the military and religious leadership of the Almoravids passed to the chief of the Lamtūnah tribe, Abū Bakr ibn ‘Umar. He returned to Mauretania in 1060 to fight against rebels challenging his authority. Command of the Almoravids in southern Morocco was then assumed by Abū Bakr’s cousin, Yūsuf ibn Tāshufīn (Tāshfīn), under whose leadership the Almoravids conquered most of the Maghrib and Muslim Spain. By 1082 Almoravid rule extended as far east as Algiers. After the collapse of the Andalusian Umayyads in 1031, Muslim Spain became divided into a number of small Muslim principalities whose rulers were unable to hold out against Christian military advances. At the request of the Spanish Muslims, the Almoravids sent their army into Spain in 1086. By 1110, four years after Ibn Tāshufīn’s death, the Almoravids had become masters of the whole of Muslim Spain. The capital of their expanded empire was Marrakech, which Ibn Tāshufīn had started to build in 1070.
In the Almoravid empire the Ṣanhājah tribes of Mauretania constituted a ruling class, distinguished from the rest of the population by the litham (face muffler) that their men wore. The Lamtūnah tribe formed the aristocracy of this ruling class and occupied the empire’s important administrative and military posts. Strict adherence to the Mālikī version of Islamic law provided the religious legitimization for the authority of this tribal caste. The fuqahā’ (experts on Islamic law) supervised both the administration of justice by the qāḍīs and the work of the provincial governors, and they acted as advisers to the rulers. The empire’s simple system of government, in which military commanders acted as administrators, was rendered especially stifling by the narrow legalism of the fuqahā’. Mystical tendencies and new religious ideas reaching the Maghrib from Muslim Spain and the Arab east that the fuqahā’ feared might undermine their authority were fought with the backing of the state.
Out of religious opposition to the Islam of the Almoravid jurists developed the revolutionary movement of the Almohads (al-Muwaḥḥidūn)—i.e., the adherents of tawḥīd, the belief in the oneness and uniqueness of God—which caused the downfall of the Almoravids. The founder of the movement was Muḥammad ibn Tūmart, a Berber belonging to the Maṣmūdah tribe of the High Atlas region of Morocco. After returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1117, he preached in public against equating Islam with the provisions of one of the four schools of Islamic law, calling for a return to its original sources—namely, the Qur’ān and the Traditions (Ḥadīth) of the Prophet. He also condemned the literal interpretation of the Qur’ān endorsed by the Almoravid fuqahā’, on grounds that it undermined tawḥīd by misleading the faithful to believe that God had human attributes (tashbīh). Ibn Tūmart fled from Marrakech in 1122 when he realized that he would be put to death if he did not cease criticizing the state’s official religious dogma. After settling with some people of his tribe in the village of Tīnmallal in 1124, he started to organize a religious community of Maṣmūdah tribesmen, who became united not only because of their sense of tribal solidarity but also because of their belief in Ibn Tūmart as the Mahdi (divinely guided redeemer). After Ibn Tūmart’s death in 1130, the movement and the conquest of the Almoravid empire continued under his trusted lieutenant, ‘Abd al-Mu’min, a Berber from the Qūmiya tribe living in the region of Tlemcen.
‘Abd al-Mu’min succeeded in establishing his authority in all the High and Middle Atlas mountains, beginning in 1133. From about 1139 he invaded northern Morocco and then western Algeria. After becoming master of this region in 1145, he advanced into the main centres of Almoravid authority in Morocco, conquering Fez in 1146 and Marrakech in 1147. Muslim Spain passed under Almohad rule between 1148 and 1172. Prior to completing the conquest of Spain, however, the Almohads had advanced into the eastern Maghrib, where the Normans of Sicily, profiting from Zīrid weakness, had occupied several positions on the Tunisian coast. Between 1152 and 1160 the Almohads were able to conquer the whole of the eastern Maghrib, including Tripolitania. For the first and last time in its history, the entire Maghrib was unified under one central indigenous authority.
The Almohad empire, like that of the Almoravids, was a Berber tribal state in which the Maṣmūdah tribes, previously united in the community of Tīnmallal, constituted the ruling class. Unlike the Almoravids, however, the Almohads did not have a clear religious orientation. They rejected the idea of equating Islamic law with any of its established schools, but, for practical reasons, the Almohad judges based their judgments on the provisions of the already established Mālikī school. Moreover, the belief of the common people in Ibn Tūmart as the Mahdi was slowly being superseded by the spread of Sufism (Islamic mysticism) and the veneration of Sufi holy men. Sufism had a prominent representative during the Almohad period in the person of Shu‘ayb Abū Madyan al-Ghawth (died 1197). At the Almohad court, however, the sciences and philosophy were cultivated. The philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroës) wrote his famous commentaries on Aristotle when at the court of the Almohad caliph Abū Ya‘qūb Yūsuf (1163–84). These diverse developments meant that Almohad doctrine could not unite even the ruling class, whose coherence was undermined further when ‘Abd al-Mu’min appointed his son as heir apparent in 1154, thus making his family, which did not belong to the Maṣmūdah tribe, the ruling dynasty. Through this act ‘Abd al-Mu’min bypassed Abū Ḥafṣ‘Umar, the Maṣmūdah chief who gave protection to Ibn Tūmart in the High Atlas during his period of exile and whom the other Maṣmūdah chiefs expected to succeed ‘Abd al-Mu’min. Maṣmūdah opposition was dealt with by putting a number of their chiefs to death and by giving the Ḥafṣids (i.e., the family of Abū Ḥafṣ ‘Umar) a position in the state hierarchy second only to the ruling dynasty. Nevertheless, the ruling family constantly had to contend with the opposition of the Maṣmūdah chiefs.
Tensions within the ruling class finally led to an open split when the Almohads attempted to reestablish their authority over the eastern Maghrib, after the Banū Ghāniyah—the family that last ruled Muslim Spain in the name of the Almoravids and that after 1148 retained control of the Balearic Islands—had taken control there. The Banū Ghāniyah invaded eastern Algeria in 1184 and, with local Arab tribal support, brought Almohad authority in the region to an end. In 1203 they took control of Tunisia as well. The Almohad caliph al-Nāṣir (Muḥammad ibn Abī Yūsuf Ya‘qūb) restored the empire’s authority in the region with several large military campaigns from 1205 to 1207. Before returning to Marrakech, he appointed a Ḥafṣid to govern the reconquered eastern Maghrib. The Ḥafṣids were able to squelch the ongoing rebellion of the Banū Ghāniyah in 1227 and to establish control over Ifrīqiyyah, thus emerging as virtual rulers of the region. When the Almohad caliph al-Ma’mun formally renounced the Almohad doctrine in 1229, the Ḥafṣids declared themselves independent of him.
At the time of the Ḥafṣid secession, the control of the Almohads over western Algeria also had weakened, and they were no longer able to restrain the nomadic Zanātah tribes living in the south from moving with their herds to the rich pasturelands of the north. A group of these Zanātah, the Banū Marīn, advanced through northern Algeria into Morocco during the 1240s. Having captured Fez in 1248, they emerged as rulers of northern Morocco. It was only a matter of time before they brought Almohad rule to an end by conquering Marrakech in 1269. In the 1230s another group of Zanātah Berbers, the Banū ‘Abd al-Wād (‘Abd al-Wādid dynasty), had taken control of the region of Tlemcen in western Algeria. The state they founded there was overrun several times in the 13th and 14th centuries by the Marīnids. Nevertheless, its ruling line, the Banū Zayyān (Zayyānids), was able to maintain its authority in Tlemcen until the beginning of the 16th century.
After the collapse of Almohad rule, the Maghrib became divided into three Muslim states, each ruled by a Berber (Amazigh) dynasty: the Ḥafṣids, whose territory included Tunisia, eastern Algeria, and Tripolitania; the Marīnids, ruling over Morocco; and the Zayyānids, whose capital was in Tlemcen, ruling over most of western Algeria when this region was not occupied by the Marīnids. Both the rigid legalistic doctrine of the Almoravids and the more enlightened religious orientation of the Almohads had proved to be unsuitable as foundations for durable political authority. Furthermore, the rulers themselves were unsuitable to act as custodians of the faith. Islamic culture came of age in the Maghrib only after the rulers gave up attempting to identify their authority with a single religious doctrine and allowed religious life to develop freely through the interplay of religious ideas and social forces in relative independence from the state. The Maghribi rulers subsequently legitimized their authority by cultivating relations of trust and cooperation with the leading religious scholars of the time. Their capital cities became, consequently, the foremost centres of learning in their realms and were adorned not only with exquisite mosques but also with sumptuous madrasahs, residential colleges built and financed by the rulers. The Mālikī school of law was again recognized. Its scholars were held in great esteem and granted various privileges by the rulers, but they were not allowed to determine the conduct of government.
From the 12th century Sufism had spread widely in the Maghrib. Sufi holy men were venerated in both the towns and the countryside. Although in the towns their influence tended to be overshadowed by that of the legal scholars and the organs of the state, in the countryside they were the main custodians of Islamic norms. Often allied with tribal chiefs and sometimes having their own communities, these religious leaders helped establish order and stability by using their moral authority to uphold religious norms and arbitrate conflicts. They could perform these functions and gain influence over the tribal societies because the rulers’ administrative authority extended little beyond their capital cities and garrison towns, and the rulers, as well as the urban scholars, considered tribal society to be of marginal importance. Indeed, the tribes exercised direct influence on political life only when they became involved in conflicts for power within the ruling family or when their warriors took part in wars against a foreign enemy.
Relations between the three Maghribi states were greatly influenced by the pressures that the Christian states of the Iberian Peninsula exerted on them from the mid-13th century. The Ḥafṣids claimed to be the heirs of Almohad religious authority, but after the first independent Ḥafṣid ruler, Abū Zakariyyā’ (1228–49), they gave up attempting to substantiate this claim, either by pressing forward the conquest of the western Maghrib or by helping the Muslims of Spain militarily. The Marīnids inherited both the heartland of the former Almohad state in Morocco and its confrontation with the Christians in Spain, but, because of political instability, they were never able to take the initiative in the war against the Christians. Through their military outposts in southern Spain, they merely tried to check attacks on Morocco itself and to help the Muslim principality of Granada (Gharnāṭah) survive as a buffer between them and the Christian powers. In March 1344 the Marīnids suffered a serious military defeat when the army of the Christian kingdom of Castile, reinforced by warriors from England, France, and Italy, conquered Algeciras, their last military outpost in Spain. Meanwhile, since the mid-13th century, the Ḥafṣids and Zayyānids had been carrying on commercial relations with Christian Aragon. In return for allowing subjects of the king of Aragon to trade freely in their dominions, they received military help in the form of Catalan mercenaries. Defeat at the hands of the Christians, at a time when the Ḥafṣids and Zayyānids had friendly relations with Aragon, prompted the Marīnid sultan Abū al-Ḥasan ‘Alī (1331–51) to invade their territories. Between 1346 and 1347 his army overran the eastern Maghrib as far east as Tripolitania, but, when the Arab tribes of Tunisia joined in the battle against them, the Marīnids were overwhelmed, and Abū al-Ḥasan himself had to flee by sea from Tunis. His son and successor, Abū ‘Inān, also invaded the eastern Maghrib, in 1356–57, but he, too, had to withdraw from Tunisia when faced with Arab tribal resistance.
Political life in the Maghrib from the mid-14th to the end of the 15th century was dominated by the preoccupation of the ruling dynasties with internecine conflicts, which in the case of the Ḥafṣids was complicated by the domination of many parts of their territories by Arab tribes. These conflicts caused the Ḥafṣid state to be divided into two parts between 1348 and 1370, one being ruled from Tunis and the other from Bejaïa, with the ruler of each part supported by a different Arab tribal group. After it was reunified in 1370 by Sultan Abū al-‘Abbās, the Ḥafṣid state enjoyed periods of relative stability interspersed with strife. Political instability did not, however, prevent learning from developing in the towns. The greatest intellectual figure of the Maghrib before the modern period, the historian and sociologist Ibn Khaldūn, was born and educated at that time in Tunis. Conflicts for power within the Zayyānid state enabled the Marīnids to establish indirect control over Tlemcen in the second half of the 14th century, but, being preoccupied with strife within their own dominions, they were not able to realize their long-held ambition of bringing the whole of the Maghrib under their rule.
Between 1471 and 1510 the line of confrontation between the Muslims of the Maghrib and the Christians of the Iberian Peninsula shifted from Spain to the Maghrib itself. The Portuguese occupied a number of positions on the Moroccan coast between 1471 and 1505, which included Tangier in the north and Agadir in the south. The Spaniards conquered Granada, the last Muslim stronghold on the peninsula, in 1492, and between 1505 and 1510 they began establishing garrison posts along the Maghribi coast. The most important of these were at Oran (Wahrān) and Bejaïa in Algeria and Tripoli in Libya. The strong religious reaction in the Maghrib to Christian colonial intrusion enabled the Sa‘dī dynasty of sharifs to capture power in Morocco in 1549 and paved the way for Ottoman rule to be established later in the rest of the Maghrib.
As a reaction to the Portuguese presence in Agadir, the tribes in southern Morocco were organized by the sharifian Sa‘dī family—with the active support of Sufi leaders—into a militant religious movement directed against both the Portuguese presence and Morocco’s own rulers, the Waṭṭāsids. The latter was a branch of the Marīnid dynasty that had usurped power in Fez in 1472 and pursued a policy of coexistence with the Portuguese. After occupying Marrakech in 1525 and consolidating their authority in southern Morocco, the Sa‘dīs conquered Agadir in 1541. By 1550 they had forced the Portuguese to evacuate the rest of their positions on the Moroccan coast and conquered the Waṭṭāsid capital of Fez. The Sa‘dīs consolidated their rule in Morocco thereafter and, by later defending the territory against Ottoman expansion from Algeria, gave it a national identity distinct from the rest of the Maghrib. Their authority was legitimized by their descent from the Prophet, but the dynasty’s mainstay was the support it received from the settled agricultural and commercial communities, as well as the possession and use of firearms by its troops. The dynasty reached the zenith of its power during the reign of Aḥmad al-Manṣūr (1578–1603), who, with the help of Spanish and Turkish mercenaries, built Morocco’s first professional army. With this force at his command, al-Manṣūr imposed his will on the whole country, besides defending it against the Ottoman Empire and, in 1591, conquering the West African state of Songhai (present-day Mali). However, conflict for power after his death divided the country into several principalities that lasted until they were reunited through another sharifian family, that of the ‘Alawites.
The ‘Alawites, who rule Morocco to this day, came to power with the help of Arab tribes that had moved into Morocco in large numbers during the Almohad period. The founder of the dynasty, Mawlāy al-Rashīd, mobilized these tribes against the powerful Berber principality of the Dilā’iyyah that had dominated the Middle Atlas and parts of northern Morocco since the 1640s. Mawlāy al-Rashīd’s half brother, Mawlāy Ismā‘īl, succeeded in reunifying Morocco with the help of a professional army of slaves (‘abīd) known as ‘Abīd al-Bukhārī, who were drawn from the descendants of the many sub-Saharan Africans who were brought back to Morocco after the conquest of Songhai. After Mawlāy Ismā‘īl’s death, however, conflict over succession between his sons, who are said to have numbered about 500, complicated by the intrigues of the ‘Abid officers, ushered in a period of chaos and economic decline that lasted nearly 50 years. Following the dynasty’s recovery during the reign of Sultan Muḥammad ibn ‘Abd Allāh (1757–90) and continuing under Sultan Mawlāy Sulaymān (1792–1822), Morocco enjoyed a period of relative stability that was disturbed on a large scale only by conflicts between the ruling dynasty and tribes recognizing the authority of Sufi leaders. The economy of Morocco also started to recover in that period, and the state’s external trade expanded. However, the French occupation of Algeria after 1830, together with European political and economic infiltration of Morocco thereafter, created new challenges with which the state’s traditional political system could not adequately cope.
The Ottoman Turks occupied Egypt in 1517. Shortly afterward they became involved in the confrontation between Muslims and Christians in the Maghrib through the exploits of two Muslim privateers, ‘Arūj and his brother Khayr al-Dīn Barbarossa, who occupied Algiers in 1516 and made it a base for operations against the Spaniards. After ‘Arūj was killed in 1518 in an attack on Tlemcen, Khayr al-Dīn offered submission to the Ottoman sultan in return for military help, which subsequently enabled him to gain control over most of the Maghrib.
Algeria was the first country of the Maghrib to be ruled by the Ottoman Empire. Administered at first by governors sent from Istanbul, the Ottoman regency of Algiers was transformed into a sort of military republic when the troops stationed there rebelled against the Ottoman governor in 1689 and installed one of their officers as ruler, giving him the title of dey (maternal uncle). The Ottoman troops thus emerged as a ruling caste that periodically renewed itself with fresh recruits from various parts of the Mediterranean region. The deys, chosen from within this caste, governed Algeria independently from the Ottoman government. They retained religious ties to the Ottoman sultan, however, by recognizing him as caliph and by making the Ḥanafī school of law—the official school of the Ottoman Empire—the official school of law in Algeria as well. Piracy provided the ruling caste with its main source of revenue. Generated largely from the money received for ransoming Christian captives and from the price of peace levied on obliging Christian countries, such income remained forthcoming until the mid-18th century. Local inhabitants accepted the rule of the deys because the taxes they had to pay them were light and because their own leaders were allowed a large degree of autonomy in managing the affairs of their communities. Furthermore, the deys were careful to cultivate the good will of the influential Sufi personalities in the countryside. From the mid-18th century the balance of power in the Mediterranean started to turn in favour of the European powers. Thereafter the revenue that the deys derived from piracy declined. The heavy taxes that they subsequently had to impose on the Algerians led to conflicts with the tribal communities led by Sufi leaders, which ultimately weakened the regime of the deys on the eve of the French invasion of Algeria in 1830.
The Ketchaoua Mosque in Algiers, the capital and chief seaport of Algeria. Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images
The Ottomans occupied Tunis in 1534 but were forced by Spanish troops to evacuate it the following year. Thereafter the Ḥafṣids ruled Tunisia under Spanish protection until the Ottomans reconquered the country in 1574. In 1591 the Ottoman troops stationed in Tunis rebelled against the governor sent from Istanbul and established a regime headed by deys chosen by the troops, which was similar to the dey-ruled regime that appeared in Algeria a little later. In Tunisia the regime of the deys was transformed from within through the importance that the bey, the officer responsible for maintaining order in the countryside and for collecting taxes, came to have in it. In 1705 the bey, Ḥusayn ibn ‘Alī, effectively usurped the power of the dey when, with the help of Tunisian tribal warriors, he repulsed the invasion of Tunisia by the army of Algiers. Thus was established the Ḥusaynid dynasty of beys, which ruled the country until the monarchy was abolished in 1957. While recognizing the religious authority of the Ottoman sultan as caliph, the Ḥusaynids ruled Tunisia independently from the Ottoman government. They officially adopted the Ḥanafī school of law but governed the country through local Mālikī notables and allowed Mālikī religious scholars to manage the religious and legal affairs of their communities, while also bestowing favours on them. In common with other Maghribi states at the time, piracy was an important source of revenue. It was supplemented, however, by trade in the country’s products, which the beys controlled through monopolies and sold mostly to Jews at high prices.
The Ottomans conquered Tripoli in 1551, defeating the Knights of Malta. The Ottoman province that they established was governed from Tripoli and included the whole of present-day Libya. In 1711 the province underwent a change similar to the one that Tunisia had experienced in 1705, when the chief of the cavalry, Aḥmad Karamanli, usurped power and established his own dynasty. The Karamanlis ruled Libya until 1835 when, in the wake of a tribal rebellion supported by the British, direct Ottoman rule was reimposed there. From the mid-16th century Libya became active in the lucrative trans-Saharan trade that crossed its territory. In the Karamanli period it also became an important centre of piracy. After Napoleon I occupied Malta in 1798, Libya was opened to European trade, and it consequently became involved in the rivalry between the British and the French for supremacy both in the Mediterranean region and in West Africa.