by Hugh Kennedy
9
THE ALMOHAD CALIPHS
THE COLLAPSE OF the Umayyad caliphate in Córdoba in the first decades of the eleventh century led to the period of the Taifa kings in Andalus. These kings, whose power was confined to one city or region, were never able to claim caliphal status, both because their power was too limited to make such an assertion plausible and because they lacked the important attribute of Qurashi descent. The most powerful of them, the Abbadid rulers of Seville, took quasi-caliphal titles, Mutadid (1042–69) and Mutamid (1069–91), and for a while maintained the fiction that they were ruling in the name of the vanished Umayyad Hishām, until the passing of the years made such a claim ridiculous.
Christian advances in the late eleventh century, especially the conquest of Toledo by Alfonso VI of León-Castile in 1085, meant that the position of the Taifa kings became impossible to sustain and, with some reluctance, most of them accepted the overlordship of the Berber Almoravids (Ar. Murābitūn) from Morocco. The Almoravids were a coalition of Sanhaja Berbers from the western Sahara who had been brought together by the religious reformer Abd Allah b. Yāsin. Ibn Yāsin had travelled in the Middle East and returned to his native people with a clear message that the Islam they practised was at best corrupt and at worst heretical. Ibn Yāsin’s puritanical reform movement soon spread to most of Morocco and, between 1086 and 1090, established its rule over most of Andalus except for the northern kingdom of Zaragoza. Under the rule of Yūsuf b. Tashfīn the Almoravids were able to stem the Christian advance, defeating Alfonso VI at the Battle of Zallaqa in 1086. However, under the rule of Yūsuf’s pious but ineffective son Alī (1106–43), the military position in Andalus deteriorated and the Almoravids were faced by a major new ideological and political challenge from another group of puritanical reformers, the Almohads (Ar. Muwahhidūn).
The Almoravids, despite the extent of their empire, including as it did at its height most of Andalus, and Morocco as far south as the Sahara, never claimed the title of caliph. Instead they acknowledged the overlordship of the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad, bringing the Maghreb back into the wider umma. They themselves took the title of Emir al-Muslimīn. Strangely, this rather obvious title, meaning simply ‘Prince of the Muslims’, was very seldom used by Muslim monarchs, the caliphal title always being Amīr al-Mu’minīn. The implication was that while they appealed to all Muslims they nonetheless remained emirs under the overall authority of the caliphs in Baghdad.
IBN TŪMART AND THE RISE OF THE ALMOHADS
Almoravid rule was challenged in Morocco from 1120 by the emergence of the Almohads. As with the Almoravids, the movement was begun by a religious reformer, Muhammad b. Tūmart, who had travelled to the east and returned with a mission for religious change. Ibn Tūmart was a Berber, but unlike the Almoravids he hailed from one of the Masmuda tribes of the Atlas Mountains and his followers were people from mountain villages rather than nomads from the desert. In the east he claimed to have been taught by the great Ghazālī (d. 1111), whose book Reviving the Religious Sciences had argued strongly that simple obedience to the strict laws of Islam was not enough and that Muslims should follow the spirit of Islam if they wanted to be good Muslims. Combining Sufism with traditional legal scholarship, his writings were widely circulated and complete anathema to the rigorist legalistic authorities of Almoravid Andalus, who ordered his books to be burned.
Ibn Tūmart claimed that the great man had given him his blessing and asked him to avenge the burning of his works. Whether any of this is true is quite uncertain, but it did mean that he could claim to be the disciple of the greatest religious thinker of his age. Ibn Tūmart’s life became the subject of an account, almost like the biography of the Prophet Muhammad himself, and truth was embellished by piety so that we cannot be sure of all the details. What is clear is that he returned in the years 1117 to 1119, pausing along the way to preach a simple and puritanical Islam criticizing the wearing of bright clothes, the mixing of the sexes at festivals, the playing of musical instruments and the selling of wine.
By 1120 he had returned to his native Morocco and is said to have preached to the Almoravid ruler Alī b. Yūsuf in his capital at Marrakesh. His appeal for a reformed Islam was rejected and he made his way to the mountains where he had been brought up to continue his mission from the safety they provided.
Ibn Tūmart had failed to win over the Almoravid leadership and became determinedly hostile to them. Both movements were intent on establishing a reformed Islam, free of what they regarded as the laxities and abuses which had crept in. It is difficult to see what divided them. Ibn Tūmart demanded that Islamic law be based on the Qur’ān and hadīth, rather than the reason and argument which were used to support it, and this seems to have aroused the opposition of the legal scholars whose work was the ideological foundation of Almoravid doctrine. He insisted on the absolute unity of God and accused the Almoravids of anthropomorphism, of representing God as a human being. This insistence on the unity of God gave the Almohads the name by which they are generally known to history, Almohade being the Spanish version of the Arabic Muwwahidūn, meaning those who assert the unity of God. He also attacked the Sanhaja Berbers who formed the backbone of the military support of the regime: like many of the Touareg of today, the men wore veils to protect their faces from the blowing sand and fierce heat of the desert. This enabled Ibn Tūmart to accuse them of effeminacy.
These were differences which could be stressed and used to dismiss the Almoravids as heretics and morally corrupt, but what really distinguished the Almohads from the Almoravids was the style of leadership. After his rejection by the Almoravid court, Ibn Tūmart determined to break with them completely. He began proclaiming that he was the infallible Mahdī who would lead the Muslims to true Islam. He also developed a genealogy for himself which showed that he was descended from the Prophet Muhammad through the Idrisids who had come to settle in North Africa. You could not be a member of the Almohad movement unless you accepted Ibn Tūmart as the God-appointed leader whose word was law. There was no room for compromise.
In 1122 Ibn Tūmart established his base in the little town of Tinmal, to the south of Marrakesh, which was accessible only through a narrow mountain pass. This was to become his Medina, the place to which he made his Hijra and where he established his regime. The mosque that was built there still exists, recently restored, a physical witness to the early days of the movement. He also set up a remarkable hierarchy among his followers, which aimed to supplement or even replace the tribal loyalties which were so strong among these mountain people. The Mahdī himself was, naturally, the head of the organization. Below him were the Council of Ten, all early followers of Ibn Tūmart, either people who had joined him on his journey west, like Abd al-Mu’min, or local tribal leaders. Below them were a Council of Fifty, mostly Berber tribal leaders from the Atlas region. They were assisted by a corps of people known as talba (sing. tālib). This term is usually translated as ‘students’ and, in its Persian plural, gives us Taliban. The talba were one of the most distinctive features of the Almohad regime. They were, in a sense, political commissars, ideologues who expounded Almohad ideology but also fulfilled a number of what might be described as civil service roles. Adherence to Almohad ideology was enforced with bloodthirsty severity. In 1129–30 there was the first tamyīz, or purge, among the Berbers, which resulted in the deaths of many who were thought to be opposed to Ibn Tūmart’s authority or simply showed insufficient enthusiasm.
Another distinctive feature of the Almohad regime was its Berber identity. Berber was a vernacular which was, and still is, widely spoken in North Africa, but it had never been a written language nor, as far as we can tell, the language of religion and preaching. Ibn Tūmart not only preached in Berber, but he also produced a Berber version of the Qur’ān. Arabic was still used as an official language and remained the language of high culture, but a knowledge of Berber was essential for anyone who wanted to progress in the Almohad hierarchy and there are examples of qādī
s and other officials in Andalus losing their jobs because they could not understand the language. This was the first time in the Muslim world that a regime had promulgated a non-Arabic Islam. Persian was widely spoken and written by the twelfth century and the great Ghazālī himself wrote religious tracts in Persian as well as Arabic, but there was no attempt to use a Persian translation of the Qur’ān, still less to make the learning of Persian compulsory. This Berber identity produced a sense of solidarity among the various Berber tribes committed to the movement, but it also alienated many Muslims, especially in Andalus where Berber was not really spoken at all. When the military power of the movement began to fail in the early thirteenth century, the Almohads were easily distinguished by their disgruntled subjects and this certainly contributed to the decline of the dynasty.
From his base in Tinmal, Ibn Tūmart launched a series of attacks on the Almoravid capital of Marrakesh, but in 1130 the movement suffered what might have been a deadly blow. Ibn Tūmart was fatally wounded in an unsuccessful attack on the city. With the Mahdī gone, leadership passed to one of his earliest followers, Abd al-Mu’min. Abd al-Mu’min established his control over the movement and, crucially, took the titles of caliph and Amīr al-Mu’minīn. Whether consciously or not, he was casting himself in the role of Abū Bakr to Ibn Tūmart’s Muhammad. Ibn Tūmart seems to have had no sons and his brothers were systematically removed from any positions of responsibility and influence. It was the family of Abd al-Mu’min who were to provide the caliphs until the end of the Almohad regime.
Like Abū Bakr, Abd al-Mu’min was determined to continue the expansion of the Almohad movement. In a series of campaigns in the 1140s he systematically subdued the cities of Morocco, and on 24 March 1147 Marrakesh was finally captured. It soon became the most important capital of the new caliphate and the real centre of Almohad power.
After the conquest of Morocco, it was inevitable that the Almohads would become involved in the affairs of Andalus. The collapse of the Almoravid regime in Marrakesh had left the Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula exposed to the depredations of Christians. Without military support from North Africa, Andalus was hardly viable. The pursuit of the jihād was a core function of caliphate and Abd al-Mu’min would certainly have been aware not only of the duties this involved but also the opportunities it would provide for developing the prestige of his office among his own followers and in the wider Muslim world.
His military support was urgently needed in Andalus. In 1147, the same year in which the caliph conquered Marrakesh, the king of the newly established kingdom of Portugal, Afonso Henriques, conquered Lisbon with the help of warriors from northern Europe sailing to join the Second Crusade. At the same time the Castilians contrived to capture, and hold for the next decade, the port of Almería, right on the south coast of the peninsula and an important centre of communication with North Africa. Throughout Andalus, the advances of the Christians provoked uprisings against the remaining Almoravid governors and garrisons. That year, invited by local leaders, Abd al-Mu’min sent the first Almohad forces to the Algarve.
The advance into Andalus was slow. This was partly because of strategic factors which made the Almohad state very different from the Almoravid. The Almohads were always active on two fronts. The Almohad empire at its height included all of modern Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco as well as a large part of modern Spain and Portugal. It was never easy to control these far-flung territories: distances were long and much of the land was wild and sparsely populated. In the 1150s Abd al-Mu’min devoted much of his military energies and resources to driving the Normans who had conquered the important seaports of Tunisia, out of Sicily. It was not until 1160 that they were finally dislodged from their last stronghold in Mahdia and the caliph could devote his attention more completely to the jihād in Andalus. He took care to write to the people of Seville and presumably others in Andalus with a grandiloquent account of his victory over these infidels. The Almohads always paid great attention to what we might describe as the public relations aspect of caliphate, but at the same time the letter could hardly disguise the fact that he was giving them no real support against the increasingly aggressive Christians who were raiding right up to the gates of the city. Even with the Normans gone, the east was far from easy to control. Abd al-Mu’min had to deal with the numerous and powerful Arab tribes who had migrated to the area. He tried to do this by force but also by incorporating many of the tribesmen into the Almohad armies. Here they were a disruptive presence, resented by many of the Almohads and by the Andalusi military in the army. Their presence also led to an increasing Arabization of the Maghreb: it is ironic that this most Berber of dynasties should have facilitated the spread of the Arabic language.
Abd al-Mu’min was also busy restructuring the caliphate. He decided to build a new military base and centre of operations on the Atlantic coast where he could assemble armies and supplies for the jihād in Andalus. This base was called the ribāt, an Arabic word which means, among other things, a fortification, where men could go to practise religious exercises, particularly fasting and praying during Ramadan, and confronting the infidel. He constructed a massive fortification on a rocky headland on the other side of the river Bu Regreg from the ancient city of Salé and began work on a huge mosque. The city became the core of what is now the modern capital of Morocco, Rabat.
He also took time to establish his own family firmly in control of the caliphate. It helped that he had no less than fourteen sons, and most of the main provincial centres were governed by them. Other members of the old Almohad families were also given prestigious and lucrative positions and this consolidated the hereditary nature of the regime.
There was no pretence here that all the Muslim subjects of the caliphate were in any sense equals. This was a caliphate with a strict hereditary structure. It also had no pretensions to be a universal caliphate. Abd al-Mu’min never declared any intention to conquer the rest of the Muslim world or challenge the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad. In this he was perhaps helped by the fact that the Fatimid caliphate of Cairo had been abolished in 1171. There were now only two caliphates in the Muslim world, both with very separate spheres of influence. There was some limited communication between them. At one stage in the 1180s, Saladin, who of course claimed to be in loyal service to the Abbasids, tried to negotiate a naval alliance with the Almohads against the Crusaders. Although this never came to anything, it shows that people in the eastern Islamic world both knew of and, at least at one level, respected the Almohads.
Stability in Andalus was frequently disrupted, not just by the aggressive Christians but also by groups among the Muslim population of the country who were bitterly opposed to the Almohads. This was especially true of one Ibn Mardanīsh, who effectively ruled Valencia and Murcia and the whole of the Levante and was quite prepared to ally with the Christians in his struggle with the Almohads. The rhetoric of caliphate cut very little ice with such men when they could see that it was no more than a cover for Almohad dynastic control.
Abd al-Mu’min tried to counter this by incorporating local Andalusi lords into his army and paying them salaries, but though they often fought well they were usually excluded from the hierarchy and the best paid jobs. He also attempted to reorganize the administration of Andalus. The Almohads were always conscious of the legacy of the Umayyad caliphs of Córdoba and they attempted to harness this memory to boost their own prestige. After a triumph over Muslim rebels in Granada in 1162, the caliph ordered that the capital and all the government offices should be transferred from Seville to Córdoba. Seville had been chosen as the centre of Almohad administration in the Iberian Peninsula because of its good communications with Morocco. The river Guadalquivir was navigable as far up as Seville but not up to Córdoba. Córdoba was also by this time an impoverished and underpopulated city whose few inhabitants tried to make a living by farming deserted plots within the old city walls. The decision to move to Córdoba showed that prestige triumphed over logic and practical considerati
ons.
Another attempt to harness the Umayyad legacy was by taking possession of the Qur’ān of Uthmān. The so-called Qur’ān of Uthmān was, as we have seen, used as a legitimizing relic by the Abbasids, but it would seem that this was another copy preserved by the Umayyads of Córdoba. It had been of special significance to them because Uthmān was himself an Umayyad and it represented evidence of their connection with one of the great figures of early Islam. This Qur’ān was now brought from Córdoba to Marrakesh to form part of the spiritual armoury of the Almohad caliphate, symbolizing the transfer of the caliphate from the Umayyads to the Almohads. Nothing seems to be known about the fate of this volume after the fall of the Almohads in the late thirteenth century.
Despite the caliph’s administrative reforms and the appointment of his sons as governors of the cities, the situation in Andalus remained precarious. In 1163 he prepared a huge expedition, gathered at his new stronghold of Rabat. There were said to have been 100,000 horsemen and 100,000 foot soldiers and the camp stretched for some nineteen kilometres. The intention was to attack all the main Christian states, Portugal, León, Castile and Barcelona, simultaneously. It would certainly have been a major invasion and might have secured the future of Andalus under Almohad rule, but the problems of supplying and directing so large a force would have been formidable.
THE LATER ALMOHAD CALIPHS
In the event all the preparations came to nothing because the caliph himself died in 1163. Abd al-Mu’min was the real founder of the Almohad caliphate. He had taken the legacy of Ibn Tūmart the Mahdī and transformed his religious vision into a powerful state, by far the strongest power in the western Islamic world, and established himself and his family in firm control.