IV
ALMORAVIDS AND ALMOHADS
While the Hilalian Arabs were conquering and destroying northern Morocco
another but more fruitful invasion was upon her from the south. The
Almoravids, one of the tribes of Veiled Men of the south, driven by the
usual mixture of religious zeal and lust of booty, set out to invade the
rich black kingdoms north of the Sahara. Thence they crossed the Atlas
under their great chief, Youssef-ben-Tachfin, and founded the city of
Marrakech in 1062. From Marrakech they advanced on Idrissite Fez and the
valley of the Moulouya. Fez rose against her conquerors, and Youssef put
all the male inhabitants to death. By 1084 he was master of Tangier and
the Rif, and his rule stretched as far west as Tlemcen, Oran and finally
Algiers.
His ambition drove him across the straits to Spain, where he conquered
one Moslem prince after another and wiped out the luxurious civilization
of Moorish Andalusia. In 1086, at Zallarca, Youssef gave battle to
Alphonso VI of Castile and Leon. The Almoravid army was a strange rabble
of Arabs, Berbers, blacks, wild tribes of the Sahara and Christian
mercenaries. They conquered the Spanish forces, and Youssef left to his
successors an empire extending from the Ebro to Senegal and from the
Atlantic coast of Africa to the borders of Tunisia. But the empire fell
to pieces of its own weight, leaving little record of its brief and
stormy existence. While Youssef was routing the forces of Christianity
at Zallarca in Spain, another schismatic tribe of his own people was
detaching Marrakech and the south from his rule.
The leader of the new invasion was a Mahdi, one of the numerous Saviours
of the World who have carried death and destruction throughout Islam.
His name was Ibn-Toumert, and he had travelled in Egypt, Syria and
Spain, and made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Preaching the doctrine of a
purified monotheism, he called his followers the Almohads or Unitarians,
to distinguish them from the polytheistic Almoravids, whose heresies he
denounced. He fortified the city of Tinmel in the Souss, and built there
a mosque of which the ruins still exist. When he died, in 1128, he
designated as his successor Abd-el-Moumen, the son of a potter, who had
been his disciple.
Abd-el-Moumen carried on the campaign against the Almoravids. He fought
them not only in Morocco but in Spain, taking Cadiz, Cordova, Granada as
well as Tlemcen and Fez. In 1152 his African dominion reached from
Tripoli to the Souss, and he had formed a disciplined army in which
Christian mercenaries from France and Spain fought side by side with
Berbers and Soudanese. This great captain was also a great
administrator, and under his rule Africa was surveyed from the Souss to
Barka, the country was policed, agriculture was protected, and the
caravans journeyed safely over the trade-routes.
Abd-el-Moumen died in 1163 and was followed by his son, who, though he
suffered reverses in Spain, was also a great ruler. He died in 1184, and
his son, Yacoub-el-Mansour, avenged his father's ill-success in Spain by
the great victory of Alarcos and the conquest of Madrid.
Yacoub-el-Mansour was the greatest of Moroccan Sultans. So far did his
fame extend that the illustrious Saladin sent him presents and asked the
help of his fleet. He was a builder as well as a fighter, and the
noblest period of Arab art in Morocco and Spain coincides with his
reign.
After his death, the Almohad empire followed the downward curve to which
all Oriental rule seems destined. In Spain, the Berber forces were
beaten in the great Christian victory of Las-Navas-de Tolosa, and in
Morocco itself the first stirrings of the Beni-Merins (a new tribe from
the Sahara) were preparing the way for a new dynasty.
