Almoravids: The Berber Empire of North Africa and Spain

The Almoravids were a Berber dynasty and Islamic reform movement that rose in the western Sahara around 1040 and, within half a century, ruled a realm reaching from the Senegal River region to the Ebro valley in Spain. Their leaders founded Marrakesh, unified Morocco for the first time, and rescued the fragmented Muslim states of al-Andalus from Christian pressure before absorbing them. Their rule lasted until 1147, when the rival Almohad movement took Marrakesh.

Origins in the Sahara

The movement began among the Sanhaja, camel-herding Berber tribes of the western Sahara such as the Gudala, Lamtuna and Massufa. They controlled stretches of the caravan routes that carried gold, salt and slaves between West Africa and Morocco, but their Islam was, by the standards of urban scholars, shallow and irregular.

Around 1035–1040 a Gudala chief, Yahya ibn Ibrahim, returned from the pilgrimage to Mecca determined to teach his people. Through scholars in North Africa he recruited Abd Allah ibn Yasin, a strict teacher of the Maliki school of Islamic law from the Sus region of southern Morocco. Ibn Yasin demanded prayer, fixed religious taxes and an end to customs he considered un-Islamic, and he organised his followers as a disciplined community.

The Gudala soon rejected him, but Ibn Yasin found new backing among the Lamtuna under the brothers Yahya ibn Umar and Abu Bakr ibn Umar. The name al-Murabitun, which Spanish turned into Almoravid, is usually linked to the Arabic ribat, meaning a fortified retreat or religious struggle. Whether there was ever a single island or desert ribat, as later stories claim, is uncertain.

Expansion north and south

In 1054–1055 the Almoravids seized two key trading towns: Sijilmasa, the northern gateway of the Saharan trade, and Awdaghust, a southern market linked to the empire of Ghana. Control of both ends of the route gave them wealth and a reason to keep advancing.

Yahya ibn Umar was killed around 1056, and Ibn Yasin died in 1059 fighting the Barghawata, a group on the Atlantic plains whose religion the Almoravids considered heretical. Leadership passed to Abu Bakr ibn Umar. He founded a new base at Marrakesh, traditionally in 1062 though many historians now date it to about 1070, at the foot of the High Atlas.

Abu Bakr soon returned south to deal with unrest in the desert and left the north to his cousin Yusuf ibn Tashfin. Yusuf proved an exceptional organiser. He took Fez in the early 1070s, pushed east to Tlemcen and captured Ceuta in 1083–1084. Abu Bakr remained active in the Sahara until his death in 1087. Arabic sources say Almoravids attacked Ghana in 1076, but how far this was a conquest is debated among historians.

Intervention in al-Andalus

Across the Strait of Gibraltar, the Caliphate of Córdoba had broken up by 1031 into rival taifa kingdoms. Many paid tribute to Christian kings, and in 1085 Alfonso VI of León and Castile took Toledo. Alarmed, the rulers of Seville, Badajoz and Granada asked Yusuf for help.

Yusuf crossed in 1086 and, with the taifa armies, defeated Alfonso at the Battle of Sagrajas on 23 October 1086. Toledo stayed Christian, but the advance from the north was checked. Disappointed by the quarrelling taifa kings, and supported by Maliki jurists who condemned their taxes and luxury, Yusuf returned to depose them: Granada fell in 1090, Seville in 1091 and Badajoz in 1094. Al-Mu’tamid, the poet-king of Seville, ended his life as a prisoner at Aghmat in Morocco.

Valencia, held by El Cid from 1094, was taken in 1102, and Zaragoza came under Almoravid rule in 1110. By then nearly all of Muslim Iberia belonged to the Almoravid state. Yusuf took the title amir al-muslimin, commander of the Muslims, while recognising the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad.

The empire at its height

Yusuf died in 1106 and was succeeded by his son Ali ibn Yusuf, who ruled until 1143. Ali’s army won a major victory over Castile at Uclés in 1108, but in 1118 Alfonso I of Aragon captured Zaragoza, a serious loss in the Ebro valley.

The Almoravid gold dinar was among the most trusted coins of the Mediterranean world, and Christian Spain imitated it as the morabetino, the origin of the maravedí. Andalusi craftsmen and architects worked in Morocco, and Almoravid patronage produced the Great Mosque of Tlemcen and the Great Mosque of Algiers. In Marrakesh the domed ablution pavilion known as the Almoravid Qubba is one of the few buildings of the period to survive almost intact.

The ruling Saharan elite remained a small minority. Its men kept the face veil, or litham, of the desert tribes, and the regime relied heavily on Maliki jurists, whose rigid authority later critics used against it.

Decline and fall

From the 1120s a new movement, the Almohads, grew in the High Atlas around the preacher Ibn Tumart. He accused the Almoravids of religious error and of tolerating moral laxity. After his death his successor Abd al-Mumin waged a long war against them.

At the same time, Christian pressure in Spain grew and Almoravid authority in al-Andalus weakened, opening the way to a second period of local taifa rulers. Ali’s son Tashfin ibn Ali died near Oran in 1145. In 1147 Abd al-Mumin took Marrakesh and the last Almoravid ruler, the young Ishaq ibn Ali, was killed. The Almohad Caliphate inherited the empire. A branch of the family, the Banu Ghaniya, held the Balearic Islands for some decades longer.

Timeline

• c. 1035–1040: Yahya ibn Ibrahim returns from Mecca and recruits Abd Allah ibn Yasin.
• 1054–1055: Almoravids take Sijilmasa and Awdaghust.
• 1059: Ibn Yasin is killed fighting the Barghawata.
• c. 1062–1070: Marrakesh is founded under Abu Bakr ibn Umar.
• 1076: Almoravid attack on Ghana reported by Arabic sources.
• 1086, 23 October: Yusuf ibn Tashfin defeats Alfonso VI at Sagrajas.
• 1090–1094: Taifa kings of Granada, Seville and Badajoz are deposed.
• 1106: Death of Yusuf ibn Tashfin; Ali ibn Yusuf succeeds.
• 1147: Almohads capture Marrakesh, ending Almoravid rule.

Why it matters

The Almoravids turned a desert reform movement into the first Berber empire to unite Morocco with al-Andalus. They prolonged Muslim rule in Iberia, tied the Sahara trade to the Mediterranean economy and left Marrakesh as a lasting capital, while their fall prepared the ground for the larger Almohad state.