The taifas, the Almoravids and the Almohads

Part oneThe kingdoms of the factions

When the caliphate ended, dozens of small states appeared, each ruled by a local family. They are called the taifas, from the Arabic word for factions. Seville, Granada, Zaragoza, Toledo, Badajoz and Valencia were among the biggest. The rulers of Zaragoza were the Banu Hud, and Badajoz, Toledo and Valencia each had their own dynasty. Each court wanted to look like a little Cordoba, and each competed to attract the finest poets and scholars.

The result was an odd mix of political weakness and cultural brilliance. In Seville, al-Mu'tamid was a king and a poet, and his court was famous for verse. Ibn Hazm of Cordoba, who had lived through the fitna, wrote about the nature of love in The Ring of the Dove and also wrote influential books on law and religion.

Politically, the taifas were another story. Their rulers fought one another, and they paid tribute, called parias, to the Christian kings of the north to be left alone or to buy help against a neighbour. The Christian kings of Castile and Leon grew stronger on the proceeds. Even a Castilian knight was caught up in the system. Rodrigo Diaz, known as El Cid, served the Muslim king of Zaragoza for a time and took Valencia for himself in 1094. In 1085 Alfonso VI of Castile took Toledo, the old Visigothic capital, and the rest of the south saw how exposed it was.

Part twoThe Almoravids

Al-Mu'tamid and other rulers asked for help from across the strait. The answer came from the Almoravids, a movement of reformist Berber warriors from the Sahara who had built an empire in Morocco and founded Marrakesh around 1070. Their leader was Yusuf ibn Tashfin. In 1086 he crossed with an army and met Alfonso at Zallaqa, near Badajoz. The Muslims won decisively, and the northern advance paused for a time.

Yusuf then did what the taifa kings had feared. After a few years he decided that the little kingdoms could not be trusted to defend themselves, and he removed their rulers one by one with the backing of the jurists. The Almoravids collected few taxes besides those the law allowed, and for a while they were widely accepted as defenders of the faith. Al-Mu'tamid was taken to Morocco, where he spent his last years in captivity and wrote poetry about his lost palace. By the early 1100s the Almoravids ruled Muslim Iberia from Marrakesh.

Gold from West Africa crossed the Sahara to their mint, and their coins were trusted far beyond their borders. Yusuf died in 1106 and his son Ali succeeded him. The Almoravids were strict in religion, and they were a foreign power with little local support among Iberia's own scholars and townspeople. Their power weakened as Christian armies, led by Aragon, took Zaragoza in 1118. A rebellion in Cordoba in 1121 showed the strain. The movement was already being challenged from the Atlas Mountains.

Part threeThe Almohads

Ibn Tumart, a Berber preacher who had studied in the east, accused the Almoravids of having drifted from the true faith. He called his followers al-Muwahhidun, "those who affirm the oneness of God", which became Almohads in English. After his death his successor Abd al-Mu'min took Marrakesh in 1147 and then crossed into Iberia. Seville became their main centre in the peninsula. In Marrakesh they raised the tall minaret of the Kutubiyya mosque, and the Giralda of Seville, begun in the 1180s, follows the same pattern. It still stands beside the cathedral that later replaced the mosque. Almohad rule brought a measure of stability to Morocco and Iberia for several decades.

The Almohads also patronised thinkers. The caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf welcomed Ibn Tufayl and the philosopher and judge Ibn Rushd, known in Europe as Averroes, who was born in Cordoba in 1126. His long commentaries on Aristotle were translated into Latin and read in European universities, where he was often called simply the Commentator. Ibn Tufayl wrote a philosophical tale, Hayy ibn Yaqzan, about a boy who reaches truth by reason alone on a desert island. The great Sufi writer Ibn Arabi was born in Murcia in 1165 and left for the east as a young man.

At the same time, the Almohads were less tolerant of Jews and Christians than earlier rulers, and many left the country. The philosopher Maimonides, born in Cordoba, was among those who left. Ibn Rushd himself fell out of favour for a time in the 1190s and was sent away from court.

In 1195 the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur won a major victory over Castile at Alarcos. But the Christian kings joined forces, and on 16 July 1212 they met the Almohad army at Las Navas de Tolosa, in the hills north of Jaen. The Muslims were badly defeated. Almohad power in Iberia collapsed in the following years. The Christian armies would soon advance on Cordoba and Seville.

The result was an odd mix of political weakness and cultural brilliance.

WatchThe lecture for this chapter

Lecture Al MuqaddimahThe (First) Taifas of Muslim Spain (opens on YouTube)

The mapWhere it happened

• Seville
• Toledo
• Zallaqa
• Marrakesh
• Alarcos
• Las Navas de Tolosa

This map is a simple sketch to help you picture where events took place. Positions, distances and borders are approximate, so please use it for reference only, not as an accurate map.

SourcesSources for this chapter