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16 - Muslim Spain and Portugal: Al-Andalus and its Neighbours
- By Hugh Kennedy
Edited by David Luscombe, University of Sheffield, Jonathan Riley-Smith, University of Cambridge
Book:

The New Cambridge Medieval History

Published online:

28 March 2008

Print publication:

14 October 2004, pp 599-622
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Summary

The frontiers of al-Andalus were free from major outside threats: to the north the Christian kingdoms and counties had been repeatedly raided and their armed forces worsted in battle, culminating in the humiliating sack of Santiago de Compostela in 999. The removal of the Fatimids from Tunisia to Egypt in 969 meant that there was no threat to al-Andalus from the Muslim east. With the collapse of the caliphate, al-Andalus broke up into a number of different states, each with its own court and capital. By 1083, the Almoravids had reached the Straits of Gibraltar and were in undisputed control of Morocco. By 1148, only Granada and the Balearic islands remained under Almoravid control: Granada fell to the Almohads in 1155, but the Balearic islands remained in the hands of the Almoravid Banu Ghaniya and the base for repeated raids on Almohad North Africa.

(b) - The Maghrib
from 19 - Islam and the Mediterranean
- By Michael Brett
David Abulafia, University of Cambridge
Book:

The New Cambridge Medieval History

Published online:

28 March 2008

Print publication:

21 October 1999, pp 622-635
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The triumph of Islam in the Maghrib was the victory of the pure faith of the Prophet over adawa, enmity to the Law on the part of pagans, Christians and Jews, and all Muslims blinded by the ramifications of traditional jurisprudence. The definition of the new faith was that of the great theologian al-Ghazali at the end of the eleventh century, as preached in the Maghrib at the beginning of the twelfth by the Mahdi Ibn Tumart. Less ominous but more serious in the long term was the situation in the eastern Maghrib or Ifriqiya, where the Almohads were faced with a mercurial enemy composed of Almoravids, Arabs and Turks. The creation of a new empire in the central Maghrib was a novel enterprise which threatened the monarchies of Ifriqiya and Morocco. In effect, the Moroccan sultan transferred his capital to his camp, which he built into a replacement for the city he had surrounded.

11 - The Sahara and the Sudan from the Arab conquest of the Maghrib to the rise of the Almoravids
- By Nehemia Levtzion, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Edited by J. D. Fage
Book:

The Cambridge History of Africa

Published online:

28 March 2008

Print publication:

01 February 1979, pp 637-684
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The Saharan trade and the introduction of Islam were the two principal external factors in the history of West Africa before 1500. The journey across the Sahara with slaves must have been extremely difficult and exhausting. This is fully borne out in an anecdote about an Ibāḍī from Wargla in the eleventh century. The Umayyad government sought to encourage the flow of gold from the Sudan. But direct imperial involvement in the organization of the gold-trade was short-lived. In 750, when the Umayyad caliphate was overthrown, the Maghrib was in the throes of a Berber revolt under the banners of different sects of the Kharijiyya. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, Kairouan was an important centre of Islamic learning, and almost all the important fuqahāʾ of the Maghrib studied there for some time. The Almoravids left their impact in the Sudan, where their intervention brought about the islamization of Ghana and eradicated traces of Ibadi influence.