Almoravids

Almoravids, Berber Muslim dynasty that ruled Morocco and Muslim Spain in the 11th and 12th cent. The Almoravids may have originated in what is now Mauritania. The real founder was Abd Allah ibn Yasin, who by military force converted a number of Saharan tribes to his own reformed religion and then advanced on Morocco. After his death (c.1059), Yusuf ibn Tashfin and his brother Abu Bakr came to power. Marrakech was founded in 1062 and was the center of a powerful empire. Called by the Moors in Spain to help stem Christian reconquest, Yusuf entered Andalusia and defeated (1086) Alfonso VI of Castile. He later subdued the local Muslim rulers and governed Muslim Spain and N Morocco (Abu Bakr ruling over S Morocco). The dynasty also pushed south, destroying the ancient state of Ghana. The Almoravids were rough and puritanical, contemptuous of the luxurious Muslim courts in Spain. Their rule was never entirely stable and in the 12th cent. was attacked by the Almohads, who finally (by 1174) won both Morocco and Muslim Spain.

Arabic al-Murābitsubdotūn

(1056–1147) Berber confederation that succeeded the Fātsubdotimid dynasty in the Maghrib. It flourished in the 11th and early 12th centuries. Its founder, aynAbd Allāh ibn Yasīn, was a Muslim scholar of the Mālikī school who used religious reform as a means of gaining followers in the mid-11th century. The Almoravids took over Morocco and then the rest of the Maghrib following the decline of the Zīrid dynasty. By 1082 they ruled Algiers. By 1110 they also controlled Muslim Spain, but the Christians began to win back territory in 1118. In the 1120s another Berber coalition, the Almohads, started a rebellion, eventually displacing the Almoravids.

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