Comunidad y comunidad virtual

Somewhat like Seville, Ceuta had a particular destiny. Because of its situation, the port maintained privileged, commercial, political, and military relations with the Iberian peninsula. The Almohad fleet’s base there was the grounds for these relations, and the qā’id al-usṭūl of Ceuta was usually the admiral of the Almohad fleet. The city played on its situation as a commercial crossroads between the Maghrib, the Latin West, and al-Andalus. Depending on the circumstances, Ceuta transferred its activities between these different zones, and in favorable periods profited from the circulation between these spaces. When the political situation in the Maghrib was disturbed after al-Mustanṣir’s death (1224), the city decided its own policies, freeing itself from the Maghribī hinterland and privileging its commercial interests with the Italians (especially the Genoese, well-implanted in the city), though sometimes also symbolically joining with the power in Marrakesh by swearing allegiance to the reigning caliph, as under al-Rashīd.

Thus, at the beginning of this period, during the conflict between al-Ma’mūn and Yaḥyá al-Muʿtaṣim b. al-Nāṣir, the governor of Ceuta, the sayyid Abū Mūs, al-Ma’mūn’s brother, proclaimed an ephemeral caliphate in 631/1229 that maintained relations with Ibn Hūd, then master of Algeciras. Al-Ma’mūn laid siege to the city by land for three months without

251 _{See taqdīm 41.} 252 _{See taqdīm 39.}

succeeding in taking it. The city recognized Ibn Hūd who appointed the admiral al-Ghustī as governor. Ceuta rapidly revolted against him and chased him away. Al-Yanashtī, one of the city’s main merchants, took the title of al-Muwaffaq bi-Llāh and governed the city for five years from 630/1233 and 635/1238. The city was then independent and maintained its place thanks to the port and its commercial Mediterranean networks, especially its agreements with the Genoese, who maintained a considerable quarter in Ceuta. Al-Yanashtī used, moreover, the Genoese as a scapegoat for his difficulties and incited the Ghumāra Berbers to pillage their neighborhood in 632/1234-1235. This episode led the inhabitants of the city to depose al- Yanashtī, and their new ruler, one of the Ghumāra shaykhs, Abū al-ʿAbbās b. Abī Saʿīd, to recognized the caliph al-Rashīd in Marrakesh (635/1238), as confirmed by monetary emissions.253 The city quickly recovered its autonomy since the Almohad ruler left control of the customs and the city government to Abū ʿAlī Ibn Khalāṣ, an Andalusī notable, like al- Yanashtī. Taqdīm 2 seems indeed to date from this period: the Almohad ruler appoints in a “collective allocution” (mukhāṭaba jumhūriyya) a new “qā’id at the head of the fleet (usṭūl) and maritime affairs (ashghāl al-baḥr),” with important prerogatives that included “customs (dīwān), the mint (sikka), inheritances (mawārīth), and tithes (zakāt).”254 This act may well concern Ibn Khalāṣ al-Balansī, who held his office until his death in 640/1243, when the city joined the Ḥafṣid emir Abū Zakariyā, with Tangiers doing the same. The two Moroccan ports remained under the Tunis Ḥafṣids until the death of Abū Zakariyā and the ascension of al-ʿAzafī who proclaimed his allegiance to the caliph al-Murtaḍá.255 _{In exchange, the caliph granted him}

an official investiture, probably taqdīm 6, in response “to the desire [of the population of the city] to see appointed the illustrious legal expert (faqīh) Abū l-Qāsim al-ʿAzafī over their land.”256 _{This long document mentions events the exact nature of which are hard to define, but}

which bear witness to the strategic situation of the region: spreading rumors are firmly condemned as “lies” (ufk, zūr) and “slander” (bahtān, baht), the interference of the “associators” (ahl al-shirk) and the intervention of the two “brothers” from a Christian monastic order (ifrayriyyān) reveal the weakness of the caliphal power in northern Morocco. Not only did the caliphate tolerate the contestation, but it was moreover incapable of putting it down other than through words.

253 _{B. ROSENBERGER, “Le contrôle du Détroit de Gibraltar (XII}e_-XIIIe _{siècles)”, 29.} 254 _{See below taqdīm 2, f° 3r, l. 23-3v, l. 1 and f° 3v, l. 17.}

255 _{A. ʿAZZĀWĪ, al-Gharb al-islāmī, t. 1, 46-47.} 256 _{See below taqdīm 6.}

E. The Marinid rise

The Berber Zanāta tribes of the high Algerian-Moroccan plains, the Banū Marīn, began to irrupt through Tāzā in the region of Fez in 1213. They do not seem before this date to have gone beyond Muluya or Guercif, where, as nomads in zone between Sijilmāssa and Figuig, they came to stock up on grains.

The restoration of caliphal authority under al-Rashīd was not enough to reestablish the Empire’s position, as shown by events in the Gharb. In 635/1238, to consolidate a situation that seemed to be improving, the caliph named one of the principal Almohad leaders, ʿAbd Allāh b. Wānūdīn al-Hintātī, as governor of the Gharb and the Ghumāra, a vital zone for the caliphate and extremely troubled by the tribal agitation of Arabs (Riyāḥ) and Zanāta (Banū Marīn). ʿAbd Allāh b. Wānūdīn al-Hintātī tried to play on the rivalry between the two branches of the Banū Marīn, the Banū ʿAskar and the Banū Ḥamāma. He allied with the former to combat the latter, but, in 637/1239-1240 when the battle came, the Banū ʿAskar defected; the Almohad, Riyāḥ, and Christian mercenary army was crushed by the Banū Ḥamāma. Having undergone this defeat and provoked the discontent of the local population with his fiscal demands in the Ghumāra districts and the cities of Meknes and Fez, and accused of too much independence and too many mistakes, ʿAbd Allāh b. Wānūdīn al-Hintātī fled to his tribe, the Hintāta of the High Atlas.

Al-Rashīd’s premature death at 24 in 640/1242, plunged Morocco into anarchy. ʿAlī Abū l-Ḥasan, the son of al-Ma’mūn, was acclaimed on his brother’s death, with the laqabs of al-Muʿtaḍid bi-Llāh and al-Saʿīd (640/1242-646/1248). Relying on the Arabs, he attempted to reestablish Almohad authority over Morocco and the Central Maghrib, while the Ḥafṣids spread their power to Tlemcen and the Marinids pushed as far as Meknes where they collected taxes.

Taqādīm 42 and 65 are explicitly attributed to him, but 66 and 77 were probably also written on

his initiative. During this time, Ceuta and Sijilmāssa joined the Ḥafṣids. Al-Muʿtaḍid bi-Llāh al-Saʿīd pressured the Marinids, who submitted. Their leader, Abū Yaḥyá b. ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq helped the Almohads attack the ʿAbd al-Wād. However, the caliph died in an ambush fighting against the Yaghmurasān. The Marinids took advantage of the situation to turn against the Almohad army and massacre them at Guercif, near the Muluya crossing, before capturing Fez. The Marrakesh makhzan then proclaimed caliph a nephew of al-Manṣūr, Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar al-Murtaḍá (646/1248-665/1266). His long reign, from which five taqādīm are extant in

the manuscript 4752, did not prevent the dynasty’s further weakening.257 _{The Marinids}

established their capital in Fez and organized their makhzan there. Abū Yaḥyá, then Abū Yūsuf, led the Marinids in their attempt to conquer the Moroccan south. The Almohad caliph was even forced to pay them tribute to save Marrakesh in 1262, but the respite bought was to be short. The threat in the end came not from outside, but from within the reigning family. In 1266, Idrīs Abū l-ʿUlá Abū Dabbūs al-Wāthiq (665/1266-668/1269), Abd al-Mu’min’s grandson, sought to overthrow his cousin. He obtained helped from the Marinid Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqub against al- Murtaḍá in exchange for one-third of his future conquests. Thanks to the 3,000 warriors the Marinids supplied him, and the Christian militia that joined him, he seized Marrakesh by surprise. Al-Murtaḍá fled to Azemmūr, to one of his sons-in-law, who turned him over to Abū Dabbūs al-Wāthiq for execution. The new caliph, confident in his strength, after having put down a rebellion in Sūs, refused to give the Marinid his share of conquests. Abū Dabbūs vainly sought the help of Yaghmurasān who created a diversion in eastern Morocco, but the Marinids marched on Marrakesh and seized it in 1269, putting an end to Almohad power.

Conclusion: from an itinerant court to a capital under siege

The conquering Empire (1147-1214) was succeeded by an imperial Morocco. With al- Nāṣir’s return to Marrakesh after the defeat at Las Navas de Tolosa, the sphere of action for the Almohad caliphs gradually decreased over a dozen years to the Western Maghrib, and the caliph shut himself off in his capital at Marrakesh. The first Empire had no real capital, even though Marrakesh and Seville were the official capitals, Tinmāl the symbolic capital, and the caliphal court the itinerant center of authority.258 _{From 1214-1229, we can see an increasing}

immobilization of the caliph, and a sedentarization of the ruler and the central administrations. The caliphate was effectively under siege from the moment the Marinids began to increase their pressure from the north of Morocco. The caliph’s trips little by little were reduced to the journey between Tinmāl and Marrakesh, the sphere of influence shrank by symbolic steps to the cradle of the Almohad movement. Provincial officials traveled to see the caliph in his capital, while until the reign of al-Nāṣir, the caliph was at home wherever he went. The court was itinerant, and governors, judges, and representatives were appointed or dismissed when the ruler arrived.

257 _{Taqādīm 6, 43, 44, 47, and 48, and probably 45 and 46.}

258 _{Jocelyne Dakhlia has studied the tradition of “itinerant” power in the Maghrib (J. DAKHLIA, “Dans la} mouvance du prince”). The Almohads began this tradition: initially the court's nomadic habits responded to the needs of the conquests, but they rapidly became “consubstantial” with the caliphal office (see M. Marín, “El califa almohade”, 457).

Thus, while the Empire disintegrated, the caliphs lost their power over most of the Empire’s territories. The governors of many regions became independent, like Muḥammad b. Yūsuf b. Naṣr in Granada, Yaghmurāsān in Tlemcen, Ibn Khalāṣ, then al-ʿAzafī in Ceuta, ʿAbd Allāh b. Zakariyā al-Hazrajī, Abū Zayd ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Zakariyā al-Ǧadmīwī and Muḥammad al-Qiṭrānī259 in Sijilmāssa. In many cities, the population was able to choose its own leaders, as in Tunis, Seville, or Ceuta. Beginning with the reign of al-Ma’mūn, only the governors of the Maghrib al-Aqṣá came under the caliph’s power, where the regime had to face the revolts of Arab tribes and the Marinids in the countryside. Outside the important governmental capitals, the caliph’s power extended only to the main cities: Tāzā, Azemmūr,260

Aghmāt, Darʿa and Meknes.261

This evolution was formed not only by sibling rivalry, the drive of the Christian powers, of the Latin world in general and the Iberian peninsula in particular, but also economic,

259 _{Ibn ʿIdhārī thus referred to him to underline the absolute scandal that came of the rise to power of someone} from the lower classes, since he was apparently a tar seller (qiṭrān). The weakening of Mu'minid power was thus accompanied by unprecedented troubles or deregulation, since even the lower classes were taking power (MG). 260 _{“Olive tree” in Berber (MG).}

261 _{ʿI. al-D. MŪSÁ, al-Muwaḥḥidūn fī l-Gharb al-islāmī, 178.}