Combustible nuclear
“GESTION DE RIESGOS FINANCIEROS, DE CAPITAL Y DE SEGUROS
Another type of resistance to the propagation of the Almohad doctrine and reform was tied to the religious effervescence that affected the entire Maghrib at this time.165 The Sūs
Ǧazūla revolted against the caliph of Marrakesh under the direction of their religious leader Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Hūd al-Māssī. This was the name he adopted when he too proclaimed himself Mahdī. Al-Baydhaq gives his name as ʿUmar b. al-Khayyāṭ and gives him also, as it was frequent, the Berber name of Bū Ykandī166. Apparently of humble origins, he
appeared for the first time in the ribāṭ of Māssa, near Sūs, forty-five kilometers south of Agadir. The revolt that he led began a year after ʿAbd al-Mu’min’s occupation of Marrakesh. According to the Almohad dynasty chronicles, fugitives from different regions came together under his banner. The inhabitants of Sijilmāssa and Darʿa recognized his power, as well as the Dukkāla,
165 H. FERHAT, Le maghreb au XIIe siècle- XIVe siècle.
166 This is probably a disparaging nickname, whose structure resembles those given to Almohad opponents such as Bū-wasardūn “the man with the mule” or Bū-waghyūl “the man with the ass,” a Ṣanhāja who rebelled in the Middle Atlas (MG).
Ragrāga,167 Huwāra, and Tāmesna.168 Al-Baydhaq cites the tribal territories that revolted in his
name: Ǧazūla, Ḥāḥa,169 Hazmīra, Haskūra, Dukkāla, and Banū Wariaghel were joined by the
cities of Ceuta, Tangiers, and Almería. According to Ibn ʿIdhārī, the entire land except for Marrakesh and Fez “apostatized”.170 Another revolt, apparently inspired by the Sufis against
ʿAbd al-Mu’min’s authority, was led by Yaddar171 al-Dukkālī, among the Dukkāla, called the
ahl al-rakawāt. The rakwa was considered a distinctive sign of the Sufis and itinerant ascetics,
and the region of Dukkāla was known as an important Sufi zone, mainly because of the influence in the region of the ribāṭ of Tīt,172 founded by the Banū Amghār.173
The revolt of al-Massātī, or al-Māssī, thus left the Almohads with only the Atlantic coast, Fez, and Marrakesh. Meknes, Sijilmāssa,174 and the region of Darʿa,175 as well as Tangiers
and Ceuta joined the rebellion. Ceuta’s participation was significant: led by its qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, the city had pledged its submission in 540/1146 and received an Almohad governor. The town’s inhabitants, like some regions of al-Andalus, thinking the end of the Almohads near, took advantage of al-Massātī’s insurrection to revolt against the governor and kill the Almohad officials. The Almohads were not able to crush this grave sedition until the end of 543/May 1149, killing Ibn Hūd al-Māssī. Ibn ʿAṭīyya’s report on this Almohad victory brought the famous secretary to the caliph’s attention. The letter revealed the violence of the battles and the cruel defeat of Ibn Hūd, the rebel’s ties to the ribāṭ of Māssa, as well as the Sufi preaching that had prepared the insurrection and Ibn Hūd’s success.176
Roger Le Tourneau analyzes these movements as a reaction to the Almohads’ development, like Muḥammad, of a new society that broke with the tribal structures and blood
167 The Berber form of this ethnonym is Irgrāgān, “the blessed.” This name comes from the root ĀRG, the Berber equivalent of the Arabic BRK. They received the name supposedly because their were the first Maṣmūda to convert to Islam and played an eminent role in its spread throughout the region. More probably, they formed a barrier against the Barghawāṭa, building a series of ribāts to contain them. Their territory ranged from Oued Tansift to the north, not far from Safi, to modern Essouira to the south (MG).
168 This name in Berber means “the plain”. It covered the great Atlanic plain from Habṭ to Oued Umm Rabīʿ. For centuries it belonged to the Barghawāṭa (MG).
169 Iḥāhān in Berber. This tribe's territory was located on the coast south of the Ragrāga and west of the Ganfīsa. According to local legend, this ethnonym came the Iḥāḥān habit of pronouncing kha' as ḥā' (MG).
170 M. GARCÍA ARENAL, Messianism and Puritanical Reform, 193-195. 171 This named is based on the Berber root DR, meaning “life” (MG).
172 The complete name of this ribāṭ, located some kilomaters from modern El Jadida, is Ṭīt n’Ufṭar, “the source of the instrument” which served to measure the quantity of wheat given for the zakāt (MG).
173 ʿI. DANDASH, “Dukkāla min khilāl al-Tashawwuf”, 199 ; V. J. CORNELL, “Ribāṭ Tīṭ-n-Fiṭr”, 23-36. 174 In Berber, Sig Il-mās signifies above the active waters. The name of the capital of king Syphax, Siga, refers to the same root (MG).
175 This name comes from the Berber Idra, “the other side of the mountain”, which conforms with this region's location in regards to the High Atlas (MG).
lines characteristic of the nomadic populations, to move towards a community of faith, united in the respect for the divine Law.177 This interpretation may be somewhat anachronistic,
ascribing to the time of the Mahdī ideological elements developed later, under the reign of ʿAbd al-ʿMu’min, or even his son and successor, Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf (1163-1184). The caliph, nevertheless, had much difficulty in suppressing these movements, and it was the “recognition” (iʿtirāf) of Almohad power, in reality a second bloody purification, concerning also the Almohad hierarchy, that “pacified” the regions of the Empire.178 According to Ibn ʿIdhārī, the
Barghawāta maintained their obedience to al-Māssī, even after his defeat and death, and continued to fight against the troops of ʿAbd al-Mu’min.179
These religiously-based revolts shed light on the weak control over conquered territories by the new masters of the Maghrib. When news of al-Māssī’s rebellion reached al-Andalus, Seville rose up against the two brothers of the Mahdī Ibn Tūmart who governed the city and its region. They claimed to have assassinated the ruler of Niebla, al-Biṭrūjī, who then renewed his alliance with the Almoravids who still remained in al-Andalus. Only Ibn ʿAzzūn, leader of Ronda and Jérez, stayed faithful to the Almohads. Ibn Ghāniya seized Algeciras and met up with the resistance in Ceuta. The Almohads, forced to flee to Bobastro with only Ibn ʿAzzūn’s help, were finally able to retake Algeciras.180 The Mahdī’s brothers were recalled to Marrakesh, where they opposed the caliphal changes that were sweeping them and the Mahdī’s primitive organization aside. This general insurrection lasted three years. The Almohad troops were only able to restore control over Seville, Niebla, Silves, Santa María del Algarve, and Badajoz after these troubles were settled.181
These religiously-based revolts were chronic throughout the Almohad Empire and concerned each of the caliphs. Around 1188, for example, Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb was retained in the Maghrib by the insurrections of al-Jazīrī (in Marrakesh) and al-Ashall (in the Zāb). In both cases, the rebels’ political and religious pretensions revealed strong social tensions.
C. The Administrative consequences of the conquest
Mūsá’s hypothesis about a progressive construction of partisan structures only partially contradicts Viguera Molíns’s claim that the Almohad movement’s initial period was
177 R. LE TOURNEAU, The Almohad Movement, 47.
178 Al-Baydhaq mentions the death of 32,780 victims (É. LE TOURNEAU, The Almohad Movement, 54). 179 IBN ʿIDHĀRĪ, Bayān, trans. Huici, 1963, 293.
180 B. ROSENBERGER, “Le contrôle du Détroit”. 181 Ma J. VIGUERA (dir.), El retroceso territorial, 85.
characterized by a rigorous and firmly established organization. Both historians agree that the passage out of the original Mahdī structures gradually took place over time, with the initial disappearance of tribal representation and the creation of the Empire.182 This retrospective reconstruction of institutional history indeed seems to be at the origin of a perception that once again tends to make this initial moment into a model, established ex abrupto, of social, political, and religious organization that was gradually betrayed by the founder’s successors. The organization’s appearance, as well as its disappearance, was gradual. There was thus not any real rupture between the time of the Mahdī and the Empire, but an empirical adaptation to new political conditions by structures that were always more or less informal and fluid. As much as the Mahdī asked the opinions of the members of the Council of Ten (ahl al-jamāʿa) and charged them each with particular tasks, ʿAbd al-Mu’min called on the surviving members of the “Assembly” (jamāʿa) to exercise the new functions demanded by the administration of the Empire. Thus, the shaykh Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar Intī, a member of the Council of Ten, was appointed governor of Cordova and left the partisan organization to enter the imperial administration. This appointment, and comparable others, led to a weakening of the structures slowly put into place during the movement’s early days.
More than twenty official letters from the time of ʿAbd al-Mu’min written in his name help fix the chancellery style typical of the dynasty and show the attention the ruler paid his entire territory. The founder of the Empire seems to have used the chancellery to promote the cohesion of the Empire, sparking a “pre-national” sentiment through public readings of circular letters in all the Great Mosques of the provincial capitals. Each conquest and victory was proclaimed during the Friday prayer through missives whose sağʿ (“rhymed prose”) had been composed by the great writers of the Empire. The logic is fairly obvious behind this system that combined the elaboration of an imperial discourse, the rapidity of transportation, and public readings in an immense Empire where communications were only as fast as a horse’s gallop. There was of course a propaganda effect in the publicity of victory, calling most often on the
topoi of religious and political thought, or even the literature and poetry of the medieval Arab-
Muslim world, that is adab, but these public announcements with the organization that they required had also other implications. They completed the traditional “signs of recognition” of power, such as pronouncing the caliph’s name in the khuṭba or on coins, the minting of gold, or the bayʿa, by imposing over the entire territory the same administrative language with its own
specific codes, a time of obligatory listening for all men and shared festivities to celebrate the sovereign’s success. The imperial cult was thus developing around a doctrine, a ruler, specific rites, and a history to which these administrative documents contributed.
The victories over the Arabs, during the conquest of Gafsa and the campaign of 1159- 1160, with the submission of the Banū Sulaym, received its own particular treatment in the letters of victory, and so also in the chronicles and later literature. The same is true of the demonstrations of joy and festivities organized in Seville after the fall of Mahdīya and the expulsion of the Normans by ʿAbd al-Mu’min in ṣafar 555/February-March 1160.183 At the
same time, the imperial governmental system gradually broke with the original “prophetic” structure. A new organization saw the light, with its own specific personnel, including not only the sons of ʿAbd al-Mu’min, among them a few in particular, such as the governor Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf b. ʿAbd al-Mu’min, but also an administrative hierarchy with the appearance of original title forms, including the shaykhs, sayyids, ṭalaba, and huffāz.