In Our Time - The Almoravid Empire

Episode Date: May 3, 2018

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Berber people who grew to dominate the western Maghreb, founded Marrakesh and took control of Al-Andalus. They were desert people, wearing veils over their faces to keep out the sand, and they wanted a simpler form of Islam. They called themselves the Murabitun, the people who gathered together to fight the holy war, and they were tough fighters; the Spanish knight El Cid fought them and lost, and the legend that built around him said the Almoravids were terrible and had to be resisted. They kept back the Christians of northern Spain, so helping extend Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula, before they themselves were destroyed and replaced by their rivals, the Almohads, from the Atlas Mountains.The image above shows the interior of the cupola, Almoravid Koubba, Marrakesh (C11th)With Amira K Bennison Professor in the History and Culture of the Maghreb at the University of CambridgeNicola Clarke Lecturer in the History of the Islamic World at Newcastle UniversityAnd Hugh Kennedy Professor of Arabic at SOAS, University of LondonProducer: Simon Tillotson.

This is the BBC. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoyed the programs. Hello, in the 11th century, veiled Islamic warriors rode out of the Sahara Desert and across the Atlas Mountains and established an empire, firstly in North West Africa and then in Muslim Spain.

These nomadic tribes were the Almoravids, united by their strict interpretation of Islam and their jihad against rival Muslims and then Christians. They also controlled trade across the Sahara and were rich from West African gold. They established Marrakesh, which became the greatest city in the region, and they stopped the Christians overrunning Muslim Spain after the fall of Toledo in 1085,

helping postponed by 400 years what Christians called the reconquista. With me to discuss the Armoravid Empire are Ameriqe-Bennyson, Professor in the History of Culture, in the history of culture of the Magrid at the University of Cambridge, Nicola Clark, a lecturer in the history of the Islamic world at Newcastle University, and Hugh Kennedy, Professor of Arabic at Soas, University of London. Amir Abinerson, what does Almoravid mean? And is it a place, a people, and idea? What is it?

The word Almoravid actually comes to us from Spanish. It's a name of a group. It's about people. it relates to the Arabic root, Rabata, which is to Thai, and it is a sense of people who are either tied to God in the sense of being particularly committed to a particular religious message. It's often attributed in later sources to being given to the group at a particular moment of time by their leader, Ibn Yersin,

when they had had a particularly bad battle, many had died, and he encouraged them and galvanized them by saying you are, in Arabic, al-Murabitun, the ones who are tied to God and your commitment will be rewarded. In terms of the people who they actually were from another perspective, they were predominantly Sanhaja Berbers from the Saharan Desert. So when did they come together of people? Were there people before they started on the track of the road to conquest or the individual tribes, and how related were they in the sense of a cohesive force?

The Sanjaharja are a tribal people. Many different tribes made up the Confederation. They were sometimes hostile to each other. And it is really the religious message preached to them by Ibn Yersin, which gradually unites more and more tribes. However, that process of unification was not simply a matter of persuasion to follow a particular form of Islam, but it also could be coercive in the sense of tribes fighting each other and the defeated party joining the movement. So the Sanhaja are a number of different

tribes scattered throughout the Sahara who become gradually united into a single group, the Al-Morovids, who then go on to create an empire. The Sahara is so big. Can you give us any idea of the size of the army that men came together? It's very difficult to say for the 11th century. We don't really have any statistics. So I would hesitate to put numbers on this. The sources don't routinely talk about numbers, but I don't think we're not talking about massive armies by any means.

We're not talking about 20,000 people. In terms of the entire Confederation, one might be. And I suppose the point to make here is that tribesmen are generally not civilians and soldiers. There isn't that division. Everybody is capable of fighting. So you can mobilize very large numbers of people if you do need to, but that doesn't mean that for every battle there was a huge number of troops involved. How and when did they acquire their very strict approach to Islam? Their approach to Islam, which one might describe as Malikism, one of the branches of Sunni Islam,

was brought to them by a preacher, Ibn Yersin. There are many stories about how Ibn Yersin arrived in the desert, including stories of Sanhaja tribesmen going on pilgrimage, meeting scholars in Karewa. Yes, going on pilgrimage to Mecca, that's correct.

Meeting scholars in Kaira, which was the main city in Tunisia at that time, and becoming aware of, their relative ignorance about what it really meant to be Muslim. I think one point to make is that in this era, much of North Africa's population has heard of Islam. They may have nominally converted, but there isn't a deep understanding of what it means to be Muslim.

So the arrival of Ibn Yersin teaching these tribesmen is part of a very long process of gradual Islamization of peoples within North Africa. And they adopt this particular form, Maliki, Sunism. Nicola Clark, what would Jihad have meant to the Moribis? They brought it back from Mecca or there's this preacher anyway. They turn out to be, let's call on a sect, that useful, a very tough. Can you tell me more about that?

So, I mean, in terms of thinking about jihad, I suppose there's, I guess, two elements to it. One is obviously the sense that we're most familiar with today in terms of fighting, but there's also the sense of struggle, sort of internal struggle, moral struggle and so forth. And I think both of those elements are important for the Al-Maravids. So as Amira says, this idea of sort of trying to educate the Saniha Burba's in Islam is very important to have in Yassin's kind of his message. So it's partly about sort of an idea of trying to unite this tribe under a particular form of Islam. So it's through

fighting but also moral reform as well in education. Who was trying, who principally was trying to unite them? Wayne, can you give us a date now? So we're talking about primarily sort of 1140s, 1150s, and sorry, 1040s, 1050s, I do apologize. And so, as you say, Ibn Yazin particularly, and there's this idea that, yeah, that they required a bit more education that they didn't know enough about Islam and so forth. And so I think it's also partly, I mean, as Amir says, North Africa, particularly the Maghreb is there's not a huge amount of political formation in this area. Things are quite diffuse.

So it's also about bringing them together under leadership as well, an idea of that Islam as a community should be a united community. Did they have outward and visible forms of their faiths? Like who you learn about in the Middle East at that time, for instance? In the sense of mosques and things. Yes. So, I mean, one of the things ultimately the Ammaravids go on to do is they spend, quite a lot of time, put quite a lot of money

into building mosques. Again, a lot of, to the extent of settlement in this area, at the time when they're getting started, there are some cities, but they're mostly sort of trading places. And one of the things... Like Fas and Tangier. Yes, yeah.

And so, one of the things that the Armaravids are doing very much is building mosques. There's sort of focal points for the movement. They got rich through gold. Can you tell us about that? So, I mean, this is, again, sort of the gold trade, the Trans-Saharan gold trade, particularly from mines in West Africa, is something that's been very important to the sort of economy of the region for quite some time.

So people, regimes like the Amayyads in Spain have been sort of battling for quite a long time to take control of some of this. And then the Almaravids there, particularly in the 1070s, the Amaravids, it's a little bit hard to say, whether it's a conquest or a sort of alliance or something on these lines, but take control in particularly in the area of Ghana and then that gives them control of the gold trade from West Africa and so that it gives them that channel. What do they trade for the gold? Particularly salt, I understand.

Yeah, so I think salt is one of the things. There's also, I mean, their grain, I think as well, is also travelling across the Sahara, but yes. So there are three trades, I understand it, gold, salt and slaves. Was the slave part of their trade? big? I think it's not as substantial as it becomes, I would say.

Becomes when? In towards the later medieval period, the slave trade becomes rather larger. But the slave trade in this region also, I mean, there's also quite a lot of, there's some trade certainly into Muslim Spain from Central Europe and Eastern Europe as well, so it's not just purely the Trans-Saharan trade that's important. Can we just pin down how rich this gold? trade made them because as I understand it these few, comparatively

and let's say at least try, and ended up controlling currency or being the currency of the area which is a remarkable thing to happen. Yeah, so they, certainly the gold is being used not just to sort of make jewellery and things like that, but yes, it's also very much for minting coins and these coins do travel a lot

around the Mediterranean and so on. So yeah, they are extremely important and it again is important for Muslim Spain too. So the Amoravids are on the rise Hugh Kennedy. What's on the decline? there's a companion piece to this? The most noticeable decline is in Spain, just across the water, of course, easily visible

from the North African coast, where the Omair Caliphate, which had been in the 10th century, the richest and most sophisticated and developed political unit in Western Europe, had disintegrated during the course of the 11th century into a lot of little individual kingdoms. Each major town had its own king, its own court,

and so on, believe there were rivalries between them. And this wouldn't have mattered so much, except that the Christians of northern Spain, from Castile and Leon and Aragon, were increasingly militant and increasingly took advantage of the insecurity in the Muslim areas.

And so at the time of the al-Maravids were emerging and developing their power in North Africa, Muslim Spain, Al-Andalus, as they called it, was in crisis and under threat. Can we stay in North Africa for a little while longer here? We're going to go across the Strait of which you brought her quite soon, but not quite yet. How integrated were the Berber people outside North West Africa? What sort of force are we talking about?

It's much the same question as I asked Nicola, but maybe you can bring a different aspect to it. The Berbers of North Africa lived very simple lives in the sense of they lived in tribal groups, either as nomads in, particularly in the Sahara, where the Sanhaja come from, or in the mountain areas where they live to tribal lives, but in villages and cultivating things. The area was very unurbanized, particularly compared with other areas in the Middle East, with just as the small settlements at Fez and Tangier being the only urban communities, really in the area.

And Islamic learning and Islamic law and so on were very much confined to those small urban areas. the rest of the population, as we've just been hearing, was really quite unaware, shall we say, of what orthopraxist, what orthodox Islam was about. So how far could we call them Islamists and how far could we call them people who just rounded up for battle? The two go together. They join the...

Can you give us a weight from one side to the other? Everybody has their own motives, but basically people were anxious, lots of people are anxious to convert to what they saw as a true Islam because of all the benefits you've got in this world and the next, which is very important. But also, people want to join

a successful group. Success breeds success, particularly in a society there where loyalty is very fluid, where different groups can align and with other groups and then break away from them and so on. The Amaravids were the real coming people and they attracted anyone who wanted to be part of, well, being modern in mid-11th century in Morocco, meant

joining the Amaravids. How were they regarded when they moved over, when they began to explain, how are they regarded by Arabic people? Because they weren't Arabic, were they? Well, they were not Arabic in the sense they didn't speak Arabic as their primary language, and that's the only definition. But there is this, historians make this contrast between, as it were, the sophisticated people of Al-Andalus and cities like fares who are educated in Arab language, literature,

and living very urban and urbane lives, compared with the rude Berbers who, you know, rolled up in their blankets underneath their camels. So there's that and the resentment that we get in some sources, and we can find in some sources, of these sophisticated urbanites against these nomads who are nonetheless very important, to protect them from the Christians. But they were regarded rather as barbarians, were they? Am I pushing it? Yes, I think they were.

And particularly they spoke of foreign language and they were veiled. Everyone talks about the veiling of the men as a very distinctive thing. And that made them kind of threatening when they walked through the street, just like somebody wearing a balaclava might be in a London street today.

They inspired awe, but also inspired anxiety. The bail wasn't, I think, it wasn't to do with, for holy reasons, it was to keep the sand out of their face. It seems to be an ancient custom for exactly that reason. But the veiling of men, of course,

is absolutely something that does not go on in most Islamic societies. And it gave rise to people who thought they were or their enemies accused them of being effeminate, trying to betray them they were women and so on and so forth. And you can imagine that sort of discourse. Amair, Mary Benison,

We talk about them without culture. Yet they established Marrakesh. That was a piece of level ground, up sprang Marrakech, one of the great cities there, and it continued to be. Yes, they did found Marrakesh. We don't know the exact date, probably sometime between 1062 and 1072.

That'll do. And I would also like to point out, though, that they do consider towns very important and one that we haven't mentioned, which we must mention, is Sijl Masa on the northern edge of the desert, which was one of their first conquests and set them on the path to empire.

And after capturing Sijl Masa in the northern Sahara, and Al-Degust in the southern Sahara, they cross the mountains, and then they need to think about having an urban base. Cross the Atlas Mountains. The Atlas Mountains in Morocco today, yes. And once they've crossed those mountains, they want to have a new urban base north of the high Atlas.

They settle in a small town of Agmart, which is another trading centre for some time, and then they did for various reasons, which may be to do with overcrowding in Agmat, or simply a desire to have their own base. They negotiate with local tribes and get territory to found Marrakesh, which seems in many ways like early Islamic garrison towns that were established after the Arab conquests of the Middle Eastern North Africa. It was quite simple, but it was primarily for the Almoravids themselves and their following. It was probably made up of sort of domestic compounds for each family in clan,

quite dispersed with palm trees and other planting areas for livestock. But it was also on another level seen as being in some way royal, the site of the Almoravit royal family and their immediate Sanhaja tribal following. Did they build early on? Did they build mosques? We know very little about the early history of Marrakesh. It was probably founded by Abu Bakr, one of the very early leaders of the movement. He returned to the Sahara quite soon after that point, and the next phase of building was under use of Ibn Tashvim,

who took over control of the movement. He is associated with the building of a great mosque, but it doesn't seem that Marrakesh was particularly, particularly urban in the time of Yusuf bin Tashvina. It's really under his son Ali, who is in control, not only of North African territories, but also territories in what's now Spain and Portugal, and eventually the Balearic Islands.

And by creating that huge empire, there's then a pool of labour and craftsmen who gradually flow down to the city of Marrakech, which becomes a hugely important hub for the urbanisation of the south. Nicola Clark, why were the Almoravids invited? Because they were invited. Some ideas, they raided Spain. They were invited in by the Muslims in Spain.

Why did the Muslims want them to come across the Straits of Gibraltar? So, as Hugh mentioned a little bit earlier on, in Muslim Spain at the time there's... I think the situation is tense and quite vibrant in lots of ways, but also quite unstable. So at the beginning of the 11th century, the Amide Caliphate that had been ruling in Spain from the 8th century that collapsed and left in its wake a whole kind of profusion of city states. And they're around about 30 or so of them at the beginning of the 11th century and they gradually, they spend quite a lot of time essentially just disagreeing with each other and gobbling each other up, particularly the city of Seville, sort of cannibalizes quite these city states. But because they're quite disunited and because, as you mentioned, that the Christian North is, I'm,

starting to push further south. I mean, for a while, there's this sort of status quo in which people particularly like Alfonso, the 6th of Leon Castile, he is effectively extracting protection money from some of these city-states, particularly Toledo, in return for essentially not attacking them.

But then, so there are, certainly there are quite a lot of cross-border campaigns. So what's happening is that there's all of disintegration in Western Spain and the great civilisation of Cordoba, as collapsing. But the most significant event, sorry to interrupt you, is that in 1085 the Christians, capital, let's say it's near enough the middle of Spain

and everybody, the Muslims are frightened, that the game's up, and so they need help. Yes, yeah, absolutely. So, because Toledo had been the Visigothic capital of Spain before the Islamic conquest, so it was a very big kind of symbolic victory for the Christians, and it certainly caused panic among the rulers of these city-states. So the ruler of Seville, quite reluctantly, I think, in lots of ways.

I think he realizes that maybe this is not necessarily going to be the best option, but he writes to Yusufibhantashvim, who Amir mentioned is at this stage, that the ruler, the leader of the Amiravids and says, please, please, please come and help. And so in 1086, Yusufibn Tashvine makes his first journey across to Spain. Which is very serious. Have we any record of what that communication was, why he agreed, and when he agreed, what forces he took there?

That's a compound question, but you're fully capable of it. We don't know originally how the communications began, but the distances are very short, and people are always coming across the straits from Andalus to North Africa. And when he seemed, Yusuf Metschfine seemed to have intervened somewhat reluctantly originally. He was invited and persuaded,

and he came across for short campaigns and then went back to North Africa. It was only in 1092, after a couple of previous, interventions and a great victory over the Castilians that he finally decided there was no hope for the Muslim powers. They weren't going to get their act together. They needed a permanent al-Maravid presence to protect them from the... We can't hop over the great victory over the Castilians. That was quite something, wasn't this? It was a king Alponso. They went on the

battlefield with him and they won. And they won. And the Amaravids, like lots of desert peoples, were highly mobile, very used to hardship and very used to maneuvering together in groups, were very effective in field battles. They were much less effective than in the new style warfare that was coming in particularly...

At the time, let's go one thing at a time. The first big battle against the King of Castile, which mattered, if they fought, they won. That must have meant something. Yes. 1086 at Zalaka. And a year after the fall of Toledo. A year after the fall of Toledo. And it was a big defeat for Alfonso,

the sixth of Castile, who was a leading Christian monarch at the time, and a severe setback for his, he was really on the verge of, as you were saying, gobbling up Muslim Spain, basically, and that couldn't enter for a while. Yes. And was it this, that this victory that persuaded Elmarov is that they could go over in bigger force with greater determination and take over? Yes. Well, not that they could, but also that they had to.

Why did they have to? Because they were the only people who had a vice. viable military force that could stand up to the Christian armies. So they won that Battle of Mirra. What happened next? And what did the Spanish Muslims think of these people coming in from the Sand Dunes? Very romantically, for me, I think from the sand dunes of the Sahara with their kind. What did they think of these people?

Yes, I don't think the Muslims of the Iberian Peninsula saw it quite so romantically. But I think we should point out that there is a division in Andalusie society. The juridical establishment, the jurists. really do support the Almoravids quite strongly. They like their form of Islam. They think they are more pious and devoted to the cause than the Tarifa rulers, the petty princes of the peninsula.

So whilst there's a reluctance among rulers in Al-Andalus to invite the Almoravids in, there's a lot of support at grassroots level for them coming into the peninsula, for them holding the line very strongly against the Christian kings of the north. Who are coming down south.

Who are pushing south. So initially I think there's quite a lot of optimism and enthusiasm. And in most parts of the peninsula, say for instance, Grenada, you have a sort of a split in the Grenadden community between those who are welcoming the Almoravids

with banners and cheers and parades and the rulers themselves who are having to pack their bags and are being sent into exile in North Africa. However, that kind of honeymoon period does begin to sour quite quickly, for some of the reasons we've mentioned before,

that these people do seem very alien, very strange, very different to the Andalusies. And they're prepared to tolerate them as long as they're militarily successful. And secondly, and quite importantly, as long as they don't tax them too hard. Because another issue here right from the outset was the level of taxation in the Iberian Peninsula. And the petty kings were taxing people very heavily to try and pay tribute to the Christian kings. So the Almoravids come in on a platform of low taxes as well as effective military defence of the frontier. But they're mutually exclusive. You actually have to raise a lot of money to hold the frontier. So the Almoravids start to impose taxes. And it's at that point that

people begin to become unhappy. And then when that's combined with some military defeats, the whole thing begins to go sour and the population begins to react against the Almoravids. Can we defer the defeats for a moment or two? Of course we can. Go back to Nicklin. Talk about El Cid, who is a certain amount of obscurity,

but a certain amount of clarity, a knight, a Christian, but he fought Christians as well as Muslims, great hero, and he became a legend and there's a great poem about him, which is a huge reference of persons like yourself. Can you give us the whole truth about him?

We don't really have time for the whole truth, I think. Yeah, we have time for everything. But certainly, so yes, as you mentioned, there's the poem, which is written a considerable while after El Cid's career and talks very much about him, as you say, as this sort of great Christian hero, who, despite the fact that his king, Alfonso I, the 6th, it treats him rather badly,

he emerges as very much this sort of this noble figure who's vindicated over the course of the poem, who's good to his followers, including some Muslim followers. There's lots of cheering villages around every time El Cid comes past and so forth. Some of the earlier sources, both the Arabic sources and a Latin biography of him

sort of complicate that picture a little bit more and particularly talk a lot more about the fact that he's perhaps a little bit more of a mercenary figure than we might expect from that image that he various times he's in exile from Castile. He works for, amongst other things, the rulers of Tharagotha, for the Muslim rulers of Tharagotha,

and he raids Christian territory repeatedly, particularly, in Aragon. And so he is a rather more complex figure. How did he become a Christian hero and legend in Spanish literature then? I think, I mean, one of the things is that he does inflict, to go to the defeats of the Armoravids, he does inflict very significant defeat on the Armouravids in 1094, and he takes over the city of Balenthea. I mean, again, there's quite a lot of back and forth and skullduggery going on there, and it's a rather more complicated picture than it might appear. But I think, yeah, that sort of, that sense of him as resisting the Armaravids and being able to

afflicted defeat from the armaravids, which has not generally been the case. As Hugh mentioned, they've been a very significant, very, very big force against the Christians until that point. I think that helps quite a bit. But some of it is also, I think, just as the Crusade period goes on and the Reconquista period goes on, people are looking for, perhaps for heroes. And so El Cid gets slightly reimagined, I think, in lots of ways. It's enrolled as an inspirational figure. Hugh, can you give us some idea and the armouredges are there?

They won a great battle. They're raising taxes as Amiris said. People don't like that. They never do, that's all right. What's happening? Are they settling in? Are they really ruling? Are they in palaces?

Are they making the law? Are they running stuff? They're certainly living in palaces, and they are an elite, and they're an interrelated elite and slightly exclusive elite. It was difficult for... You mean they're still with their old tribes back in the Sahara?

Yes, but they're also with their cousins in the neighbouring cities in Spain. They're a self-contained elite. They're very different from what you were talking... what Amira was talking about, the legal elite, which is important in terms of public opinion and so on, who were almost entirely Andalusis. That's Arabic-speaking natives. But the military establishment, the political establishment,

was really... What does I say? It was corralled by a small group of Almaravid families who'd done very well out of it. And as time goes on and as they become militarily less effective against the Christians, more resentment builds up against these foreigners. Was what was happening there, marked a different from what was happening in other parts of the Islamic, other parts of Islamic influence. Well, there is an interesting parallel in terms of the Turkish.

Seljuk invasion of the Middle East and in the 1050s onwards and the way again. And another really desert stepland people come in from the east to the developed urban lands of the Middle East. And they established themselves as rulers over a series of generations. But like the Almoravids, they co-opted the bureaucrats and the literary class of the legal scholars of the Middle East to support their. nomad rule, basically, or their Turkish rule. So the Amaravids in Spain particularly and do the same thing,

that they co-opt existing elites to support them. But they careful both Seljuks and in the East and Amaravs in the West are careful to keep the real political power in the hands of the families who originally... You mean, wishing to talk about your decline, all of you, but they were there for quite a long time. I mean, they were in control for upwards. of a century or near enough.

The historian Ibn Kaldun is that how he pronounced it, wrote about the Almoravids about their rise to power and he saw that part of a cycle. What did you mean by that? Well, Ibn Haldun's theory and he used the Almoravids

and their successors, the Almohads, amongst other dynasties, to generate his theory. So he was looking at the history of this period when he generated the theory and he felt that empires are generally built by tribal peoples who have the military qualities and capabilities once they're united by some kind of a religious program which enables them to get over internal feuds of various kinds. But that to have an empire you need to capture cities.

So this tribal group will go out and capture cities, create an empire. He then argued, though, that once you settle in a city, that the tribal group, sort of lifestyle becomes somewhat diluted by living in that city. They sort of begin to relax a bit. They begin to like nice meals and nice clothes and become less fervent. And as a result, sort of over three generations, they will probably lose that kind of impetus and dynamism that they had at the start. And they are likely then to be overthrown by a new tribal people from the periphery

who have fresh impetus and dynamism and a new religious message. Can I pick up a stitch with you, Hugh, when you're talking about they declined because they were wonderful at open field battles, but then things moved on, where'd they move on to, and why weren't they wonderful at that as well? Well, if they were going to secure the future of the Muslim communities in Spain and Arnoldus, they had to retake, particularly Toledo, which is a big fortified city, and Almaravid military technology was simply not up to that in terms of, because in order to arrange a siege, you have to the siege equipment, you have to have a regular service. supply chain to keep the people fed. And increasingly, they began to recruit, ironically, Christian soldiers or corrupt soldiers of Christian origin. And not only in Spain did they employ them, because these people would do anything for good salaries and the prospect of booty, but they even employed them in Marrakesh to defend them from their Moroccan enemies. And so you get a community of Christian soldiers in Marrakech with their own church and their own priests,

in the heartlands of this supposedly purely Islamic empire. Waging jihad against them. Yes. And I think this really was really challenging for lots of the population. Here are these Muslims and say these champions of Islam actually depend for a lot of their survival on a group of Christian mercenaries,

mostly Catalans from Barcelona. And Nicola, there was another people on the horizon and threatening the Amoravids, the Almohads, who were they? So the Almohads are, well, they get their start, their sort of founding figure, Mohamed bin Tumat. He's in Masmuda Berber, and so from the Atlas Mountains. And he initially is, I mean, he's educated partly in the Ammaravid lands. He also travels further east.

But he has, in contrast to the Ammaravids, who have this very legalistic, this meliki form of Sunni Islam, he has much more of a kind of, he develops much more of a kind of hybrid sort of theology. So their name, the Almahads, this is a version of the Arabic term Wehudun, which means the sort of believers in the oneness of God, the unity of God.

And he presents himself various times as a sort of, as the Mahdi, as a sort of Messiah figure. And he very much, again, he's very committed to this idea of very personally going around and commanding the right and forbidding the wrong as the term goes. So he goes around and personally tells people off for doing things wrong.

So he supposedly sort of frightens the, an al-Moravid governor's sister on her horse because she's riding around without a veil. He smashes instruments. He smashes wine cups, all this sort of thing. So he's basically making himself very irritating to people. And eventually in a sort of ends up being kicked out of Marrakesh and ends up sort of retreating to a sort of military monastery type thing in the mountains,

gradually sort of builds up the following through preaching along those lines and eventually comes to combat the Amaravids more directly. So presumably these are the other people from the periphery that you refer to, Hugh, are coming in when they are, you know, how good were they? I mean, obviously good enough to begin to drive. So you can have a good time now. You can talk about the decline. They came in the middle of the 11th century.

We're in the middle of the 11th century. We're in the 12th century now, and we're heading. and in a few decades of decline. Now, you're in your element now. What happened? How did this happen? The decline, expert on decline, yes. The problem for the Almoravids was that they lost control of Morocco.

They lost control of the Moroccan heartlands. And the contrasts that they were just bringing up between the mountain peoples of the Masmuda Berbers of the mountains and the peoples of the plains of the desert. And it's the people of the mountains who support the Al-Moharov. hats and they attack Marrakesh, so they go for the centre of the Almaravid Empire. How distinct are the people of the mountains, are also no ones, from the people of the desert? They belong to different tribes. They probably spoke a different dialect. They were immediately recognisable as different people, and they had completely different lifestyles. They lived in

little mountain villages with terraced fields and so on. They were very much bound in a tribal society, but there's always, perhaps, historically, since the beginning of time, this rivalry between nomad peoples and village peoples. And perhaps that's one of the things that were played out in the triumph of the Almohads over the Almoravids. You look as if you want to come in, and I suppose I just wanted to say, since you know, you were mentioning that we seem to be going towards the decline in the moment, that of course part of the resistance that the Al-Moravids face in North Africa and in Al-Andalus is because they're effective. They establish the first provincial administration within North Africa.

They're probably the first regime to actually tax these North African tribes. So you can argue that part of the resistance of the Masmuda in the mountains is because the first time they are feeling the hand of an outside government upon them. And they begin to resent that and resist it. So in a sense they're victims of their success rather than this just simply being a decline. They're often written up as culturally ignorant and absent, as it were, here. Is that true? Not entirely, but compared with that Almohad's successors, we don't hear of Elmarov. It's, for example, establishing libraries, patronising intellectuals and so on.

They certainly supported the jurists and so on. but we can't really point to any great intellectual achievements that we owe to the Almoravid regime. They built buildings, some of which survive. So, no. And they were against alcohol? They were against alcohol. And they were against poetry?

Not in Susie. Well, you're shaking your head, but one of you in your paper said that they were against poetry. No, no. And they weren't against poetry. So they were not against poetry. Everyone liked poetry, as long as the poets said good things about them, basically. Whether it went much beyond that. is difficult to tell.

But they have a reputation probably justified for not being that interested in culture, in the way that their successors and in a way that the Umaz had been before them. When the Almahadz came in, did they take over the role of holding back the Christians in Spain? Yes, they did. Because they held them back for a few hundred years, didn't they?

They did, and in a sense, they enter the Iberian Peninsula first and foremost to combat the Almoravids, but also to hold the frontier and prevent further Christian advances. And the Almohads do have notable military successes, just as the Al-Moravids had before them. So that is an important part of what the Almohads do. But to go back to the culture point for a moment, if I may, very briefly,

I do think it's also partly the fact that they don't have much time to develop their culture. patronage. And we do know that in the second third generation, we have women poetesses in Seville holding literary gatherings. So one could argue that if the Almoravids had had more time, they would have become great patrons of culture

and learning. It's not that they were definitely opposed to that. It was simply a matter of time in my view. Is there any one thing that can say drove them out? You keep talking about not more time. That's a very good point. So what pushed them out in the end? We've talked about having to hire Christians because

the lack of experience in siege war, and so on. Was there anything else? I think that was the fundamental al-Maravid contract with the people of Al-Andalus was, and the people of North Africa, was that they would protect them against their enemies in exchange for political submission. The Al-Moravis increasingly couldn't deliver

on the first part of that contract. They couldn't defeat the Christians. There was one spectacular example in 1125-6 when the King of Aragon has a real rampage all the way through the heartlands of Al-Andalus, pillaging, capturing prisoners, destroying him,

and the Amaravid administration can't stop him. It was obvious to everybody that they weren't fulfilling their part of the contract. Nicola Clark, would anybody have mourned the replacement

of the Albarids by the Al-Mahans? I think really by that stage, I mean, as he says, that if they're not doing the thing they're supposed to be doing, then by and large, no.

I think the only point I would make, and possibly this is something I would pass back to Amira at this point. is that possibly for elite women that the Almohads represent a slightly worse situation in some respects compared to under the Sanhajah. Yes, I mean it's one of the features of the Almoravids. The men wear veils, but the women often don't.

So it's a very, it's an era where women have a lot of political and cultural autonomy, which is important to them. So can we talk about the legacy? Can I begin with you, Hugh, and go around the street. The legacy is overwhelmingly the Islamisation of Morocco, the fact that, and also that Morocco becomes part of the wider Islamic world during this period. The Ammaravids, write letters, send embassies to the Abbasic-Kaliz in Baghdad. They've integrated into the wider Islamic world,

and I think that's the major long-term achievement. And I would say also the foundation of Marrakesh and the development of a major urban hub a place of learning, culture, law in the south of Morocco is also very important. Can you tell us how tolerant the Armouravids were of Jews and Christians? Somewhat less so than some of their predecessors were, certainly. I mean, one of the things that the Armouravids said when they arrived was that part of the reason they had to eventually sweep away

the city states, these party kings, so-called, was that they tended to employ Jewish people. Fiziers and so on so particularly in Grenada most obviously but not just in Grenada so they I think again as part of their sort of display of piety and of correct adherence to Islamic law they were

very keen to kind of enforce things like collection of the poll tax and restrictions on Christians and Jews and that's a big difference from the hanging gardens of Cordoba in which way yes

yes the yes the omites were supposed to be tolerant in the 10th centuries a time of tolerance in Coventia, the 11th and 12th centuries a time when religious divisions become very stark and strong and violent. Like all historical generalisations, it has to be modified in various ways. But fundamentally, that's where we are.

Well, thank you for that ending with a fundamental statement. Thanks to you, Hugh Kennedy, and Amira Benison and Nicola Clark. Next week we'll be discussing medieval Welsh stories of the Maninogian. Mabinogian. Thanks for listening. the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. So what did we miss out? Anything that was important that we missed out?

I really wanted to talk about Ibn Buligin. Oh yes. Because, so this is the ruler of Granada at the time when the Amarabids arrive. He wrote a memoir after he was deposed and he's, I kind of envisaged him sort of herding goats in North Africa being very sad. But he writes this memoir. It's a terrifically kind of self-justifying book all about his family. and how hard he worked and how difficult it was. Nobody understands how difficult it was to be the ruler of a city state at this time

and how eager he was when the armurav has arrived and he was so happy to work with Yusfibh and Tashvim, Tashvine, and then he gets exiled. And so it's a really interesting insight that you don't tend to get from this period of what his thought processes were. I mean, obviously he is presenting himself sort of trying to make the best possible case for himself, but he is talking quite a lot about his doubts, his hope. all these sorts of things. It's such an interesting book.

Yes, it's a wonderful book. And it's an autobiography of a failure, which is, you know, so often. Autobiography, but there is no getting away from the fact that he was, exactly. There's no getting away from the fact that he was a failure. But Nicola's absolutely right. It's a very insightful book of the sort. You don't get very much in medieval sources.

And it is one of the sources as well that gives us much more information about the degree of support for the Almarov. from other parts of the community. So, you know, in addition to justifying himself, it is one of the sources that tells us about that popular support. I suppose from my point of view, one of the things is just to always remember that, I mean, we always tend to drag things back to Al-Andalus.

Yes. And I think it's so important to remember that for the Almoravids, it wasn't their key area of operations. You know, we may think of the Sahara as well. It's just an empty space. But for them, it was their home. You know, they considered the weather. African part of their empire and the desert, very, very important.

So Marrakesh is very central to them, but as you start going further north, it's not so important. So although there's more sources for Al-Andalus and more interest in that as an area of study, it's really important to always remember that for them, it's the south that's more important. Yes, perhaps it. Yes, perhaps it, andalisi. It always takes over somehow. Did they just fiddle away? Fizzler away, sorry. In the South?

Yeah. We don't really know what happened, but they seem to be instrumental in the Islamization of the South, whether it is by kind of a conquest or a more relaxed set of interactions with the Soninke in Ghana. But it's a key moment in the Islamization of West Africa. and they do secure access to the gold. So whatever happens in the South,

clearly they do throughout their period as rulers, have access to the gold. And one of the very interesting things is how significantly the level of gold coinage drops in the succeeding Almohad Empire. I mean, the Almohads are hugely successful, but they do not control the desert. They do not control the gold trade

in the way the Almoravids do. and most of their currency is silver. So it's the Almoravids who have the gold currency in massive quantities which becomes the gold standard throughout the Mediterranean of their day. So they're very successful in that respect. Whatever's going on in Al-Andalus, which is their northern provincial frontier in a way. So what we really need is an Almoha program.

Yes, we do. We nearly had one. You wanted to get there faster than any of the rest of us. Did their skills, which we spoke about at the beginning of the program, their skills as horsemen and their skills in open field battle, they kind of become entirely redundant just because... Oh, no, no, no, they're not entirely redundant in certain circumstances. They're extremely effective.

And nomad peoples have the bunch of mobility. They don't require... They're used to living on the hoof, literally. They don't require baggage trains and supply organizations and things like that. And they don't mind sleeping rough, and their animals don't. don't mind sleeping rough and so on. And so that at certain level...

But did they go on to conquer other things after they'd been pushed out of Spain? Other places now? No, but they do continue... My Sahara's big enough to have, is that... Yeah, I mean, they continue to give the Almohads a lot of grief for decades, from the Balearis, from Menorca and Miorca. The Almoravids hold on there much longer than they do anywhere else.

What's the nature of the grief? Well, they... basically a guerrilla war. So from about the 1180s... Al-Morovids from the Balearics invade North Africa and rampage for decades throughout North Africa, giving the Almohads tremendous trouble. And the Almohads can't defeat them,

but the Almoravids can't actually gain land. So it is guerrilla war. It's like rampaging through the countryside, hitting a town or a village, sacking something. But they cause a great deal of trouble for a very long time. I mean, I think on the siege warfare thing, I think we have to be fair in the sense that Toledo didn't fall because of good siege warfare. It fell because of tricky, murky negotiation, somebody opening a back gate.

So when it comes to siege warfare, actually, very few regimes were able to actually, you know, knock down the walls of a fortified town. It's almost always to do with someone opening a back gate and food running out. But what I would say is it's more, I mean, they don't have the techniques. absolutely true, but it's also they don't have the mound power, because if they could have encircled these towns for long enough and cut off the food for long enough, they would probably have capitulated, but they can't quite do that. So I think that's an important point. Ultimately, that's what Elsa does in Belencia, right? He stars the city out. It's about starving places until they give in,

not really about bashing down their gates or walls. I mean, the exception, I suppose, in terms of nomadic conquerors that do manage to sort of take care of siege, warfare is the Mongols, I've just been teaching about last week. And the main reason that they succeed is because they just, they identify what they need and take it. So in that case, they, they find Chinese siege engineers and force them to become part of their army and then they're able to use them then to conquer cities. And they're still in that, they're still in those armies when they are conquering Baghdad in the mid 13th century and so on. So the, yeah, the Mongols are just extremely adaptable, whereas the Amaravids, as you say, they, they use Christian mercenaries, but

perhaps not to quite the same extent. And it doesn't become part of their practice in the same sort of way. Well, here's the cavalry going in with an opera. Simon. Who'd like tea and you'd like coffee? I'll have a coffee, I'll have a coffee. Yeah, I'll have a coffee. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson. Who was she?

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