The Almohad Empire: The Moroccan Caliphate That Ruled Half of Spain

Marrakech, 1147. After eleven months of siege, the capital of the Almoravid empire falls to an army from the mountains: the Almohads, al-Muwahhidun, "the people of the oneness of God". Twenty-seven years earlier their founder, Muhammad ibn Tumart, was a wandering scholar who insulted the emir to his face. He came back to the Atlas, declared himself the Mahdi, and built a movement that nearly died in its first battle. His successor, Abd al-Mu'min, the son of a potter, turned it into the Almohad Empire, the first empire to unite the whole Maghreb, from the Atlantic to Libya, and half of Spain. Under his heirs came the Kutubiyya, the Giralda and the Hassan Tower, the philosophers Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Rushd (Averroes), and in 1195 one of the last great Muslim victories in Spain: the battle of Alarcos. CHAPTERS 0:00 Marrakech, 1147: four questions 1:10 The thin man at the emir's court 2:13 I. The man from the mountains 3:07 II. The preacher and the potter's son 3:54 The Mahdi of Tinmel 5:06 III. The sorting and the first battle 5:53 The secret successor 6:28 IV. The war in the mountains 7:29 V. The fall of Marrakech 8:25 VI. One Maghreb 9:42 VII. Across the Strait 11:06 VIII. Faith and fear 11:45 IX. The philosopher caliphs 12:46 Ibn Rushd meets the caliph 13:55 X. Wars on the frontier 14:25 XI. Al-Mansur, the Victorious 15:39 XII. The road to Alarcos 16:24 The battle of Alarcos, 1195 18:40 After the battle 19:32 The philosopher on trial 20:35 The answers 21:26 The double legacy FURTHER READING ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Marrākushī, al-Muʿjib fī talkhīṣ akhbār al-Maghrib (c. 1224) Abū Bakr al-Baydhaq, memoirs of a companion of Ibn Tumart (Akhbār al-Mahdī Ibn Tūmart) Ibn ʿIdhārī, al-Bayān al-mughrib; Ibn Abī Zarʿ, Rawḍ al-qirṭās Allen J. Fromherz, The Almohads: The Rise of an Islamic Empire (2010) Amira K. Bennison, The Almoravid and Almohad Empires (2016) Maribel Fierro, The Almohad Revolution (2012) Hugh Kennedy, Muslim Spain and Portugal (1996) IMAGE CREDITS (via Wikimedia Commons) Koutoubia, Marrakech: photo by Erzianj jurnalist, CC BY-SA 4.0 Koutoubia at sunset: photo by Jakub Hałun, CC BY 4.0 Tinmel mosque, exterior: photo by Sambasoccer27, CC BY-SA 4.0 Tinmel mosque, mihrab: photo by Drugstore95, CC BY-SA 4.0 Tinmel mosque, qibla aisle: photo by R Prazeres, CC BY-SA 4.0 High Atlas, Mount Azourki: photo by Lucyin, CC BY-SA 4.0 La Giralda at dusk, Seville: photo by David Iliff, CC BY-SA 3.0 Hassan Tower, Rabat: photo by Petar Milošević, CC BY-SA 4.0 Bab Agnaou, Marrakech: photo by Luc Viatour / https://Lucnix.be, CC BY-SA 3.0 Qur'an manuscripts, Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum: photo by Francesco Bini, CC BY-SA 4.0 Almohad silver dirham: Los Angeles County Museum of Art (M.2002.1.434), public domain Andrea di Bonaiuto, Triumph of St Thomas Aquinas (detail with Averroes), Santa Maria Novella, Florence: public domain Imagined sketch of Ibn Rushd (Egypt, 1961): public domain 19th-century engraving of a scholarly assembly: public domain Video footage: Pexels. Maps and battle diagrams: made for this channel; terrain from Natural Earth (public domain); medieval borders are approximate. Music: original score made with VSCO 2 Community Edition samples (CC0). Narration voice: Kokoro TTS (Apache 2.0). Previously on Qalam & Saif: the battle of Zallaqa, 1086. #history #morocco #almohads #almohadempire #alandalus #islamichistory