The Banu Ghaniya, the last Almoravids

Who rules

Name

Yahya ibn Ishaq ibn Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Ghaniya al-Massufi, called al-Mayurqi (the Majorcan)

Title

Amir, head of the African branch of the Banu Ghaniya; his brother Ali took the Almoravid title amir of the Muslims (amir al-muslimin) under the Abbasid caliph, and Yahya is said to have kept it (whether he used it in 1200 is not pinned)

Since

584 AH (1188), on the death of his brother Ali ibn Ghaniya (Ibn Khaldun dates Ali's death to 584, killed by an arrow near the Nafzawa; Arabic Wikipedia puts it just after the defeat at al-Hamma, 9 Sha'ban 583, about 15 October 1187)

Born

Not pinned. He outlived his whole generation and died in the 1230s (631 to 635 AH in different sources).

Family

Sons of Ishaq ibn Muhammad, amir of Majorca (died 1183), of the Massufa Sanhaja through the Almoravid princess Ghaniya. Brothers: Abd Allah, amir of Majorca since about 1187; Muhammad, who submitted to the Almohads in 1185 and lost Majorca; Ali, who opened the African war in November 1184 (died 1187 or 1188); Tashfin and Talha (short reigns in Majorca, 1184-1187); Jabbara ibn Ishaq, who fights beside Yahya (killed near Gabes in 1205); and al-Ghazi, whom Yahya will leave in charge of Tunis in 1203. Nephew: Ali ibn al-Ghazi, called his cousin in some sources, later governor of Mahdia (1203-1206). Wives and children: not pinned; later accounts say he left only daughters, whom the Hafsids took into their care. Officers: Abd al-Barr ibn Farsan, the secretary who won the Abbasid caliph's recognition for Ali in Baghdad in the 1180s (whether he still serves Yahya is not pinned); Ibn Asfur, Yahya's secretary and tax-gatherer at Tunis in 1203.

Confidence

high

Ibn Khaldun (de Slane, vol. 2, pp. 100-111) is the fullest account: before he took Mahdia (597 AH) Yahya 'held Tripoli, Gabes, Sfax and the Jarid' (p. 107), and he came out of Gabes to fight the rebel of Mahdia. Checked against Arabic Wikipedia and the TDV encyclopaedia; Baadj 2015 was not read directly.

Overlord

None in practice. The Banu Ghaniya refuse the Almohad caliph and have the Friday sermon said for the Abbasid caliph of Baghdad, al-Nasir li-Din Allah, as the Almoravids did; Ali ibn Ghaniya sent an embassy to Baghdad in 581 (1185) and was answered through Saladin. The Ayyubid link has lapsed since Saladin's death (1193).

What the realm holds

• Gabes: the oasis town on the sea and its castle, Yahya's residence and base that winter (Ibn Khaldun: he 'came out of Gabes' to meet the rebel of Mahdia)
• Tripoli: the walled port and its plain (the Jafara), taken from Qaraqush's freedman Yaqut with the help of ships sent by Abd Allah from Majorca, in the 1190s (Ibn Khaldun, p. 105; Baadj through Wikipedia)
• Sfax and its olive country on the coast north of Gabes
• The Jarid (Qastiliya): Tozeur, Nefta, El Hamma of the Jarid and Degache (Taqyus), the date oases west of the Chott el Djerid
• Gafsa and its oasis: most likely his that morning (it is his before the battle with the rebel of Mahdia in 597 AH); the date he took it is not pinned
• Overlordship, not pinned in detail: the Nafzawa villages, the Berber hill villages of the Matmata and the Jabal Demmer, the coast from Gabes to Tripoli; claims on Djerba and on the Jabal Nafusa, which he will tax heavily after 1203
• Majorca (held by his brother Abd Allah; see the Iberia map, record Banu Ghaniya): the island and the family's fleet; Menorca in dispute; Ibiza Almohad since 1187

How it was acquired

Ali ibn Ishaq ibn Ghaniya sailed from Majorca and took Bougie on 13 November 1184, then Algiers, Miliana, Achir and the Qal'a of the Banu Hammad, and besieged Constantine. The caliph Ya'qub al-Mansur recovered Bougie in May 1185 (19 Safar 581) and the central Maghreb, and Ali fell back on the Jarid, where he joined Qaraqush and the Arab tribes. Together they took Gafsa and most of southern Ifriqiya and beat the Almohads at Umra near Gafsa on 25 May 1187 (15 Rabi I 583).

Al-Mansur came in person, routed them at al-Hamma near Gabes on 15 October 1187 (9 Sha'ban 583), retook Gabes, Tozeur and Gafsa (whose walls he razed), deported many Arabs to Morocco and went home early in 1188, leaving the sayyid Abu Zayd as governor at Tunis. Ali died of his wounds in 1187 or 1188 and Yahya took over. Qaraqush deserted to the Almohads in 586 (1190), seized Gabes by a ruse and massacred about seventy chiefs of the Dabbab and Ka'ub at a castle near it, then took Tripoli and most of the Jarid.

The Sulaym went over to Yahya, who beat Qaraqush near Tripoli (the battle of the Wadi al-Hira or Muhsin, about 40 km south-west of the city, date not pinned), made Qaraqush's freedman Yaqut give up the fortress of Torra (so in de Slane's translation; not identified), and took Tripoli, where Yaqut had held out for a long time, with two ships sent by Abd Allah from Majorca; Yaqut was sent a prisoner to Majorca, where he still is in 1200 (al-Tijani through Ibn Khaldun, p. 105). Yahya then besieged and took Gabes.

While al-Mansur fought in Spain (Alarcos, 1195, and the campaigns to 1197) Yahya rebuilt his power in the south. All this was done by 1199, but the exact years of the steps between 1190 and 1199 are not pinned.

Allies and rivals

Allies: the Banu Sulaym, above all the Dabbab of Tripolitania, who hate Qaraqush for the massacre at Gabes, and probably the Awf (the Ka'ub fled to Barqa after the massacre; their return is not pinned); the Dawawida of the Riyah, whose chief Mas'ud ibn Zimam escaped from exile in Morocco and died at the taking of Tripoli in Qaraqush's service, and whose son Muhammad has led them since and fights for Yahya in the 1200s; the Hilali clans that sided with Ali ibn Ghaniya in the 1180s (the Jusham, part of the Riyah, and the Asim and Muqaddam of the Athbaj) were deported to Morocco by al-Mansur for it, while the Zughba stayed with the Almohads (Ibn Khaldun vol. 1, pp. 173-186, 212); Ghuzz Turkish horse-archers who passed from Qaraqush to the Banu Ghaniya (numbers and leaders not pinned); his brother Abd Allah in Majorca, who sends ships.

Rivals: the Almohad caliph Muhammad al-Nasir and his governor at Tunis; Qaraqush, now a fugitive in the desert, who still calls himself lord of Tripoli; and since mid-1199 the rebel of Mahdia, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Karim al-Ragragi, who fights both the Almohads and Yahya. Relations with the Almohad governor of Tunis are hostile but not active that winter: in 597 AH the governor lends Yahya two warships against the rebel of Mahdia, their common enemy (Ibn Khaldun, p. 107).

The realm that morning

At first light on 1 January 1200 (about 12 Rabi I 596) Yahya holds Gabes, Tripoli, Sfax and the Jarid, and most likely Gafsa; he is at Gabes or in the field in the south (not pinned). He is not besieging any Almohad town that we know of. The north of Ifriqiya (Tunis, Bizerte, the Medjerda valley with Beja, Le Kef and al-Urbus) is held for the caliph by the governor at Tunis; Kairouan and Tebessa are not his; Mahdia and the villages round it are held by the rebel al-Ragragi, who is at war with Tunis and will soon turn on Gabes.

Across the borders: Bona, Constantine, Biskra and the Zab are on the central Maghreb sheet (Almohad governors and Riyah Arabs); Qaraqush holds out in the desert at Waddan (most likely; not pinned); the Fezzan obeys no one firmly. In Majorca Abd Allah holds the island; Menorca is in dispute and Ibiza is Almohad. There is no truce with the caliph: the Banu Ghaniya have never made peace with the Almohads.

Wealth

Booty and tribute rather than settled revenue: the dates of the Jarid and Gafsa, the oil of Sfax, the gardens, silk and henna of Gabes, the port dues of Tripoli and Gabes, the caravan trade that comes north from Ghadames and the Fezzan, and the dues he lays on the towns and on the Berber mountain villages. The Arab allies are paid with shares of plunder and with grants of the towns' revenues. Coinage struck in Ifriqiya in Yahya's name: not pinned.

Majorca adds corsair booty and trade with Genoa and Pisa.

Military

A small hard core of veiled Massufa and Lamtuna and their clients, the heirs of the Almoravid army, with Ghuzz Turkish horse-archers; the bulk of every army is Arab tribal horse (Sulaym and Riyah), loyal while there is plunder. Fortresses: the castle of Gabes, the walls of Tripoli and Sfax, the oasis towns of the Jarid. Ships: the Majorcan fleet of Abd Allah and whatever galleys sail from Tripoli and Gabes (not pinned).

Record: the victory of Umra (1187), the defeat of al-Hamma (1187), the defeat of Qaraqush near Tripoli (1190s). The sources give no numbers for 1200.

Threats

• The young caliph al-Nasir, who will send a fleet and army east once Majorca is dealt with (1203-1206)
• The rebel of Mahdia, who will besiege Gabes in 1200
• The fickleness of the Arab tribes, who change sides for pay and pasture (they desert him in 1209)
• Qaraqush and his Ghuzz in the desert, and the Dabbab's feud with them
• The loss of Majorca, which would cut his sea link and his supply of ships

As seen from the France and Iberia sheet

On the morning of 1 January 1200 the Banu Ghaniya, the last branch of the Almoravid ruling house, still hold Majorca from the walled city of Madina Mayurqa (Palma). Their amir is Abd Allah ibn Ishaq, who won the island back about 1187 after an Almohad-backed coup, sailing from Tripoli with ships and men topped up in Sicily by the Norman king William II. The family is at war with the Almohad caliphate on two fronts: in the islands, where an Almohad fleet took Ibiza in 1187 and Menorca has also been lost on the best account, and in Ifriqiya (Tunisia and Tripolitania), where Abd Allah's brother Yahya ibn Ghaniya leads Arab and Berber allies against the Almohad garrisons.

Majorca lives by its fleet: corsair raids on Provence and on the Almohad coast of Sharq al-Andalus, trade under treaties with Genoa (1188) and Pisa, and a friendly understanding with Peter II of Aragon. It is a small, rich and exposed island state, and the young caliph Muhammad al-Nasir, in power since January 1199, means to end it: the Almohads take Menorca and Majorca in 1203 and Abd Allah dies in the fall of his capital.

Name

Abd Allah ibn Ishaq ibn Ghaniya (in full Abd Allah ibn Ishaq ibn Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Ghaniya)

Title

Amir of Majorca (Mayurqa), head of the island branch of the Banu Ghaniya, the last Almoravid house

Since

About 1187, when he won Majorca back from the pro-Almohad regime set up in 1185

Born

Not pinned

Family

Son of Ishaq ibn Muhammad ibn Ghaniya (amir about 1155/56 to 1183/84) and grandson of Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Ghaniya, the Almoravid governor (from 1126) who kept the islands as his own when the Almoravid state fell in 1147. Brothers: Muhammad (amir 1183-84, deposed because he was ready to submit to the Almohads, restored under Almohad suzerainty in 1185); Ali (opened the war in Ifriqiya in November 1184, died 1187 or 1188); Talha (named as holding the island for a few months in 1184-85 in one list); Tashfin (installed under Almohad suzerainty about 1185-87); and Yahya, who has led the family war in Ifriqiya since Ali's death. Wife, sons and their ages: not pinned.

Confidence

high

His recovery of Majorca (about 1187) and his death in the Almohad conquest of 1203 are in every account (Wikipedia's Abdallah ibn Ghaniya article, after Baadj 2015, Bel 1903 and Kennedy 1996). The order of the brothers' short reigns in 1183-1187 differs between the English and Spanish lists.

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

In 1200

1. 596 AH (22 October 1199 to 10 October 1200), season not pinnedThe rebel of Mahdia, after failing before Tunis, besieges Yahya in Gabes, then lifts the siege and moves on Gafsa; Yahya follows and routs him at Qusur Lalla near Gafsa, then besieges him in Mahdia.Depends on: The rebel turning south after Tunis; Yahya's Arab allies staying with him. Stopped by: A settlement between the rebel and Yahya, or the Almohads crushing the rebel first.
2. 597 AH (11 October 1200 to 29 September 1201)With two warships lent by the Almohad governor of Tunis, Yahya forces Mahdia to surrender on terms; the rebel dies in prison soon after and his son is drowned off Collo. Yahya now holds Mahdia.Depends on: The governor of Tunis preferring Yahya to the rebel; the siege by land and sea holding. Stopped by: An Almohad relief of Mahdia, or a quarrel between Yahya and Tunis before the town falls.

Later, on the likely course

1. About 1201-1202 (not pinned)Yahya sacks Beja and kills its governor Umar ibn Ghalib, is beaten near Constantine by an Almohad army under Abu'l-Hasan, then takes Biskra and occupies Tebessa and Kairouan, and beats Qaraqush again.Depends on: Mahdia taken and the Arab tribes with him. Stopped by: An early Almohad expedition from Morocco.
2. 7 Rabi II 600 (15 December 1203); Ibn Khaldun gives 599Yahya storms Tunis and captures the sayyid Abu Zayd; Bona, Bizerte, Le Kef, al-Urbus, Kairouan, Tebessa, Sfax, Gabes and Tripoli acknowledge him and the Friday sermon is said for the Abbasid caliph in Tunis.Depends on: All the steps above. Stopped by: Any of the above failing.
3. 1203 (November in one account)In Majorca, an Almohad fleet takes Menorca and Madina Mayurqa; Abd Allah is killed. The sea link is cut.Depends on: Al-Nasir choosing to clear the islands first. Stopped by: A Christian fleet helping Abd Allah, or a crisis in Spain.

Places of note

• Gabes: Yahya's residence and castle: Seat of the African branch that winter.
• Tripoli: port and walled city: Taken from Qaraqush's freedman Yaqut with Majorcan ships in the 1190s.
• Battlefield of al-Hamma (October 1187): Al-Mansur's victory over Ali ibn Ghaniya and Qaraqush.

Where the sources disagree

• Tripoli: Ibn Khaldun's Banu Ghaniya chapter (pp. 104-105, 107) has Yahya take Tripoli in the 1190s and hold it, with Gabes, Sfax and the Jarid, before he takes Mahdia; his Almohad chapter (p. 227) and the Tikrit article that follows it put 'the defeat of Qaraqush, lord of Tripoli' after Mahdia and with the conquests of 599 AH. We follow the fuller chapter and Baadj (Majorcan ships at Yahya's siege of Tripoli 'in the 1190s'). Qaraqush may have recovered Tripoli for a time; not pinned.
• Ali ibn Ghaniya's death: 583 AH (after al-Hamma, October 1187) in Arabic Wikipedia; 584 AH (1188-89), by an arrow near the Nafzawa, in Ibn Khaldun; the Iberia record says 1187 or 1188.
• The Abbasid investiture: the English Wikipedia article says Ali was appointed 'heir of the Almoravids' by the caliph al-Mustadi, who died in 1180; the TDV encyclopaedia has Ali's embassy go to al-Nasir li-Din Allah in 581 (1185), which fits the dates. We follow TDV.
• Ali ibn al-Ghazi is called Yahya's nephew by Ibn Khaldun and his cousin by the Zarkashi chronicle and Wikipedia.
• Popular accounts that give Yahya Kairouan, Beja, Bona, Biskra or Tebessa before 1200 back-project the conquests of 1201-1203.

Evidence: The towns Yahya holds before he takes Mahdia are stated by Ibn Khaldun; the order and years of his conquests between 1190 and 1199 are not pinned in the sources we could read, and Baadj's study was not available to me.

On the map: Yahya's rule is over towns, oases and allied tribes, not a bounded territory; the outline joins the towns he holds through the steppe his Arab allies graze. Gafsa is probable rather than certain. Majorca lies outside this sheet.

Primary sources for this realm

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• History of the Two Dynasties, the Almohad and the Hafsid, al-Zarkashi (Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Lu'lu'i al-Zarkashi) (about 1490 to 1495, at Tunis). A short Hafsid-era chronicle whose Almohad opening gives, in a few lines a reign, the succession of al-Mansur and al-Nasir, the Banu Ghaniya's seizure of Ifriqiya and its recovery, and the sending of Abd al-Wahid ibn Abi Hafs to Tunis, which the Hafsids counted as the start of their house. Read online
• The Complete History: the passages on the Maghreb and al-Andalus, Ibn al-Athir (about 1220 to 1231, at Mosul). The year entries for 595 to 597 of the Hijra (late 1198 to 1201) record the death of Yaqub al-Mansur, the accession of al-Nasir and the opening of Yahya ibn Ghaniya's war in Ifriqiya; the following years follow Yahya and the Ghuzz captain Qaraqush through Tripoli, Gabès and Mahdia to al-Nasir's reconquest in 1206, with the best eastern account of Qaraqush's career. Read online
• The Garden of Pages: a History of the Kings of the Maghreb and of the City of Fez, Ibn Abi Zar al-Fasi (completed in 1326 at Fez, for the Marinid sultan Abu Said Uthman). The Almohad chapters give a brisk dated narrative of al-Mansur's death and burial, al-Nasir's accession and the Banu Ghaniya troubles, with the kind of detail (coinage, public works at Fez and Rabat, prices, plagues) that a Fez compiler cared about, and the annals of Fez supply the city's governors and markets. Read online
• The Wondrous Account of the History of al-Andalus and the Maghreb, Ibn Idhari al-Marrakushi (about 1312, at Marrakesh). The Almohad section is the fullest year-by-year narrative of the caliphate around 1200: the last campaigns and the death of Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur in January 1199, the accession of his son Muhammad al-Nasir, the renewed war of the Banu Ghaniya in Ifriqiya under Yahya ibn Ishaq and his ally Qaraqush, the Almohad losses of Mahdia and Tunis a few years later, and al-Nasir's reconquest of Ifriqiya in 1205 to 1206 followed by the appointment of Abd al-Wahid ibn Abi Hafs as governor. Read online
• The Book of Examples: the History of the Berbers and of the Muslim Dynasties of North Africa, Ibn Khaldun (1375 to 1379 at Qal'at Ibn Salama and Tunis, revised until 1406). Ibn Khaldun's tribal histories are the standard account of the powers that Almohad chronicles treat as background: the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym in Ifriqiya and Tripolitania and their alliances with the Banu Ghaniya and Qaraqush; the Zenata of the central Maghreb (Banu Marin, Banu Abd al-Wad, Tujin, Maghrawa) before their rise; the Sanhaja and the veiled peoples of the Sahara; the Masmuda and the Almohad tribes. Read online
• The Pleasant Book: a Summary of the History of the Maghreb, Abd al-Wahid al-Marrakushi (completed in 1224, in the East, after the author left the Maghreb in 1217). Abd al-Wahid was a boy of fifteen at Fez and Marrakesh in 1200 and later moved in Almohad court circles, so his account of Yaqub al-Mansur (died January 1199) and of the first years of Muhammad al-Nasir is partly from memory and from men he knew: the character of the new caliph, the weakness that let the Banu Ghaniya overrun Ifriqiya, the Majorca expedition of 1203 and the Ifriqiya campaign of 1205 to 1206. Read online
• Official Letters of the Almohad Chancery (1140s to 1260s; the letters nearest 1200 are of the reigns of al-Mansur and al-Nasir). Circular letters from the caliphs to governors, tribes and towns announcing victories, appointments and policy, preserved in later manuscript collections.
• The Journey of al-Tijani, Abd Allah ibn Muhammad al-Tijani (after 1309 and before 1318, at Tunis). A Hafsid chancery official's travel book, which at each town stops to tell its history, and so preserves accounts of the Banu Ghaniya war and of Qaraqush in southern Ifriqiya and Tripolitania around 1200 (Gabès, Djerba, Tripoli, the Jarid oases) from lost Almohad-period sources. Read online