The Idrissite rule is a welter of obscure struggles
between rapidly melting groups of adherents.
Its chief features are: the founding of Moulay
Idriss and Fez, and the building of the mosques of
El Andalous and Kairouiyin at Fez for the two groups
of refugees from Tunisia and Spain. Meanwhile
the Caliphate of Cordova had reached the height of
its power, while that of the Fatimites extended from
the Nile to western Morocco, and the little Idrissite
empire, pulverized under the weight of these expanding
powers, became once more a dust of disintegrated tribes.
It was only in the eleventh century that the dust
again conglomerated. Two Arab tribes from the
desert of the Hedjaz, suddenly driven westward by
the Fatimites, entered Morocco, not with a small military
expedition, as the Arabs had hitherto done, but with
a horde of emigrants reckoned as high as 200,000 families;
and this first colonizing expedition was doubtless
succeeded by others.
To strengthen their hold in Morocco the Arab colonists
embraced the dynastic feuds of the Berbers. They
inaugurated a period of general havoc which destroyed
what little prosperity had survived the break-up of
the Idrissite rule, and many Berber tribes took refuge
in the mountains; but others remained and were merged
with the invaders, reforming into new tribes of mixed
Berber and Arab blood. This invasion was almost
purely destructive, it marks one of the most desolate
periods in the progress of the “wasteful Empire”
of Moghreb.
ALMORAVIDS AND ALMOHADS
While the Hilalian Arabs were conquering and destroying
northern Morocco another but more fruitful invasion
was upon her from the south. The Almoravids,
one of the tribes of Veiled Men of the south, driven
by the usual mixture of religious zeal and lust of
booty, set out to invade the rich black kingdoms north
of the Sahara. Thence they crossed the Atlas
under their great chief, Youssef-ben-Tachfin, and founded
the city of Marrakech in 1062. From Marrakech
they advanced on Idrissite Fez and the valley of the
Moulouya. Fez rose against her conquerors, and
Youssef put all the male inhabitants to death.
By 1084 he was master of Tangier and the Rif, and
his rule stretched as far west as Tlemcen, Oran and
finally Algiers.
His ambition drove him across the straits to Spain,
where he conquered one Moslem prince after another
and wiped out the luxurious civilization of Moorish
Andalusia. In 1086, at Zallarca, Youssef gave
battle to Alphonso VI of Castile and Leon. The
Almoravid army was a strange rabble of Arabs, Berbers,
blacks, wild tribes of the Sahara and Christian mercenaries.
They conquered the Spanish forces, and Youssef left
to his successors an empire extending from the Ebro
to Senegal and from the Atlantic coast of Africa to
the borders of Tunisia. But the empire fell to
pieces of its own weight, leaving little record of
its brief and stormy existence. While Youssef
was routing the forces of Christianity at Zallarca
in Spain, another schismatic tribe of his own people
was detaching Marrakech and the south from his rule.
