The leader of the new invasion was a Mahdi, one of
the numerous Saviours of the World who have carried
death and destruction throughout Islam. His name
was Ibn-Toumert, and he had travelled in Egypt, Syria
and Spain, and made the pilgrimage to Mecca.
Preaching the doctrine of a purified monotheism, he
called his followers the Almohads or Unitarians, to
distinguish them from the polytheistic Almoravids,
whose heresies he denounced. He fortified the
city of Tinmel in the Souss, and built there a mosque
of which the ruins still exist. When he died,
in 1128, he designated as his successor Abd-el-Moumen,
the son of a potter, who had been his disciple.
Abd-el-Moumen carried on the campaign against the
Almoravids. He fought them not only in Morocco
but in Spain, taking Cadiz, Cordova, Granada as well
as Tlemcen and Fez. In 1152 his African dominion
reached from Tripoli to the Souss, and he had formed
a disciplined army in which Christian mercenaries
from France and Spain fought side by side with Berbers
and Soudanese. This great captain was also a great
administrator, and under his rule Africa was surveyed
from the Souss to Barka, the country was policed,
agriculture was protected, and the caravans journeyed
safely over the trade-routes.
Abd-el-Moumen died in 1163 and was followed by his
son, who, though he suffered reverses in Spain, was
also a great ruler. He died in 1184, and his
son, Yacoub-el-Mansour, avenged his father’s
ill-success in Spain by the great victory of Alarcos
and the conquest of Madrid. Yacoub-el-Mansour
was the greatest of Moroccan Sultans. So far did
his fame extend that the illustrious Saladin sent
him presents and asked the help of his fleet.
He was a builder as well as a fighter, and the noblest
period of Arab art in Morocco and Spain coincides with
his reign.
After his death, the Almohad empire followed the downward
curve to which all Oriental rule seems destined.
In Spain, the Berber forces were beaten in the great
Christian victory of Las-Navas-de Tolosa, and in Morocco
itself the first stirrings of the Beni-Merins (a new
tribe from the Sahara) were preparing the way for
a new dynasty.
V
THE MERINIDS
The Beni-Merins or Merinids were nomads who ranged
the desert between Biskra and the Tafilelt. It
was not a religious upheaval that drove them to the
conquest of Morocco. The demoralized Almohads
called them in as mercenaries to defend their crumbling
empire; and the Merinids came, drove out the Almohads,
and replaced them.
