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By the eleventh
century, Islam had spread throughout the west Sahara under the
influence of Berber and Arab traders and occasional Arab migrants.
Nevertheless, traditional religious practices thrived. The conquest
of the entire west Saharan region by the Almoravids in the eleventh
century made possible a more orthodox Islamization of all the
peoples of Mauritania. The breakup of the Sanhadja Confederation
in the early eleventh century led to a period of unrest and
warfare among the Sanhadja Berber groups of Mauritania.
In about 1039, a chief of the Djodala, Yahya ibn Ibrahim, returned
from a pilgrimage to Mecca bringing with him a Sanhadja theologian,
Abdallah Ibn Yassin, to
teach a more orthodox Islam.
Rejected by the Djodala two years later, after the death of
Ibn Ibrahim, Ibn Yassin
and some of his Sanhadja followers retired to a secluded place
where they built a fortified religious center, a ribat, which
attracted many Sanhadja.
In 1042 the al murabitun (men of the ribat), as Ibn
Yassin's followers came to be called, launched a jihad,
or holy war, against the nonbelievers and the heretics among
the Sanhadja, beginning what later become known as the Almoravid
movement. The initial aim of the Almoravids was to establish
a political community in which the ethical and juridical principles
of Islam would be strictly applied.
First, the Almoravids attacked and subdued the Djodala, forcing
them to acknowledge Islam. Then, rallying the other Berber groups
of the west Sahara, the Almoravids succeeded in recreating the
political unity of the Sanhadja Confederation
and adding to it a religious unity and purpose.
By 1054 the Almoravids had captured Sijilmasa in the Maghrib
and had retaken Aoudaghast from Ghana.
With the death of Ibn Yassin
in 1059, leadership of the movement in the south passed to Abu
Bakr ibn Unas, amir of Adrar, and to Yusuf ibn Tashfin in the
north.
Under Ibn Tashfin, the Berbers captured Morocco and founded
Marrakech as their capital in 1062.
By 1082 all of the western Maghrib (to at least present-day
Algiers) was under Almoravid domination.
In 1086 the Andalusian amirates, under attack from the Spanish
Christian king Alfonso and the Christian reconquest of Spain,
called on Ibn Tashfin and his Berber warriors to cross the Strait
of Gibraltar and come to their rescue.
The Almoravids defeated the Spanish Christians and, by 1090,
imposed Almoravid rule and the Maliki school of Islamic law
in Muslim Spain.
In Mauritania, Abu Bakr led the Almoravids in a war against
Ghana (1062-76), culminating
in the capture in 1076 of Koumbi Saleh. This event marked the
end of the dominance of the Ghana
Empire. But after the death of Abu Bakr in 1087 and Ibn
Tashfin in 1106, traditional rivalries among the Sanhadja
and a new Muslim reformist conquest led by the Zenata Almohads
(1133-63) destroyed the Almoravid Empire. For a short time,
the Mauritanian Sanhadja dynasty of the Almoravid Empire controlled
a vast territory stretching from Spain to Senegal. The unity
established between Morocco
and Mauritania during the Almoravid period continued to have
some political importance in the 1980s, as it formed part of
the basis for Morocco's
claims to Mauritania. But the greatest contribution of the Sanhadja
and the Almoravids was the Islamization of the western Maghrib.
This process would remain a dominant factor in the history of
the area for the next several centuries. |
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