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Mauritania
Index
Figure 2. Almoravid and Sudanic Empires, Eleventh to Seventeenth
Centuries
Source: Based on information from Charles Toupet (ed.), Atlas
de la République Islamique de Mauritanie, Paris, 1977, 29.
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 (see Glossary)
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
(see
fig. 2). 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 (see Glossary)
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.
Data as of June 1988
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