Almoravid Empire

In the mid-11th century a movement of Sanhaja Berbers from the western Sahara, the Almoravids (al-Murabitun, 'those of the ribat' or fortified monastery), sets out to enforce a stricter Maliki Islam. Its spiritual leader was Abdallah ibn Yasin, and its military leaders came from the Lamtuna tribe. They took Sijilmasa in 1054, and by about 1060 were a power in the Sahara and Morocco. Marrakesh, founded around 1070, becomes their capital under Yusuf ibn Tashfin.¹³

The Almoravids controlled the northern ends of the trans-Saharan gold and salt trade. Their rise in the south was connected with the empire of Ghana, and Arabic accounts say they captured its capital in 1076, though historians debate this. In the north, Muslim Spain had broken up into small taifa kingdoms after the Caliphate of Cordoba collapsed, and Christian Castile under Alfonso VI took Toledo in 1085. The taifa rulers asked Yusuf for help, and his army crushed Alfonso at Sagrajas (Zallaqa) in 1086. He then took over the taifas himself and ruled from Morocco to Valencia and Zaragoza. They spread strict Maliki law and minted a gold dinar that circulated in the Mediterranean. They declined in the 1100s under Christian and Almohad pressure, and the Almohads, another Berber movement, took Marrakesh in 1147.¹²⁴