Africa (6th–10th c.)Politics and state

Ifriqiya under the Aghlabids

In 800 Harun al-Rashid made Ibrahim ibn al-Aghlab hereditary emir of Ifriqiya, roughly present-day Tunisia with eastern Algeria and Tripolitania. Nominally Abbasid vassals, his descendants ruled from Kairouan for more than a century, conquered Sicily from 827 and filled the country with monuments — the rebuilt Great Mosque of Kairouan (836), ribats and reservoirs — while Kairouan became a leading centre of Maliki law, until the Fatimid movement overthrew them in 909.

Date: 800 – March 909start: year known; end: month known · duration: ≈ 109 years
Place: Kairouantoday: Kairouan, Tunisia · Africa
Participants: Aghlabids, Harun al-Rashid, Abbasid Caliphate
Threads: Africa (6th–10th c.)
Also known as: Aghlabids; Aghlabid emirate; Banu al-Aghlab; Great Mosque of Kairouan; Aghlabid Basins; Raqqada; Аглабиды; Аглабидский эмират; Великая мечеть Кайруана; Раккада

After the Berber revolt of 740 Ifriqiya was the only part of the Maghreb left to the caliphate, and even there Kharijite Berbers had held Kairouan in the 750s and the Arab troops, the jund, often mutinied. To end the disorder, Harun al-Rashid in 800 granted the province as a hereditary emirate to Ibrahim ibn al-Aghlab, son of an Arab commander from Khorasan of the Banu Tamim, in return for an annual tribute and the mention of the caliph in the Friday prayer. Ibrahim built a new residence, al-Abbasiyya, outside Kairouan, partly to keep his distance from the city’s Maliki scholars, who disapproved of the court’s luxury and of the dynasty’s Hanafi and Mu'tazili leanings. His son Ziyadat Allah I (817–838) survived a dangerous revolt of the jund (824–827) and then sent the qadi Asad ibn al-Furat to invade Byzantine Sicily (827), giving the restless troops a new outlet; Palermo fell in 831.

The middle decades of the 9th century were the dynasty’s apogee. Agriculture and trade across the Sahara and the Mediterranean prospered, and the emirs answered criticism of their wealth with charity and building. Ziyadat Allah I rebuilt the Great Mosque of Kairouan in 836, giving it essentially its present form, with the oldest surviving minaret in North Africa; around 862–863 Abu Ibrahim Ahmad (856–863) added its mihrab, faced with lustre tiles, and a teak minbar, the oldest surviving in the world, and in 860–862 he built the great reservoirs north of the city, which still stand. Fortified ribats guarded the coast at Sousse and Monastir. The Maliki jurist Sahnun (d. 854/855) compiled the Mudawwana, one of the most important works of Maliki law. Persecuted under Muhammad I for rejecting the createdness of the Qur’an, which the Aghlabids upheld following Baghdad, he was later appointed qadi of Ifriqiya by the same emir (848/849) and drove the Mu'tazilites and other sects out of the Great Mosque. Kairouan became a leading centre of Islamic learning in the Maghreb.

Under Ibrahim II (875–902), who moved the court to the new palace city of Raqqada in 876, decline set in. In 880 the Tulunid prince al-Abbas, in revolt against his father, invaded from Barqa and in the winter of 880/881 was stopped near Tripoli by the Ibadis of the Jabal Nafusa; a Berber revolt was put down with great bloodshed; and from 893 the Isma'ili missionary Abu Abdallah al-Shi'i won over the Kutama Berbers of the mountains to the west. After the last Aghlabid army was routed at al-Aribus on 18 March 909, Ziyadat Allah III fled to Egypt, and a week later Abu Abdallah entered Raqqada, opening the way for the proclamation of the Fatimid caliphate.

Open in the interactive atlas

Connections

Causes and preconditions

Reign of Harun al-Rashidbetween 14 September and 17 September 786 – 24 March 809 · Middle East and EgyptHarun granted Ifriqiya to Ibrahim ibn al-Aghlab as a hereditary emirate in 800

Related events

Uqba ibn Nafi founds Kairouan670 · AfricaZiyadat Allah I rebuilt the mosque founded together with the city by Uqba ibn Nafi
Berber Revolt against the Umayyadsbetween 739 and 740 – between 742 and 743 · Africaafter the revolt Ifriqiya was the caliphate’s last foothold in the Maghreb, troubled by Kharijites and mutinous troops
Rustamid imamate at Tahertbetween 776 and 778 · Africathe Ibadi imams of Tahert were the Aghlabids’ western neighbours, with whom relations were strained
The mihna: the Abbasid inquisition over the createdness of the Qur’an833 – between 848 and 852 · Middle East and Egyptfollowing Baghdad, the Aghlabids made the createdness of the Qur’an the official doctrine of Ifriqiya, and the Maliki jurist Sahnun suffered under the mihna in Kairouan
Aghlabid conquest of SicilyJune 827 – 1 August 902 · Western and Central EuropeThe army was sent from Ifriqiya by the Aghlabid emir Ziyadat Allah I under the qadi of Kairouan, Asad ibn al-Furat
Founding of the al-Qarawiyyin Mosque in Fezbetween 857 and 877 · Africain the early 9th century Arab families from Aghlabid Kairouan settled in Fez and gave their name to its Qarawiyyin quarter
Ahmad ibn Tulun rules Egypt: al-Qata'i and the Mosque of Ibn Tulun15 September 868 – 10 May 884 · Middle East and Egyptin 880–881 Ibn Tulun’s rebel son al-Abbas invaded Aghlabid Ifriqiya and was defeated near Tripoli by the Ibadis of the Jabal Nafusa