The Almoravids: from a desert reform movement to an empire

Around 1040 Yahya ibn Ibrahim, a chief of the Gudala Berbers, returning from the pilgrimage to Mecca, met the Maliki jurist Abu Imran al-Fasi at Kairouan and asked for a teacher for his people; on Abu Imran's advice he went to the ribat of Waggag ibn Zallu in the Sous valley, known as the Dar al-Murabitin, and Waggag sent him his pupil Abdallah ibn Yasin. Ibn Yasin's harsh rigour soon got him expelled by the Gudala, but the Lamtuna under Yahya ibn Umar embraced his preaching that conquest must accompany the spread of the faith. Why the movement took the name al-murabitun is uncertain: later writers connect it with a fortified retreat (ribat) on an island — off the Atlantic coast or on the Senegal — with "steadfastness in battle" or with Waggag's school. In the early 1050s the veiled Sanhaja warriors set out to control both ends of the trans-Saharan trade, taking Sijilmasa in the north and Awdaghust in the south in 1054 or 1055; Awdaghust, although largely Muslim, was sacked because it recognised the king of Ghana.

After Yahya ibn Umar fell in battle in 1056, his brother Abu Bakr ibn Umar led the army across the High Atlas and took Aghmat (1058); Ibn Yasin was killed fighting the Barghawata in 1058 or 1059. Around 1070 Abu Bakr founded Marrakesh as a new capital — the sources give dates from 1062 to 1078, and some credit Yusuf ibn Tashfin with the foundation — and then returned to the Sahara to put down a revolt, leaving the north to his kinsman Yusuf. When Yusuf would not give up his command, Abu Bakr accepted the division and led the Almoravids of the Sahara until his death in 1087. Yusuf took Fez, northern Morocco, Tlemcen and Ceuta, styled himself amir al-muslimin, 'Commander of the Muslims', and recognised the Abbasid caliph; called in by the taifa kings after Alfonso VI took Toledo, he crossed into al-Andalus, won the battle of Sagrajas in 1086 and between 1090 and 1094 deposed most of the taifa kings themselves.

In the south, an ambiguous passage of Ibn Khaldun (14th century) was long read as recording an Almoravid conquest of Ghana in 1076–1077. Many historians now doubt such a conquest: David Conrad and Humphrey Fisher argued in 1982 that the conquest is a later misreading of the Arabic sources, and Timothy Insoll notes that the archaeology of ancient Ghana shows no sign of sudden destruction; Dierk Lange speaks of political influence rather than conquest, while Sheryl Burkhalter held that the Almoravids' grip on the West African gold trade implied real political control. Beyond dispute is the lasting effect of the movement: it spread Maliki Sunni Islam across the Sahara, united the western Maghreb and al-Andalus politically for the first time and urbanised Morocco. In the 12th century Almoravid power waned before the Almohad revolt, and the last Almoravid ruler was killed when the Almohads took Marrakesh in 1147.