The Zirids rule Ifriqiya for the Fatimids

The Zirids were Sanhaja Berbers of the Talkata tribe from what is now Algeria. Their ancestor Ziri ibn Manad served the Fatimids as governor of the central Maghreb and built a fortified residence at Ashir in the 930s; in 945, during the great Kharijite revolt of Abu Yazid that nearly overthrew the dynasty, he helped to break the siege of the Fatimid capital, Mahdia, and in 959 he joined Jawhar's expedition that took Fez and Sijilmasa. His son Buluggin founded Algiers, Médéa and Miliana and succeeded him when Ziri was killed fighting the Zenata in 971.

Before moving his court to Egypt, al-Mu'izz gathered his followers at Sardaniya, not far from Kairouan, and there on 2 October 972 appointed Buluggin viceroy of Ifriqiya and the Maghreb; from the caliph he also received the honorific titles Abu al-Futuh and Sayf al-Dawla. On 20 December Buluggin took up residence in Sabra al-Mansuriyya, the Fatimid palace city outside the walls of Kairouan. The caliph took the treasury and the fleet with him and left Sicily to its Kalbid governors, while Buluggin had to fight the Zenata Berbers, allies of the Umayyads of Córdoba; around 980 he briefly took Fez and most of the western Maghreb, and in 977 or 978 the Fatimids added Tripolitania to his domain. He died in May 984.

Under Buluggin's successors the Zirids ruled in the Fatimids' name while growing ever more independent. One branch, the Hammadids, broke away in the central Maghreb in 1015, and another, led by Zawi ibn Ziri, founded the taifa of Granada in al-Andalus. Between 1041 and 1051 the emir al-Mu'izz ibn Badis renounced the Fatimids and recognised the Abbasid caliph; in retaliation the Fatimids set the Bedouin Banu Hilal upon Ifriqiya. The Zirids moved their capital to Mahdia in 1057 and held it until the Normans of Sicily took it in 1148.