Governing the Empire. Provincial Administration in the Almohad Caliphate

432 Pages·2017·5.31 MB·English

Governing the Empire. Provincial Administration in the
Almohad Caliphate (1224-1269)
Pascal Buresi, Hicham El Aallaoui, Travis Bruce
To cite this version:
Pascal Buresi, Hicham El Aallaoui, Travis Bruce. Governing the Empire. Provincial Administration
in the Almohad Caliphate (1224-1269): Critical Edition, Translation, and Study of Manuscript 4752
of the Ḥasaniyya Library in Rabat Containing 77 Taqādīm (”Appointments”). Brill, 3, pp.xxviii et
540, 2012, ”Studies in the History and Society of the Maghrib”, ￿10.1163/9789004239715￿. ￿halshs-
00804491￿
HAL Id: halshs-00804491
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00804491
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Pascal BURESI
and
Hicham EL AALLAOUI
Governing the Empire.
Provincial Administration in the Almohad
Caliphate
(1224-1269)
Critical edition, translation, and study of manuscript 4752 of the Ḥasaniyya Library in Rabat
containing 77 taqādīm (“appointments”)

Travis Bruce (English translation)
Abbreviations
ʿAbd al-Razzāq: AL-ṢANʿĀNĪ, ʿAbd al-Razzāq, al-Muṣannaf, 11 vols, Beirut, al-maktab al-
islāmī, 1987
DIHA: LÉVI-PROVENÇAL, Évariste (ed., trans., and introd.), Kitāb akhbār al-
Mahdī Ibn Tūmart wa-bidāyat dawlat al-muwaḥḥidīn, Documents inédits
d’histoire almohade. Fragments manuscrits du legajo 1919 du fonds arabe
de l’Escurial, Paris, Geuthner, 1928
EI2: Encyclopédie de l’islam, Leiden-Paris, E. J. Brill-G. P. Maisonneuve et
Larose, 2nd ed., 1960-2009, 13 vols.
HPIA: HUICI MIRANDA, Ambrosio, Historia política del imperio almohade, 2
vols. Tétouan, Editora Marroquí, 1956-1959
Ibn Ḥibbān: IBN BALABBĀN, Ṣaḥīḥ Ibn Ḥibbān bi-tartīb Ibn Balabbān, 18 vols, Beirut, al-
risāla, 1997
MG: Mehdi Ghouirgate
Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ: AL-NAWĀWĪ, al-Minhāj sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj, 18 vols, Beirut,
Dār al-maʿrifa, 1999
NLA: ʿAZZĀWĪ, Aḥmad, Rasā’il muwaḥḥidiyya. Majmūʿa jadīda (Nouvelles
lettres almohades), annotated and commented ed. of new Almohad letters,
Université Ibn Tufayl, Kénitra, 1995
NLA 2: ʿAZZĀWĪ, Aḥmad, Rasā’il dīwāniyya muwaḥḥidiyya, Rabat, 2006
RIEIM: Revista del Instituto de Estudios Islámicos de Madrid
ROMM: Revue de l’Orient musulman et de la Méditerranée
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GOVERNING THE EMPIRE
Phonetic transcriptions
Transcription Arabic Letter
ā ا
b ب
t ت
th ث
j ج
ḥ ح
kh خ
d د
dh ذ
r ر
z ز
s س
sh ش
ṣ ص
ḍ ض
ṭ ط
ẓ ظ
ʿ ع
gh غ
f ف
q ق
k ك
l ل
m م
n ن
h ه
w, ū و
y, ī ي
Table 1: Phonetic transcriptions
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GOVERNING THE EMPIRE
Prologue
The conquest of Marrakesh in 1147 by the troops of ʿAbd al-Mu’min ended the
Almoravid era in Morocco, but this was much more than a simple change in power at the local
level. It constituted, in fact, an essential step in the Maghrib’s emancipation from Eastern
centers of influence. This military victory, prepared by more than a dozen partial victories and
stinging defeats, resulted also in the death or execution of the last rulers of the Saharan
Almoravid dynasty (1071-1147). It represents the moment of birth for the new Empire which,
though not always easily, took the place of the toppled regime. More than a principality, less
than an Empire, the new power was undergoing transformative growth. It exercised authority
over the region of Marrakesh, over the major urban centers of northern Morocco, spreading
then over al-Andalus and proceeding simultaneously to the unification of the entire Maghrib,
from the Atlantic to Tripolitania. Only the Sahara escaped its grasp, from whence came the
Lamtūna-Banū Turjūt, founders of the Almoravid Empire. Despite the new rulers’ affirmation
of a total rupture with the previous regime, symbolized in the beheading of the last Almoravid
ruler, many elements continued on from one regime to the next. Without them, it would be
difficult to understand the development of what can be considered the largest Maghribī-
Andalusī empire in history.
Despite, or because of France and North Africa’s shared, often painful, past, French
researchers passed over the medieval Maghrib during the second half of the twentieth century.
The great historical works on this region written over half a century ago in a colonial context
have not been renewed. Governing the Empire is meant to serve as part of a renewal in North
African studies. It aims to correct in part our ignorance of medieval political systems in the
Western Mediterranean. With the edition, translation, and study of a specific documentary
corpus, seventy-seven provincial appointments preserved in a manuscript in the Ḥasaniyya
(formerly Royal) Library of Rabat, we will treat a number of themes through the Almohad
example, such as the preservation of administrative memory in the medieval Islamic world, the
behavior of imperial powers before the advent of the modern state, as well as the means of
controlling populations and lands in a territory characterized by the complimentary qualities of
vast nomadic spaces and the exceptional vitality of its cities, which were among the most
important in the Mediterranean basin at the time.
v
GOVERNING THE EMPIRE
Introduction
vi
GOVERNING THE EMPIRE
Context
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GOVERNING THE EMPIRE
The birth of the Almohad Empire refers as much to myth as it does to history: Ibn
Tūmart’s journey to the East, his meeting with the Almoravid authorities, the first bayʿa by his
disciples in the Atlas Mountains, the first battles against the plains powers, the death of the
Mahdī, and the conquest of Marrakesh. The Almohads have caused much ink to flow. As
founders of an excessively bureaucratic Empire, they wrote numerous documents many of
which are still extant. Lead by a dynasty carried to power by ʿAbd al-Mu’min (d. 1162), they
surrounded themselves with scholars dedicated to singing their exploits in the form of
panegyrics, heroic poems or chronicles. Bearing a complex dogma and original ideology, they
rewrote history in their favor, recycling time, directing Maghribī space, and erasing the words
of their predecessors to engrave their own. Nevertheless, the originality of the structure that
they put into place could not stray from the framework they contributed to formalizing. Therein
lies the dialectic of distinction through conformity, i.e. the conformity of distinction, that is at
the heart of this study.
A new imperial structure emerged at the end of the eleventh century, one whose political,
cultural, artistic, or religious importance historians have often underestimated. Under the aegis
of Saharan Berber nomads, the Almoravids, this empire united the eastern Maghrib and al-
Andalus – the part of the Iberian Peninsula belonging to Dār al-Islām. For the first time in
history, a Maghribī power controlled both shores of the Straits of Gibraltar. The Almohads
followed the path opened by the Almoravids, reinforcing the political unity of the Maghrib and
al-Andalus, with the center of power in North Africa. Both dynasties came from religious
reform movements and bear witness, each in its own way, to the growing islamization of the
Maghrib to which they contributed. Both empires, moreover, were led by Berber rulers whose
power was based on the military strength of confederated Berber tribes. For two centuries, from
1071 to 1269, the capital of this territorial ensemble was Marrakesh, founded by the
Almoravids, while al-Andalus, on the other side of the Straits, was home only to secondary
capitals.
There were, despite these continuities, significant differences between the two empires.
The Almoravids were Saharan nomads from the Ṣanhāja confederation, with their own
anthropological specificities. Their tribes were matriarchal–which is atypical for the Islamic
world–; women were not veiled and held important social power, while men wore veils over
their mouths (lithām), whence the sobriquet mulaththamūn (“veiled”) given to the Almoravids.
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The Almohads, for their part, were sedentary inhabitants of the Atlas Mountains,
members of the Maṣmūda confederation, with a patrilineal society. Both groups were Berber
speakers, and the psychological war lead by the Almohads against the Almoravids has
characterized comparisons of the two throughout history.1 The Almoravids were said to be
illiterate. Worse still, concerning legal affairs – viz. justice – they had forgotten the Law by not
referring more directly to the Koran and the Sunna, preferring exclusively the large
compilations of juridical consultations that form the basis of the Mālikī school of law dominant
in the Maghrib and al-Andalus since the ninth century. Comparing the Almoravid and Almohad
chancelleries, however, reveals that continuing out of the taifa period, a time when writers,
poets, and chancellery secretaries acted as “king makers”2, adab, the classical literary culture
at the core of the educated honest Muslim, exerted a strong influence over the Almoravid
chancellery, contradicting Almohad accusations of illiteracy. Moreover, the important influence
of Berber language during the Almohad period also becomes clear, as shown by the founder of
the Almohad movement, Ibn Tūmart, who preached in Berber and wrote his profession of faith
in the same language. It was probably not until the reign of the second Almohad caliph, Yūsuf
Abū Yaʿqūb (1162-1184) that Ibn Tūmart’s works were translated into Arabic.
There is another important link between these two Berber-founded empires: despite
their geographic origins, both regimes referred to the Arabic East. A prince with the title of amīr
al-muslimīn (“Prince of the Muslims”) ruled the Almoravid Empire, a title modeled after amīr
al-mu’minīn (“Prince of the believers”), which was adopted by the caliph ʿUmar (634-644), a
close companion to the Prophet and his second successor. This refusal to carry a title of caliphal
rank reveals that the Almoravid ruler did not claim the leadership of the entire community of
believers, only a “diverted” authority over a portion of Dār al-Islām. The religious reform that
he defended was part of an extreme legalism and referred back through a series of acts to the
superior authority of the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad, thus in particular opposition to the Shiites
and as a continuation of the eleventh century. It accorded an essential role to the Mālikī jurists
for legitimating political decisions taken by the rulers and so placed the Maghrib and al-Andalus
in the lap of the East. The Almoravids accepted a subaltern place for the territories their
reformist dynasty led and drew even a glorifying theme or legitimacy from the dependence and
theoretical respect that they gave the signs of recognizing the central Iraqi power.

1 N. BARBOUR, “La guerra psicológica”.
2 B. SORAVIA, Les fonctionnaires épistoliers.
9