High Middle Ages · Africa · Politics

1106

Ali ibn Yusuf inherits the Almoravid empire

1106

Yusuf ibn Tashfin, the Berber warlord who had bulldozed al-Andalus into his desert empire, died at a reported age of a hundred. His son Ali, raised in Marrakesh rather than the Sahara, proved a pious administrator unable to hold together his father's coalition of camel-mounted zealots. Under his reign the Almoravid empire began to fracture, its Andalusian provinces growing restive and its African territories threatened by the Almohad preachers rising in the Atlas.