Empire · 1121–1269 · Northern Africa

Almohad Caliphate

The Almohad movement began with Ibn Tumart, a Berber religious reformer from the Atlas Mountains who in 1121 proclaimed himself the Mahdi and preached a strict doctrine of God's absolute oneness. His successor Abd al-Mu'min took the title of caliph, overthrew the Almoravids, captured Marrakesh in 1147 and went on to unite all of North Africa from Morocco to Tripoli, as well as Muslim Spain.

The Almohads were great builders, raising the Koutoubia mosque in Marrakesh and the Giralda in Seville, and their court patronised philosophers such as Averroes. Their crushing defeat by the Christian Spanish kingdoms at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 began a rapid decline; provinces broke away to the Hafsids, Zayyanids and Marinids, who took Marrakesh in 1269.

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Years

1121–1269

Capital

Tinmel, then Marrakesh; Seville in al-Andalus

Greatest extent

1170, about 2.30 million km²

Region

Northern Africa

From the Atlantic to Tripolitania, plus southern Spain; c. 2.0–2.3M km² (Taagepera 1997; Turchin et al. 2006); c. 2.3M km² c. 1150 (Taagepera 1997); c. 2.0M km² c. 1200 (Turchin, Adams & Hall 2006)