Aghlabid Dynasty

Overview

The Aghlabid dynasty (800–909) ruled Ifriqiya — roughly modern Tunisia, eastern Algeria, and Tripolitania — as nominally vassal but de facto autonomous emirs of the Abbasid Caliphate, with capitals at al-Abbasiyya and later the palace-city of Raqqada, both near Kairouan. The dynasty was founded by Ibrahim I ibn al-Aghlab, a Khurasanian Arab commander of the Banu Tamim, whom the caliph Harun al-Rashid appointed hereditary emir in 800 to end the anarchy that had followed the fall of the Muhallabids. The Aghlabids never renounced Abbasid suzerainty — paying an annual tribute of 800,000 dirhams and naming the caliph in the Friday khutba — but governed independently in every other respect.

History

The dynasty's greatest undertaking was the conquest of Sicily, launched in 827 under the qadi Asad ibn al-Furat, ostensibly to aid the rebel Byzantine commander Euphemios. The campaign proceeded slowly — Palermo fell in 831, Messina in 842–843, Syracuse in 878, and Taormina only in 902 — while Aghlabid forces and semi-independent Muslim adventurers raided deep into Italy, holding Bari and Taranto for decades, raiding Rome in 846, and taking Malta in 870. The Sicilian venture gave Ifriqiya's restless Arab soldiery (the jund) an outlet after their dangerous revolt of 824–827, and brought in plunder and revenue.

At home, the Aghlabids presided over a golden age of prosperity built on agriculture, irrigation, trans-Saharan and Mediterranean trade, and a flourishing urban population. They were great builders: the Great Mosque of Kairouan (rebuilt 836, with the oldest surviving minaret in North Africa and the world's oldest minbar), the al-Zaytuna Mosque in Tunis, the ribats of Sousse and Monastir, and the monumental reservoirs of Kairouan remain among the oldest Islamic monuments in the Maghreb, in a distinctive heavy, fortress-like style blending Abbasid and Byzantine elements. Religiously, the emirs imposed Mu'tazilite rationalism and Hanafi law against a hostile Maliki majority, while co-opting Maliki scholars with office and patronage.

Decline and legacy

Decline began under the erratic Ibrahim II (875–902), who faced Tulunid attack and Berber revolt and died campaigning in Italy in 902. From 893 the Ismaili missionary Abu Abdallah al-Shi'i rallied the Kutama Berbers, and after a decade of warfare his army routed the last Aghlabid forces in March 909; the emir Ziyadat Allah III fled to Egypt, and the Fatimid Caliphate was proclaimed in Raqqada. The Aghlabid century left Tunisia with an enduring Arab-Islamic urban civilization and its finest early monuments.