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Almohad  

Karl-Heinz Golzio

[al-Muwaḥḥidūn]

Islamic dynasty that ruled parts of north-west Africa and Spain from 1130 to 1269. Muhammad ibn Tumart (d 1130), a Masmuda Berber, preached a faith based on the Koran and the Sunna, stressing above all the oneness of God (Arab. tawḥīd), a doctrine from which the movement took the name al-Muwaḥḥidūn (‘believers in the oneness of God’). Ibn Tumart, who declared himself also as the infallible Mahdí, was able to unite disparate groups of Berbers and in 1121 began an insurrection against the Almoravid rulers with the help of the Berbers of the Atlas Mountains. After the conquest of the Anti-Atlas and Sus region, he emigrated to Tinmal (Tinmallal), south of Marrakesh in the High Atlas, an event likened to the Prophet’s Hegira from Mecca to Medina in ad 622. A defeat near Marrakesh temporarily stopped the rise of the Almohads, and even Ibn Tumart’s lieutenant and successor, ‛Abd al-Mu’min (...

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Ayyubid  

Islamic dynasty that ruled 1169–1252 in Egypt, 1180s–1260 in Syria and south-east Anatolia, and 1174–1229 in the Yemen, with minor branches continuing until the end of the 15th century. The Ayyubids were the Kurdish clan brought to power in 1169 by Salah al-Din (Saladin; reg 1169–93) and his nephew Shirkuh when they occupied Egypt on behalf of the Zangid family ruler of Damascus, Nur al-Din (reg 1146–74). Shirkuh soon died, and Salah al-Din became master of Egypt. He ended the Shi‛ite Fatimid dynasty of Egypt in 1171 and brought Aleppo and Damascus under his control in 1183 and 1186. Salah al-Din is best known in both East and West as a tireless foe of the crusaders, and for his liberation of Jerusalem in 1187. The Ayyubid lands were governed by leading members of his family. The sultan ruling in Cairo was paramount, and Damascus was the second capital, but Ayyubid possessions extended to the Yemen and into Anatolia. The counter-crusade continued throughout the Ayyubid period; notable is the failed treaty between al-Malik al-Kamil (...

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Bazaar  

Mohammad Gharipour

Bazaar, which is rooted in Middle Persian wāzār and Armenian vačaṟ, has acquired three different meanings: the market as a whole, a market day, and the marketplace. The bazaar as a place is an assemblage of workshops and stores where various goods and services are offered.

Primitive forms of shops and trade centres existed in early civilizations in the Near East, such as Sialk, Tepe in Kashan, Çatal Hüyük, Jerico, and Susa. After the 4th millennium BC, the population grew and villages gradually joined together to shape new cities, resulting in trade even with the remote areas as well as the acceleration of the population in towns. The advancement of trade and accumulation of wealth necessitated the creation of trade centres. Trade, and consequently marketplaces, worked as the main driving force in connecting separate civilizations, while fostering a division of labour, the diffusion of technological innovations, methods of intercultural communication, political and economic management, and techniques of farming and industrial production....

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Great Zimbabwe  

P. S. Garlake

Complex of dry-stone walls among the hills on the south-eastern edge of the plateau c. 250 km south of Harare in Zimbabwe (see fig.). It was built and occupied between the 11th and 15th centuries ad as the capital of a state of the Bantu-speaking peoples now known as the Shona, for whom zimbabwe means ‘ruler’s court’. It is by far the largest of c. 200 similar stone buildings between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers and is also probably the largest pre-Colonial construction in Sub-Saharan Africa, comprising one of the earliest, most powerful and longest-surviving indigenous states to develop in the African interior.

The earliest surviving written description of Great Zimbabwe appears in João de Barros’s account of the Portuguese conquests of south-east Africa, Da Asia, published in 1552 in Lisbon. This description, derived from reports of Swahili traders on the coast, reveals that Great Zimbabwe was believed to be a former palace of the Mutapa dynasty, which at the time ruled a state further north in the Zambezi Valley and its immediate hinterland. Although the Mutapa king no longer lived there, his kin and courtiers were said to do so. Portuguese relations with the Mutapa state were sustained over centuries, but no Portuguese traveller was ever allowed to visit Great Zimbabwe, although, during the 16th century, a few stayed in the stone-walled ...

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Hafsid family  

Marianne Barrucand

Dynasty that ruled in Tunisia and eastern Algeria from 1228 to 1574. Descended from Abu Hafs ‛Umar (d 1176), a disciple of the founder of the Almohad movement, Abu Zakariya Yahya I (reg 1228–49) was governor of the region for the Almohads. He declared his independence in 1237 and expanded his territory as far as Constantine, Annaba, Algiers and Tlemcen, obliging the Marinid dynasty of Morocco to acknowledge his supremacy and engaging in trade and diplomatic relations with Christian governments. His son Abu ‛Abdallah (reg 1249–77) assumed caliphal titles, and his court was equally celebrated for its culture and international relations. Violent family rivalries, Christian intervention and independence movements, particularly in the cities of the interior, led to a period of decline at the end of the 13th century. Abu’l-‛Abbas (reg 1370–94) reunified the country, and during the 15th century the Hafsid empire enjoyed its last period of prosperity and expansion. Spain and the Ottoman empire threatened North Africa in the 16th century, and in ...

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Ibn Daya, Khodja Ed Din  

Egyptian, 13th century, male.

Active in Cairo at the end of the 13th century.

Miniaturist.

Ibn Daya was a chancellor to the Sultan Mameluk Baybar and painted several pictures representing the Pilgrimage to Mecca.

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Mamluk family  

R. Nath and Robert Irwin

[Arab. mamlūk: ‘slave’]

Name applied to two distinct sequences of Islamic rulers in northern India and the Levant from the 13th century. Many but not all of the rulers were manumitted slaves of Turkish origin, hence the common names of the lines.

R. Nath

This quasi-dynastic line of Turks conquered and ruled northern India from 1206 to 1290. The line of sultans is known as the Mu‛izzi Mamluks of Delhi because Qutb al-Din Aybak (reg 1206–10) was originally a slave of the Ghurid king Mu‛izz al-Din Muhammad; two later sultans, Shams al-Din Iltutmish and Ghiyath al-Din Balban, were also manumitted slaves. As a trusted lieutenant, Qutb al-Din extended Ghurid power over the Gangetic doab. In Delhi he initiated the construction of the Quwwat al-Islam Mosque (see Delhi, §III, 1) and in Ajmer the Arhai Din ka Jhompra Mosque. These are the earliest and most important monuments of the Sultanate period. ...

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Mappa mundi  

Michael Curschmann

The medieval term mappa mundi (also forma mundi, historia/istoire) covers a broad array of maps of the world of which roughly 1100 survive. These have resisted systematic classification, but the clearly dominant type is one that aims at comprehensively symbolistic representation. Its early, schematic form is a disc composed of three continents surrounded and separated from one another by water (“T-O Map”) and associated with the three sons of Noah: Asia (Shem) occupies all of the upper half, Europe (Japhet) to the left and Africa (Ham) to the right share the lower half. Quadripartite cartographic schemes included the antipodes as a fourth continent, but the tripartite model was adopted by the large majority of the more developed world maps in use from the 11th century on and—with important variations—well into the Renaissance. While details were added as available space permitted, the Mediterranean continued to serve as the vertical axis and, with diminishing clarity, the rivers Don and Nile as the horizontal one. The map also continues to be ‘oriented’ towards Asia, where paradise sits at the very top. A circular ocean forms the perimeter and not infrequently the city of Jerusalem constitutes its centre....

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Marinid  

Lucien Golvin

[Merinid]

Islamic dynasty that ruled in north-west Africa from 1196 to 1465. The Marinids, a tribe of nomadic Zanata Berbers, took Marrakesh from the last Almohad ruler in 1269 and extended their power in the 14th century. Abu’l-Hasan ‛Ali (reg 1331–48) conquered all of North Africa, thus reconstituting the great Almohad empire, but was unable to sustain rule in Tunisia and was forced to withdraw in 1341. His son Abu ‛Inan Faris (reg 1348–59) renewed the successful campaign against the Hafsid family realm of Tunis, but was obliged to withdraw hurriedly. The dynasty then began a decline that ended in its extinction in 1465, although a collateral branch, the Wattasids, continued to rule in Fez until 1549.

Marinid rule was marked by an unprecedented flourishing of literature, due to the patronage of the first generation of sovereigns. Their architectural legacy (see Islamic art, §II, 6(iv)(b)) was considerable, beginning with ...

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