saint. The peace treaty al-Mustanṣir signed to convince the crusader army to leave came at a heavy price: two hundred and ten thousand ounces of gold, and a number of commercial concessions and guarantees.22
Half a century was not enough to secure Ḥafṣid rule over all of Ifrīqiyā. As soon as al-Mustanṣir died in 1277, wars of succession ensued. The political crisis made it clear that the ruler of Tunis had had a very fragile hold on power. Louis’s Crusade showed that al-Mustanṣir could not defend his kingdom without the help of Bedouins. The succession wars showed that all the major political players sought to confer legitimacy on their actions by attaching themselves to a Ḥafṣid emir. This illustrates the extent to which the Ḥafṣids had succeeded in becoming the dynasty of Ifrīqiyā.
The Ḥafṣids of Ifrīqiyā
The Ḥafṣids were at first just Almohad governors, but over time, they claimed an increasing degree of autonomy. Making Ifrīqiyā Ḥafṣid, or bringing it under unified Ḥafṣid rule, was a gradual, imperfect, and often violent process. It also involved making the Ḥafṣids, the powerful Hintātī clan from the western Maghrib, into Ifrīqiyans. This process did not begin as a well-formed or formulated plan. The first Ḥafṣid governor could hardly imagine that his descendants would make Ifrīqiyā their homeland. In fact, once the Ḥafṣids declared independence from Marrakech, they did not denounce their roots in the Almohad order. On the contrary, they claimed continuity with the Almohads and behaved like them, too, as if the Almohad capital had moved from Marrakech to Tunis. Nonetheless, the Ḥafṣids seceded, made Tunis their capital, and began appointing the governors of Bijāya. Rulers of Tunis had never done this before.
The making of the first Tunis-based regional emirate began with the imposition of Ḥafṣid domination over the body of Almohad sheikhs. To defeat those sheikhs, the Ḥafṣids utilized a variety of strategies, the most significant of which was to establish alliances with urban elites and Bedouins. They also encouraged elite Andalusis to immigrate to the cities they controlled—Tunis and Bijāya foremost among them. They appointed Christian converts to key positions in the bureaucracy and bolstered the number of non-Almohad soldiers by utilizing Andalusi and Christian militias from nearby kingdoms such as Aragon.23 As they saw them, these paid soldiers constituted an army more loyal than any they could muster at home to fend off Bedouins, Almohad sheikhs, and other members of the Ḥafṣid clan. All this is remarkable when considered against the uncertain beginning the Ḥafṣids had in Ifrīqiyā and their attachment to the Almohads. It is therefore far from surprising that a few groups continued to resist their “regional” domination.
Bijāya as an Autonomous Ḥafṣid Capital (1277–1346)
The resolution of Ḥafṣid crisis of rule came in the form of Bijāya’s secession from Tunis. The secession at first followed a familiar pattern: wealthy merchants sought out the Ḥafṣid emir Abū Zakariyā Yaḥyā (r. 1285–1301) and supported his accession to the throne in their city. But unlike the previous abortive secessions, this one split the Ḥafṣid dynasty into two self-recognized branches, each claiming control over a different part of the kingdom that had once been ruled by Abū Zakariyā (1229–49) and al-Mustanṣir (1249–77). While Bijāya was not the only autonomous city, focusing on its independence gives a concrete example of the shift from the regional Ḥafṣid emirate to a number of local ones.
The Limits of Regional Rule
When Abū Zakariyā Yaḥyā II al-Wāthiq succeeded al-Mustanṣir to the throne in Tunis, he was young and, according to the Ḥafṣid historian Ibn Qunfudh, his ḥājib (vizier) treated him “as an adult guardian [treats] a child.”24 A native of Murcia, this ḥājib, Ibn al-Ḥabbabar, had risen in the ranks under al-Mustanṣir, becoming chief of the customs house in Tunis before being appointed to the highest office. He married into the Hintātī clan and wielded a great deal of power, eliminating potential competitors and appointing his own men, many of whom were Andalusis, to sensitive positions. He also appointed his own brother as governor of Bijāya.
The Bijāyan notables did not appreciate the newcomer’s haughty attitude and cavalier treatment of them, and not long after his arrival, conspired to rid themselves of him, of al-Wāthiq, and of their supporters. To do so, they sent for al-Wāthiq’s uncle, Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhim in Tilimsān. Abū Isḥāq had fled to Granada during al-Mustanṣir’s rule (1249–77), and upon hearing of al-Mustanṣir’s death, he had reentered the Maghrib to await his moment at the ‘Abd al-Wādid court in Tilimsān. The moment arrived when a delegation of Bijāyans arrived and offered him their city. He accepted readily and was proclaimed emir in Bijāya in April 1279.
Ibn al-Ḥabbabar responded to this move by sending an army to Bijāya under the command of Abū Ḥafṣ ‘Umar—another uncle of al-Wāthiq’s—who promptly defected and joined Abū Isḥāq on Bijāya’s side. This major defeat left Tunis with no real army and forced al-Wāthiq to abdicate in favor of Abū Isḥāq in August 1279.25 Abū Isḥāq then arrested Ibn al-Ḥabbabar, confiscated his property, and had him killed. The young al-Wāthiq was arrested for plotting with the leader (qā’id) of the Christian militia and was executed in 1280, together with his three sons. Prominent individuals associated with al-Mustanṣir and Ibn al-Ḥabbabar received the same treatment.
As a ruler of Tunis and Bijāya, Abū Isḥāq showed a clear policy of favoritism toward Andalusis. Abū al-Qāsim Aḥmad b. al-Shaykh was put at the head of the palace while Abū Bakr b. Ḥasan b. Khaldūn, the grandfather of the famous historian, headed the treasury. The Ḥafṣid ruler then appointed his son Abū Fāris governor of the province of Bijāya and agreed to the appointment of Muḥammad b. Khaldūn, the son of his treasurer, to the highest office, that of ḥājib, in Bijāya. In turn, the new governor of Bijāya, Abū Fāris, designated the Almohad Ibn al-Wazīr governor of Qasanṭīna, and two sons of the powerful Banū Muznī from Biskra as governors of the southern regions of al-Zāb and al-Jarīd. By appointing them as governors, the Ḥafṣids extended their influence over the Banū Muznī dynasty, which ruled in that oasis town. The move gave the Ḥafṣids more consistent access to Saharan caravans and consolidated the Banū Muznī in their capital, even if they had to recognize the Ḥafṣids as overlords.26
Abū Isḥāq attempted to stretch his influence even further over the region by maintaining good relations with his western neighbors, the ‘Abd al-Wādids (1236–1555). The founder of that dynasty, Yaghmurāsan (r. 1236–83), renewed his allegiance to Abū Isḥāq and, in 1282, sent his heir to Tunis with gifts to ask for the hand of a daughter of Abū Isḥāq for one of his sons. The union of the two dynasties was thus sealed. Soon after that, the new couple became the parents of two future ‘Abd al-Wādid sultans. But the relative peace between the eastern and western Maghribī dynasties did not afford the government of Tunis the relief it sought. Crop failure in 1280 and the reluctance of the Bedouins to pay taxes led Abū Isḥāq to send his two sons, Abū Zakariyā and Abū Muḥammad, at the head of important military units to collect the taxes in fall 1282.27 Doing so was no easy task. The powerful Dabbāb had rallied behind a man who claimed to be al-Faḍl, the son of the former Ḥafṣid ruler al-Wāthiq (r. 1277–79), and sought to unseat Abū Isḥāq.
Kings and Kingmakers
This man was Aḥmad b. Marzuq b. Abī ‘Umāra. His family was from al-Masīla (M’sila) and had emigrated to Bijāya, where he had grown up. He worked as a tailor in Bijāya, then traveled to the western Maghrib, where he claimed to possess supernatural powers and to be the awaited mahdī. In order to demonstrate his good faith and messianic status, he promised to produce miracles that would convince the skeptics. On the appointed day, the miracles he promised failed to materialize and he had to escape the region. He traveled back to Ifrīqiyā and stayed with Bedouins
