Zirid dynasty

The Zirids were a family of Sanhaja Berbers from what is now Algeria who governed Ifriqiya, roughly modern Tunisia and eastern Algeria, from 972 until 1148. They began as lieutenants of the Shi'a Fatimid Caliphate, later broke with it, and presided over a prosperous age centred on Kairouan before Arab tribal migrations and Norman raids wore their state down. Branches of the family also founded the Hammadid state in Algeria and the taifa of Granada in Spain.

The family took its name from Ziri ibn Manad, a Berber of the Talkata tribe whom the Fatimids made governor of the central Maghreb. In 936 he built a fortified capital at 'Ashir, south-east of Algiers, and in 945 he helped relieve the Fatimid capital, Mahdia, during the Kharijite revolt of Abu Yazid. He was killed fighting the Zanata Berbers in 971. When the Fatimid caliph moved his court to newly conquered Egypt in 972, he left Ziri's son Buluggin behind as viceroy of Ifriqiya. Buluggin overran Fez and much of Morocco by 980 and was given authority over Tripolitania, but after his death in 984 the far west was given up.

Quarrels over the succession soon split the dynasty. In 999 several of Ziri's sons rebelled against their grand-nephew Badis and were crushed; one survivor, Zawi ibn Ziri, crossed to al-Andalus and in 1013 founded the taifa of Granada, which his family ruled until 1090. After 1001 Tripolitania slipped away to the Banu Khazrun, a Maghrawa family. Badis's uncle Hammad built his own capital, the Qal'at Bani Hammad, and declared independence in 1015; after a war, his Hammadid state kept control of much of present-day Algeria while the main Zirid line held Ifriqiya.

The early reign of al-Mu'izz ibn Badis, from 1016 to 1062, is generally seen as the peak of Zirid power. Grain, olives and dates enriched the countryside, and Kairouan flourished as a centre of trade, religious scholarship and book production; the "Nurse's Qur'an", copied in 1020 for al-Mu'izz's nursemaid, is a celebrated example. Al-Mu'izz restored the Great Mosque of Kairouan, where its carved wooden screen, the oldest of its kind still in place, survives. He also intervened in Muslim Sicily, sending an army there in the 1030s.

Sometime between 1041 and 1051, al-Mu'izz rejected the Fatimids and recognised the Sunni Abbasid Caliphate instead. In reprisal, the Fatimids encouraged the Arab Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym tribes to move west. The Zirids met the Banu Hilal at Haydaran in April 1052 and were routed, despite reportedly outnumbering them heavily. The countryside fell into disorder, and in 1057 al-Mu'izz abandoned Kairouan for the coastal fortress of Mahdia, while towns such as Tunis, Sfax and Gabès came under local rulers.

Tamim, who reigned from 1062 to 1108, worked to rebuild Zirid authority, fought the Hammadids until a truce in 1077 and raided the coasts of Calabria and Sicily. In the following decades the Normans of Sicily turned the tables, seizing Jerba in 1135 and Tripoli in 1146. In 1148 a Norman fleet under George of Antioch appeared off a famine-weakened Mahdia, and the last emir, al-Hasan, abandoned the city. The Almohad Caliphate took the Hammadid capital, Bijaya, in 1152 and Mahdia in 1160, bringing the whole Maghreb under one rule.

Our 1100 map shows the Zirid and Hammadid lands together as the Zirid and Hammadid emirates, between the Almoravid dynasty to the west and the Fatimid realm in Egypt to the east. At that date they were in fact two separate states, the Zirids in Ifriqiya and the Hammadids in central Algeria.