When Abū Zakariyā died in 1249, he left a great reputation behind him. Some of the chronicles depict him with mere boiler plate praise of the sovereign, as having listened to the complaints of the poor and having been loved by the masses. But others detected the thin line he walked between Almohad succession and outright independence. They described him as surrounding himself with a Council of Almohads that supported Ḥafṣid claims to authentic Almohad lineage. They also praised his wise reliance on freed Christian captives (‘ulūj) and Andalusi immigrants, who, together with Christian mercenaries, helped the Ḥafṣids to keep in check the power of the Almohad sheikhs.20 Almohad though he might have acted, he was also willing to carve an independent course of rule.
Fending Off Urban Elites, Bedouins, and Crusaders
Abū Zakariyā’s son and heir, Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muḥammad, benefited from the support of his father’s confidants, a fact not to be taken for granted given that the bonds of patronage at court were rarely passed on by legacy. The chroniclers note that when Abū ‘Abd Allāh arrived in Tunis, he immediately enjoyed the double allegiance of the Almohad sheikhs and the common people (‘āmma).21 But things were not so simple. In 1250, he survived a coup attempt fomented by Almohad leaders who resented the rising power of the freed slaves and the Andalusis. In 1253, his own brother, Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm, continuing the family tradition of internecine quarrels, escaped Tunis, where he had been closely watched, and took refuge among the Dawāwida. Their sheikhs pledged allegiance to him, recognized him as emir, and helped him form an army to unseat his brother. When they were defeated, Abū Isḥāq fled to al-Andalus, where he found refuge at the court of Muḥammad b. Yūsuf of Granada.
In 1253, a mere four years after assuming rule, Abū ‘Abd Allāh took on the caliphal title Commander of the Faithful (amīr al-mu’minīn) and assumed the caliphal-sounding regnal name al-Mustanṣir. This move must be seen in the context of his attempts to quell the Almohad sheikhs, now in the form of the Banū Nu‘mān. A powerful Almohad family, the Banū Nu‘mān had supported al-Mustanṣir’s father, and he came to see their influence as governors of Qasanṭīna as a serious threat to his rule. he eliminated three of the most prominent members of their clan from the political scene by killing them.
Threats to al-Mustanṣir’s rule came not only from the Almohad sheikhs but from the urban elites, and further members of his own family. Taking advantage of the political instability in eastern Ifrīqiyā, urban elites in the western town of Milyāna made bids to break away from Tunis. In 1261, al-Mustanṣir’s brother Abū Ḥafṣ took Milyāna and placed it in the hands of the Awlād Mandīl before heading back to Tunis. East of Milyāna, the Mediterranean port city of Jazā’ir Banī Mazghanna (Algiers) also proclaimed independence from Tunis and prompted a similar reaction. In both cases, the Ḥafṣids asserted their military domination at great cost.
In addition to urban elites who jockeyed for influence, the Ḥafṣids faced a constellation of armed Bedouin groups, each with its own agenda and strategies. A few years before the events of Milyāna, al-Mustanṣir had seen firsthand how challenging Bedouins could be. When the coalition led by the self-proclaimed messiah Abū Ḥimāra threatened to overtake the whole southern Zāb, al-Mustanṣir led an army from Tunis, had Abū Ḥimāra killed, and arrested the leaders of the Mirdās and Dabbāb who had offered him logistical support. But even then, he could not rest on his laurels, facing the ever-troublesome Dawāwida in the region south of Qasanṭīna, aided by members of his own family. With al-Mustanṣir’s cousin Abū al-Qāsim on their side, the Dawāwida sought to sponsor their own Ḥafṣid ruler. But when the time came to fight, Abū al-Qāsim cowered, fleeing to al-Andalus and leaving the Dawāwida and their sheikh Shibl b. Mūsa to face the Tunisan army alone. The battle went in favor of al-Mustanṣir, who forced the enemy to retreat to the south of al-Masīla. Unsatisfied, al-Mustanṣir was back on the offensive two years later, in 1268, with the help of the Ku‘ūb, Dabbāb, and Sadwīkish. The Banū ‘Asākir branch of the Dawāwida accepted defeat and pledged allegiance to him, but the Banū Mas‘ūd refused to capitulate and fled to the south of Biskra, well into the Sahara, where their livelihood would be endangered. After some discussion, they reversed their decision and asked to negotiate terms with al-Mustanṣir, who responded by arresting their leaders and decapitating them, and then leading a surprise attack against their remaining supporters.
Seriously challenged inland and still having trouble imposing his will in the region, al-Mustanṣir now faced yet another enemy: Louis IX. In 1270, after the failure of his Crusade in the Levant, Louis led a Crusade against Tunis. After four months, the tight naval siege he maintained forced al-Mustanṣir to ask for help from nearby cities and Bedouins. Whether the move would have weakened his rule or allowed him to build alliances we will never know: just when al-Mustanṣir’s capital seemed about to fall to the crusaders, a mysterious illness killed Louis and forced the crusaders back home with the body of their leader, and future 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