Page:Bury J B The Cambridge Medieval History Vol 2 1913.djvu/406

378 the Abbasids had become consolidated and it was proposed to make an energetic attack on him from Bagdad, he renounced his obedience to the Abbasids and received fugitive Umayyads as honoured guests in Ḳairawān (754-755). These Umayyad princes however brought discord into 'Abd-ar-Raḥmān's family, in connexion with which he himself and two of the princes met their deaths. A third prince, 'Abd-ar-Raḥmān ibn Mu'āwiya, forced his way through to Spain and became the founder of the western Caliphate. In Africa the murder of Ibn Ḥabīb led to a general disorganisation and set free all the tendencies towards decentralisation. Independent Berber dynasties arose in the extreme West, as for instance the Banū Midrār in Sijilmāsa (757) and Banū Rustam in Tahert (761), the latter under the banner of the Khārijites; in the nearer West the Arabs on the one hand and the Berbers, who had also separated into parties, on the other, fought for the possession of Ḳairawān, which did not again acknowledge the authority of the Abbasids until 761, and then only for a short time; the province of Africa, as far as to the border of Algeria, was once more restored, though with disturbances and interruptions, but the whole of the far West remained irretrievably lost.

Here in the far West a third State was soon founded. A descendant of Ali named Idrīs, who had fled from the Abbasids, created for himself, in the year 788, an independent kingdom, which soon extended eastward to beyond the town of Tlemcen. Here again a clever leader managed to unite the Berbers by a religious party-cry. The kingdom of the Idrīsids was the first Shī'ite State founded in the West.

The remainder of the province of Maghrib once so extensive was moreover destined to make itself independent in the last decade of the eighth century. The constant dissensions between the Arab leaders and tribes could no longer be permanently controlled by the governors sent from Bagdad. The Amīr of Mzab (in the back-country of Algeria) Ibrāhīm ibn Aghlab, who had grown up in Africa, and whose father had been the means of reconquering the Mzab, was on the other hand the right man in the right place to restore state authority (800). When he had succeeded in this however he demanded from the Caliph the hereditary investiture in return for payment of a tribute and the customary naming of the Caliph in the pulpit prayers and on the coinage. This amounted to complete independence. Thus arose the dynasty of the Aghlabids of Ḳairawān, which gave to Africa a series of clever, but also often worthless, rulers. In proportion to the smallness of their kingdom they had a considerable naval force, and thus they became the leaders of the expansion of Islām into Mid-Europe. It was under them that Sicily was conquered.

Before turning however to Sicily, we must still sketch the further destinies of Northern Africa, in as far as it is connected with the history of Islām in Southern Europe. In spite of their brilliant performances