The Almoravid Empire

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Berber people who grew to dominate the western Maghreb, founded Marrakesh and took control of Al-Andalus. They were desert people, wearing veils over their faces to keep out the sand, and they wanted a simpler form of Islam. They called themselves the Murabitun, the people who gathered together to fight the holy war, and they were tough fighters; the Spanish knight El Cid fought them and lost, and the legend that built around him said the Almoravids were terrible and had to be resisted. They kept back the Christians of northern Spain, so helping extend Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula, before they themselves were destroyed and replaced by their rivals, the Almohads, from the Atlas Mountains.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Amira K Bennison No other episodes
  Professor in the History and Culture of the Maghreb at the University of Cambridge
• Nicola Clarke No other episodes
  Lecturer in the History of the Islamic World at Newcastle University
• Hugh Kennedy 11 episodes
  Professor of Arabic at SOAS, University of London

Reading list

• The Almoravid and Almohad Empires
  Amira K. Bennison (Edinburgh University Press, 2016) Google Books →
• Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History of al-Andalus
  Hugh Kennedy (Longman, 1996) Google Books →
• The Almoravids and the Meanings of Jihad
  Ronald Messier (Praeger, 2010) Google Books →

Related episodes

• Muslim Spain
  
  21 Nov, 2002 940 History of Europe
• The Arab Conquests
  
  26 Jun, 2008 950 History of Asia
• The Mamluks
  
  26 Sep, 2013 950 History of Asia
• The Abbasid Caliphs
  
  2 Feb, 2006 900 History
• Al-Ghazali
  
  19 Mar, 2015 210 Philosophy and theory of religion
• The Barbary Corsairs
  
  9 Nov, 2023 900 History
• The Battle of Tours
  
  16 Jan, 2014 940 History of Europe
• The Mokrani Revolt
  
  7 Mar, 2024 960 History of Africa
• The Battle of Talas
  
  9 Oct, 2014 950 History of Asia
• The Spanish Inquisition
  
  22 Jun, 2006 940 History of Europe

---

Programme ID: b0b0lzk7

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b0lzk7

Auto-category: 960 (History of Africa)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello, in the 11th century, veiled Islamic warriors rode out of the Sahara Desert and across the Atlas Mountains and established an empire, firstly in North West Africa and then in Muslim Spain.