Ibn Tumart's conception of political power
Unlike Ibn Yasin, Muhammad Ibn Tumart has left behind him a corpus in which he laid out his theory of political and religious power. Born in the Sous, to a mid-ranking figure from the Hargha Berber tribe at the end of the 11th century, he was trained in Marrakesh, in the Malekite tradition, he went on to study further in Cordoba, where he soaked up Ibn Hazm[1]'s doctrine. Thereafter he travelled East where he deepened his grasp of usul al dîn[2] and aligned with al-Ash'ari on the interpretation of dubious verses. Chroniclers remarked on the unforgiving nature of Ibn Tumart's positions founded in « enjoining good and forbidding evil »
: he condemned the use of musical instruments; he protested, right up to Mecca, the consumption and trade of alcoholic drinks; he rejected any kind of public interaction between the sexes (he was in favour of the strictest separation between men and women). He was warned off in Alexandria and later driven out of Bejaïa, now, somewhere near the town, he came across Abd al-Mu'min, a member of the Gumiya tribe. This meeting is recorded in hagiographic texts with a view to give a religious slant to the two men's exceptional destiny.
Having settled in Marrakesh in 1121, Ibn Tumart got involved in disputes with Almoravid jurists he considered kufar (« infidels »
). Though he did not seek to overthrow the sovereign Ali Ibn Yusuf, he openly criticised him, marshalling his arguments under three headings: the oppressive nature of his power; his licentious behaviour; anthropomorphic formulations used in divine invocation. Ibn Turmat's swing into full frontal confrontation followed an attempt to remove the dissident scholar in Igli-n-Waraghan in the High Atlas. From then on, Ibn Tumart would not rest until he had set up a politically and religiously driven reforming movement. His treatise A'azz ma yutlab (« The Dearest of What Is Sought »
), summed up this thinking and justified the jihad[3] against the Almoravids: « If they help you fighting the jihad against the infidels, then leave them alone [...] if they rebel against the truth and persist in giving their support to the people of lies and corruption, then, kill them wherever you find them and do not make any of them your companions or allies. »
While aligning himself with Sunni Islam in that he recognised as rightful the succession of the first four caliphs (rather than that of the Imams of Ali's line), Ibn Tumart borrowed, between 1125 and 1130, principles from the Shia theory of power focusing on the figure of the Mahdi[4]. The circumstances were exceptional: the Almoravids were pressurising Ibn Tumart's partisans so he seized upon this reference in order to sustain the hope and loyalty of his troops. The factors brought to bear were as follows: the condition of al isma – meaning that the Mahdi has not been touched by sin: he is sinless; the reference to the name – « Mohammed ben Abdallah al-Qurayshi al-Hashimi »
– which set him, the Mahdi, in the Quraysh tribe to which the Prophet of Islam belonged; the attempt to break with tribal allegiances to redirect them towards him in an exclusive scheme. Ibn Tumart held not only that the power detained by the Almoravids, the Fatimids, and the Abassids was illegitimate but that the obedience he was owed was the same as that owed « to God and his Prophet »
. This settled, he engaged a decisive military offensive culminating at the battle of al-Buhayra, at the term of which he was defeated and killed.
Far from crumbling the thrust of the movement grew in vigour. Ibn Tumart had no son and he had not named any of his brothers as successor. His partisans saw in this a repetition of the Prophet of Islam's gesture, leaving it to the members of the shura[5] to agree on a successor after his death. This option ruled out for good any Shia influence. A collective government made up with five members, one of them a woman had the exercise of power: Sidi Abd al-Mu'min Ibn Ali, Ismail Igig, Omar Asanag, Abu Mohammed Abdellah Ibn Muksin al-Wansharisi and Zaynab (Ibn Tumart's sister). Sources diverge as to an eventual preference Ibn Tumart would have voiced for Abd al-Mu'min, member of a prestigious tribe. Whatever the case may be, his figure soon emerged thanks, among other things to his ability to hold the balance between the Arab and Berber tribes and to redraw their hierarchy: his tribe, that of Gumyia / Zenata was set very close to Ibn Tumart's Hargha Almsamudih tribe at the top with all the others coming in third position. Abd al-Mu'min took two major decisions : he proclaimed the caliphate in the western part of the Muslim empire which led to a final breach with the Abassid Dynasty and he established the principle of familial succession.
The theory of political power ended up holding sway in its Sunni tradition. In the case of Ibn Tumart, the reference to Madhism, closer to Shia Islam, was dictated by circumstances. However the system of governance founded in the Shura's decisional power did not stand up to the pressures of time. His immediate successor, Abd al-Mu'min favoured the hereditary system. The vagueness of the laws that regulated the devolution of power led to ongoing problems after his reign and several dynasties would one after another seize power by force until the 15th century.
