1-Abd al-Mu'min 1145-1163
2-Abu Ya'qub Yusuf I 1163-1184
3-Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur 1184-1199
4-Muhammad an-Nasir 1199-1213
5-Abu Ya'qub Yusuf II 1213-1224
6-Abd al-Wahid I 1224
7-Abdallah 1224-1227
8-Yahya 1227-1235
9-Idris I 1227-1232
10-Abdul-Wahid II 1232-1242
11-Ali 1242-1248
12-Umar 1248-1266
13-Idris II 1266-1269
ALMOHADES (properly Muwahhadis, i.e. "Unitarians," the name being corrupted through the Spanish), a Mahommedan religious power which founded the fifth Moorish dynasty in the 12th century, and conquered all northern Africa as far as Egypt, together with Moslem Spain. It originated with Mahommed ibn Tumart, a member of the Masmuda, a Berber tribe of the Atlas. Ibn Tumart was the son of a lamplighter in a mosque and had been noted for his piety from his youth; he was small, ugly, and misshapen and lived the life of a devotee-beggar. As a youth he performed the pilgrimage to Mecca, whence he was expelled on account of his severe strictures on the laxity of others, and thence wandered to Bagdad, where he attached himself to the school of the orthodox doctor al Ashari. But he made a system of his own by combining the teaching of his master with parts of the doctrines of others, and with mysticism imbibed from the great teacher Ghazali.
His main principle was a rigid unitarianism which denied the independent existence of the attributes of God, as being incompatible with his unity, and therefore a polytheistic idea. Mahommed in fact represented a revolt against the anthropomorphism of commonplace Mahommedan orthodoxy, but he was a rigid predestinarian and a strict observer of the law. After his return to Morocco at the age of twenty-eight, he began preaching and agitating, heading riotous attacks on wine-shops and on other manifestations of laxity. He even went so far as to assault the sister of the Murabti (Almoravide) amir'Ali III., in the streets of Fez, because she was going about unveiled after the manner of Berber women. 'Ali, who was very deferential to any exhibition of piety, allowed him to escape unpunished.
Ibn Tumart, who had been driven from several other towns for exhibitions of reforming zeal, now took refuge among his own people, the Masmuda, in the Atlas. It is highly probable that his influence would not have outlived him, if he had not found a lieutenant in 'Abd-el-Mumin el Kumi, another Berber, from Algeria, who was undoubtedly a soldier and statesman of a high order. When Ibn Tumart died in 1128 at the monastery or ribat which he had founded in the Atlas at Tinmal, after suffering a severe defeat by the Murabtis, 'Abd-el-Mumin kept his death secret for two years, till his own influence was established. He then came forward as the lieutenant of the Mahdi Ibn Tumart. Between 1130 and his death in 1163, 'Abd-el-Mumin not only rooted out the Murabtis, but extended his power over all northern Africa as far as Egypt, becoming amir of Morocco in 1149. Mahommedan Spain followed the fate of Africa, and in 1170 the Muwahhadis transferred their capital to Seville, a step followed by the founding of the great mosque, now superseded by the cathedral, the tower of which they erected in 1184 to mark the accession of Ya'kub el Mansur. From the time of Yusef II., however, they governed their co-religionists in Spain and Central North Africa through lieutenants, their dominions outside Morocco being treated as provinces. When their amirs crossed the Straits it was to lead a jehad against the Christians and to return fo their capital, Marrakesh.
The Muwahhadi princes had a longer and a more distinguished career than the Murabtis or "Almoravides" (q.v..) Yusef II. or "Abu Ya'kub" (1163-1184), and Ya'kub I. or "El Mansur" (1184-1199), the successors of Abd-el-Mumin, were both able men. They were fanatical, and their tyranny drove numbers of their Jewish and Christian subjects to take refuge in the growing Christian states of Portugal, Castile and Aragon. But in the end they became less fanatical than the Murabtis, and Ya'kub el Mansur was a highly accomplished man, who wrote a good Arabic style and who protected the philosopher Averroes. His title of El Mansur, "The Victorious," was earned by the defeat he inflicted on Alphonso VIII. of Castile at Alarcos in 1195. But the Christian states in Spain were becoming too well organized to be overrun by the Mahommedans, and the Muwahhadis made no permanent advance against them. In 1212 Mahommed III., "En-Nasir" (1199-1214), the successor of El Mansur, was utterly defeated by the allied five Christian princes of Spain, Navarre and Portugal, at Las Navas de Tolosa in the Sierra Morena. All the Moorish dominions in Spain were lost in the next few years, partly by the Christian conquest of Andalusia, and partly by the revolt of the Mahommedans of Granada, who put themselves under the protection of the Christian kings and became their vassals.
http://historymedren.about.com/od/aentries/a/11_almohades.htm
