Battle of Tabfarilla
The Battle of Tabfarilla was a military conflict between the Almoravids and the Berber tribe of the Judala . It took place in the spring of 1056 (March 21 to April 19) in Tabfarilla near Azougui in the center of Mauritania (in the Islamic calendar year 448 after the Hijra). It ended in a defeat for the Almoravids.
prehistory
In 1053 the Almoravids, under the command of their first emir Yahya ibn Umar from the tribe of the Lamtuna, had conquered the trading town of Sidschilmasa , which was ruled by the Zanata ( Magrawa ) and located in the Tafilalt of Morocco, with heavy losses. The following year, they turned south and took the other end of the trans-Saharan route located Aoudaghost one whose governors were also Zanata, but in the service of the empire of Ghana stood. Since the rule over Sidschilmasa was lost again after a short time, the desert warriors of the Almoravids had to turn north again. This was opposed to the tribe of the Judala, they began to mutiny and terminated the fighting alliance. Yahya ibn Umar was therefore forced to split his forces in two. He sent his brother Abu Bakr ibn Umar to Sidschilmasa to keep the city in check. He himself wanted to advance in the direction of the Mauritanian Atlantic coast, the tribal area of the Judala, in order to draw them back into the combat league, if necessary by force.
battle
When Yahya ibn Umar that of his brother ibn Yannu Umar built fortress Ardschi (or Arji ) or Azougui in Adrar Mauritania reached, he started on his own strength to doubt and therefore sent a request for help to the allied Islamized King Was Jabi of Takrur in Senegal . It is unclear whether his aid contingent, led by his son Labi, arrived in Azougui on time, because the Judala had meanwhile taken the initiative with around 30,000 warriors. They besieged Yahya's army and forced a decisive battle on him in nearby Tabfarilla . The battle in which Yahya was killed ended in a terrible debacle for the Almoravids. Unfortunately, details about troop strengths, the exact course of the battle and the exact location of the battlefield are not known.
Aftermath
Despite this terrible defeat, Abu Bakr ibn Umar, who had been proclaimed the second emir of the Almoravids by Abdullah ibn Yasin after the lost battle, succeeded in re-conquering Sidjilmassa, driving out the Zanata and finally taking all of Morocco under his influence in the 1070s bring.
literature
- Humphrey Fischer: The Western and Central Sudan and East Africa . In: The Cambridge History of Islam . volume 2. Cambridge University Press, 1970, ISBN 0-521-07601-3 .