ʿAli b. Yusuf b. Tashfin

Yusuf was born and bred of the desert. Even after leaving, he had kept, one might say cultivated, the customs that marked him as a pious desert nomad (or pastoralist) throughout his life. He wore simple garb and drank camel milk into his old age. Or this is at least how he was represented, in a way which appears genuine to his origins, values, and the customs of his people. It was also very close to an Islamic ideal: simple, austere, and pious, a person of the desert in the way that Muhammad’s aunt and uncle were remembered in the Islamic tradition. Yusuf’s character echoes that of the Prophet as well as that of ʿUmar al-Khattab, model ruler among the Rashidun (the first four caliphs). Yusuf’s son and successor, on the other hand, was born of another world entire. ʿAli b. Yusuf b. Tashfin was born in a palace, in a city by the sea, to an Iberian captive and concubine of Yusuf. The status of such a slave/concubine changed upon bearing a child to a legal status termed umm walad. And as mother of a regent, she could bear significant influence. The city where ʿAli grew up, Ceuta, was the Almoravids’ most important Maghribi port, through which all traffic to and from al-Andalus (and elsewhere in the Mediterranean) passed. The city had always been an important port with strong connections to al-Andalus and the western Mediterranean.