Almohads in the context of Mahdi

The Iberian Crusades were papally promoted wars, part of the Reconquista, fought against the Muslim states of the Iberian Peninsula within the wider Crusading movement from 1095 to 1492. The Muslim conquest of the peninsula was completed in the early 8th century, when the Christian Visigothic Kingdom fell, yet the small realm of Asturias endured in the north-west. From the 9th century, its southward expansion against al-Andalus (Muslim Spain) was portrayed in local chronicles as a divinely sanctioned war of recovery. This expansion, along with Frankish advance, gave rise to new Christian realms—Navarre, León, Aragon, Castile, Portugal, and Barcelona—in the north. After al-Andalus split into taifas (small states) in 1031, the Christian realms exploited Muslim disunity to further expansion. From the 1060s, the papacy occasionally supported campaigns against al-Andalus by granting spiritual rewards to participants.

As the Reconquista advanced, the taifa rulers sought aid from the fundamentalist Almoravids of North Africa, who halted the Christian expansion. Soon after proclaiming the First Crusade for the liberation of the Holy Land at the Council of Clermont in 1095, Pope Urban II extended the same spiritual privilege—remission of sins—to Iberian lords who took up arms against the Moors (Iberian Muslims). Peter I of Aragon was the first ruler, in 1100, to fulfil his crusading vow within the peninsula, and his example was soon followed by others. Leading crusading armies, Alfonso I of Aragon captured Zaragoza (1118), Afonso I of Portugal seized Lisbon (1147), and Ramon Berenguer IV of Barcelona took Tortosa (1148). The renewed Christian advance provoked another North African intervention, this time by the Almohads, who could only temporarily halt the Christian expansion. Occasionally, the Moors' Christian allies, such as Alfonso IX of León were also targeted by crusading campaigns. After crusader forces inflicted a decisive defeat on the Almohads at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, the Reconquista gained new momentum. Papal grants of crusade indulgence then supported James I of Aragon in the conquest of Mallorca (1231) and Valencia (1238), and Ferdinand III of Castile in the capture of Córdoba (1236) and Seville (1248), reducing al-Andalus to the Emirate of Granada by 1262.

The Emirate of Nekor or Şālihid Emirate (Arabic: إمارة بني صالح, romanized: ʾImārat Banī Ṣāliḥ) was an Arab emirate centered in the Rīf area of present-day Morocco. Its capital was initially located at Tamsāmān, and then moved to Nekor. The ruling dynasty was as of Himyarite Arab descent. The emirate was founded in 710 CE by Şālih ibn Mansūr through a Caliphate grant. Under his guidance, the local Berber (Amazigh) tribes adopted Islam, but later deposed him in favor of one Dāwūd al-Rundī (unlikely to have been a native of Ronda) from the Nafza tribe. They subsequently changed their mind and reappointed Şālih ibn Mansūr. His dynasty, the Banū Şālih, thereafter ruled the region until about 1015.

Several successive political entities controlled the Rīf In the period between the 8th and 14th centuries. The Emirate of Nekor, established at the beginning of the 8th century, ended with the destruction of its capital city Nekor in 1080. The area was integrated subsequently into the dominions of the Almoravids, and then those of the Almohads and the Marīnids.

The People of Monotheism may translate several Arabic terms:

• Ahl al-Tawḥīd (Arabic: أهل التوحيد), a name the Druze use for themselves. Literally, "The People of the Unity" or "The Unitarians", from tawḥid, unity (of God).
• al-Muwaḥḥidun (Arabic: الموحدون) is an Arabic term meaning "the monotheists". It has currency as:
  • the Arabic name of the Almohads.
  • the term used by the early followers of the 18th-century Arabian Muwahhidun movement of the reformer Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab to describe themselves
  • a term that adherents of Salafism use to describe themselves.
  • a term that the Druze use to describe themselves.
  • a term that the Alawites use to describe themselves.
• Ahl al-ʿAdl wa t-Tawḥīd, "The People of Justice and Monotheism", a term used by the Mu'tazilis to describe themselves.

Moorish architecture is a style within Islamic architecture that developed in the western Islamic world, including al-Andalus (the Iberian Peninsula) and what is now Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia (part of the Maghreb). Scholarly references on Islamic architecture often refer to this architectural tradition in terms such as architecture of the Islamic West or architecture of the Western Islamic lands.

This architectural tradition integrated influences from pre-Islamic Roman, Byzantine, and Visigothic architectures, from ongoing artistic currents in the Islamic Middle East, and from North African Berber traditions. Major centers of artistic development included the main capitals of the empires and Muslim states in the region's history, such as Córdoba, Kairouan, Fes, Marrakesh, Seville, Granada and Tlemcen. While Kairouan and Córdoba were some of the most important centers during the 8th to 10th centuries, a wider regional style was later synthesized and shared across the Maghreb and al-Andalus thanks to the empires of the Almoravids and the Almohads, which unified both regions for much of the 11th to 13th centuries. Within this wider region, a certain difference remained between architectural styles in the more easterly region of Ifriqiya (roughly present-day Tunisia) and a more specific style in the western Maghreb (present-day Morocco and western Algeria) and al-Andalus, sometimes referred to as Hispano-Moresque or Hispano-Maghrebi.

Abu Zakariya Yahya (Arabic: أبو زكريا يحيى بن حفص, Abu Zakariya Yahya I ben Abd al-Wahid (1203 – 1249) was the founder and first sultan of the Hafsid dynasty in Ifriqiya. He was the grandson of Abu Hafs Umar ibn Yahya al-Hintati, the leader of the Hintata and second in command of the Almohads after Abd al-Mu'min.

The Taifa of Valencia was a medieval Muslim kingdom which existed in and around Valencia, Spain. It gained independence from the Caliphate of Córdoba circa 1010 and became its own small kingdom, or Taifa, for most of the 11th century. It was absorbed by the Taifa of Toledo in 1065, which in turn fell to Alfonso VI of León and Castile in 1085. From 1094 to 1099, the kingdom was ruled directly by the Castilian military commander known as El Cid, then by his wife Jimena after his death, until being annexed by the Almoravids in 1102.

Following the collapse of Almoravid power, Valencia became independent again in 1145. From 1147 to 1172, it was under the control of Ibn Mardanish, after which it was annexed by the Almohads. When the Almohads retreated from al-Andalus, Valencia became independent once again from around 1229 to 1238 under the rule of Zayyan ibn Mardanish. It was finally conquered by the Crown of Aragon in 1238.

The Hammadid dynasty (Arabic: الحماديون, romanized: Al-Hāmmādiyūn, lit. 'children of Hammad'), also known as the Hammadid Emirate or the Kingdom of Bejaia, was a medieval Islamic kingdom in the central Maghreb, encompassing what is now Algeria. It was established at the beginning of the 11th century when Hammad ibn Buluggin declared himself emir, thus splitting the Zirid domains into two separate dynasties. Under the reign of Emir Al Nasir, the emirate briefly became the most important state in the Maghreb, and reached its greatest territorial extent, stretching from Tlemcen in the west to Tunis in the east, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the desert oasis of Ouargla and Oued Righ in the south. While they briefly controlled the principality of Fez in the west and cities like Sfax, Kairouan, Laribus, and Tripoli to the east.

At first, Hammad built a fortified city that would serve as the capital for his newly declared kingdom. Later, upon the arrival of the Arabic Banu Hilal tribes, the capital would be replaced by another city, newly built by Emir Al Nasir ibn Alnas, called Al-Nāsiriyyah (from Arabic: الناصرية) and later renamed to Bejaia; it was the official capital of the Emirate by 1090 during the rule of Al-Mansur. Both cities grew to become among the largest and most prosperous centers of the Maghreb, with Bejaia housing more than 100,000 inhabitants. The Hammadids subsequently clashed with the Almoravids in the west and their cousins the Zirids in the east. The latter weakened with the rise of the prominent Normans in Sicily, who also confronted the Hammadids for the domination of Ifriqiya (now Tunisia). However, the Hammadids faced another challenge on their western borders with the growing force of the Almohad Caliphate, and their emirate was finally annexed by the Almohads in 1152 after a brief clash with them.