French
DeutschEmirate of Nekor
Emirate of Nekor إمارة بني صالح | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 710–1019 | |||||||||
.gif) The Emirate of Nekor (yellow) at the time of the Idrisid dynasty. | |||||||||
| Status | Client state of the Umayyad Caliphate (710–750) | ||||||||
| Capital | Temsaman (710–760) Nekor (760–1019) | ||||||||
| Common languages | Arabic Berber | ||||||||
| Religion | Islam | ||||||||
| Government | Monarchy | ||||||||
| Emir | |||||||||
• 710–749 | Salih I ibn Mansur | ||||||||
• 947–970 | Jurthum ibn Ahmad | ||||||||
| Historical era | Middle Ages | ||||||||
• Established | 710 | ||||||||
• Disestablished | 1019 | ||||||||
| |||||||||
| History of Morocco |
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| Historical Arab states and dynasties |
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The Emirate of Nekor or Salihid Emirate (Arabic: إمارة بني صالح, romanized: ʾImārat Banī Ṣāliḥ) was an Arab emirate centered in the Rif area of present-day Morocco. Its capital was initially located at Temsaman, and then moved to Nekor. The ruling dynasty presented itself as of Himyarite Arab descent.[1] The emirate was founded in 710 CE by Salih I ibn Mansur through a Caliphate grant. Under his guidance, the local Berber (Amazigh) tribes adopted Islam, but later deposed him in favor of one az-Zaydi from the Nafza tribe. They subsequently changed their mind and reappointed Ibn Mansur. His dynasty, the Banū Sālih, thereafter ruled the region until 1019.
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 Merinids.[2]
The Emirate of Nekor (or Nakūr) was the first autonomous state in the Maghreb and the only one that adhered to Sunni Islam exclusively. Not much is known about the town of Nekor's archaeology outside the field survey and minor excavations conducted in the 1980s. The town has what may have been a mosque, a possible hammam, or public bathhouse, and two substantial walls. Ceramics excavated there include local productions and others that show its connections with Ifrīqya and al-Andalus.[3]
History
[edit]The Arab conquest of North Africa began in 648, bringing Islam, thereafter the predominant religion of the region. Uqba ibn Nāfi (662–683) was the leader of the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb. When his troops attacked local mountain Berber tribes, Arab reinforcements appeared in the Rīf to join them. One of these groups was led by a Yemeni Arab called Salih ibn Mansur al-Himyari, who founded the Banū Sālih dynasty in 710, ruling until 749. The Salih family founded the Emirate of Nekor and ruled it for more than three hundred years. Located beside the river Nekor, east of al-Hoceima, it prospered through trade and commerce.[4]
The Madinat al-Nakur was founded in the early 8th century. It was situated on the banks of the river Nekor in an alluvial valley of the Rīf Mountains, 25 km inland from the Mediterranean coast. Under Indrisid rule it controlled productive agricultural territory that reached the coastal plain near modern-day al-Hoceima. The city flourished as it was on established trade routes and served as an entrepôt for goods shipped from Fes and Sijilmāsa in the south of the Rīf[5]
In 859, a major long-distance Viking expedition set out for Spain. They tried to land at Galicia and were driven off. Then they sailed down the west coast of the peninsula and burned the mosque at Seville, but were repelled by a large Muslim force there before entering the Mediterranean through the Straits of Gibraltar and burning the mosque at al-Jazīrah (Algeciras), following which they headed south to Nekor, plundered the city for eight days,[6] and defeated a Muslim force that attempted to stop them.[7]
Nekor had many markets and shops, as well as baths, a main mosque, and an oratory (muṣallā[8]). According to the historian Ahmed Tahiri it contains the oldest urban structure dating from the medieval period in the west of the Maghreb, built with the earliest Islamic construction methods. He considers the Viking invasion of 859 (Tahiri says 858) and the sacking of Nekor as a demarcation line in its urban evolution, and that afterwards, urban and rural architecture in the area became more defensive in orientation. The rivalry between the Fäţimid and the Umayyad Caliphates spurred the development of a new architectural layout in the city.[9]
Fäţimid troops sacked the city twice, in 917 and in 934. According to J.D. Latham, 'Abd al-Rahman III, the Umayyad Caliph of Qurṭuba (Córdoba), had observed with growing concern the increasing prestige and power of the Fäţimids in the Rīf, this region perilously close to al-Andalus. In 927 he began his policy of defensive expansion by occupying Malīlya (Melilla) and by 928-929, he opened negotiations with the Idrīsids. In retaliation Mūsā ibn Abi'l-Afiya attacked and vanquished the Umayyad's vassal, al-Mu'ayyad, the Şāliņid ruler of Nakūr, situated between Malīlya (Melilla) and Tiṭwān (Tetuan). The troops of Mūsā, a Berber chieftain of the Miknasa tribe [10] besieged, sacked, and burned Nekor in 931.[10] With a fleet of forty vessels, the Umayyads launched a naval assault from Ceuta against Nekor and its port, al-Mazamma, and attacked Nekor, devastating the city which was garrisoned by three thousand men.[9]
The relationship between the ruling family of the Salihid (Şāliņid) Emirate of Nekor and the local Berber tribal structure made it a predominantly Berber state, one aligned with the Umayyads of al-Andalus. The Umayyad Caliph al-Walid I had obtained the territory through iqṭāʿ, the Isamic practice of tax farming. Their bond was strengthened by the fact that the Emirate of Nekor professed the same Islamic creed as the Umayyads, that of the Maliki school.[11]
According to the Arab Andalusi geographer al-Bakrī, several ports of the Moroccan Rīf in the Emirate of Nekor – including Badia, Buquya, and Bālish,[12] the port of the Ṣanhāja (Aẓnag) Berber confederation – were controlled by Berber tribes. These coastal communities developed with mixed populations of Berber, Arab, and Andalusi (converted or Mozarab) descent. The Berbers were taxed by the Şāliņid emirs, and paid their taxes with the income they earned by exploiting marine resources on the coast and consequently controlling its maritime activity.[13]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Picard, Christophe (2018). Sea of the Caliphs. Harvard University Press. p. 247. ISBN 978-0-674-66046-5.
- ^ Coletti, Caterina Maria (1 November 2018). "Risultati e aspetti problematici della ricerca archeologica a Melilla e nel Rif (Marocco settentrionale)". Antiquités africaines. L’Afrique du Nord de la protohistoire à la conquête arabe (in Italian) (54): 37. doi:10.4000/antafr.966.
- ^ Anderson, Glaire D.; Fenwick, Corisande; Rosser-Owen, Mariam (2017). "Introduction". In Anderson, Glaire D.; Fenwick, Corisande; Rosser-Owen, Mariam (eds.). The Aghlabids and their Neighbors: Art and Material Culture in Ninth-Century North Africa. BRILL. p. 27. ISBN 978-90-04-35604-7.
- ^ Cucco, Stefan Festini (2025). Rifian Society, Culture and Politics in Mediterranean Morocco. pp. 24–25.
- ^ Trakadas, Athena (2009). "Early Islamic ports of Morocco: location and economical considerations". In Christides, V.; Monferrer-Sala, J.P.; Papadopoulos, Th. (eds.). East and West. Essays on Byzantine and Arab Worlds in the Middle Ages. Gorgias Press. pp. 159–162.
- ^ García Losquiño, Irene (2023). "Vikings in the Spanish Mediterranean: Measuring Impact Through Local Responses" (PDF). In Price, Neil; Eriksen, Marianne Hem; Jahnke, Carsten (eds.). Vikings in the Mediterranean: Proceedings of an International Conference co-organized by the Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish Institutes at Athens, 27-30 November 2019. Athens: Norwegian Institute at Athens. p. 70. ISBN 978-618-85360-4-3.
- ^ Price, Neil (2008). "Spain, North Africa and the Mediterranean". In Brink, Stefan; Price, Neil (eds.). The Viking World. Routledge. pp. 465–466. ISBN 978-1-134-31826-1.
- ^ Hillenbrand, R. (1993). Bosworth, C.E.; Van Donzel, E.; Heinrichs, W.P.; Pellat, C.H. (eds.). Encyclopedia of Islam. Vol. VII. pp. 658–659.
- ^ a b Tahiri, Ahmed (2002). "Proceso de urbanización en el Rif: situación actual y perspectivas de investigación (Siglos VIII-X)". II Congreso Internacional La Ciudad en al-Andalus y el Magreb (in Spanish). Fundación El legado andalusì. pp. 46–47. ISBN 978-84-932051-7-1.
- ^ a b Latham, J.D. (1993). "Musa b. Abi'l-Afiya". In Bosworth, C.E.; Van Donzel, E.; Heinrichs, W.P.; Pellat, C.H. (eds.). Encyclopedia of Islam. Vol. VII. pp. 641–642.
- ^ Cressier, Patrice (2017). "Nakur: un émirat rifain pro-omeyyade contemporain des Aghlabides". In Anderson, Glaire D.; Fenwick, Corisande; Rosser-Owen, Mariam (eds.). The Aghlabids and their Neighbors: Art and Material Culture in Ninth-Century North Africa. BRILL. p. 502. ISBN 978-90-04-35604-7.
- ^ Huici Miranda, A. (1986). "Bālish". Encyclopaedia of Islam (2 ed.). BRILL. p. 997. ISBN 90-04-08114-3.
- ^ Picard, Christophe (2018). Sea of the Caliphs: The Mediterranean in the Medieval Islamic World. Harvard University Press. p. 166. ISBN 978-0-674-66046-5.