Abbadids (Banu Abbad)

The Abbadids, the Banu Abbad, were a dynasty of Arab stock who reigned for most of the 5th/11th century over the south-west of al-Andalus, with Seville as their capital. ² They arose when the caliphate of Cordova broke up and the country was divided among the petty kings known as the party kings, the muluk al-tawa'if. ²

The qadi of Seville, Abu al-Qasim Muhammad ibn Abbad, was proclaimed ruler in 414/1013. He was the son of a celebrated jurist of Lakhmid origin, Isma'il ibn Abbad. At first he recognised the nominal suzerainty of the Hammudid king Yahya ibn Ali, but soon dropped it. The article says little is known about the details of his reign, which was spent mostly settling disputes by arms with the Jahwarids of Cordova and the lesser lords of southern Andalusia, and that he died in 433/1042. ²

His son Abbad ibn Muhammad ruled for nearly thirty years, 433-460/1042-69, and enlarged the principality considerably by posing as champion of the Andalusian Arabs against the Berbers. ² Taking first the title of hajib and then the honorific al-Mu'tadid billah, he is described by the author as authoritarian, ambitious and cruel. ² He fought the Berber ruler of Carmona and extended his realm westward by defeating the lords of Mertola and Niebla. ³ A league of other party kings formed against him, and a long war with the Aftasid al-Muzaffar of Badajoz lasted until mediation bore fruit in 443/1051. ³ He annexed Huelva, Silves and Santa Maria de Algarve, and to justify these moves claimed to have found the caliph Hisham II, who had died in obscurity, a story the article calls a clumsy stratagem. ³ In 445/1053, it reports, he took Arcos, Moron and Ronda from small Berber chiefs, an act that provoked the Zirid Badis of Granada. ³ The article gives his death as 461/1069 in one passage and 460/1069 in another, and the museum keeps both. ^{2 3}

His son Muhammad, better known as al-Mu'tamid, succeeded him and took over a greatly enlarged kingdom. In the second year of his reign he annexed Cordova. Ibn Ukkasha seized the city by surprise in 468/1075 and killed al-Mu'tamid's son, the young governor, and al-Mu'tamid recovered it only in 471/1078. ³ The vizier Ibn Ammar negotiated a peaceful settlement with Castile in return for a double tribute. ³ Ibn Ammar later fell out with his master and was handed over to him and killed. ⁴

When Alfonso VI began to invest Toledo, the princes of Spain, with al-Mu'tamid at their head, asked the Almoravid sultan Yusuf ibn Tashufin for help. Yusuf crossed the Straits and won the battle of al-Zallaqa on 22 Rajab 479/23 October 1086. ⁴ Al-Mu'tamid had to appeal again in person, and Yusuf landed at Algeciras in 480/1088, but then, according to the article, resolved to continue the jihad in Spain on his own account and to dispossess the princes who had called him. ⁴

By the end of 1090 an Almoravid army had taken Tarifa, Cordova, Carmona and finally Seville, despite a heroic sortie by al-Mu'tamid. He was sent with his family to Tangier, then Meknes, then Aghmat near Marrakesh, and died there in 487/1095 aged fifty-five. ⁴ The author judges that, whatever the excesses and cruelty of its princes, the dynasty was the most brilliant of the taifas and the one under which arts and letters shone most brightly in eleventh-century Muslim Spain. ⁴