Yusuf Ibn Tashfin - Succession To Power

Succession To Power

Yusuf ibn Tashfin emerged from a line of Berber military leaders. Abu Bakr ibn Umar, a natural leader of Lamtuna extraction, a branch of the Branès, one of the original disciples of ibn Yasin who served as a spiritual liaison for followers of the Maliki school of thought, was appointed general after the death of his brother Yahya ibn Ibrahim. His brother oversaw the military for ibn Yasin but was killed in a Saharan revolt in 1056. Ibn Yasin, too, would die in battle against the Barghawata three years later. Abu-Bakr was an able general, taking the fertile Sūs and its capital Aghmāt a year after his brother's death, and would go on to suppress numerous revolts in the Sahara, on one such occasion entrusting his pious cousin Yusuf with the stewardship of Sūs and thus the whole of his northern provinces. He appears to have handed him this authority in the interim but even went as far as to give Yusuf his wife, Zaynab an-Nafzawiyyat, purportedly the richest woman of Aghmāt. This sort of trust and favor on part of a seasoned veteran and savvy politician reflected the general esteem in which Yusuf was held, not to mention the power he attained as a military figure in his absence. Daunted by Yusuf's new-found power, Abu Bakr saw any attempts at recapturing his post politically unfeasible and returned to the fringes of the Sahara to settle the unrest of the southern frontier.