30 chapter one
and they satisfied their desires for wealth by pillaging travelers (ibtighā’ahum
al- rizq min taḥayyuf al- sābila) and by the ends of the spears ( fī ẓill al- rimāḥ al-
mushra‘a). They made war with other tribes, fought against other nations and
states, and had victorious battles over kings, of which little is known.... During
these ancient periods (al- aḥqāb al- qadīm), no king of this generation of Zanāta
encouraged men of letters (ahl al- kitāb) to record events or write history (taqyīd
ayyāmihim wa- tadwīn akhbārihim).^82
While this stylized description emphasizes the military prowess of
these new tribes, reflecting his basic typology, Ibn Khaldūn’s image of
the Berbers as marauding nomads, innocent of civilization (what he calls
‘umrān ḥaḍārī) in fact fits poorly with the story he tells.^83 In the period
before the Almohad collapse, the ‘Abd al- Wādids had already estab-
lished an alliance with the Almohad Caliphs; their foundation of a king-
dom at Tlemcen (Tilimsān) reflected only one of many ways their rule
developed out of Almoravid and Almohad models.^84 For their part, the
Marīnids, based in Fez (Fās), employed religious ideals to their advantage
by establishing alliances with religious leaders in urban centers, building
madrasas, and establishing a messianic mission through jihād.^85 In other
words, these redoubtable Zanāta tribes of the “second wave” were canny
and well suited to take advantage of the religious and political situation
of the Maghrib and the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the thirteenth
century.
The appearance of these new Zanāta kingdoms reminds us that in the
decades preceding 1284 — the year when the jenets begin to appear in the
records of the Crown of Aragon in large numbers — the political order of
North Africa shifted dramatically (map 4 ). From the wreck of the Almohad
Empire, three new successors — the Ḥafṣids (an offshoot of the Almohads)
at Tunis, the ‘Abd al- Wādids at Tlemcen, and Marīnids at Fez — emerged,
effecting a profound shift in the political and commercial landscape of the
western Mediterranean. The Ḥafṣids declared themselves independent in
1229 , and the ‘Abd al- Wādids in 1239. The Marīnids dealt the final blows,
conquering Marrakesh (Marrākush) in 1269 and Tinmallal, the sacred cen-
ter of the Almohads in the Atlas Mountains, seven years later. While only
the latter two were Zanāta, all three employed Zanāta cavalrymen, which
is to say, all or any of the three could have been the source of the Muslim
soldiers called jenets.^86
The rivalry between these three states produced a complex array of dip-
lomatic arrangements with Christian Iberian kings. For instance, despite
