Masmuda

The Masmuda, one of three great Berber confederations of the Maghreb with the Sanhaja and Zenata, settled chiefly across Morocco's plains, coasts and mountains, with groups crossing into al-Andalus. Unlike the nomadic Sanhaja, they were mostly sedentary farmers, and their aristocracy was based at Aghmat in the High Atlas.

From the tenth century they lost ground to Sanhaja, Zenata and, later, Arab Bedouin tribes such as the Banu Hilal. Their peak came when Ibn Tumart, a Masmuda, united their tribes around 1121, was recognized as the Mahdi and built the base of Tinmel; his Almohad movement, completed by Abd al-Mu'min, overthrew the Almoravids at Marrakesh in 1147 and grew into a caliphate over the Maghreb and Muslim Spain.

When the last Almohad caliph was killed at Marrakesh in 1269 and the Marinids took the city, the confederation lost its political role. By the sixteenth century Arab tribes held most of its former lowlands, the Masmuda confined to mountains from the Rif to the Sous, ancestors of the Shilha Berbers.