Sanhaja

The Sanhaja were one of three great Berber confederations of the Maghreb, whose tribes fell into two worlds. In the western Sahara, veiled nomadic clans such as the Lamtuna roamed between the Draa and Niger, while others settled from the ninth century in the Middle Atlas, the Rif and oases around Sijilmasa, with related Kutama farther east.

The Kutama carried the Fatimids to power, and the Sanhaja Zirid dynasty ruled Ifriqiya until the twelfth century. In the mid-eleventh century the theologian Abdallah ibn Yasin united the desert Sanhaja in the Almoravid movement, which founded Marrakesh around 1070 under Yusuf ibn Tashfin, conquered the western Maghreb and al-Andalus and halted the Castilian advance at Sagrajas in 1086, before falling to the Almohads in 1147.

The settled Sanhaja of the Atlas and Tafilalt oases then passed under Zenata Marinid rule and were gradually Arabized. In the seventeenth century the Char Bouba war left the remaining nomadic Sanhaja subjects of Arab warrior castes.