Talk:Berber Revolt

inappropriate template
this revolt occurred in the actual Maghreb and Spain, a History of the Maghreb template, should be more appropriate, since morroco is just a part of it — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dzlinker (talk • contribs) 13:29, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The template was added more than a year ago and the article remained stable, with many contributors editing it without removing or talking about the removal of this template.
 * You have then to discuss that before removing the template ; that is why I reverted your edit.
 * For my part, I see no reason to remove this template, we can even add another template under it, but as it is written, a major consequence of this revolt was the independence and the foundation on Morocco.
 * The discussion is open. :)
 * Omar-Toons (talk) 13:37, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
 * it's not a reason to keep it!
 * not a chance to add other templates, it'll encumber the text
 * why not creating a template:history of the maghreb, that'll be used for all events that've occurred in north west africa
 * Dzlinker (talk) 19:32, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Nor a reason to remove it :)
 * Omar-Toons (talk) 22:54, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
 * it's here since a year and it's not a reason to remove it!!
 * ok some day i'm going to make the berber history article with its template
 * i'll ask you for some help then ;)
 * it already exist in the french wiki, take a look here: fr:Histoire des Berbères
 * god bless google, it'll not be difficult
 * Dzlinker (talk) 00:51, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

I have to agree with Omar-Toons. Although I was the main writer of this article, I did not add that template, but it fits well enough here. The Berber Revolt was very important for Moroccan history, where it was successful, but it is a relative footnote for Spain and Ifriqiya, where it failed. Walrasiad (talk) 13:51, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
 * it was important for all berbers since it started the crash of arab invaders.
 * Dzlinker (talk) 19:32, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the tea. I needed that. :) It is quite important for Berber history, and perhaps a template should be made for that. However, a general Maghreb template may be too far-ranging. There's a lot to squeeze in tht box. That said, it is a matter of relative importance.  For Morocco, this revolt is of absolute importance, completely changing the direction of Moroccan history, indeed it was the event that separated Morocco's fate from the rest. But for the rest of the Maghreb, it wasn't a game-changer. The revolt was crushed there, the Arabs remained in control.  Morever, whatever impact it had in those regions was soon overshadowed by more tremendous events - the establishment of the Umayyad emirate in 754, the 758 Ibadite revolt and the establishment of the imamate of Tahert in the 770s, far more definitive moments for the histories of Spain, Tunisia and Algeria respectively, with very little connection with the Revolt of 740. Walrasiad (talk) 01:20, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I was bribing you :)
 * you seem Incorruptible :(
 * but i'm convinced.
 * --Dzlinker (talk) 15:41, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Later years
Seems like there's a little edit war going over this section, as well as the battle template. Since nobody is taking it to the talk page, might as well open the discussion myself.

This page was written narrowly about the Berber Revolt of 740. This revolt ended in 743. The end result was the independence of what is largely Morocco (+ Tlemcen). The rest of the Maghreb - most of what is now Algeria, Tunisia and Libya - remained under Arab rule for longer.

Now, yes, there were more Berber revolts in the second half of the century, most notably the Berber revolt of 757-58. But that revolt was unrelated to this one. It had a different center, beginning from the Naufusa Berbers of Tripoli, and was principally inspired by a different religious sect (Ibadites). Moreover, it was not against the Umayyad governors but against the local Fihrid dynasty. Now, the 758 revolt is a very interesting story, but it is also very long, and (IMO) deserves an article of its own rather than being squeezed here as an appendix or footnote to the 740-43 revolt.

I had planned to set up other pages for the post-743 breakdown of the rump Ifriqiyan state - relating to the Fihrid empire of 745-58, the independence of al-Andalus in 756, the "second revolt" (Warfajuma, Nafusa) of 757-58, the 760-61 Abbasid invasion, the Hafsid coup of 767, the "third revolt" (siege of Kairouan) of 768, Abbasid extermination campaign of 771-72, the capture of Tlemcen, the erection of Tahert, the migration of the Midrarids to Sijilmassa, the Idrisids to Fez and (taking it down to the end), the foundation of the Aghlabid emirate in 800 and its strange modus vivendi with Tahert & Nafusa, finally producing a new "equilibrium" in the Maghreb. So lots of stuff evidently happened in the half-century after 743 that may, by a stretch, be connected by a very long string to the 740-43 revolt, but really ought not to be squeezed here as a direct "outcome" of it. There are plenty of stories that need to be told in between, deserving their own detailed pages.

I had composed separate articles on these events, unfortunately, because of a little computer accident, I lost most of what I had written. I am happy enough to recreate a brief summary here, but this should really not be the main page for these post-743 events. This article should be narrowly about the Berber Revolt of 740-43.

I admit, the end of this page ("Later years") is left rather hanging. I had hoped to complete it with a postscript relating to the break up of the original Berber confederation of the western Maghreb (Berghwata, Abu Qorra, etc.), that was indeed a direct outcome of the original 740-43 revolt (although most of the details I had collected for this too are now also lost to the cyber-ether :, and leave the longer-term matters, particularly those matters that are more directly related to the wholly new 758 Tripolitana rising, in an article dedicated to it.

So let me reverse this for now and restore the battle template for 740-43, which is really what this article is about.

BTW, Omar-Toons, that is a really nice map for the "new equilibrium" of 800, but it is missing Nafusa (southwest of Tripoli) as an independent Kharijite state. It was connected to Tahert and was an important part of the new configuration. What is really needed fort this article is a pre-revolt map of "Great Ifriqiya" c.740, with the main cities and a rough localization of the main Berber tribes. I attempted a rough sketch of one a while ago, but it was rather ugly and I was afraid some tribes were anachronistically located. If you can make a better picture... Walrasiad (talk) 22:33, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Hello,
 * First, thanks for your intervention.
 * I made my map basing on Larousse's Atlas Historique, and they often describe these areas (Tripolitania, Gafsa, Djerid...) as "îlots kharidjites" (that can be translated by "kharidjite islands" or more closely "kharidjite blocks"), but not as independent states. Is there some references describing them as "states"? Or are they some kind of "organized tribe-ruled land"?
 * Regards,
 * --Omar-toons (talk) 02:35, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, I guess its a judgment call on islets vs. states. After all, Sijilmassa could be classified as a mere Kharijite "islet" too. Nafusa mountains were the Ibadite core center until the Abbasid invasion of the 760s, when the Ibadite leadership shifted to Tahert. Nafusa remained a independent Ibadite republic, much like Tahert was (only smaller, poorer and more isolated), and, from 772, was notionally subject to Tahert (with which it communicated via the hinterlands). It has some importance as an Aghlabid-tolerated buffer state against Egypt and a check on the Aghlabid hand against Tahert (by its strategic position - Nafusa could take Tripoli any day of the week, or at least split Tripolitana away from Ifriqiya, if so inclined.)  Taken together, Tahert and Nafusa are twin Ibadite pillars that "contained" the Aghlabids and helped maintain equilibrium in the Maghreb through the 9th C.  It is admittedly small, and certainly an "islet", but I wouldn't necessarily ignore islets in coloring maps for this period. They may be peaceful/pacified, but are independent enough and do play a role. But on the other point: does your Larousse happen to have a suitable c.740 map to help illustrate this article? Walrasiad (talk) 03:28, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Hello Walrasiad, I can share a pics of "Larousse's Atlas Historique", and this map is wrong :
 * 1) Map of the central Maghreb, The Idrissides control juste a city of Tlemcen, not all North-West of Algeria
 * 2) On page 224, there is no map of Aghalibids or Idrissids, but a map of the arab conquest of Ifriqiya.--Waran18 (talk) 10:13, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Yeah, I was wondering why Tahert was drawn to the coast. I know they had commercial access to Oran and other ports, but I always thought their domains were landlocked. The kind of map I was hoping for 740 was something like this, which covers the range of wilayat of Kairouan in the grandest sense (Maghreb + Spain). I made this myself a long time ago as a reference map, but it is obviously very ugly - I wanted to include towns, highlands, rivers, valleys and Berber tribes, but it is very cluttered. It is also not reliable, as I was basing myself mostly on written texts, and not a professionally-drawn map. I was hoping someone had a map of 740, or simply better map-making skills, to produce something on this range, showing the approximate locations of the major elements mentioned in the article, would be a very helpful illustration. Among the towns, Kairouan as grand capital, regional capitals (Tripoli, Tangier, Cordoba) and the other towns mentioned in the article (note: some towns don't exist, e.g. Tamesna, Nafzawa are regions not towns, and the towns in parenthesis, e.g. Tahert, Sijilmasssa, Nakur, Ouargla, etc. did not yet exist at the time). The Berber tribes are only approximate and I am rather wary of them since I based their locations and affiliations on the descriptions in Ibn Khaldoun and some other chronicles - even though (as we know) there were significant population shifts and some of the tribes only migrated west later in the 760s or after (e.g. Ifran should probably really be in Aures) and some locations and affiliations are disputable. But even if approximate and dubious, it would be better than having no illustration at all. Walrasiad (talk) 14:11, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Waran18, did you read the note to the right of the map p.224? I don't think so...
 * About the Idrisid realm, I agree that they had effective control on the Tlemcen area, but the Larousse reports that it extended to the Chelif valley under Idris II and quoting Rachid Benblal's "Histoire des Idrissides, 172-337 (788-948)", p.163 description of the Idrisid realm after the death of Idris II "Les fils d'Idris, fils de Mohammed ibn Soleiman, gardèrent Tlemcen, ceux d'Eica ibn Mohammed se fixèrent à Archghoul et la famille d'Ibrahim ibn Mohammed eut le gouvernement de Tenés ". That's why I extended their realm on the map, approximately, to the Ténès area.
 * But, it not false that the Idrisids lost these territories after the death of Idris II, so should I make this area striped on the map, as I did for Salé?
 * About the Rustamid realm, many Algerian historians insist on the fact that they had some control over the coast, and this is the reason of my April 18th 17:59 edition on Commons, but I can still revert it depending on the consensus.
 * --Omar-toons (talk) 16:59, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, "Les fils d'Idris, fils de Mohammed ibn Soleiman, gardèrent Tlemcen, ceux d'Eica ibn Mohammed se fixèrent à Archghoul et la famille d'Ibrahim ibn Mohammed eut le gouvernement de Tenés , his grand son found a new state who control cities, not the Berber tribes, it is not the Idrissid kingdom, and in the original map, we see just the city of Tlemcen in the territory of Idrissids .--Waran18 (talk) 19:35, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Seems that you didn't understand that the paragraph is about how the realm was divided after the death of Idris II. No prob', now you know it :)
 * --Omar-toons (talk) 07:34, 21 April 2013 (UTC)


 * WE HAVE TWO PERSONS IDRIS AND SOLEIMAN, are brothers!!!!!--Calise (talk) 06:03, 16 August 2013 (UTC)