The Berber Kingdom of Morocco Lost Kingdoms of Africa

The Sahara Desert - one of the harshest climates in the world.

A huge expanse of unforgiving rock,

scrub and sand the size of Europe.

To me, it looks like a place of nothingness,

but it was from here that a group of desert nomads

came to transform the north-west corner of Africa

into a vast empire that stretched from the Sahara to Spain.

What started with one man's mission

grew into a kingdom which lasted for centuries.

Its rulers generated tremendous wealth,

created great architecture,

and promoted sophisticated ideas in an ordered society.

They were called the Berber

and they changed this part of Africa for ever.

We know less about Africa's past than almost anywhere else on Earth,

but the scarcity of written records doesn't mean Africa lacks history.

It's found in artefacts, culture, and the traditions of the people.

In this series, I'm exploring some of the richest

and most vibrant histories in the world.

I'm here in Morocco to explore how a small collection of Berber nomads

created a vast kingdom out of nothing,

and how the very forces that created that kingdom

ultimately helped to destroy it.

21st-century Morocco - a modern Islamic state

whose Arab king claims descent from the prophet Muhammad.

He rules over a country with a culture and history

as diverse as its landscape.

Morocco has coasts that face the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea,

snow-covered mountains almost as high as the Alps,

and the bone-dry fringes of the Sahara Desert.

The dominant languages spoken here now are from Arabia and Europe,

but nearly half the population still speak Berber -

the language of the indigenous Africans.

1,000 years ago, this was their land,

but there was no sense of a nation state.

Instead, on either side of the Atlas Mountains,

lived small independent Berber clans of farmers, traders and nomads.

These people were Muslim...

..but they maintained their traditional Berber customs,

and they didn't always follow Islam to the letter of the law.

But, in the mid-11th century, one man changed everything.

A Berber who had studied the Koran,

and had become a charismatic, fiery preacher.

Idealistic and uncompromising,

he had a clear mission to change his fellow Berbers into proper Muslims,

schooled in the strict fundamentals of their religion.

His name was Abdallah Ibn Yasin,

and his travels to Islamic centres of learning

left him a student of a legalistic interpretation of the Koran.

He started his mission in the western Sahara

where he pulled together an alliance of tribes

and appointed himself as spiritual leader.

In so doing,

he started a series of events that transformed North-West Africa.

In the year 1054, he led an army of thousands of nomads

and headed for Sijilmasa, a trading post on the edge of the Sahara,

and one of the most important cities in Africa.

Ibn Yasin and his followers were called "Almoravids"

from a phrase meaning "Those bound together in the cause of God".

They were determined to bind everyone to the cause.

They had one simple mission - jihad.

The term "jihad" today carries connotations for many people

of anti-Western extremism.

But Ibn Yasin's holy war,

his struggle to uphold a true understanding of Islam,

was aimed at his fellow Muslim Berbers.

This spectacular ruin is now all that's left of Sijilmasa -

a city of well over 50,000 people -

built in the middle of one of the biggest oases in Africa.

Now a quiet and tranquil backwater,

the date palms and irrigated fields hide clues

to a much bigger and more significant past.

And it's on a shingle bank at the heart of the oasis

where the ruins of the mud-built city lie.

The taking of Sijilmasa would be the first major building block

of an Almoravid kingdom.

What attracted Ibn Yasin here?

The wealth of the city. This city was very prosperous.

In fact, it was the commercial hub of Morocco.

A huge city in a huge oasis.

Doctor Eric Ross has been involved

in some of the recent archaeological studies here

that confirmed why this was such an important prize for Ibn Yasin.

I call it the Casablanca of 1,000 years ago

because Morocco wasn't looking to Europe or the Atlantic -

it was looking across the Sahara.

The Sahara was wide open to trade.

So there were goods coming from all over the region

-they were being traded and exchanged here?

-Yes.

What sorts of things are being traded here?

Cloth, manuscripts and books. Horses also.

Most important was the gold, trading mostly south across the Sahara -

places like Mali and Senegal today were producing especially gold,

so gold was the main part of the wealth of the city.

We know gold coins were minted here.

They were stamped here and exported,

and mostly they were exported eastward

to Egypt, Iraq, Central Asia,

and they ended up in places like India.

Wow! So, they're trading tendrils?

They'd stretch all the way from West Africa as far as South Asia?

Yes, absolutely.

It's a trading powerhouse.

Yes, it is, and the envy of empires across the continent.

They all tried to take it,

and the Almoravid succeeded in doing that.

Once they had Sijilmasa under their control,

the Almoravids set about securing the source of the city's gold trade.

They crossed 1,000 miles back to the opposite side of the Sahara

and seized the trading town of Awdaghust.

By controlling the supply of gold across the desert,

they had a virtual monopoly on this most lucrative of trades.

With a considerably strengthened army of weapons and camels

taken from Sijilmasa,

the Almoravids now had what they needed

to carry their jihad beyond the Sahara.

But they couldn't have done any of this

without another important resource - the key to life itself.

Water sustains everything in this harsh climate,

and the Berbers had the know-how to find and move it under the desert.

These are "khettara".

They're part of an ancient Berber irrigation system.

And you see these mounds stretching out across this landscape -

what you see on the surface belies a very complex network of tunnels

that sit underneath the ground,

funnelling the water across this landscape,

because water was such a rare resource.

These access shafts are all that you see

of the gently sloping tunnel system

that taps into the underground water table.

These systems could take water for miles

in this very arid, dry, hot landscape,

and to take it where it was needed,

and it just says how the Berber understood this landscape,

how they worked with it,

how they used the small resources that they had to their advantage.

With a powerful army, money and the rallying call of Islam,

Ibn Yasin now had the potential to create a Berber nation.

The Almoravids' jihad had an unstoppable momentum,

but now they wanted to take their brand of Islam to every Berber,

and that meant crossing the Atlas Mountains.

The high Atlas Mountains rise to over 13,500 feet,

and they form a natural divide between the desert

and the more fertile and populous lands on the other side.

But these were dangerous times,

and this was a perilous area to be travelling through.

1,000 years ago,

these valleys would have carried one of the main trade routes

through the mountains, and that made it attractive to thieves.

Ibn Yasin and his men were in bandit country.

This is called "The Road of 1,000 Kasbahs",

and kasbahs are these fortified houses

that were once owned and used by Berber merchants.

These buildings would have often been used

to house things like gold and silks

that came across the desert,

and they had to be fortified because this was a dangerous territory.

These are beautiful buildings,

but their fortification give a sense of what it was like in those days.

The Almoravid army traversed this hostile environment

with 400 horsemen, 800 cameleers and 2,000 foot soldiers.

It was a treacherous journey in an alien landscape.

1,000 years ago, when Ibn Yasin and his army

came up these passes to cross these mountains,

they were entering completely new territory.

They were desert warriors, and these mountains and everything beyond

was a completely different environment to them.

But they had a clear goal.

To the north-west of the mountains lived the tribes of Berbers

that the Almoravids considered to be heretics.

In 1058, the first people to feel the force of Ibn Yasin's army

were the rulers of Aghmat -

a small city nestling in a lush valley north of the mountains.

Aghmat became the new headquarters

for where the army took their jihad to the tribes nearby.

It's been difficult for historians to uncover what life was like

in Aghmat at the time for one simple reason.

No-one knew where ancient Aghmat was.

It was thought to be a lost city,

but actually it was right here beneath our feet.

The dig has revealed only a small portion of the city so far,

but this hamam, or bath-house,

is one of the most substantial and important finds.

These remains illustrate the scale of the settlement here,

and show just how expertly they understood how to use water

as a foundation of civic society.

Abdullah Fille has been slowly unearthing the remains

of the buildings here since the dig first started.

Remarkably, this entire building, which dates

from the time of the Almoravids more than 1,000 years ago,

was excavated almost intact.

This is absolutely amazing.

I'm used to seeing their earth-built buildings but to see this kind

of stone and mortar construction, but also the water engineering.

This is real innovation - so exciting.

'There was hot and cold running water.

'The temperature of the three rooms increased the nearer they were

'to the huge fires that heated the water as it came into the hamam.

'This was civilised living.'

These were a people who came from the desert,

for whom water was a precious resource.

This is more than a bath-house.

This is a temple to water - and what a place.

'The Almoravids were beginning to appreciate city life,

'but there was a problem.

'For desert nomads this city was just in the wrong place.

'Surrounded by mountains and hills on three sides,

'Aghmat was not in a good defensive position.

'As people most suited to fighting in the open

'it made them feel vulnerable.'

After a little more than a decade the Almoravids looked for a new home.

A new base from where they could expand,

and take on even more territory and infidels.

'The Almoravids had the desert in their DNA,

'and they chose a flat dry open piece of land around 20 miles

'from the foothills of the Atlas Mountains.

'They pitched their tents

'and named their city after the Berber words for "Land of God".

'It was called Marrakech.'

The founding of Marrakech in 1070 represents a point

where the loose band of marauding jihadists

become an imperial force to be reckoned with.

'What began as a collection of tents rapidly became an established city.

'The Berbers who settled here were offered security

'in return for their taxes, and that paid for

'the further expansion of the Almoravids territory.

'The movement seemed unstoppable, even when Ibn Yasin died

'while fighting Berber heretics.

'The holy enterprise continued unabated.'

After the death of the fiery preacher Ibn Yasin

a new man took charge of the jihad.

His name was Yusuf Ibn Tashfin,

and he made a greater contribution to the dynasty than any other man.

He turned a fledgling kingdom into an empire.

'While Ibn Yasin had been the spiritual leader who'd

'inspired the Almoravid movement and led it out of the desert,

'Ibn Tashfin would take the dynasty even further.

'He began with Marrakech.

'Khettara were dug to supply water to the growing population

'and walls were built to surround it.'

The street where we are, it was made at this time and especially

the walls we will see, the walls were made at this time.

'Former Minister of Education, Professor Mohamed Kinidiry,

'knows Ibn Tashfin's city well.'

What sort of man was Ibn Tashfin? What was he like?

Ibn Tashfin was a very high man, very courageous

and a beautiful, handsome man.

-Handsome.

-Yes, handsome,

and especially, he was very curious and very,

very strong man, and had a big personality.

And how did he change Marrakech?

He said that, "Here, we'll have a palace. Here, we'll have commerce.

"Here, we'll have an administration," and he make a very good plan,

and he began to make construction of that to realise.

Really? So, he built these streets?

The street was made at this time just like as you see it now,

with the commerce and the sellers of everything for the table,

and also spices with colour, smells,

and many smells, many colours,

it was like that since long time, since the 11th century.

So, wandering round here,

you still get a flavour of the days of Ibn Tashfin?

Yes, of course.

'The walls that Ibn Tashfin commissioned

'have been rebuilt many times, but one of his original gates,

'the Bab Doukkalaa, still stands.'

It's huge, but it's remarkably simple.

The architecture of the Almoravid is very simple.

The Almoravid came from the Sahara and they were Muslims

and they had the of Islam which is that you have harmony,

you have beauty but simplicity.

I love that. The idea of harmony, of beauty, of simplicity.

All of those things together in this gate,

and every time you pass through here you're going to remember that,

and for those people that felt part of this community,

they were tied together by that simple, beautiful philosophy.

And I think it is the philosophy of life.

But it's something which begins here.

That's right.

'The Almoravids had created a worthy capital.

'Now they set about establishing an empire.

'Their army took the jihad north, taking city after city,

'expanding their influence east as far as Algiers,

'well beyond what we now call Morocco.

'Back in Marrakech, the Almoravids reflected

'on their extraordinary achievements.'

It had taken 26 years from their first incursion out in the desert,

with the taking of Sijilmasa, to the point where

they controlled the whole of North-West Africa.

'Their next move extended the Almoravids' jihad

'beyond anyone's expectations, north into Europe.'

'A parallel Islamic world had existed in Spain and Portugal

'since the early 8th century.

'It was called Al-Andalus and it had flourished under

'the Caliph of Cordoba into a rich civilisation

'of lavish palaces and elegant gardens.

'Now, in the 11th century it had broken up into weaker city states.

'These were being attacked by Christian armies

'from the north of Spain and the Muslim rulers appealed

'to the Almoravids for help.'

'Yusuf Ibn Tashfin helped repel the Christians

'but he was disgusted at the decadence of the Muslim princes

'he'd agreed to help.'

Ibn Tashfin had enough of these party princes and their moaning.

He also disliked their lack of dedication to Islam.

But he decided he had an obligation

to save the souls of their Muslim subjects,

and in 1090 he returned in force and deposed their rulers one-by-one.

The Almoravids now ruled over a vast kingdom

that reached from the Sahara to Spain,

and from Africa's Atlantic coast to Algeria.

Never before had all this Muslim territory been united

under one management, one kingdom united politically and spiritually

and it was the so-called "barbarians of the desert" that had done it.

The beating heart of the kingdom was Marrakech.

This was a place where people came to exchange stories, ideas.

Stories that had been traded across the desert from as far away

as West Africa, stories that had come from Southern Europe,

from the Middle East,

they all ended up here - here in the central square in Marrakech.

By the beginning of the 12th century, the square here had become

the news hub of the empire.

But in 1106, the news running around this square

was of terrible importance.

Yusuf Ibn Tashfin had died.

Ibn Tashfin was more than 80-years-old when he died.

He had seen his Berber kingdom grow from the founding days

of Marrakech to the farthest reaches of his empire.

But now the warrior king was dead and the mantle of ruler

of the Almoravids' dynasty passed to Ibn Tashfin's 23-year-old son

and a very different era began.

One of power and privilege.

Ali was the first Almoravid leader not to have known a desert

or its hardships.

He knew the royal palace and its luxuries.

At the time of his father's death, the royal treasury

housed 13,000 boxes of silver and 5,400 boxes of minted gold.

He was loaded.

The new leader worked hard to make Marrakech even more splendid

and he ordered a new palace to be built.

It was part of a beautification plan for the city which drew heavily

on the architectural influences of Andalusia.

It was thought that no buildings were left that could show us

what Ali's grand vision might have looked like.

Then in 1952, buried under some outbuildings, they found this.

The Koubba Ba'adiyin.

It's not only a rare example of Almoravid architecture,

but it gives us some sense of what this city

looked like at the high point of the dynasty.

This is the Koubba.

This is the masterpiece of the architecture

-of the Almoravid period.

-It is a masterpiece.

-Yes.

Professor Mohammed El-Faiz

has written extensively on the buildings of Marrakech.

And I think that the architects came in from Andalusian Spain,

they make this journey.

It's very unique in the architecture of Morocco.

Look at the simplicity of lines and of proportions.

It is absolutely gorgeous.

So this was a place where people before prayer would come

and they would wash their bodies?

They wash their bodies, they prepare and they go to the mosque.

It's a sumptuous building.

It tells us just what Marrakech may have looked like.

It must have been a place with fantastic architecture

and also very, very wealthy people

who were obviously living the high life.

Yes. It was a very rich civilisation because Marrakech

was capital of empire, like New York

or other cities - very important.

This delicately carved interior is such a contrast

to the bold simple shape we see outside.

It was also highly fashionable.

These wonderful scallop-shell shapes were common in Andalusia

and this is the first time that they've been seen in Africa.

Ali wanted nothing but the best.

What was Ali Ibn Yusuf like?

He is different from his father. He was a liberal man.

I think that the reign of Ali Ibn Yusuf is very important

because with him, we have a development of architecture,

of cultural...humanities,

poets and it's not the same character as his father.

This is a massive architectural statement

in the palace grounds which shows just how far the Almoravids had come

since their days as desert warriors bent on Holy War.

But while Ali beautified the Almoravid capital,

the kingdom was starting to slip from his grasp.

Under Ali, the link to the desert tradition was broken

and to some, the Almoravids seemed to be going soft.

High in the mountains behind the city, a force even more powerful

than the Almoravids was stirring.

The fires of dissent were being stoked by rival Berbers holed up

in the High Atlas Mountains.

This precarious mountain track leads to what was, in effect,

their mountain hideout.

The Almoravids were never comfortable with the hills

and mountains of the high Atlas and whenever they tried

to root out trouble they were evaded

and there was plenty of trouble brewing.

Here, a new group of Islamic revolutionaries laid

the groundwork for their domination of this whole region.

They were called the Almohads

meaning "The people who believed in the unity of God".

The leader of the revolution was Muhammad Ibn Tumart.

He wasn't a desert warrior like the Almoravids.

He was a mountain Berber.

Ibn Tumart had spent decades studying Islam.

He claimed to have been divinely chosen to restore the true faith

as he understood it.

This is Tinmel, the village where Ibn Tumart started his revolution.

From here, he preached against the arrogance

and corruption of the Almoravids.

Professor Muhammed Rabatatdin has studied the power struggle that

developed between the Almoravids and their fiercest critic.

So your interpretation is the religious manipulation

of the text was something that Ibn Tumart

was...spearheading as a way of changing regimes?

So Ibn Tumart wants to increase his political influence

and then go down the mountain to attack Marrakech.

Ibn Tumart undermined the support for the Almoravids

by questioning their understanding of Islam

and therefore their claim for legitimate rule.

And he goaded Ali Ibn Yusuf into combat.

In 1130, the battle of words finally turned to war

and the army of the Almohads came out of the mountains to face

the Almoravids and lay siege to their cities.

It would be a long campaign.

In Marrakech, the city walls were reinforced and rebuilt

by the Almoravids in direct response to the Almohad threat.

A culture based on nomadic tradition and tents

turned in its most desperate moment

to huge walls like this to protect themselves.

But their ancient belief that walls imprisoned rather than protected

proved true as they became increasingly confined to the city.

It took almost 20 years of skirmishing battles

for the Almohads to finally enter the city of Marrakech

and in 1147, the dynasty of the Almoravids was finally over.

Once inside the city walls,

the Almohads wanted to stamp their authority on the city

and they started by replacing

the most significant of the Almoravids' buildings.

This is the Koutoubia mosque, named after the al-Koutoubiyyin

or the booksellers who used to ply their trade here.

It's also Marrakech's most important building.

Legend has it that the predecessor to this mosque was torn down

by the Almohads because it wasn't correctly aligned with Mecca.

In fact, all the mosques in the city were pulled down

and replaced on religious grounds.

This sent a big bold message to the people of Marrakech.

They were making it clear that their way

and their interpretation of Islam was the correct one...

..and anyone arriving in the city got a similar message.

This is the Bab Agnaou or the "Gate Of Guinea".

It was built by one of Ibn Tumart's successors,

Sultan Yaqub al-Mansur, in 1185.

It's a beautiful gate, this one. So ornate.

This is an Almohad gate and it's so different.

Earlier I did a quick sketch of the Almoravid Gate

and the Almoravid gate is just one of those perfect, very simple gates.

But this one - so different from the Almoravids and that modesty.

It's so much more sumptuous.

Layers upon layers of decoration have been built up

with this beautiful green stone.

This is an empire, a kingdom that is very, very pleased

to announce it to everyone who enters the city.

Almost everything the Almohads built seemed more substantial,

more impressive than that built by their predecessors,

and that included the Berber kingdom.

Just like the rulers before them,

the Almohad used Marrakech as an imperial base

for an expansion even more ambitious than their predecessors.

The Almohads took over almost all the territory

previously run by the Almoravids

and they also seized the neighbouring lands of Africa

which stretched into what is now Libya.

In Spain, they took Andalusia

and made Seville their second capital after Marrakech.

Under the Almohads, the kingdom was to become an even stronger force

in the Mediterranean than the Almoravids had been...

..and their wealth and ideas went hand in hand.

Here in the Bank of Magreb is evidence to show how both dynasties

used their currency to spread the word of Islam.

-This is a gold dinar.

-It's from Sijilmasa Almoravid dynasty.

Oh, I see.

That's beautiful. With an Arabic inscription right in the centre.

What does it say on there?

"It shall not be acceptable that anyone takes a faith

"other than Islam".

That's in the centre of the coin

so they're actually helping to evangelise.

Those coins were circulated around the Mediterranean Sea.

We have it in Spain and Portugal.

In London, in Germany and Holland and China.

-Really? This was the dollar of its day?

-Yes.

It's about trade but it's also taking, wherever it goes, religion.

Because a lot of Christian kingdoms used these coins at this time.

It's a beautiful thing. Absolutely beautiful.

The Almoravids' dinar was widely valued.

The Almohads wanted to build on its success

but they also wanted to do things differently.

They introduced innovations including a new coin

with a square design that proclaimed the ambition of their jihad.

So this one is the first round dirham

minted by Almohad.

It's round but with a square in the middle

but after this one...

Now, that's square.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's square.

So they created these circular coins first with the square inscription

in the centre and then, they reduced them down just to these squares.

Particularly, in the mint of coins it's easy to do, sometimes,

the coins which is square.

So these squares were much more efficient to be minted

because there was much less wastage in a square sheet of silver.

That's correct.

And it's amazing that that's just a tiny thin wafer of silver

and yet it represents so much.

These four sides were seen as being symbolic of the four sides

of the kingdom, of the different directions

looking eastward, eastward towards India, towards China,

looking north up toward Europe, looking south towards the desert

and west towards new opportunities

but this is about an empire expanding.

Under the Almohads, the Berber kingdom

become extraordinarily powerful and wealthy.

They undertook increasingly ambitious projects

to reflect the magnificence of their empire.

These are the Agdal Gardens

in the grounds of the Royal Palace in Marrakech.

Almost a thousand acres of orange, lemon, fig, apricot

and pomegranate trees linked by olive-lined walkways

all irrigated by water brought from the mountains

over 20 miles away...

and I think they're beautiful.

What a gorgeous place!

This is the Almohad using water in such a luxuriant way.

This setting was meant to be a place in which you could come

and reflect on this landscape

and what they're using are all the traditional constituent parts

of Berber culture.

You have here, water, you have the palms, you have olives,

you have fruit trees.

These are things that they would have had in their oases,

but what they're using them for here is for recreation

and for just simply for people to come and reflect

on the beauty of Berber culture.

Even today, hundreds of years on, who can doubt that they succeeded?

At the end of the 14th century, the Muslim philosopher Ibn Khaldun

wrote about the Berber state being just like a garden.

Within this garden, the government turned like a wheel.

He said that there was no justice without the monarch.

No monarch without the army. No army without taxes.

No taxes without wealth and no wealth without justice.

Ibn Khaldun's vision of a garden in perfect balance

highlighted just how interdependent these elements of government were.

Justice was defined by the monarch who was supported by the army.

They were paid for by taxes

that were generated by the wealth of its citizens.

While all of those things were in place and intimately connected

the wheel could continue to turn.

And 240 miles north of Marrakech is a city that shows how well

the system worked while it remained in perfect balance.

Its medina is probably the most complete medieval city centre

in the world.

A place that has changed little since the days of the Almohads.

This is Fez, one of the great cities of the empire.

Then, as now, a great centre of trade.

From here the Almohad traded in things like sugar cane

and cotton, like gold and copper and pottery.

But some of the most significant things they dealt in were ideas.

In spite of their religious views,

the Almohads were not intellectually repressive.

The ancient university of Fez attracted thinkers

and scholars from right across the Mediterranean.

Deep in the centre of the old medina is a theological college.

It welcomed hundreds of scholars through its doors

during the years of the Almohad reign.

Librarian Abu Baqa showed me some of the most priceless books

in the collection.

And this volume is actually illuminated and that some

of the words are picked out in gold and this plate here.

Written by Ibn Tumart, it describes in detail his interpretation

of the finer points of the Koran.

HE GASPS

Look at that!

You'd come in here to learn

but this is just so uplifting, visually, as well.

It's just such a privilege to see it.

It's just the richness of it.

One of the scholars who worked here, perhaps surprisingly,

was Moses Maimonides,

still regarded as the most important Jewish philosopher

for the past 2,000 years.

And this beautifully bookworm-ridden volume

was written by another of the intellectual titans based here

the Andalusian philosopher, Ibn Rushd,

known in Europe as "Averroes".

Oh, look at that!

Most famous for his commentary on the works of Aristotle,

he was a significant link between the ideas of ancient Greece

and medieval Europe.

On its extremely delicate wafer-thin pages

are his thoughts on Islamic law.

It's fascinating because these are figures

who talk about Islamic studies

but they're putting it into a much wider intellectual context.

Here there are all of these great thinkers all working together

and they're pushing philosophy, pushing on astronomy,

pushing on a number of great disciplines

further than anywhere else in the area around the Mediterranean.

These weren't just people who were interested in business,

in conquering their neighbours, just look at this,

they knew beauty and they knew how to celebrate it.

These are exquisite books.

Absolutely exquisite.

Directly outside the college,

the atmosphere is peppered with the almost constant sound of hammering -

the medina is still a place of work.

At the height of the Almohad empire,

Fez had 372 mills,

9,082 shops,

47 soap factories,

and 188 pottery workshops.

This wasn't so much as a market town as a centre of industry.

And, in one corner of the medina, is an ancient industry

as old as the city itself.

Binding and protecting the priceless books and their precious contents

is some of the finest leather in the world,

and it's still made today

as it would been during the Almohads' reign.

The skins are first scraped free of hair and fat,

then soaked in lime baths,

before being softened in a mixture of guano and water.

It's a process that is still remarkably natural.

What do you actually use to dye?

This is a herb that you're actually using to dye it?

So, this is all natural? This bright pink is a natural substance -

so this process has remained unchanged for hundreds of years?

Way before Henry Ford created his factory for assembling cars,

the Berbers of Fez already had a production line.

Intellectually and economically, the Almohads were in charge of an empire

that ranked alongside the greatest of that time anywhere in the world.

This was the high point of the Berber kingdom,

but controlling such a massive realm brought its own problems.

By the end of the 12th century, this fort at Rabat

overlooked an armada of ships at anchor.

The Almohads controlled substantial amounts

of the Atlantic and Mediterranean coast,

and armies were being carried by sea to far off battlegrounds.

Sea ports like Rabat became crucial,

and by the end of the 12th century,

the Almohads' greatest ruler Yaqub al-Mansur,

developed the town into his military headquarters.

First came the fortification of the old town with ramparts and gates,

and then, in 1195, something really grand.

It had 400 columns and pillars.

It was big enough to hold an entire army.

It would have been the largest mosque in the Islamic west,

if not the entire Muslim world.

As ambitious as the great Roman architecture of North Africa,

or the buildings of Mecca,

it spoke to their heritage, and to God,

and it was as permanent a statement as could be made.

We'll never know if this would have been the world's grandest mosque

as this isn't just a ruin, it's an unfulfilled dream.

The reason why there's no top on the minaret,

or roof on the prayer hall here,

is because in 1199, only four years after worked started,

Yaqub al-Mansur died.

The mosque remained in this unfinished state.

His grand vision was never complete.

Al-Mansur was the last strong leader of the Almohads

and his death marked a critical turning point.

It was the beginning of the end of Almohad dynasty.

Squabbles over his succession meant rival Berber tribes vied for power,

and the weakness at the centre had repercussions further afield.

In Andalusia, a fundamentalist Christian crusade

gained the upper hand against the equally fundamentalist jihad.

The Almohads were humiliated by the Christians

in a decisive battle in Spain,

from which their army never really recovered.

And the grip on Africa was lost

as Arab tribes rebelled against the Almohad rulers.

Professor El-Faiz has studied the factors

that led to the decline of the Almohads' Berber kingdom.

Several external factors.

Almohad army facing the Christian army in Spain, they don't succeed.

They lost also the control of the Mediterranean Sea.

So, on every front things are collapsing in?

Economic factors are very important

in the explanation of the decline.

They don't control the trade.

There is no money or no budgets to control population.

Internally, they lose their tax revenue

as local people begin to turn against them.

The different ethnic groups began to fracture and fight the regime,

and gradually, the empire begins to disintegrate.

It is that kind of wheel, one of those factors breaking down

which means the whole empire then begins to fail.

All these factors continued in time to the collapse of this dynasty.

In 1269, Almohad rule ended

when a rival Berber dynasty seized power in Marrakech.

The collapse of the Almohad empire didn't happen overnight.

It happened over decades.

But nothing that followed could come close to what they had achieved.

None of the Berber dynasties that succeeded the Almohads

was powerful enough to rule North Africa.

Attempts to return to the glory days of the Almohads failed.

In the 16th century,

the kingdom of Morocco was revived.

But this vast palace was built by a different dynasty.

Claiming the right to rule as true interpreters of Islam,

these people saw themselves as Arabic, not Berber.

The importance of Islam altered the identity of the kingdom.

The religious zeal that brought the African Berbers an Islamic empire

had ensured that it would be an Arab dynasty

claiming direct descent to the prophet Muhammad

that would rule the kingdom that the Berber had created.

An Arab dynasty is still in power today.

After five centuries of Arab rule,

many now think of Morocco as an Arab state with an Arab history.

This is a kingdom with roots that are distinctly African.

A group of indigenous nomads from the desert

had achieved what no-one else has ever done.

They united a disparate group of Berber peoples

under the banner of Islam

and created an African empire that stretched into Europe.

The Berber story deserves its place

among the continent's great histories.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd