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Yusuf ibn Tashfin or Tashafin (reigned c. 1061 - 1106) (Arabic: يوسف بن تاشفين or يوسف بن تشفين) was the Berber Almoravid ruler in North Africa and Al-Andalus (Moorish Iberia).

He took the title of amir al-muslimin (commander of the Muslims). He was either a cousin or nephew of Abu Bakr ibn Umar, the founder of the Almoravid dynasty, and married Zaynab an-Nafzawiyyat, a former wife of Abu Bakr. He united all of the Muslim dominions in the Iberian Peninsula (modern Portugal and Spain) to the Kingdom of Morocco (circa 1090), after being called to the Al-Andalus by the Emir of Seville.

Yusuf bin Tashfin is the co-founder of the famous Moroccan city Marrakech (in Arabic Murakush, corrupted to Morocco in English). The site had been chosen and work started by Abu Bakr ibn Umar in 1070 but early in 1071 he had to leave to quell a revolt in the Sahara. The work was completed by Yusuf, who then made it the capital of his Empire, in place of the former capital Aghmat. Until then the Almoravids had been desert nomads, but the new capital marked their settling into a more urban way of life.

According to Abd Allah's "Roudh el-Kartas" (History of the Rulers of Morocco) and A.Beaumier's French translation of the 14th century work, Yusuf ibn Tashfin was "teint brun, taille moyenne, maigre, peu de barbe, voix douce, yeux noirs, nez aquilin, meche de Mohammed retombant sur le bout de l'oreille, sourcils joints l'un a l'autre, cheveux crepus"; meaning - "Brown color, middle height, thin, little beard, soft voice, black eyes, straight nose, lock of Muhammaed falling on the top of his ear, eye brow joined, wooly hair"

Bibliography

• Ibn Idhari, Al-bayan al-mughrib Part III, annotated Spanish translation by A. Huici Miranda, Valencia, 1963.
• N. Levtzion & J.F.P. Hopkins, Corpus of early Arabic sources for West African history, Cambridge University Press, 1981, ISBN 0521224225 (reprint: Markus Wiener, Princeton, 2000, ISBN 1-55876-241-8). Contains English translations of extracts from medieval works dealing with the Almoravids; the selections cover some (but not all) of the information above.
• E. A. Freeman, History and Conquests of the Saracens, (Oxford, 1856)
• Codera, Decadencia y desaparicion de los Almoravides en España (1889)

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