The Almohads

In recent months, Western attention has turned to “neo-Ottomanism”, and the prospect of a Caliphate-like “Islamic Union” from Morocco to Pakistan (and beyond), as Turkey has re-emerged as a vital regional player. Given recent events in North Africa, such ideas have received renewed impetus. Ever since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, there has been great concern in the West about Islamic revivalist movements, which stress the need to overthrow corrupt, “apostate” regimes, establish the Shari[ah, and which contain an emphasis on the coming of the Islamic messianic figure, the Mahdi. Few non-academic commentators know much about the Almohads, who established a state in North Africa and southern Spain in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Fromherz’s book fills this gap, and has implications for the present.