The Aghlabids and Their Neighbours: Art and Material Culture in Ninth-Century North Africa
Historians and archaeologists offer an interdisciplinary and transregional perspective on the Aghlabid dynasty and ninth-century North Africa to highlight the region's important interchange with other medieval societies in the Mediterranean and beyond.
The Zirids may have wanted to bring the island under their own control, much like the Aghlabids
two centuries earlier.
Sfax was founded by the Aghlabids
dynasty which ruled some parts of northern African and southern Italy between AD 800-909.
Drawing from snippets of information from various sources, Chiarelli introduces him as a scion of the Aghlabids
and former governor of Tripoli, who was behind the anti-Fatimid uprisings.
The Fatimids were a Shiite dynasty that capitalized on Sunni grievances which were economic and political in nature to evict the Sunni Aghlabids
from North Africa.
The arrival of the Aghlabids
(mostly Arab and Berber subjects), was, according to Arnaldi, not so much the result of religious fanaticism but an expansion due to the growing aridity of Arab and Berber lands, an invasion prompted by climate change.
It was from here that the Aghlabids
who ruled Tunisia then launched their successful invasion of Sicily.
The first, and longer, is a political history of the Ibadi communities, their inception and their relation to the growing hostile powers, Aghlabids
, Fatimids and Zirids.
, 800-909; the Murabits, 10621145; and the Muwahhids, 1145-1223 A.
Closer to home, Ibn Tulun had the example of the Aghlabids
of North Africa, with their ongoing project of conquest in Sicily and continental Italy.
In the North African period, the Fatimids, as was true of the Aghlabids
who preceded them, benefited substantially from wealth flowing into the realm as a result of military actions--maritime raiding, predominantly--across the Mediterranean along the coasts of southern Italy.