This book is the outgrowth of some lectures delivered by the author at Princeton some years ago. The translation is competent and reads well, and the book is about the only thing so far on the Almohads (al-Muwahhidūn) now available in English. As such, it is a valuable supplement to the sketchy chapter on the Almohads in Watt and Cachia’s History of Islamic Spain. In his three chapters, Le Tourneau discusses the origins of the birth of the movement and gives an account of the career of Ibn Tūmart, the second African Mahdī, and then the expansion and collapse of the “Unitarian” cause.
The entire Almohad episode was a rather improbable one. The author might have done more to explain why Ibn Tūmart’s propaganda was such a success among the Masmūda mountaineers of Morocco. One wonders if simple hatred of the Almoravids and a dislike of centralized authority on the part of the Masmūda was enough to make them fight their Ṣanhāja enemies with such vigor? One also wonders if the arguments advanced (pp. 108-109) for a Berber-Arab clash within the empire are not echoes of French historical writing which always stressed these differences in Morocco. But these are minor points, and the study is a useful and valuable one which does something to fill the great gap in accounts of Spanish, as well as North African, Islamic history which can be read in English.
