and the judges who served under him were Ibn Maḍāʾ (1), then al-Wahrānī (2), and finally Abū al-Qāsim ibn Baqī (3).

When he first assumed power, he found himself encircled by rivals from among his uncles and brothers. He therefore moved to Salé, where the pledge of allegiance was ratified; he placated his relatives with liberal stipends and built a coastal city to serve Marrakesh (4). Before long ʿAlī ibn Ghāniya, the Veiled chieftain, rebelled against him, seized Béjaïa, and had the Friday sermon proclaimed in the name of the ʿAbbāsid al-Nāṣir. The preacher who performed this was ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq, author of al-Aḥkām; had his appointed hour not been at hand, al-Manṣūr (5) would have destroyed him.

Ibn Ghāniya next captured the fortress of Ḥammād. Al-Manṣūr marched out, regained Béjaïa, and mustered his forces; Ibn Ghāniya engaged them and routed them. Al-Manṣūr then advanced in person, shattered Ibn Ghāniya, who withdrew badly wounded and died in the tent of a Bedouin woman (6). The Almohad troops thereupon appointed his brother Yaḥyā to lead them; he withdrew with them into the desert among the Arabs, and protracted wars ensued. Al-Manṣūr retook Qafṣa (7) and slaughtered many of its inhabitants, exceeding all bounds. He later put his two uncles Sulaymān and ʿUmar to death by execution (8); afterward he repented, adopted asceticism and austerity, sat with the righteous and the hadith scholars, inclined toward the Ẓāhirī school, turned away from the Mālikīs, and burned an untold number of books on the furūʿ (subsidiary legal rulings).

ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn ʿAlī (9) said: “I was in Fez when I witnessed the loads being brought….”