page_title: History of Tunisia
section_title: Zirid succession
hierarchical_section_title: History of Tunisia / Fatimids: Shi'a Caliphate, and the Zirids / Zirid succession
caption_attribution_description: English: Genealogical scheme of the tribes of Banu 'Amir ibn Sa'sa'ah. Banu Hilal in genealogical scheme of the Banu 'Amir.
context_page_description: The present day Republic of Tunisia, al-Jumhuriyyah at-Tunisiyyah, is situated in Northern Africa. Geographically situated between Libya to the east, Algeria to the west and the Mediterranean Sea to the north. Tunis is the capital and the largest city; it is near the ancient site of the city of Carthage.
  Throughout its recorded history, the physical features and environment of the land of Tunisia have remained fairly constant, although during ancient times more abundant forests grew in the north, and earlier in prehistory the Sahara to the south was not an arid desert.
  The weather is temperate in the north, which enjoys a Mediterranean climate with mild rainy winters and hot dry summers, the terrain being wooded and fertile. The Medjerda river valley is currently valuable farmland. Along the eastern coast the central plains enjoy a moderate climate with less rainfall but significant precipitation in the form of heavy dews; these coastlands are currently used for orchards and grazing. Near the mountainous Algerian border rises Jebel ech Chambi, the highest point in the country at 1544 meters. In the near south, a belt of salt lakes running east–west cuts across the country.
context_section_description: After removing their capital to Cairo, the Fatimids withdrew from direct governance of al-Maghrib, which they delegated to a local vassal, namely Buluggin ibn Ziri a Sanhaja Berber of the central Maghrib. As a result of civil war following his death, the Fatimid vassalage split in two: for Ifriqiya the Zirid (972–1148); and for the western lands [present day Algeria]: the Hammadid (1015–1152). Civic security was chronically poor, due to political quarrels between the Zirids and the Hammadids, and attacks from Sunni states to the west.
  Although the Maghrib remained submerged in political confusion, at first the Fatimid province of Ifriqiya continued relatively prosperous under the Zirids. Soon however the Saharan trade began to decline, caused by changing consumer demand, as well as by encroachments by rival traders from the Fatimids to the east and from the rising power of the al-Murabit movement to the west. This decline in the Saharan trade caused a rapid deterioration to the city of Kairouan, the political and cultural center of the Zirid state. To compensate, the Zirids encouraged the commerce of their coastal cities, which did begin to quicken; however, they faced tough challenges from Mediterranean traders of the rising city-states of Genoa and Pisa.
  In 1048, for economic and popular reasons, the Zirids dramatically broke with the Shi'a Fatimid suzerainty from Cairo; instead the Zirids chose to become Sunni (always favored by most Maghribi Muslims) and declaring their allegiance to the Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad. Many shia were killed in disturbances throughout Ifriqiya. The Zirid state seized Fatimid coinage. Sunni Maliki jurists were reestablished as the prevailing school of law. In retaliation, the Fatimids sent against the Zirids an invasion of nomadic Arabians who had already migrated into Egypt; these bedouins were induced by the Fatimids to continue westward into Ifriqiya.
  The arriving Bedouins of the Banu Hilal defeated in battle Zirid and Hammadid armies and sacked Kairouan in 1057. It has been said at much of the Maghrib's misfortunes to follow could be traced to the chaos and regression occasioned by their arrival, although opinion is not unanimous. In Arab lore Abu Zayd al-Hilali the leader of the Banu Hilal is a hero, as in the folk epic Taghribat Bani Hilal. The Banu Hilal originated from the tribal confederacy of the Banu 'Amir, located generally in southwest Arabia.  As the Banu Halali tribes took control of the plains, the local sedentary people were forced to take refuge in the mountains; in prosperous central and northern Ifriqiya farming gave way to pastoralism. Even after the fall of the Zirids the Banu Hilal were a source of disorder, as in the 1184 insurrection of the Banu Ghaniya. These rough Arab newcomers did constitute a second large Arab immigration into Ifriqiya, and accelerated the process of Arabization, with the Berber languages decreasing in use in rural areas as a result of this Bedouin ascendancy.
  Substantially weakened, the Zirids lingered on, while the regional economy declined, with civil society adrift.
caption: Banu Hilal in genealogical scheme of the Banu 'Amir.
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