ibn Ayyub S.alahu dDinOMAYYAD CALIPHS OF SPAIN'AbdurRah.man III912-961al-H.akam II961-976Hisham II976-1008& 1010-1012Muh.ammad II1008-1009Sulayman1009 &1012-1017('Ali ibn Hamud)1017-1021'AbdurRah.man IV1021-1022(al-Qasim)1022'AbdurRah.man V1022-1023Muh.ammad III1023-1024(Yahya ibn 'Ali)1024-1027Hisham III1027-1031The glorious culmination of Omayyad rule in Spain, when 'AbdurRah.man III proclaims himself Caliph, ends up leading to a surprisingly rapid collapse of the regime. 'AbdurRah.man's great grandchildren became the pawns of slave troups from Europe (the S.aqaliba) and North Africa. Leadership devolved onto the H.ajib or Chief Minister, like Ibn Abi 'Amir Al-Mans.ur (Almanzor), who captured Barcelona and sacked the shrine of St. James of Compostella in Galicia, hitherto the most sacred site of Christian Spain, but the situation soon escaped even this kind of control. Islamic Spain broke into petty states and permanently lost its ability to maintain its own unity or resist the Christian Reconquista.One reason that 'AbdurRah.man III may have proclaimed himself Caliph, besides the general decline of the Abbasids in power the prestige, was the new Fatimid Caliphate in North Africa. While the Fatimids claimed descent from the Prophet's daughter Fat.ima, as descendants of the Seventh Imam, Isma'il, there is little confidence and less evidence for this genealogy. What it gave the Fatimids, however, was a claim to the Shi'ite Imamate. This was an Apocalyptic movement, coincidentally approaching the Millennium on the Christian calendar. When the Fatimids occupied Egypt in 969, it did look like they might be the heirs of all of Islam. The new capital founded in Egypt, al-Qahirah, "the Victorious," although at the place of the Roman fortress of Babylon (of all things) and the Omayyad city of Fust.at. (Old Cairo), now becomes the classic Islamic capital of Egypt, Cairo. While Fatimid control soon extended into the Levant and to the Holy Cities of the Hijaz, this proved to be the Fatimid high water mark. In the Fatimid decline, North Africa broke away, the Crusaders arrived in the Levant, and the Fatimid succession itself passed to a collateral line that lost the numinous status of Shi'ite Imam. The last Fatimid Caliph, a sickly child, was allowed to die a natural death by the occupier of Egypt, Saladin, before the regime was deposed.THE MULUK AT-T.AWA'IF,REYES DE TAIFASThe Jahwarids of Cordova, Qurt.ubahJahwar ibn Muh.ammadibn Jahwar1031-1043Muh.ammad ar-Rashid1043-1058'Abd al-MalikDhu's-Siyadatayn al-Mans.ur1058-1069'Abbadid conquest, 1069Omayyad Spain broke up into a chaos of petty states, like the period of the Oghullar in Anatolia. In Arabic, the rulers were called the muluk at.-T.awa'if, or the "kings of the bands/factions/parties [t.a'ifa]." This was adapted into Spanish as the Reyes de Taifas.The map shows 21 Reyes de Taifas in 1030, but at different times there were up to 39 of them. Only some of the more significant and durable are listed in the tables here. Already, both Leon and Navarre are larger than any Islamic state. Spain would never again be unified by a native Islamic state. This disunity was, of course, a golden opportunity for the Christian kingdoms; and the fall of Toledo to Leon and Castille in 1085 is significantly considered the beginning of the Christian Reconquista. The Moslem position was restored by the advent of the Almoravids, who then absorbed all the