Ibn Mardanish, The Wolf King Who Established His Own Kingdom After the Fall of Almoravid Empire in Iberian Peninsula

 

Ibn Mardanish, also known as the Wolf King, was a powerful Muslim king in the Iberian Peninsula in the 12th century. He established his own dominion over the cities of Murcia, Valencia, and Dénia after the decline of the Almoravids. Like the Iberian Christian kings, he opposed the spread of the Almohad caliphate, and his reign shows that the "Reconquista" was not a conflict between two clearly divided factions of Christians and Muslims, but of rival kingdoms of both religions that sometimes faced each other in combat or joined in alliances against each other in various contexts.

Ibn Mardanish came from a family originally descended from Visigoths who had converted to Islam. He hired Christian mercenaries from Barcelona, Castile, and Aragon to help him preserve the lands of his kingdom, and signed treaties with the republics of Pisa and Genoa, which had strong bases and commercial relations with his kingdom. His reign was marked by conquests and territorial expansions, and he extended his domains to Jaén, Baza, and Guadix, as well as threatened Córdoba and besieged Seville, causing havoc in the new African empire that wanted to unify the Peninsula, the Almohads. He was called the "Wolf King" by Christians.

During his reign, the city of Murcia reached immense splendor, with agriculture and handicrafts achieving great development and prestige. His palace, Alcázar de Beni Mardanish, was renowned for its impressive architecture and served as a symbol of the Wolf King's power and wealth. However, the success of his Islamic-Christian anti-Almohad movement did not last forever, as the members of his own family began to convert to the caliphal ideology and to hand over their cities to the Berbers. In the end, Ibn Mardanish lost his last allies and prepared to make peace with the Almohads, but he died before the peace negotiations could take place.