Ashir

A city known as Ashir Ziri, according to al-Idrisi. It has a sandy plain and spring waters, and it lies near Sutayt. ²

Ashir is an old fortified town in North Africa, about 100 km south-south-west of Algiers in the Titeri mountains. It appears in history in the first half of the fourth/tenth century, in the country of the Sanhaja on the western border of their territory. The Sanhaja were the highland Berbers who supported the Fatimids of Ifriqiya against the Zanata of the Oran plains, adherents of the Umayyads of Cordova. As a reward for services to the Fatimids, especially in the revolt of Abu Yazid, in 324 AH (935) Ziri obtained permission from the Fatimid caliph al-Qa'im to found a town, which gave the tribal chief much of the prestige and autonomy of a sovereign. The entry notes that al-Bakri and Ibn al-Athir attribute the fortified town of Ashir to Ziri's son Bulukkin; al-Bakri dates it to 364 AH (974). The new city was artificially populated with elements brought from Tobna, Msila, Hamza (now Bouira) and later Tlemcen. ³

Bulukkin, after being invested by the Fatimid al-Mu'izz, who left Ifriqiya for Cairo in 363 AH (973), left Ashir for al-Qayrawan, though his family stayed. The frontier of the Zirid kingdom was entrusted to the Banu Hammad, and Ashir came into their territory when their secession was recognised by the arrangement of 408 AH (1017). Its possession was disputed within the family; Yusuf ibn Hammad took it just after 440 AH (1048) and his troops pillaged it. In 468 AH (1076) it was besieged and occupied by the Zanata, and later retaken by the Banu Hammad. In 495 AH (1101) the Almoravid governor of Tlemcen, Tashfin ibn Tinmar, took and destroyed it. Restored once more by its Hammadid masters, it fell about 580 AH (1184) to Ghazi the Sanhaji, ally of the Banu Ghaniya. After this date the name disappears from history. ³

Three sites in the Titeri, all showing Muslim origin, may be read as three phases of the Zirid Sanhaja. Manzah Bint al-Sultan is a fortified enclosure crowning a rocky eminence about 276 metres long, with a guard-house and a large cistern; it was a refuge and observation post rather than a town. Yashir, a rectangular enclosure with a spring 'Ayn Yashir, was shown by M. L. Golvin's excavations to contain a stone castle with a symmetrical plan, whose entrance resembles that of the Fatimid palace of al-Qa'im at Mahdiyya; it is identified with the foundation of Ziri (324 AH, 934-935). Benia, two and a half km away across a valley, is probably the city of Bulukkin (364 AH), which al-Bakri describes exactly. The entry's bibliography is not transcribed. ³