At a glance
- Era
- The Early Abbasid Caliphate
- Region
- Maghreb
- Identifiers
- Wikidata
- Review
- Draft Completeness 3/5 · Help complete it
In time
Summary
The Aghlabid emirate was the state of Ifrīqiya and Qayrawān in the second and third Islamic centuries, in practice independent of the Abbasids while still naming them as overlords. Ibn Khaldun reports that Ibrāhīm b. al-Aghlab corresponded with al-Rashīd about the governorship "leaving him the letters and the gifts" 1.
Internal wars and Sicily
Ibn Khaldun sets the dynasty's rise amid the mutinies of the Ifrīqiyan army: Qayrawān revolts against the governors, ʿImrān seizes it, Ibrāhīm besieges it for a year, and then the province settles on the Banū l-Aghlab 2. In the same section come the Aghlabid conquests in Sicily: Asad b. al-Furāt, qāḍī of Qayrawān, is sent out with the army on the expedition, and the campaigns of Palermo and Syracuse follow with reinforcements from Ifrīqiya 3. The chapter closes on the deaths of the amirs and the state's decline 4.
For young visitors
The Aghlabids were a family that ruled Tunisia and Qayrawan for about a hundred years; they stayed under the Abbasids in name but governed independently and opened the island of Sicily.
Research notes
- Text from the harvested Ibar of Ibn Khaldun (Heliopolis 1957): pp. 1022–1027 (the Banū l-Aghlab section) and p. 909 (the Ifrīqiya context). The scan sometimes blurs "al-Aghlab" the Berber chief and "Ibn al-Aghlab" the amir; every passage cited here belongs to the Ifrīqiya/Qayrawān news, not the Berber chapters.
Sources
- Kitab al-Ibar of Ibn Khaldun , p.1024
- Kitab al-Ibar of Ibn Khaldun , p.1025
- Kitab al-Ibar of Ibn Khaldun , p.1026
- Kitab al-Ibar of Ibn Khaldun , p.1027
Cite this page
islam.museum contributors. “Aghlabid emirate”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/polity/aghlabid-emirate/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Last updated 2026-10-27.