WI No Almoravids - Impact in the Reconquista?

As the title says, what if the Almoravids somehow never attain proeminence, or fail to expand their empire through North Africa.

I don't know if there were "unifying" or "centripetal" trends among the Berber nomadic groups that inhabited North Africa in the 11th Century, but it seems that the empire founded by Yahya ibn Ibrahim and continued by Yusuf ibn Tashfin was a rather unanticipated creation (much like the Mongol Empire by Genghis Khan) and could be butterflied away if one of their rulers is taken out of the equation.

How would this affect the Christian "Reconquista" in Iberia? At the time the Almoravids were invited in - and then outright invaded al-Andalus - in the 1080s, the Islamic polities in the peninsula were in a sensible decline, with even the most powerful among them, like the Emirs of Seville and Zaragoza being forced to pay tribute (parias) to King Ferdinand I of Leon, who, like his successor Alfonso, had enough strength to enforce the extortion. The defeat on the battle of Sagrajas undid many of the conquests of previous generations, forcing the Castillians and other Christian powers into defensive again... until at least the rapid decline of the Almoravids came in the middle 12th Century.

Nevertheless, the decline of the Almoravids paved the way for the arrival and domination of the Almohads, another Berber radicalist Islamic faction. These new arrivals were only defeated in the early 13th Century, in the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. Until now there had been significant advances, especially in the newborn country of Portugal, as well as Aragon/Barcelona, but it's fair to affirm that the invasion of the Berber dynasties "delayed" the Christian advance towards the south.

Taking all this in mind, if the Almoravids never came to be, it's possible that the Almohads would be also butterflied away (considering that their rise to power came as a result of the Almoravid decline), could we expected an earlier "conclusion" of the Reconquista (perhaps a couple centuries earlier)? Did the Andalusian polities have the strength and resolve to oppose the Leonese/Castillian and later Aragonese advance? How would be the relation between the Christian monarchies with their "Mudéjar" subjects, considering that at the time the kings seemed somewhat more tolerant than Kings Ferdinand and Isabella in the 15th Century?
 
To the best of my knowledge, the Almoravids basically did 2 things stopped the Reconquista in its tracks for a while and killed of maternal line of the house of Jimena in Castile,Leon, and Galicia. Depending on the POD you could have a Stronger Castile and Leon, however, you still to have a stable succession, considering while not as fratricidal as the Kievan Rus or Ottoman Empire the tendency to divide Kingdoms among sons, did mean conflict over who ruled what. Aragon however, is still small at this point and with better luck could be kept separate from the county of Barcelona, with no Almohads as well.
 
To the best of my knowledge, the Almoravids basically did 2 things stopped the Reconquista in its tracks for a while and killed of maternal line of the house of Jimena in Castile,Leon, and Galicia. Depending on the POD you could have a Stronger Castile and Leon, however, you still to have a stable succession, considering while not as fratricidal as the Kievan Rus or Ottoman Empire the tendency to divide Kingdoms among sons, did mean conflict over who ruled what. Aragon however, is still small at this point and with better luck could be kept separate from the county of Barcelona, with no Almohads as well.

That's exactly what I thought about. Ferdinand I's reign was an example that even a successful reign with little Islamic opposition didn't meant long term stability, as the division of the realm between his sons caused civil wars.
 
Easy to do this: Yahya ibn Ibrahim never stops in Kairouan on his way back from the hajj, or if he does, he never meets up with al-Fasi, never goes to Waggag and never gets ibn Yasin attached to him.

No Almoravids is almost certain to wipe out the Almohads, though depending on the character of the ruling dynasty in the Maghreb, it's likely you'll get some form of rigorist uprising eventually. What really creates butterflies for the Islamic cause in Iberia here is that you don't really have a single cohesive power in the Maghreb at the time. The Idrisids were basically finished by 974, and power was mostly in the hands of the Zenata Berbers, with the dominant group being the Maghrawa, which came into power with Almanzor's sanction in the late 10th century and stayed there for a few decades. The axis of power in the Maghreb would remain at Fes but at this point you'd mostly have a bunch of divided Zenata tribes with their own holdings. The Almoravids were southern Sanhaja, typically hostile to the Zenata at that point in time. Without having a unifying force to gather up a whole lot of Sanhaja Berbers, it's likely you'll mostly get what you got before the Almoravids, which is the Maghreb being a mess of tribal bickering, except this time with no Caliph to back them up.

Individual taifas would likely still hire bands of Berbers but there'd be no real "strong power" for them to appeal to if they wanted to restore order, unless one of the taifas got especially strong. You're also not likely to get the Zirids in on the action; while the Zawids of Granada were Zirids, they got to al-Andalus as exiles, and the Zirids have their hands full with the Hammadids breaking off and the Fatimids razing their lands for their audacity in converting back to Sunni.

Most of the taifas are too weak at this point to stand up to the kingdoms of the north. You could posit a successful Abbadid taifa of Seville if you found a way for them to break their submission to Castile, but it'd likely involve importing a bunch more Berber mercenaries and settling them, which leads to even more turmoil - Berbers often suffered from vast culture clash with Arabo-Andalusians.

(Not to toot my own horn, but I'm touching on some of this stuff in the al-Andalus TL I'm working on.)
 
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So in this scenario, when might we see a concluded Iberian reconquest?
That all depends on the butterflies.

The taifas were slowly consolidating by the time the Almoravids were brought in, the most powerful likely being the Abbadids of Seville, who had absorbed a lot of the smaller taifas and controlled both the most prosperous city and much of the best land. But you still had most of them paying tribute to the northern kings, especially Castile, which was quite ascendant at the time. Particularly if history holds true and Alfonso VI of Castile and Leon also gets ahold of Galicia and Portugal, you could see a much earlier Reconquista if there are no Almoravids to come in and bail out al-Mu'tamid of Seville and the other remaining taifas. Castile already gets ahold of Toledo in 1085ish, even with the Almoravids existing; without them, al-Mu'tamid is really out of options, and Seville is probably stomped flat sometime in the 12th century.
 
@Planet of Hats, thanks very much for the detailed answers. Also, I had already given a look at your TL, it was in fact one thing that inspired me to think about Medieval Iberia (even if from the Christian POV). I had imagined some points you adressed, but you shed light to some interesting details I had no idea about (like the situation in pre-Almoravid Maghreb - in fact I had thought about the PoD you explained, ibn Yasin does not meet Yahia).

Do you think that a consolidated Taifa of Seville could permit a smaller scale restablishment of the Caliphate after 1060s? Not necessarily in formal terms, but rather a more unified Islamic polity in the peninsula? I imagine they would have a stronger hold in the south (i.e. roughly Hispania Baetica) even after the Leonese/Castillian monarchy absorbs OTL Portugal, Toledo and Zaragoza. I can see a series of wars and disputes for the control of Valencia, Badajoz and Estremadura.

Now that I have your attention, if I may ask, how was the relationship among the Taifas themselves before the Almoravids came?
 
You could definitely see the Abbadids of Seville take over most of the other taifas - they have some competition, but Seville is the most developed city and the taifa itself is likely the biggest and most populated. By the time the northern kingdoms buzzsaw through the likes of Zaragoza, Toledo and Badajoz, a strengthened Abbadid taifa could feasibly gobble up most of its rivals. OTL they were really the last surviving big taifa as it was.

The only problem is that it'd be a lot like Granada OTL - a much-reduced polity with very little native strength, paying tribute to Castile-Leon and not really able to stand on its own without having to import Berber tribes. Given that the tribal loyalties of the Berbers took precedence for them over their loyalties to the Arabo-Andalusians, and given that many of the Berbers were uncomfortable in the more urbanized landscape of al-Andalus, you'd still get an Abbadid emirate that's in a troubled spot and likely to eventually be crushed without some help from another power. Either it'll eventually collapse or it'll become a province in some sort of non-Almoravid Berber kingdom, possibly one built by the Zenata.

The taifas didn't always have good relationships - al-Andalus was badly ethnically fractured, remember. You had Arabo-Andalusian patrician taifas like Seville and Cordoba, new Berbers like the Zawids of Granada, Saqaliba-run taifas like Denia, all of them claiming to be ruling in the name of the Umayyads. Some of them claimed to be sanctioned by Hisham II decades after Hisham would've died. All of them viewed themselves as the legitimate successor to the Caliphate and they spent a lot of time fighting each other to try and restore the Caliphate.

Glad my TL caught your fancy.
 
So in this scenario, when might we see a concluded Iberian reconquest?

It depends on whether or not the House of Jimena maintain power. They held Castile,Leon,Galicia Aragon and Navara, with their failed attempts at the Reconquista basically ending their dynasty's power by killing off both the patrilineal descendants of Alfonso IV who saw Castile,Leon and Galicia go to the House of Bourgogne, while with Navarre and Aragon, Navarre would be independent under Garcia the restorer, and Aragon would fall to the house of Barcelona making it the more recognizable Aragon we know. No Almoravids or Almohads basically leaves the possibility of an earlier Spain, what that "Spain" is a whole another story, how fast depends as Granada basically wasn't conquered for a very long time.
 
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