Muhammad al-Nasir
Muhammad al-Nasir lost al-Andalus in an afternoon at Las Navas de Tolosa. He was the fourth Almohad caliph, succeeding his father in 1199 over an empire that ran from central Spain to the Atlas and beyond Tunis, and he spent his first decade on Africa - suppressing the Banu Ghaniya and taking the Balearics and Ifriqiya. The Spanish campaign came out of a victory: Alfonso VIII of Castile had been beaten badly at Alarcos in 1195 by al-Nasir's father, and the truce that followed expired. He took Salvatierra in 1211, which frightened Christian Spain into doing what it almost never did - Castile, Aragon and Navarre combined, the pope declared a crusade, and foreign contingents came over the Pyrenees. On 16 July 1212 the coalition found a way through the passes of the Sierra Morena, reportedly guided by a shepherd, and came on his camp from an unexpected direction. The Christian charge broke through to the caliph's own tent, which by tradition was ringed by slave guards chained together, and he escaped on horseback. The Spanish name for him, Miramamolín, is a mangling of amir al-mu'minin, commander of the faithful. He returned to Marrakesh, abdicated in favour of a teenage son, and died within months - poisoned, said some. The Almohad state came apart within a generation. Cordoba fell in 1236 and Seville in 1248, and of Muslim Spain only Granada was left, as a tributary of Castile, for another two and a half centuries. The date is the one Spanish historiography treats as the hinge of the reconquest, and the chains said to have ringed his tent are on the arms of Navarre.
- Lived: 1182 CE – 1213 CE
- Nationality: Almohad
- Roles: head_of_state, military
