Yusuf II, Almohad caliph

Who was Yusuf II, Almohad caliph?

Abu Yaqub Yusuf 'al-Mustansir' was Caliph of Maghreb from 1213 until his death. Son of the previous caliph, Muhammad an-Nasir, the ten-year-old Yusuf was unexpectedly appointed heir by his father on his deathbed. He was confirmed as Almohad Caliph in election by the Almohad sheikhs after his father's death, and took up the caliphal title "al-Mustansir".

Young and pleasure-loving, Yusuf II left the governing of the Almohad empire to a carefully balanced oligarchy composed of older family members, like his father's brothers in al-Andalus and his grand-cousin Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Abi Hafs in Ifriqiya, Marrakesh palace bureaucrats such as the vizier Abu Sa'id Uthman ibn Jam'i and the leading sheikhs of the Almohad Masmuda tribes. But without central leadership, and with the Almohad army having suffered grievous losses at the Battle of Navas de Tolosa in 1212, a series of rebellions broke out in the Maghreb which the Almohad oligarchs were hard-pressed to contain, contributing to the eventual breakaway of Ifriqiya under the Hafsid dynasty.

Yusuf II died suddenly in early 1224 - accidentally gored while playing with his pet cows. Lacking heirs, the palace bureaucrats, led by Ibn Jam'i, quickly engineered the election of his elderly grand-uncle as the next caliph Abd al-Wahid I, as the new caliph in Marrakesh. But the hastiness and probable unconstitutionality of the Marrakesh proceedings upset his uncles, the brothers of al-Nasir, in al-Andalus. They promptly disputed the succession, and elected their own Caliph Abdallah al-Adil. It was the first such challenge to an Almohad succession. And it would set in motion a series of intercine Almohad struggles which would lead to the loss of al-Andalus and the eventual collapse of the Almohad state.