The Almohades kinged it nobly in Andalusia; but these successive revivals of fervour and activity in Western Islam may be compared to the last strong spasms of a dying man. Despite these furious inrushes of Almoravides and Al-Muwahedun, the Christians were slowly but surely gaining ground. The lieutenants of Abd-ul-Mumin subjugated Granada and Almeria in the east, Badajoz and Evora in the west. The Moorish amir of Valencia did homage to Yusuf, Abd-ul-Mumin’s son and successor, at Ishbiliyah. The third sovereign of the dynasty, Yakub Al Mansûr, dealt what seemed a crushing blow to the allied Spaniards at Alarcos in 1195. Had that victory been properly followed up, perhaps to this day a Mohammedan power might have been seated firmly in the south of Spain, and the Strait of Gibraltar might have been a western Dardanelles.
But the Christians rallied. In 1212 was fought the decisive battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, between the Moorish Khalif An-Nasr and the Castilian King, Alfonso VIII. The Musulmans were totally defeated. “Six hundred thousand combatants,” says El Makkari, with perhaps a trace of Oriental hyperbole, “were led by An-Nasr to the field of battle; all perished, except a few that did not amount to a thousand. This battle was a malediction, not only on Andalus but on all the West.”
Yet the downfall of the Islamite power did not immediately follow. An-Nasr survived his defeat seven years, and his son, Abu Yusuf Yakub Al-Mustanser, reigned four more inglorious years. His dying (1223) without children was the signal for dissensions and disturbances throughout his still vast empire. While Abd-ul-Wahed was proclaimed Khalifa in Morocco, Al Adil took up the reins of sovereignty in Murcia. Both pretenders soon disappeared from the troubled scene, Abd-ul-Wahed being assassinated, and his rival, after having been defeated in Spain by the Christians, being forced to take refuge in Morocco, there to abdicate in favour of An-Nasr’s son, Yahya. Abu-l-Ala, Al Adil’s brother, who had been left as governor in Ishbiliyah, declared himself Khalifa on learning the accession of Yahya. He was the last of the race of Abd-ul-Mumin to rule in the city. He was driven from Spain--to found a wider empire in Africa--by Mohammed Ben Yusuf, variously styled Ben Hud and Al Jodhami.