Hafsid Caliphate
The successors in Tunis of the Almohades were the Hafsids. The mild rule of this dynasty lasted, with some breaks, from 1228 to 1534, with a list of twenty-two leaders. Kheir eddin Barbarossa conquered Tunis in the name of the Ottomans in 1534. Charles V restored the Hafsid king in 1535 and garrisoned the country with Spanish troops, though the Corsair's really controlled the country. From 1574 it was really Mohammedan. In the first half of the sixteenth century the Knights of St. John held part of the country.
There is a tradition that the Prophet said: "The Caliphate after me in my nation is thirty years, then a kingdom after that." This doubtless means that the Caliphate terminated with Ali; and this transition from Caliphate to monarchy is sometimes assumed by historians to have been a fact. It has this evident nucleus of truth, that with the transference of the center of Islam from Medinah, its first capital, to other countries, the continuity of the government founded by the Prophet was severed. A view which is more widely accepted is that the Caliphate terminated when Baghdad was sacked by the Mongols.
A question arises whether there can or cannot be more than one Caliph at the same time. Theoretically there can only be one; for the Caliph is the person whorn God has charged with the interests of His servants in East and West, on sea and land, country and town, plain and mountain. There is a Tradition according to which if two Caliphs are proclaimed, one of them is to be slain. Theory, however, in these matters does not always accord with practice.
It would be of little interest to enumerate the Spanish and African dynasties by which the Caliphate was claimed simultaneously with the Caliphates of Egypt and Baghdad. Whereas, as we have seen, many supposed that the possession of the Sanctuaries furnished a title to the office, on one occasion we find the doctrine reversed. When the Caliphate of Baghdad came to an end, the Sherif of Mecca sent formal recognition to the Hafsid Caliph then reigning in Tunis, on the ground that he was the only Caliph who at the time possessed any real power;!according to this the Sanctuaries belonged to the most powerful Islamic sovereign; it was not the possession of them.
In 1228, after the Almohad caliph al-Mamun had renounced the cult of the Mahdi ibn Tumart and then massacred numerous Almohad notables of high rank, Abu Zakariya Yahya, the founder of the new dynasty, split from the sovereign of Marrakech. Without proclaiming himself caliph, the first Hafsid set up an effective autonomy with regard to the Almohad power. His son and successor, Muhammad (1249-1277), reaffirmed his independence from the caliphate in Marrakech, then in sharp decline, and claimed the title of caliph.
The Almohad legacy is strongly present in Hafsid life: the political regime drew principally on an aristocracy made up of the dignitaries of the Almohad tribes, who also provided the great military leaders. The Hafsids were at first lieutenants of the Almohades in their province of Tunis. The government passed from father to son, and the dynasty became independent. For three centuries the Hafsids governed Tunis with justice and mildness, and cultivated friendly commercial relations with the trading republics of Italy.
As of the end of the thirteenth century, the Hafsid power in Tunis fell prey to a long phase of political weakening. The Corsair Khayr-aZdīn Barbarossa conquered Tunis in the name of the Ottoman Sultan in 1534, and though the Emperor Charles v. restored the Hafsid king in 1535 and placed a Spanish garrison at the Goletta of Tunis, the province remained chiefly in the hands of the Corsairs, who re-took Tunis itself in 1568 and the Goletta in 1574;* since when, it has been a province of the Ottoman Empire, but in 1881 became practically a possession of France. Tripoli, which had been taken from the kingdom of Tunis by the Spaniards in 1510, was added to the Ottoman Empire by the Corsairs in 1551. Hafsid history was brought to an end by the Ottoman conquest of Tunis, which became in 1574 the administrative center of a new Ottoman province. In that year the Ottoman Sultan Murad III. fitted out an expedition under Sinan Pasha, who took the place by assault. Muhammad was taken prisoner, and the Hafsid dynasty came to an end.
