Zayyanid Dynasty - History

History

On the collapse of the Almohad rule in the 1230s, the kingdom of Tlemcen became independent under the rule of the Zayyanids.

Later in the fourteenth century, Tlemcen twice fell under the rule of the Marinids (1337–48 and 1352–59). The Marinids reoccupied it periodically, particularly in 1360 and 1370. In both cases, the Marinids found that they were unable to hold the region against local resistance. but these episodes appear to have marked the beginning of the end of the Zayyanids.

Over the following two centuries, the Zayyanid kingdom was intermittently a vassal of Hafsid Ifriqiya, Marinid Morocco, or Aragon. When the Spanish took the city of Oran from the kingdom in 1509, continuous pressure from the Berbers prompted the Spanish to attempt a counterattack against the city of Tlemcen (1543), which was deemed by the Papacy to be a crusade. The Spanish failed to take the city in the first attack, although the strategic vulnerability of Tlemcen caused the kingdom's weight to shift toward the safer and more heavily fortified corsair base at Algiers.

In 1554, the kingdom of Tlemcen became a protectorate of the Ottoman Empire, which later deposed the Zayyanids and annexed the country to the Regency of Algiers.