Emirate of Nekor

The Emirate of Nekor, or Salihid Emirate, was an eighth-century emirate of the Rif in today's Morocco, founded in 710 by Salih I ibn Mansur through a grant of the caliphate. Under him the local Berber tribes took Islam, though they briefly deposed him for one Dawud al-Rundi of the Nafza tribe before changing their minds and restoring him. His house, the Banu Salih, ruled the region for more than three hundred years, from a capital first at Temsamane and then at Nekor beside its river, east of al-Hoceima, a town whose mosque, bathhouse, walls and pottery show links with Ifriqiya and al-Andalus. The founder's origin is disputed: Arab tradition makes him a Himyarite from South Arabia, while al-Ya'qubi's geography counts him among the Nafza Berbers. Nekor was the first autonomous state of the Maghreb, and the only one that held exclusively to Sunni Islam of the Maliki school. It ended with the destruction of the city of Nekor in 1080, after which the Rif passed to the Almoravids, then the Almohads and the Marinids.