Aghlabid dynasty

The Aghlabids were an Arab dynasty of the Banu Tamim that ruled Ifriqiya from 800 to 909, nominally as vassals of the Abbasid Caliphate. In response to the anarchy that followed the fall of the Muhallabids, Harun al-Rashid appointed Ibrahim I ibn al-Aghlab, son of a Khurasani commander, as hereditary emir, with authority over what is now eastern Algeria, Tunisia and Tripolitania, though the grant theoretically reached all the Maghreb west of Cyrenaica. The country held perhaps a hundred thousand Arabs, most of it still Berber, and Ibrahim built himself a residence outside Kairouan at al-Abbasiya, partly to stay clear of the Maliki jurists who condemned his household's luxury. The dynasty paid an annual tribute of eight hundred thousand dirhams and its suzerainty was read in the Friday khutba: independent in all but name, it never denied Abbasid overlordship. It adhered to the Mu'tazilite doctrine within Hanafi law and imposed it as the state doctrine, and it sponsored the mosques and civic works that survive as among the oldest monuments of the Islamic age, until the Fatimids took the country in 909.