Taifa of Alpuente

The Taifa of Alpuente was a medieval taifa kingdom of Berber origin that existed from around 1009 to 1106, created following the end of the Caliphate of Córdoba in the Iberian Peninsula. It was centered at the city of Alpuente, a hill town in the mountains of the interior of what is now the Valencian Country, and was ruled by a Berber family of the Banu Qasim tribe. When the caliphate fractured in the early eleventh century, the Qasimid chiefs turned their mountain stronghold into an independent kingdom. The emir list records the succession: 'Abd Allah I ruled from about 1009 to 1030; Muhammad I Yumn ad-Dawla reigned from 1030 to 1042; Ahmad held the throne briefly in 1042–1043; Muhammad II followed within the same year; and 'Abd Allah II then reigned from 1043 until about 1106, when the kingdom's independent existence came to an end. For nearly a century the same family ruled from Alpuente while the greater powers of al-Andalus — the remnants of the caliphate and its heirs — contended around them, the little kingdom outliving the taifas founded in richer lowland cities.