Banu Isam

The Banu Isam were a Berber Muslim dynasty that ruled Ceuta, present-day Spain, for four generations. The town had been destroyed in a rebellion, and was lying waste; sometime in the middle of the 9th century, Mâjakas, chief of the Berber Majkasa tribe, resettled it and founded a dynasty that ruled the town until the Umayyads took it over in 931.^[1][2]

Its kings were:

• Mâjakas
• `Isâm, son of Mâjakas
• Majîr, son of `Isâm
• Ridâ, son of `Isâm (?-931), who paid allegiance to the Idrisids, but surrendered the city to the Umayyads when the Idrisid capital fell.

See also

• History of Ceuta

References

1. Sabta, Halima Ferhat, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. 8, ed. C.E. Bosworth, E. Van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs and G. Lecomte, (Brill, 1995), 690; " It was a refuge for Arab forces during the Kharidjite rebellion, an Idrisid principality (it was allegedly occupied by Idris I in 173/789-90), as the capital of the Banu 'Isam, who appear more as an independent dynasty than as Idrisid governors, occupied by the Umayyads of Cordova in 319/931 and became a pawn in the struggle against the Fatimids."
2. Benchekroun, Chafik T. (2016-06-01). "Les Idrissides entre Fatimides et Omeyyades". Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée (in French) (139): 29–50. doi:10.4000/remmm.9412. ISSN 0997-1327.