Abu Bakr ibn Umar

Abu Bakr ibn Umar ibn Ibrahim ibn Turgut, sometimes suffixed al-Sanhaji or al-Lamtuni (died 1087; ) was a chieftain of the Lamtuna Berber Tribe and Amir of the Almoravids from 1056 until his death. He is credited to have founded the Moroccan city of Marrakesh, and under his rule the heretic Barghawatas were destroyed. In 1076, he conquered Koumbi Saleh capital of the Ghana Empire, and is credited to have brought Islam in this Western Sub-Saharan Africa region. In November of 1087, Abu Bakr died of a poisoned arrow in Senegal. Life Abu Bakr ibn Umar was a member of the Banu Turgut, a clan of the Lamtuna Berbers. His uncle, Yahya Ibn Ibrahim was the chieftain of the Lamtuna who, together with the Maliki scholar Abdallah ibn Yasin, launched the Almoravid (murabitūn) movement in the early 1040s. Upon the death of Yahya ibn Umar in the spring of 1056 at the Battle of Tabfarilla, the spiritual leader Abdallah ibn Yasin appointed Abu Bakr as the new military commander and amir of the Almoravids. That same year, Abu Bakr recaptured Sijilmassa from the Maghrawa of the Zenata confederation. The city had been taken earlier by Yahya, but subsequently lost; Abu Bakr recaptured it definitively for the Almoravids in late 1056.