Al-Maziri was described as a member of the tribe of
Banu Tamim. There is a difference of opinion as to where Muhammad al-Maziri was born. Many sources state his place of birth as Mazara (modern day
Mazara del Vallo) on the Western Sicilian coast. Others state that he was born in Mahdia, the Tunisian city where he lived for most of his life and also died, among the most famous jurists and historians to place al-Maziri's place of birth as Sicily was the Medinan Maliki scholar
Ibn Farhun. He was born in 1061 CE (453 AH), the year in which
Roger I of Sicily crossed from the Italian mainland and began his thirty-year conquest of Sicily from the Muslims. Muhammad spent his early life studying as a young boy in Mazara, in the South of the island, before he and his family crossed to
Mahdia in modern-day Tunisia and settled there. Historians state the impending Christian invasion as the reason for their emigration. Al-Maziri's descent was from the
Banu Tamim, an Arab tribe from which the
Aghlabid rulers of North Africa and the Mediterranean islands descended from. The Banu Tamim had been one of the first Arab tribes to immigrate to North Africa from Arabia during the early conquest of
Uqba ibn Nafi in the 7th century CE. Al-Maziri's distant grandfather was amongst the army led by
Asad ibn al-Furat who conquered Sicily in the 9th century CE. The context in which al-Maziri was raised in Ifriqiya was equally turbulent to his Sicilian hometown. The political and social environment in the Maghreb was upheaved by the immigration of hundreds of thousands of Arab bedouins to North Africa as punishment by the Fatimid rulers to the Zirids for their cut from the Shiite Caliphate and pledging of allegiance to the Sunni Caliph of Baghdad. The event led to the sacking of Ifriqiya's cities, the most important of which was the capital
Kairouan, and the departure of many scholars to Andalusia and elsewhere. Nevertheless, al-Maziri and his family remained, and he grew up in the newly fortified Zirid capital of Mahdia. The turbulent events in which al-Maziri was raised have led historians to link his upbringing with his generally cautious character. == Education and Works ==