Al-Ma'mun was the first Almohad ruler to officially renegade on the
Imamate of the
Mahdi Ibn Tumart, recognizing instead the
Abbasid caliph in Baghdad as Imam and reverted back to promoting the
Taqlid of the
Maliki madhab formerly promoted by the
Almoravids whom the Almohads had ousted less than a century earlier. He claimed instead that the title Mahdi applied to Jesus. His nephew
Yahya took this step as license to proclaim himself caliph and a civil war broke out. At the same time, a revolt took place in
Murcia under emir al-Mutawakkil. Al-Ma'mun therefore send his relative Abu Zayd from Valencia to Murcia to squash the revolt, but Abu Zayd was defeated. Al-Ma'mun then went with an army to confront al-Mutawakkil, but he could not capture the city itself. As the situation in North Africa also became worse, al-Ma'mun departed to Morocco and ended thus Almohad rule on the peninsula. Idris asked
Ferdinand III of Castile for help, receiving 12,000 knights who allowed him to conquer that city and to massacre the sheikhs that had supported Yahya. Following his victory, Idris honored the treaty with Ferdinand III and allowed the construction of a Christian church in Marrakesh in 1230, which was destroyed two years later by Yahya. The side changes of Idris soon lost him popular consent. In the early 1232, when he was besieging
Ceuta, Yahya took the occasion to capture Marrakesh. Idris died during the march to reach the city, and was succeeded by his son
Abd al-Wahid II. The rejection of typical Almohad doctrine also caused the break away of the
Hafsid dynasty in the
Ifriqiya province. One of his consort was a Christian woman, Habbaba, who upon his death informed the Christian palace militia before she informed the Muslim members of the court, giving the former an advantage. Idris’ other son was
Abu al-Hasan as-Said al-Mutadid. ==Notes==