Yahya was the son of
al-Qasim, a younger son of the second
Idrisid ruler,
Idris II (). The family of al-Qasim controlled northern Morocco, with the cities of
Tangier,
Basra and
Ceuta, and for a time in the 860s even the western half of the Idrisid capital,
Fes. Known by the sobriquet
al-Miqdam, Yahya was called upon for assistance by the inhabitants of the Qaraqiyyin quarter of Fes when the town was occupied by the
Kharijite rebel
Abd al-Razzaq. Yahya drove the rebels away, and is traditionally accounted as the eighth Idrisid emir, until his death in 905. Modern historians on the other hand consider that his rule over Fes is unlikely to have lasted long: his uncle,
Dawud, appears to have ruled the city in 877, while
numismatic evidence shows that between 880 and 893 the capital was ruled by members of a different branch of the Idrisid dynasty, descending from another uncle,
Isa. Yahya fell in battle in 905 against the forces of a cousin from a different branch of the dynasty,
Yahya IV. ==References==