Yusuf was the son of
Abd al-Mu'min, the first caliph of the Almohad dynasty. His mother was Safiyya bint Abi Imran, a
Masmuda woman from
Tinmel, the daughter of Abu Imran Musa ibn Sulayman al-Kafif, a companion of
Ibn Tumart. Yusuf supported the
Almohad doctrine and, like his predecessors, favored the literalist
Zahiri school of
Islamic jurisprudence and was a religious scholar in his own right. He was said to have memorized by heart
Sahih Bukhari and
Sahih Muslim, two collections of
Muhammad's
statements considered canonical in
Sunni Islam and was a patron of the theologians of his era. Respected men of letters such as
Ibn Rushd and
Ibn Tufayl were entertained at his court. Yusuf favored the Córdoban polymath
ibn Maḍāʾ as his
chief judge; during the
Almohad reforms, the two oversaw the banning of any religious material written by non-Zahiris. Yusuf's son al-Mansur would eventually take the reforms even further, actually burning non-Zahiri books instead of merely banning them. In 1170 he invaded
Iberia, conquering
al-Andalus and ravaging
Valencia and
Catalonia. The following year he established himself in
Seville. He ordered the construction of numerous buildings, such as the
Alcázar of Seville, the
Buhaira Gardens, and the fortress of
Alcalá de Guadaíra. The arrival of the zealous Almohads heralded the end of the
Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain. Abu Ya'qub Yusuf was wounded at the
Siege of Santarém (1184), in which he died on the road to Seville, near Évora. His body was sent from Seville to
Tinmel where he was buried. ==References==