The Berber dynasty and empire that rose from a Saharan reform movement to rule Morocco and Muslim Spain in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, checking the Reconquista before falling to the Almohads.
The Almoravid dynasty, in Arabic al-Murabitun, arose from a puritanical Sunni reform movement among the Sanhaja Berbers of the western Sahara in the mid-eleventh century. Under Yusuf ibn Tashfin it became an empire spanning Morocco and, after 1086, Muslim Spain.
From their capital at Marrakesh the Almoravids ruled a vast territory on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar, imposing a stricter religious order on the sophisticated society of al-Andalus and holding back the Christian advance for a generation.
Called into Iberia by the taifa kings, the Almoravids won at Sagrajas in 1086 and then absorbed the taifa kingdoms themselves, uniting al-Andalus under their rule. At their height under Ali ibn Yusuf the empire was the dominant power of the western Mediterranean.
By the 1140s Almoravid power was crumbling under a new Berber reform movement, the Almohads, who took Marrakesh in 1147 and destroyed the dynasty, inheriting its empire in both the Maghreb and Spain.