- published: 25 Mar 2011
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The Zayyanids (Arabic: زيانيون, Ziyānyūn) or Abd al-Wadids (Arabic: بنو عبد الواد, Bānu ʿabd āl-Wād) are a Berber Zenatadynasty that ruled the Kingdom of Tlemcen, whose territory stretched from Tlemcen to the Chelif valley and reached, at its maximal extent, the Moulouya river to the west and Algiers to the east. Their rule lasted from 1235 to 1556.
On the collapse of the Almohad rule in the 1230s, the kingdom of Tlemcen became independent under the rule of the Zayyanids.
Later in the fourteenth century, Tlemcen twice fell under the rule of the Marinid sultans Abu al-Hasan Ali (1337–48) and his son Abu 'Inan. In both cases, the Marinids found that they were unable to hold the region against local resistance. but these episodes appear to have marked the beginning of the end of the Zayyanids.
Over the following two centuries, the Zayyanid kingdom was intermittently a vassal of Hafsid Ifriqiya, Marinid Morocco, or Aragon. When the Spanish took the city of Oran from the kingdom in 1509, continuous pressure from the Berbers prompted the Spanish to attempt a counterattack against the city of Tlemcen (1543), which was deemed by the Papacy to be a crusade. The Spanish failed to take the city in the first attack, although the strategic vulnerability of Tlemcen caused the kingdom's weight to shift toward the safer and more heavily fortified corsair base at Algiers.
zianides kingdom (الدولة الزيانية (الجزائر في القرون الوسطى