The Hammadids were a Berber dynasty who ruled an area roughly corresponding to north-eastern modern Algeria for about a century and a half (1008–1152), until they were destroyed by the Almohads. Soon after coming to power, they rejected the Ismaili doctrine of the Fatimids, and returned to Maliki Sunnism, acknowledging the Abbasids as rightful Caliphs.

Their capital was at first Qalaat Beni Hammad, founded in 1007 and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site; when this was endangered by the Banu Hilal, a large Arab bedouin tribe, they moved to Béjaïa (1090).

In 1014 Hammad ibn Buluggin, a Berber who had been placed as governor of central Maghreb, declared himself independent from the Zirids, then ruling most of Maghreb from Morocco to Tunisia, and obtained the recognition from the Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad. The Zirids sent an army, but two years later a peace was signed, although the Zirid recognized the Hammadid legitimacy only in 1018.

Hammad founded a new capital in Qalaat Beni Hammad. With the Banu Hilal menace rising (spurred by the rival Fatimid caliphs of Egypt), they moved it to Béjaïa, which became one of the most prosperous cities in the medieval Mediterranean (1052).