Banu Tujib

The Banu Tujib (Arabic: بنو تجيب), the Tujibids (Arabic: التجيبيون, al-Tujibiyyun, sing. Tujibi) or Banu al-Muhajir, were an Arab dynasty on the Upper March of Al-Andalus active from the ninth to the eleventh centuries. They were given control of Zaragoza and Calatayud by the Umayyads as a counterweight to the independence-minded Muwallad nobility of the region. In Zaragoza, they developed a degree of autonomy that served as the precursor to their establishment of an independent Taifa of Zaragoza after the collapse of the Caliphate of Córdoba. They ruled this taifa from 1018 until they were expelled by another Arab dynasty, the Banu Hud, in 1039. An exiled junior line of the family, known as the Banu Sumadih, established themselves as rulers of the Taifa of Almería, which they held for three generations, until 1090.

Family origin

The historian Ibn Hazm traced the Banu Tujib to two brothers who accompanied Musa ibn Nusayr from Egypt for his conquest of Iberia (early 710s), ʿAmira and ʿAbd Allah, both sons of al-Muhajir ibn Naywa. They were installed in Aragon, and ʿAmira is said to have served as governor of Barcelona for two years, while ʿAbd Allah was ancestor of the later family. The 11th-century historian al-Udri claimed the Banu Salama, who governed Zaragoza in the late 8th century were a branch of the Banu Tujib, but his contemporary Ibn Hazm included in the earliest generation of the Banu Qasi a son named Abu Salama, apparently hinting at a derivation of the Banu Salama from this Muwallad Upper March family. In the second half of the 9th century, faced with the repeated threat of the rebel Banu Qasi clan, emir Muhammad I of Córdoba recruited to his side the sons of ʿAbd al-ʿAziz ibn ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Tujibi, giving them several towns, including Daroca, as well as 100 dinars each, and charging them with fighting the Banu Qasi.