Abu Yaqub Yusuf I

Abu Ya‘qub Yusuf or Yusuf I ( Abū Ya‘qūb Yūsuf; 1135 – 14 October 1184) He was a keen student of philosophy and patron of Averroes.

Life 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.

He continued the conquest of al-Andalus, initiated by his father, into Valencia and Catalonia. In 1171, 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.