Taifa

Taifa refers to the independent Muslim kingdoms into which al-Andalus fragmented after the collapse of the Caliphate of Córdoba in the early eleventh century. Weak and often at war with one another, the taifa kings paid tribute to Christian rulers. Accounts of the Almoravid Empire describe how their vulnerability, made clear by the fall of Toledo in 1085, led to Almoravid intervention in Iberia and the eventual absorption of the taifas into the Almoravid state.