Ali ibn Hamdun al-Andalusi was an early adherent of Isma'ilism and of the Fatimid Caliphate. He was the founder and governor of the city of M'Sila, and the progenitor of a line of governors and generals in the service of the Fatimid and Umayyad rulers. Life Ali was born with the name Tha'laba, to a family descending from Abd al-Hamid al-Judhami, a member of the Syrian regiments of the Umayyad Caliphate who had settled in al-Andalus, in the region of Alcalá la Real. Ali's father, Hamdun, had moved the family to Béjaïa in what is now northeastern Algeria, where the family acquired the of . In 900, Ali decided to go on the Hajj pilgrimage, but on the way, as he was passing through the lands of the Kutama Berbers, he was impressed by the Isma'ili message being propagated by Abu Abdallah al-Shi'i. He stayed there, married a Kutama woman named Maymuna bint Alaham al-Jili, and changed his name from Tha'laba to Ali. After the establishment of the Fatimid Caliphate in 909, he became one of the closest advisors of the new caliph, Abd Allah al-Mahdi Billah. In 924, during the campaign by al-Mahdi's heir-apparent, al-Qa'im against the Zenata Berbers, Ali was given the task of establishing a new city on the plain between the Hodna Mountains and the Chott el Hodna lake. Named al-Muhammadiya (modern M'Sila) after al-Qa'im, it was meant to cement Fatimid control over the area, as well as a base from which to cultivate the once rich Hodna plain. Ali and his family settled in the new city, becoming its governors and assuming, in the words of the historian Heinz Halm, "the role of margraves" at the southwestern extremity of the Fatimid territory against the Zenata. Ali ibn Hamdun remained loyal to the Fatimid cause during the great revolt of Abu Yazid (944–947), but died in 945. He was succeeded by his son, Ja'far, who along with his brother Yahya played a major role in the conflict between the Fatimids and the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba in subsequent decades, defecting to the latter in 971. References Sources Further reading 9th-century births 945 deaths 10th-century people from the Fatimid Caliphate Governors of the Fatimid Caliphate City founders 10th-century Ismailis M'Sila Province 10th-century Arabs Banu Judham