We will address what seems to me to be the three aspects of this revolution.

The Political Aspect in Ibn Tumart's Revolution: After Ibn Tumart settled in Igil and began to call for his ideas, a number of people began to join him.

The goal was to absorb these steadily increasing followers by preparing them intellectually and organizationally to build the new society that his revolution aimed to establish. He followed various methods in this regard, differing according to circumstances and renewed as needed. The following are the most important methods of work in this political aspect.

The Declaration of the Mahdi: From a political standpoint, the idea of the Mahdi is an excellent means of gaining supporters and ensuring their continuous loyalty, as they rally without wavering around the person they believe to be the awaited Mahdi. They believe he will fill the earth with justice, not injustice. Therefore, many politicians and revolutionaries in various parts of the Islamic world have used it. The Maghreb had its share in this.

The idea of the Mahdi was not strange to the people of Sus, Ibn Tumart's homeland. They had received it from the Shi'ite call that reached the edges of the Maghreb. It managed to establish a small state in this region founded by Ibn Warasand al-Bajali, which lasted for nearly two centuries. It seems that the lack of authentic and deep Islamic culture among these mountain dwellers allowed a kind of fanciful thought to spread among them, based on divination, fortune-telling, and sorcery. This made their response to the idea of the awaited Mahdi easy, especially since some hadith attributed to the Prophet, peace be upon him, were circulating in the Maghreb in general, predicting the appearance of the Mahdi.

We will discuss the Mahdi here as a political event, and we will leave the discussion of its doctrinal aspect for when we discuss Ibn Tumart's views.

See for this: Ibn Khaldun, Al-Muqaddimah: 295. See: p. 39 of this research.