Abu Yafar Áhmad ibn Sulaymán al-Muqtadir Billah , known by the short name of Al-Muqtadir of Zaragoza or Al-Muqtadir . He was the King of the Taifa of Saraqusta between the years 1046 and 1081 / 2 , as a member of the dynasty of the Banu Hud . It took the taifa of Zaragoza to its maximum political and cultural apogee. He was a patron of science, philosophy and the arts. He ordered the construction of the beautiful Palace of La Aljafería where important Andalusian intellectuals met.
His father Sulaymán banu Hud al-Musta’in distributed the taifa among his five children, and al-Muqtadir used his life to reunite it. Only Yusuf, governor of Lleida, resisted his brother’s attempts to integrate for more than thirty years, until who was taken prisoner in 1078 .
During his military campaigns he defeated and killed Ramiro I at Graus , leading to the Crusade against Barbastro in 1064 , which al-Muqtadir recovered eight months later. Very active spiritual desire that also appears in the attempts of a “monk of France” to convert him. It is, together with the taifa of Seville , the only taifa that achieve considerable expansion, since it occupies Tortosa in 1061 and Denia in 1073 ; of Valencia achieves that his regime recognizes vassalage to him in 1076. For his part, he had to fight Castile and pay homage to his king Sancho II when he besieged Zaragoza in 1067, remaining, after his death, defenseless before Sancho García de Navarra and Sancho Ramírez de Aragón. Seeking a voice …; He then decides to pay tribute to the first and make friends with the other.
He left his kingdom divided between his sons: al-Mutamin in Zaragoza and Mundir in the eastern zone from Lleida . His title Al-Muqtadir (“the strong one for God”) was adopted after recovering Barbastro , a fact that caused great expectation throughout Al-Andalus . The last year of his life he could not rule due to senile madness