Tinmel is a small village and archaeological site in the Nfis valley of the western High Atlas of Morocco, eighty kilometres south of Marrakesh and approximately twenty kilometres west of the Tizi n'Test pass. The village's significance is entirely disproportionate to its size: Tinmel was the founding base of the Almohad movement and the burial place of Ibn Tumart, the Masmuda religious reformer who established the political project that would unify the medieval Maghreb.
Ibn Tumart relocated his community to Tinmel around 1124, three years after his proclamation as Mahdi at Igiliz in the Anti-Atlas, choosing the defensible Nfis valley as a refuge from Almoravid pursuit. The Masmuda tribal organisation he established at Tinmel — a council of ten and a council of fifty, layered over the constituent tribes — was the institutional basis for the subsequent Almohad caliphate. He died at Tinmel in 1130 and was buried at the site.
The Tinmel Mosque, completed under Abd al-Mu'min around 1156 to honour Ibn Tumart's tomb, is one of the principal early Almohad monuments. The mosque's plan — a hypostyle hall preceded by a courtyard, with a single minaret rising from the qibla wall — provided the architectural model for the subsequent Koutoubia of Marrakesh, the Giralda of Seville, and the Hassan Tower of Rabat. The site was substantially restored in the late twentieth century.
The September 2023 al-Haouz earthquake, with epicentre approximately fifty kilometres east of Tinmel, caused major damage to the mosque. Walls collapsed and the principal minaret was reduced to its lower courses; the surrounding village suffered significant casualties. Restoration planning is in progress under the Moroccan Ministry of Culture and the international heritage community.