Abu Ishaq Ibrahim II ibn Ahmad (Arabic: أبو اسحاق ابراهيم الثاني) (27 June 850 – 23 October 902) was the Emir of Ifriqiya.

Citing mistreatment of his subjects, Abbasid Caliph al-Mu'tadid dispatched a messenger to Tunis in 901/902 where he demanded Ibrahim to Baghdad and deprived him of the governorship of Ifriqiya.

Among his public works, Ibrahim completed the Zaytuna mosque of Tunis, enlarged the Uqba mosque of Kairouan, built a vast new water reservoir for the city, erected the walls of Sousse, and established a line of new naval signal towers along the Ifriqiyan coast (it reportedly took one night to dispatch a message from Ceuta in Morocco to Alexandria in Egypt).

Raqqada was built on a grandiose scale; according to al-Bakri, its walls were ten kilometers long and encompassed a land area as large as Kairouan itself.

The city was divided into two roughly equal-sized districts, one dedicated to the emir alone, the other a densely packed quarter for his noble retinue, which also contained the facilities for regular urban life – a congregational mosque, souks, public baths, etc.

According to al-Bakri, the Fatimid leader, Abdullah al Mahdi, upon entering the conquered city in 909, was astonished at the Aghlabid constructions, and singled out the waterworks of Tunis and the palaces of Raqqada as two things in the Maghreb that had no parallel back in the East.

He held open court in Raqqada every week, after Friday prayers, when the common poor people of Ifriqiya were invited to present petitions directly to the emir.

Identifying himself with the people, Ibrahim treated any report of mistreatment of a commoner by a noble as a case of lese-majesty, and handed out severe penalties to the offender, even members of his own family.

[8] Above everybody was his mother, whom the chronicles deferentially refer to merely as the Sayyida ("Supreme Lady") and characterize as the only person whose opinion Ibrahim respected or who had any influence upon him (although he was not above embarrassing her – in a public case over a 600 dinar debt she owed two merchants, he judged against her and forced her to pay up).

[9] Ibrahim sought to undermine the semi-autonomous Arab regiments (junds) which were the basis of the aristocracy's power, by supplanting them with loyal black African slave-soldiers ("Abid" or "Sudan") at the core of the Ifriqiyan army.

[10] Ibrahim expanded the Sudanese regiments (later supplemented by white European Slavs or Saqaliba) to as much as 10,000, much to the chagrin of the Arab jund commanders.

In 893, when the Arab jund lords of Belezma (near Batna, in western Ifriqiya) revolted against his military reforms and requisitions, Ibrahim invited them to Raqqada to present their case.

In 879–880, while the Tulunid emir Ahmad ibn Tulun was away in the east, his hot-headed son Abbas, without his father's permission, decided to invade Ifriqiya and led a large Egyptian army west.

Upon reaching Barqa, al-Abbas dispatched a message, falsely claiming that he had credentials from the Abbasid caliph ordering Ibrahim to step down and hand the governorship of Ifriqiya over to him.

[13] Rushing south from Tunisia, Ibrahim II arrived just in time to seize the Tulunid baggage train and its ample war chest, which proved a fortuitous bolster to the Aghlabid treasury.

Reaching Tripoli, Ibrahim II had the governor Muhammad, his own cousin, executed and impaled (ostensibly because he heard the Abbasid Caliph al-Mu'tamid had spoken favorably of him).

[14] That same year, he attacked and defeated the Ibadite Nafusa at a great battle at Manu (south of Gabès), putting an end to their independent imamate.

His reign was a determined battle for absolutism at the expense of the nobility, the army, the cities and to a lesser extent the tribes, all the elements that threatened the survival of the monarchy.

Streams of Muslim refugees fled the Greek onslaught towards the western Campania coast, where they were received by Bishop-Duke Athanasius of Naples and resettled in pockets at Vesuvius, Agropoli and Garigliano, and even as far inland as Sepiano (near Bojano).

Small fleets from Sicily would continue to support the remaining Muslim colonies on the Italian mainland, but the prospect of more concerted action was postponed.

[citation needed] Aghlabid governors of Sicily routinely led sai'fa (religiously mandated raids for booty and prisoners) on the mainland, and the prospect of raking in war plunder abroad usually helped defuse the internal political tensions over land.

In 892, Ibrahim dispatched a new governor, Muhammad ibn Fadhl, at the head of a large Aghlabid army, who managed to force his way into Palermo and briefly re-impose Ifriqiyan authority.

[33] It is reported by Ibn Khaldoun (but not other sources) that the Arabs of Palermo and the Berbers of Agrigento patched up their differences just in time to present a united Sicilian front to negotiate with the Aghlabids.

The Sicilian rebel remnant withdrew into the fortified citadel (qasr) of Palermo (the old center now known as Cassaro), leaving the town and suburbs open to the sack of the Ifriqiyan army.

Mounting reports of the cruel atrocities of Ibrahim II made their way to Baghdad, prompting the Abbasid Caliph al-Mu'tadid to finally react.

Citing the mistreatment of his subjects, the caliph recalled Ibrahim II to Baghdad and deprived him of the governorship of Ifriqiya, appointing in his stead his son Abu al-Abbas Abdallah (then on campaign in Sicily).

With apparently genuine repentance, donning the garments of a penitent and declaring a pious change of heart, Ibrahim II remitted tributes, abolished illegal taxes, opened his jails, manumitted his slaves, and delivered a large chunk of his treasury to the jurists of Kairouan to distribute to the needy.

Although the conquest of Sicily had been completed under him – Syracuse in 878, Taormina in 902 – Ibrahim II's erratic and heavy-handed rule had provoked civil war and separatism among the island's Muslim communities.

Shortly after the departure of the bulk of the Ifriqiyan army for Ibrahim's last mad campaign in Italy in 902, the Kutama, a Berber tribe of the Petite Kabylie, fired up and organized by the Ismaili preacher Abu 'Abdullah al-Shi'i, burst out of their highland strongholds and began capturing the Aghlabid fortresses that had hitherto kept them contained.

The reputation of Ibrahim II's feared Sudanese regiments was such that, during the campaigns of 902–909, the Fatimids mercilessly executed any black African who fell into their hands.