Because of his father's victories against the Christians in the Iberian Peninsula (Al-Andalus), he was temporarily relieved from serious threats on that front and able to concentrate on combating and defeating Banu Ghaniya attempts to seize Ifriqiya (Tunisia).

Needing, after this, to deal with problems elsewhere in the empire, he appointed Abu Mohammed ibn Abi Hafs as the governor of Ifriqiya, so unwittingly inaugurating the rule of the Hafsid dynasty there, which lasted until 1574.

He now had to turn his attention back to Iberia, to deal with a Crusade proclaimed by Pope Innocent III at the request of King Alfonso VIII of Castile.

[6] Writing two decades after the events, Matthew Paris, a St Albans chronicler of the early thirteenth century, claims that, in desperation, John sent envoys to al-Nâsir asking for his help.

In return John offered to convert to Islam, to make the country at disposal of the caliph and turn England into a Muslim state.