Abdallah, son of the Aghlabid emir Ibrahim II, represses a revolt of his Muslim subjects and then initiates a campaign against the last imperial strongholds in Sicily.

Abu 'Abdullah Al-Shi'i, born in Kufa in Iraq (or Sanaa, according to some accounts) had been active in the administration of the Abbasid Caliphate, before he began to associate with Ismaili teachers.

At first he had proselytized under the guidance of Ibn Hawshab in Yemen and Mecca.

During a pilgrimage to Mecca in 892, he had met some Kutama Berbers that boasted of their independence and autonomy from the Aghlabids.

Sensing an opportunity, al-Shi'i had decided to follow their invitation to the Maghrib, where he had arrived in 893.

Abdallah II, who takes over the Emirate of Ifriqiya after his father Abu Ishaq Ibrahim II is forced to abdicate in 902 after a tyrannical rule, immediately sets about trying to reduce the autonomy of the Kutama Berbers in order to stop the Ismailite mission of al-Shi'i, without success, however.

Constantinople, absent the generalship of Nikephorus Phocas the Elder, meets with reverses in the West.

Taormina had continued after the fall of the Western Roman Empire to rank as one of the more important towns of Sicily, and because of the strength of its position was one of the last places that was retained by the Eastern Roman emperors; but the Aghlabid army takes it on August 1, 902, after a siege of two years.

The Islamic conquest of Sicily is complete.

An effort by Abdallah to replace the Malikite law schools with Hanifites from Iraq also fails.

He is murdered in 903 by his son Abu Muda Ziyadat Allah, who immediately has all his brothers and uncles executed to eliminate any possible rivals.

While this massacre secures his position in the short term, the Aghlabid dynasty loses any remaining prestige it had had in the eyes of the people.