Abu Ishaq Ibrahim is the son of the Aghlabid emir Ahmad of Ifriqiya.

After his father's death in 863, the emirate of Ifriqiya had passed to his father's brother Ziyadat Allah II, but he died shortly after, and the succession had passed back to the main line, to Ibrahim's brother Abu 'l-Gharaniq Muhammad II, who proves to be a frivolous and pleasure-loving ruler.

During his brother's emirate, Ibrahim had been assigned the governorship of Kairouan, an office he had executed with exemplary efficiency and seriousness, which had earned him much admiration.

Hopes were high when the dissolute Muhammad II died prematurely in February 875 and the emirate had passed to Ibrahim II, his candidacy pushed forward by popular crowds and endorsed by the jurists of Kairouan, who had set aside the claims of his young nephew, the son of Muhammad II.

Although Ibrahim II had inherited a kingdom depopulated by the plague of 874, his reign is economically prosperous.

He revives the religious police and is said to have rid the roads of banditry and secured the safety of commerce.

He seeks to develop agriculture by building up the irrigation system.

Among his public works, Ibrahim completes the Zaytuna mosque of Tunis, enlarges the Uqba mosque of Kairouan, builds a vast new water reservoir for the city, erects the walls of Sousse, and establishes a line of new naval signal towers along the Ifriqiyan coast (it reportedly takes one night to dispatch a message from Ceuta in Morocco to Alexandria in Egypt).

Key cities in Sicily continue to fall into Muslim hands, an indication of the strength of Arab forces in the Mediterranean.

In the summer of 868, the Romans had been defeated for the first time near the important citadel of Syracuse.

At the time of the ascension of Ibrahim II of Ifriqiya in 875, most of Sicily was already in Aghlabid hands.

During Ibrahim's emirate, there is little stability in the provincial government of Aghlabid Sicily; governors are appointed and switched almost yearly.

Hostilities had resumed in the early summer of 877 by Ibrahim II's newest deputy in Sicily, Jafar ibn Muhammad al-Tamini, who had overrun the Roman-held eastern part of the island and besieged Syracuse.

The city falls on May 21, 878, bringing the Muslim conquest of Sicily to near completion.

Only Taormina, Catania and a couple of other outposts remain in imperial hands.

Ibrahim of Ifriqya had in 876 erected a new palace-city, Raqqada ("the Somnolent") just a few miles southwest of Kairouan.

It replaced the nearby palace-city of al-Abbasiya used by previous Aghlabid emirs.

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.

Its skyline is marked by a great tower, called the Abu al-Feth ("Father of Victory").

It has multiple palaces and barracks, influenced primarily by Umayyad designs, with vast gardens, pools and hydraulic systems.

The city is 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 contains the facilities for regular urban life—a congregational mosque, souks, public baths, etc.

The separation emphasizes the royal majesty of the Aghlabid Emir and his independence from the aristocracy. (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 which had no parallel back in the East.)

At the beginning of his rule, Ibrahim II had been well-regarded as a just and enlightened ruler, but this eventually gives way to a more tyrannical and gruesome reputation.

A centralizing ruler, Ibrahim mistrusts the old Arab high aristocracy of Ifriqiya, which had often been a thorn in the side of prior Aghlabid emirs.

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

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

An absolutist monarch by disposition, ascetic without distractions, Ibrahim seems to have kept counsel with himself, largely immune from the influence of courtiers and bureaucrats.

Only a few names appear near the top—his learned and martial son, Abu al-Abbas Abdallah, his chamberlain (hajib) Muhammad ibn Korhob and his successor Hassan ibn Nakib, and two ruthless slave-generals known as Ma'imun and Rashid.

Above everybody is 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 six hundred dinar debt she owed two merchants, he judged against her and forced her to pay up).

Ibrahim seeks to undermine the semiautonomous Arab regiments (junds) which are 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.

At the inauguration of Raqqada in 878, Ibrahim has the palace guard of his predecessor massacred at the tower of Abu al-Feth in order to make way for his own new Sudanese guard.

Ibrahim expands the Sudanese regiments (later supplemented by white European Slavs or Saqaliba) to as much as ten thousand, much to the chagrin of the Arab jund commanders.

The Arab nobility resents not only being eclipsed, but also the hefty taxes and requisitions imposed by Ibrahim to maintain such a large standing army.

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.