For the first two hundred years of its history, Sijilmasa was an independent city-state first under the control of the Bani Wasul and then under the Bani Midrar. Its position at the head of the trade routes across the Sahara Desert from West Africa placed it in an ideal position to control, or at least profit from, the flow of West African gold into the Muslim world. In fact, control of the city-state became the object of intense competition between the Fatimids of Ifriqiya (modern Tunisia) and the Umayyads of Cordoba in southern Spain who alternately controlled the city in the second half of the tenth century, either directly or through client Berber tribes. The Arab author, Ibn Hawqal, writing in the tenth century, informs us that half the tax revenues of the Fatimids came from Sijilmasa. The discovery in April, 1992 of 32 gold coins in Aqaba, Jordan, of which 29 were minted in Sijilmasa in the name of the Umayyads, is testimony to the role of Sijilmasa as the link between the Islamic and Mediterranean worlds to the sources of gold in West Africa.

In the year 1054-55, Sijilmasa fell to another Berber tribe, the Almoravids, who came from the Western Sahara (modern Mauritania), and used the city and its wealth as a springboard to control much of North Africa and southern Spain. It was precisely at this time that the Arab author al-Bakri wrote his Masalik wa-l-Mamalik in which he outlines Sijilmasa's political history through the conquest by the Almoravids. He provides the most complete medieval description of the city: a circuit wall with twelve gates. Within are beautiful houses, many having gardens, magnificent public buildings, a mosque that is "solidly built," and baths that are "poorly built." He describes abundant agriculture irrigated with water that is collected in cisterns.

What al-Bakri describes is a wealthy Islamic city. He was in no position to foresee what Sijilmasa would become. The next two centuries saw Sijilmasa flourish under two successive Berber dynasties, first the Almoravids and then the Almohads. Beginning with the Almoravids, Sijilmasa served as a provincial capital within a much larger empire. Its location on the edge of the Sahara Desert made it an important garrison town. It also became part of a much broader economic network. The Almoravids directly controlled the desert to the south as far as Awdaghust and Timbuctu. Their empire included all of what today is Morocco, part of what is Algeria, and all of Islamic Spain. Their commercial ties extended much further in every direction. Arab writers of the first half of the fourteenth century still describe a city at its height. Under the control of the Merinid dynasty, al- Umari says that it is one of the mightiest cities of Morocco, one of the biggest cities of the West and most celebrated in the world...possessed of imposing palaces, high buildings and tall gates. Ibn Battuta, who visited the city toward the middle of the fourteenth century, confirms al- Umari's description. In the late fourteenth century, the political situation deteriorated into squabbling between regional governors and Merinid sultans and among the Merinid hierarchy itself. In a civil war in 1393, the inhabitants killed the governor, destroyed the walls of the city, and moved to the ksour (fortified villages) in the surrounding area.

The period following the civil war at the end of the fourteenth century is the least known in Sijilmasa's history. Although the term Sijilmasa still appears in the literature, Sijilmasa ceased to function as a united city. The sixteenth century Arab writer, best known to us by his baptized named Leo Africanus, spent several months in the region of Sijilmasa. He describes the past glory of Sijilmasa and recalls the name of the Almoravid Amir Yusuf Ibn Tashfin. He says that the city at one time had stately and high walls, now visible only in a few places. People now lived in some three hundred and fifty separate ksour and hamlets. It was an area that enjoyed salutary neglect on the part of the Moroccan Saadian dynasty ruling from Marrakesh. Later, the Alaouite dynasty emerged from the Tafilelt in the 1630's to rule with a strong hand over Morocco. They fortified the garrison of Sijilmasa in the late seventeenth century and built an impressive system of irrigation that generally improved the quality of life in the Saharan frontiers of their kingdom.

The region, now known as the Tafilelt, retains its importance. The city of Sijilmasa is now replaced by the city of Rissani, which today serves as the principal market for some 25-30 villages in the oasis. Monuments and shrines on the outskirts of Rissani identify the place still as the spiritual hearth of the Alaouites, the current ruling dynasty. But the physical remains of Sijilmasa itself lie buried just to the west of the modern town.