North African Conquest

From the Islāmic conquest to 1830
After completing the conquest of Egypt in 642 the Arabs started to raid the territory to its west inhabited by the Berbers, which they called Bilad al-Maghrib (“Lands of Sunset”), or simply the Maghrib. In 705 this region became a province of the Muslim empire then ruled from Damascus by the Umayyad caliphs (661–750). The Arab Muslim conquerors left a much more durable impact on the culture of the Maghrib than did the region's conquerors before and after them. By the 11th century the Berbers had become Islāmized and in part also Arabized. Indigenous Christian communities ceased to exist in the region, whichbefore the Arab conquest had constituted an important part of the Christian world. The Islāmization of theBerbers was a consequence of the Arab conquest, although they were neither forcibly converted to Islām nor systematically missionized by their conquerors. Largely because its teachings became an ideology through which the Berbers justified both their rebellion against the caliphs and their support of rulers whorejected caliphal authority, Islām gained wide appeal and spread rapidly among these fiercely independent peoples.
Arab raids to the west of Egypt concentrated at first on the area of Cyrenaica in present-day Libya. Tunisiawas raided several times after 647, but no attempt was made to establish Arab rule there before 670. Conflicts among the Muslim leaders, especially after the assassination of the third caliph ʿUthmān in 656, hindered Muslim territorial expansion. Only after the Umayyads had consolidated their authority as a caliphal dynasty in the 660s and had come to view the conquest of the Maghrib in the context of their confrontation with the Byzantine Empire was the systematic conquest of the Maghrib undertaken. ʿUqbah ibn Nāfiʿ (Sidi Okba) commanded the Arab army that occupied Tunisia in 670. Before his recall in 674 ʿUqbah founded the town of Al-Qayrawān (Kairouan), which became the first centre of Arab administration in the Maghrib.
When the conquest of the Maghrib west of Tunisia was initiated by ʿUqbah's successor, Abū al-Muhājir Dīnār al-Anṣārī, the Arabs had to fight semisettled Berber communities that had developed some tradition of centralized political authority. In the course of his campaign, Abū al-Muhājir Dīnār prevailed upon the Berber “king” Kusaylah to become Muslim. From his base in Tlemcen, Kusaylah dominated a confederation of the Awrāba tribes living between the western Aurès Mountains and the area of present-day Fès. Since Kusaylah's profession of Islām implied his recognition of caliphal authority, it served as a basis for coexistence between him and the Arabs. However, when ʿUqbah was reinstated as commander of the Arab army in the Maghrib in 681, he insisted on imposing direct Arab rule over the whole region. In 682 he led his troops across Algeria and northern Morocco, reaching the Atlantic Ocean and penetrating south to the areas of Sūs (Sous) and Drâa in southern Morocco. On his way back to Al-Qayrawān, ʿUqbah was attacked near Biskra in present-day Algeria on orders from Kusaylah by Berbers supported by Byzantine contingents. Through his death in this battle and his extended campaign, ʿUqbah became the legendary hero of the Muslim conquest of the Maghrib.
By the 680s the Arabs had gone too far in the conquest of the Maghrib to be willing to accept defeat at the hands of a Berber leader, albeit one professing Islām. Two large armies had to be sent from Egypt, however, before organized Berber resistance could be suppressed. The first, commanded by Zuhayr ibn Qays al-Balawī, reoccupied Al-Qayrawān, then pursued Kusaylah westward to Mams, where he was defeated and killed. The dates of these operations are uncertain, but they must have occurred before 688 when Zuhayr ibn Qays himself was killed in an attack on Byzantine positions in Cyrenaica. The second Arab army, commanded by Ḥassān ibn an-Nuʿmān, was dispatched from Egypt in 693. It faced stiff resistance in the eastern Aurès Mountains from the Jawāra Berbers, who were commanded by a woman whom the Arabs referred to as Kāhinah (al-Kāhina; “the Priestess”). After Kāhinah was defeated in 698, Ibn an-Nuʿmān occupied Carthage, the centre of Byzantine administration in Tunisia, and began the construction of the town of Tunis nearby. These successes and Arab naval supremacy in the Mediterranean forced the Byzantines to evacuate their remaining positions on the Maghribi coast. Consequently, under Ibn an-Nuʿmān's successor, Mūsā ibn Nuṣayr, the Maghrib was made into a province of the Umayyad Caliphate in 705 known as the wilāyah of Ifrīqīyah, thus separating it from the wilāyah of Egypt, to which it had been administratively attached until that time.
Khārijī Berber resistance to Arab rule
Political life of the Maghrib in the 8th century was dominated by the contradiction in the position of the Arab rulers who, while posing asthe champions of a religion recognizing the equality of all believers, emphasized their ethnic distinctiveness and exercised authority without much regard for Islāmic religious norms. This contradiction surfaced in their relations with the Berbers after the latter became Muslim in large numbers, especially through serving in the Arab army, which is known to have included Berber contingents when it was commanded by Ḥassān ibn an-Nuʿmān and his successor Mūsā ibn Nuṣayr. Many Berber warriors participated in the conquest of Spain in 711. Though professing Islām, they were treated as mawālī (clients) of the Arab tribes and consequently had a status inferior to, and received less pay than, the Arab warriors. Furthermore, the Arab ruling class alone reaped the fruits of conquest, as was clearly the case in Spain. The grievances of the warriors highlighted the resentment of Berbers in general, caused by such practices as the levying of human tribute on the Berber tribes, through which the Arab ruling class was provided with slaves, especially female slaves. ʿUmar II (717–720) was the only Umayyad caliph who is known to have condemned the levying of human tribute and ordered its discontinuation. He also sent 10 tābiʿūn (disciples of the Prophet Muḥammad's companions) to teach Islām to the Berbers. The enlightened policy of this pious caliph did not survive his short reign, however. Rather it contributed toward confirming the conviction of Muslims in the Maghrib that Islām could not be equated with Umayyad caliphal rule.
The Muslim Khārijī sect exploited this revolutionary potential in their struggle against Umayyad rule. Khārijī doctrine apparently appealed to the Berbers because it rejected the Arab monopoly on political leadership of the Muslim community, stressed piety and learning as the main qualifications of the head of the community, and sanctioned rebellion against the head when he acted unjustly. In 740 a major Berber rebellion broke out against Arab rule in the region of Tangier. Its first leader was a Berber called Maysara who had come to Al-Qayrawān under the influence of the Ṣufrites (Ṣufriyah), the extremist branch of the Khārijī sect. The Berber rebels achievedan astounding military success against the Arab army. By 742 they had taken control of the whole of Algeria and were threatening Al-Qayrawān. In the meantime, the Ibāḍites (Ibāḍīyah), who constituted the moderate branch of the Khārijī sect, had taken control of Tripolitania by converting the Berber tribes living there, especially the Hawwāra and Nafusa, to their doctrine. Ibāḍite domination in Tripolitania resulted from the activities of dāʿis sent there from the main centre of the group in Iraq after the Khārijī rebellion there had been suppressed by the Umayyad army in 697.
Umayyad caliphal rule in the Maghrib came to an end in 747 when the Fihrids, the descendants of ʿUqbah ibn Nāfiʿ, taking advantage of the preoccupation of the Umayyads with the ʿAbbāsid rebellion that led to their downfall, seized power in Ifrīqīyah. The Fihrid dynastycontrolled all Tunisia except for the south, which was dominated at the time by the Warfajūma Berber tribe associated with the Ṣufrite Khārijī. Fihrid rule came to an end in 756 when the Warfajūma conquered the north and captured Al-Qayrawān. Immediately thereafter,however, the Ibāḍites in Tripolitania proclaimed one of their religious leaders as imam (the Khārijī equivalent to the Sunnite caliph) and in 758 conquered Tunisia from the Ṣufrites. An Ibāḍite state comprising Tunisia and Tripolitania thus came into being, which lasted until the ʿAbbāsids, having consolidated their authority as caliphs in the Middle East, sent an army to the region in 761 to restore caliphal rule in the Maghrib.
The ʿAbbāsids could impose their authority only on Tunisia, eastern Algeria, and Tripolitania. Their governors of the reconstituted wilāyah of Ifrīqīyah were hampered in the exercise of their authority by their dependence on an army that was recruited predominantlyfrom among the unruly Arabs of the province. A mutiny of the Arab troops against the ʿAbbāsid governor in 800 led to the transformation of Ifrīqīyah into an Arab kingdom ruled by the Aghlabid dynasty in the name of the ʿAbbāsid caliphs. The founder of the dynasty, Ibrāhīm I ibn al-Aghlab, commanded until then the Arab army in eastern Algeria. After using his troops to restore order in Tunisia, he established himself as ruler of the province. The acquiescence of the caliph, Hārūn ar-Rashīd, to Ibn al-Aghlab's usurpation of authority was linked to the latter's continued recognition of ʿAbbāsid suzerainty and payment of tributes to Baghdad.
Previous Next