Muslim conquest of the Maghreb

Between 647 and 709 the armies of the early caliphs brought North Africa west of Egypt under Muslim rule, taking it from the Byzantine Empire and from a patchwork of Berber kingdoms. It was one of the slowest of the early Muslim conquests, advancing and retreating over some sixty years. Its outcome reshaped the western Mediterranean: Berber recruits carried the conquest into Spain within two years of its completion, and North Africa became lastingly Muslim and largely Arabic-speaking.

Soon after taking Alexandria in 642, the general Amr ibn al-As pushed west with perhaps 4,000 men, taking Barqa in Cyrenaica and, around 643, Tripoli. In 647 the governor of Egypt, Abd Allah ibn Sa'd, led about 20,000 troops of the Rashidun Caliphate into the Byzantine province of Africa. Near Sufetula in southern Tunisia they drew the rebel exarch Gregory into open battle and killed him. The local population then paid a very large tribute, and the army went home in 648. Muslim attention turned to the sea, and the civil war of 656–661 halted further campaigns.

Under the Umayyad Caliphate the campaigns resumed. Mu'awiya ibn Hudayj raided deep into Ifriqiya in 665 or 667 but did not stay. In 670 Uqba ibn Nafi founded Qayrawan as a permanent base. His successor, Abu al-Muhajir Dinar, sought alliances with Berber tribes and won over Kusaila, the most powerful Berber leader. When Uqba was reinstated in 682 he reversed this policy, arrested Kusaila and marched west, by later accounts as far as the Atlantic, though some modern scholars doubt he went so far. On his return Kusaila, now free and allied with the Byzantines, ambushed and destroyed his army near Vescera, and the Muslims abandoned Qayrawan.

Around 688–689 Zuhayr ibn Qays defeated and killed Kusaila at Mamma, but he was himself killed when a Byzantine fleet landed in Cyrenaica. In 694 Caliph Abd al-Malik sent Hassan ibn al-Nu'man with a reported 40,000 men. Hassan entered Carthage in 695 or 696, lost it to a Byzantine fleet, then retook it and had the city razed; Tunis grew up nearby. A Berber leader known as al-Kahina defeated Hassan at Meskiana and drove him back east, but around 701 he returned, defeated her and enrolled thousands of her followers.

From about 704/5 Musa ibn Nusayr governed the region. He campaigned in the Aures and then westward into what is now Morocco, taking Tangier and reaching the edge of the Sahara, while Count Julian held out at Ceuta under a treaty. Byzantine resistance had effectively ended. Musa recruited Berbers on a large scale, and in 708 he left his Berber freedman Tariq ibn Ziyad in charge at Tangier. In 711 Tariq led an army of mostly Berber soldiers across the strait into Iberia.

Discriminatory taxes and the enslavement of Berbers bred resentment, and in 740 the Great Berber Revolt broke out. Within a few years Morocco and most of Algeria were lost to the caliphate for good; the later Abbasid Caliphate held only the eastern Maghreb. For the Byzantine Empire the loss of Africa removed a major source of grain and taxes. Islam and the Arabic language spread gradually; Latin and Christianity lingered for centuries, with small Christian communities surviving in Tunisia into the fifteenth century.

Our 600 map shows Byzantine Africa before the invasions, our 700 map shows the Umayyad advance across Ifriqiya, and our 800 map shows North Africa after the Berber revolt had split the west away from the caliphate.