Mauritania (ancient)
Mauritania ( Latin Mauritania, Mauretania ) was the name of a very extensive region in north-west Africa in ancient times. It comprised the north of what is now Morocco and a northern part of the modern state of Algeria , i.e. the rainy regions of the north-western Maghreb that are suitable for arable farming . The country, divided into two provinces, had been part of the Roman Empire since the 1st century .
Mauritania extended from the Atlantic coast in the west to the Amsaga River (today: Rhumel ), where Numidia joined to the east . In the north the country bordered the Mediterranean Sea , in the south the Tell Atlas and the Rif Mountains roughly marked the border. The west-east extension was about 1200 kilometers. From the Mediterranean coast, during Roman rule, the area barely extended more than 50 kilometers to the south in some places, but also more than 150 kilometers in other places.
The country name Mauretania was derived from the native inhabitants of the region, the Moors . Moors were called the Berbers in ancient times . The ancient landscape of the same name has nothing in common with today's state of Mauritania in the western Sahel.
history
kingdom
The first detailed written reports about Mauritania date from the time of the Yugurthin War . In the 2nd century BC There was a Berber kingdom there, whose ruler Bocchus was first allied with the Numidians against the Romans. Bocchus later handed over the Numid king Jugurtha, who had fled to him, to the Romans, thus establishing a friendly relationship with the Roman Republic.
The coastal cities in the area of the Mauritanian Empire (e.g. Tingis , Igilgili and Saldae ) were Phoenician or Punic foundations. Until the end of the Second Punic War (201 BC) they had belonged to the Empire of Carthage . Then they came under the rule of the Mauritanians.
During the Roman civil war between the followers of Caesar and those of Pompey (49-45 BC) Mauritania was divided into two kingdoms. Bocchus II ruled in the east and Bogud in the west . As allies of Caesar, they benefited from his victory. Bocchus received the Numidian areas up to the Amsaga. From then on, this river formed the border between the two countries. An uprising by the Tingitans led to the overthrow of Bogud, whose territory was now also taken over by Bocchus II. This ruled until his death in 33 BC. Over the united kingdom. Thereafter, Octavian administered Mauritania directly, before he was 25 BC. Chr. Juba II. , The son of the last Numiderkönigs Juba I., began to rule in Mauritania.
During the years of his direct administration, Octavianus Augustus had established 13 veteran colonies in Mauritania. Most of them were on what is now the Algerian coast, three inland and three more in what is now Morocco. The colonies in this, from a Roman point of view, very remote area were established to accommodate the numerous veterans who had been discharged from the civil war. After the restoration of the Mauritanian vassal state, the colonies formed enclaves, which may have been co-administered by the southern Spanish province of Baetica .
Juba II, who ruled Mauritania for nearly 50 years until his death in AD 24, proved to be a loyal ally of Rome. He renamed his capital Iol Caesarea in honor of his patron and made it an important urban center in the Hellenistic-Roman style. In 6 AD there was a revolt of the Moorish tribes against the king. This could only be put down with the help of Roman troops under the command of the proconsul Cossus Cornelius Lentulus . From 17 AD, Mauritanian troops took part in the fight against insurgents in neighboring Numidia for several years.
Juba II was followed by his son Ptolemy as King of Mauritania in 24 AD . Like his father, he was a loyal vassal of the Romans. Nevertheless, Emperor Caligula had him assassinated during a visit to Rome in 40 and gave the order to annex Mauritania. This sparked a Mauritanian uprising led by Aidemon, a freedman of the last king. The war lasted for several years under Claudius (emperor since 41) before Mauritania could finally be conquered. The Roman troops penetrated under the command of the Senators C. Suetonius Paulinus and Gn. Hosidius Geta far into the Mauritanian hinterland south of the Atlas Mountains.
Roman provinces
After the end of the war, Claudius organized the country in early 43 in two provinces named after their capitals, Mauretania Caesariensis in the east and Mauretania Tingitana in the west. The line between the two was drawn on the Molochat River . Administrators were chivalrous procurators who received all military, judicial and administrative powers of an imperial governor. In important provinces, these powers were only available to governors from among the senators. Knightly procurators were only used in insignificant areas. The troops protecting the Mauritanian provinces consisted entirely of auxiliary units . There was a significant difference in rank between the two Mauritanian governorships. While the procurature of the Tingitana was usually bestowed on a knight who was at the beginning of his career in the provinces, the governorship in the economically more important Caesariensis was often the climax and conclusion of a knightly career.
Moorish tribes lived both on this side and on the other side of the southern borders of both provinces. The Romans appointed their tribal leaders (lat. Principes ) to the groups that settled on Roman territory . Some tribes also had to submit to the direction of a Roman prefect. There were changeful relationships with the Moors living outside the borders. Peaceful times in which there were good diplomatic relations alternated with phases in which there was open war.
In 118 and 122, Emperor Hadrian had to put down rebellions by the Moors. And even under the rule of this emperor, the free baquats invaded the coastal town of Cartennae ( Ténès ) in the Caesariensis. Under Antoninus Pius there was another great Moorish uprising, during which the cities of Sala on the Atlantic and Tipasa on the Mediterranean were re-fortified. Units from European legions even had to be called in for reinforcement before calm returned at 150. In 171, the Moors even crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and plundered southern Spain. Nevertheless, Marcus Aurelius managed to conclude peace agreements with some of the free tribes and the incursions subsided in the following decades. A real war only broke out again under Emperor Valerian (253–260), when a coalition of Moorish tribes invaded the provinces for several years in a row and even advanced into Numidia. 255-258 there was therefore a common military high command for all African provinces east of Cyrene, which was led by the governor of the Caesariensis. In 277 the governor of the Tingitana, Clementius Valerius Marcellinus, made a peace with the baquats, which was renewed again in 280. At the end of the reign of Emperor Probus , the war flared up again and ended unhappily for the Romans with the loss of the important city of Volubilis .
As for the founding of cities and the associated Romanization, their intensity was low. Scarcely three dozen colonies and municipalities were established in the two extensive Mauritanian provinces. The urban, typically Roman settlements remained islands in a region otherwise characterized by tribal structures and villages of the Moors. In this respect, Mauritania differed greatly from the neighboring urban provinces of Numidia and Africa.
Christianity gained a foothold in Mauritania from Africa and Numidia in the 3rd century. In terms of church, the Mauritanian Christians were always dependent on the great metropolitan city of Carthage , although the Tingitana was connected to Spain in terms of state administration until the end of Roman rule in the 5th century. The Mauritanian bishops are recorded several times in the 4th and 5th centuries as participants in African regional councils.
- Mauretania Caesariensis
The province of Mauretania Caesariensis was located mainly in the area of today's Algeria and had its capital in Caesarea, which Claudius raised to a titular colony. The city was also a center of Judaism and the Mithraic cult in Africa. Also shortly after the conquest, the cities of Rusuccuru and Tipasa were given the status of a municipality. Under the Flavians, Icosium became a colony under Latin law and Nerva founded Sitifis on the Numidian border as a veterans' colony .
The province exported grain, purple, and valuable woods.
The Libyan emperor Septimius Severus (193–211) paid great attention to the African borders. Among other things, he moved the border in the eastern Caesariensis far south and thus doubled the area of the province. He had a border road built that connected the numerous newly built forts and made the connection to the Limes in the province of Africa.
Under Emperor Diocletian, the province of Sitifensis split off , which was named after its capital Sitifis and occupied the east of the former Caesariensis.
In the 4th and 5th centuries, the population adopted the Christian faith, with the Arians later becoming the majority. The province was ruled by the Vandals from 430 onwards, but was recaptured by the Eastern Roman army around 533.
- Mauretania Tingitana
The Tingitana comprised the western part of Mauritania, especially the area of what is now northern Morocco. The administrative seat was initially in the inland Volubilis and later then Tingis. New Roman settlers were sent to both cities and Volubilis was made a municipality. The Lixus colony was also a Claudian re-establishment instead of an older Punic settlement.
In contrast to neighboring Caesariensis, the province did not have a continuously fortified southern border. Only near the colony of Sala on the Atlantic was a rampart over twelve kilometers long that was supposed to protect the city from incursions by the nomads. Further to the east, the border marker consisted only of individual watchtowers, while the auxiliary cohorts stationed in the country were stationed throughout the province. In the 280s, the Romans had to cede the city of Volubilis and its territory to the Moors. The land connection to the Caesariensis was also lost. The Romanized population, however, stayed in the city. During the administrative reform under Emperor Diocletian, the Tingitana was one of the few provinces of the empire that was not divided into smaller units. They were proposed to the diocese of Hispania, which in turn was subordinate to the Gallic prefecture. In the first half of the 5th century the province was overrun by the Vandals , but the Roman settlement persisted until the Arab conquest in the 7th century.
literature
- Andreas Gutsfeld : Roman rule and local resistance in North Africa. Military clashes between Rome and the nomads. Stuttgart 1989. ISBN 3-515-05549-5 .
- Claude Lepelley : Africa. In the S. (Ed.): Rome and the Empire 44 BC BC - 260 AD. Vol. 2: The regions of the empire. Munich & Leipzig 2001. ISBN 3-937872-28-0 , pp. 107-120.
- Christian Witschel : On the situation of Roman Africa during the 3rd century. In: Klaus-Peter Johne, Thomas Gerhardt, Udo Hartmann (eds.): Deleto paene imperio Romano. Transformation processes of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century and their reception in modern times. Stuttgart 2006. ISBN 3-515-08941-1 , pp. 145-222.
- Maria Radnoti-Alföldi: The history of the Numidian kingdom and its successors . In: Heinz Günter Horn and Christoph Bernhard Rüger (eds.): Die Numider. Horsemen and kings north of the Sahara . Bonn 1979, pp. 43-74.
- István Hahn: The Politics of the African Client States in the Period of Civil War. In: Hans-Joachim Diesner; Hannelore Barth; Hans-Dieter Zimmermann (Ed.): Africa and Rome in antiquity. Halle 1968, pp. 207–228.
- Duane W. Roller: The World of Juba II and Cleopatra Selene. London, New York 2003.
Individual evidence
- ^ Sallust: Bellum Iugurthinum
- ^ Cassius Dio 40, 28.
- ^ Cassius Dio 59, 25.
- ↑ Cassius Dio 60, 9; Pliny, Naturalis Historia nat. 5, 11.
- ^ Gabriele Wesch-Klein : Provincia. Occupation and administration of the provinces of the Imperium Romanum from the occupation of Sicily to Diocletian. Münster 2008. ISBN 978-3-8258-0866-2 , pp. 308-309.
- ↑ Gerald Kreucher: The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Probus and his time. Stuttgart 2003. ISBN 3-515-08382-0 , pp. 144-145.
- ↑ TRE , articles Africa I . Vol. 1, pp. 642-643.
- ^ Egon Schallmayer : The Limes. Story of a border. Munich 2006. ISBN 978-3-406-48018-8 , pp. 29-30.
Coordinates: 32 ° 4 ′ N , 6 ° 36 ′ W