Arab conquest of the Maghreb

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Muslim conquest of the Maghreb

Part of: Islamic Expansion and Arab-Byzantine Wars

date	647-709
place	North africa
output	Victory of the Muslims
Territorial changes	Muslims conquer all of North Africa

Parties to the conflict
Byzantine Berber Empire	Caliphate of the four rightly guided caliphs Umayyad Caliphate
Commander
Gregory of Carthage Al-Kahina Kusaila John the Patrician	Abdallah ibn Sa'ad Musa ibn Nusair Hasan ibn al-Nu'man

The Islamic conquest of the Maghreb continued the rapid Arab-Muslim military expansion that followed the death of Muhammad in AD 632 by extending it to further areas of North Africa ( Maghreb ).

Arab military expeditions first started with local rulers from Egypt, which continued (unorganized) for years. During the reign of Caliph Uthman , North Africa found itself at the mercy of major Arab invasions from AD 647, and raids by Arab pirates stretched from Rhodes to the south coast of the Iberian Peninsula . The Byzantine fleet in the eastern Mediterranean was defeated. By 709 AD, the conquest of North Africa and particularly the Maghreb was completely complete.

Sources

There are virtually no contemporary records of this phase of the conquest surviving, especially those outside of Egypt. The reports of the victorious Arab forces are naturally more numerous than those of the opposing side and also present the conquest itself more favorably.

The earliest Arabic accounts that have come upon us are those of Ibn Abd-al-Hakem , Ahmed ibn Yahya al-Baladhuri, and Caliph ibn Khayyat, all of which were written 200 years after the 9th century conquests. These reports are not very detailed. The most detailed account is the story of the conquest of Egypt, North Africa and Spain by Ibn Abd-el-Hakem. Brunschvig has demonstrated that this story was written with a view to explaining the law of maliki rather than documenting history as such. Nevertheless, some of the events described have a historical core.

At the beginning of the 12th century, scholars in Cairo began to draft a new concept of the history of the conquest, which was given its final form by ar-Raqiq . This manuscript by ar-Raqiq was copied in its entirety (over many years) and occasionally interpolated by later authors; it peaked in the 14th century (with expanded versions by) scholars such as Ibn Idhari , Ibn Khaldun and Al-Nuwarayri. These later editions differ from the earlier ones not only in the amount of detail, but also in the contradicting representations of the events.

This edited version of ar-Raqiq is the best known and will also be quoted below. There is ongoing controversy over which edition to choose. For more information, see the works of Brunschivg, Modéran and Benabbès (all advocates of the earlier edition) and Siraj (proponents of the later edition) cited below.

The conquest

prehistory

640 n. Chr., The Arabs had the Mesopotamia occupied forays had in Armenia carried out and were about the conquest of the Byzantine provinces conclude in Syria and Egypt. Damascus was the residence of the Umayyad Caliphate . By the end of AD 641, all of Egypt was under their control. With the annihilation of the Persian army in the Battle of Nehawend in 642, the resistance of the New Persian Empire was finally broken, and its territories were completely occupied by the Arabs in the period that followed.

In 644 AD the Caliph Omar Uthman succeeded in Medina , during whose reign Armenia, Cyprus and the whole of Iran were added to the growing Islamic Empire; Afghanistan and North Africa now faced major Arab invasions.

The first incursion into North Africa

The first attack on North Africa ordered by the Caliph was made in 647 . 20,000 Arab soldiers who marched into Egypt from Medina in Arabia joined another 20,000 in Fustāt . These were then led by Abdallah ibn al Sa'ad against the Byzantine exarchate of Africa and were able to take Tripolitania in what is now Libya. The exarch Gregory, who had renounced the Byzantine Empire as local governor, gathered his allies and opposed the Islamic army. His army, however, was defeated in the battle of Sy Hebela, a city about 240 km south of Carthage. After Gregory's death, his successor, presumably Gennadius, achieved the withdrawal of the Arabs by paying tribute to them. This Arab campaign lasted 15 months and the army of Abdallah returned to Egypt in 648.

All further Muslim conquests were soon prevented by a civil war between rival Arab parties, at the end of which the Caliph Uthman was assassinated in 656. He was replaced by Ali ibn Ali Talib, who in turn was murdered in 661. The Omayyad dynasty as a largely secular and Arab hereditary caliphate then established itself in Damascus and Caliph Muʿāwiya I began to consolidate the empire , which stretched from the Aral Sea to the western border in Egypt. He installed a governor in Cairo by creating a subordinate residence that would last for the next 200 years. He then continued to conquer neighboring non-Muslim states by attacking Sicily and Anatolia in 663 . In 664, Kabul , today's capital of Afghanistan, fell into Muslim hands.

The second incursion into North Africa

The main mosque of Kairouan also known as Uqbas Mosque. It was founded by the Arab conqueror and general Uqba Ibn Nafi in 670 AD. It is the oldest and most important mosque in North Africa in the city of Kairouan in Tunisia .

A new conquest of North Africa was undertaken in the years 665 to 689 AD.

According to Will Durant, this began to protect Egypt “from a flank attack by the Byzantine Kyrenaica”. So "an army of around 40,000 Muslims advanced through the desert on Barca, captured it and marched into the area of ​​Carthage." During the advance, a Byzantine army defending the city was defeated.

This was followed by an army of 10,000 Arabs led by General Uqba ibn Nahi and joined by thousands of other soldiers. After leaving Damascus, the army marched into North Africa and took the vanguard. In 670 AD, the city of Kairowan was founded approximately 160 km south of modern Tunis as a retreat and base for further military operations. It later became the capital of the Islamic province of Ifrīqiya , which stretched over the coastal areas of what is now western Syria, Tunisia and eastern Algeria. Then the Arabs advanced inland. During the conquest of the Maghreb (western North Africa), Uqba besieged the coastal city of Bejaia and Tingi, today's Tangier, and thus conquered the land that had once formed the ancient Roman province of Mauretania Tingitana .

But the Arabs met with increasing resistance. Uqba was eventually recalled from the Atlantic coast. Upon his return, his troops were ambushed by units of a Byzantine-Berber coalition at the Battle of Biskra . Uqba was defeated and fell in that battle.

Meanwhile, a new power struggle raged in the caliphate. This was the reason for the rapid succession of four caliphs between the death of Muawiyas in 680 and the accession to the throne of Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan in 685. However, the civil war did not end until 692 AD with the death of the rebel leader.

The third incursion into North Africa

This development brought with it a return to orderly internal conditions, which allowed the caliph to resume the Islamic conquest of North Africa. This began with the reconquest of the former Islamic province of Ifriqiya. The coast remained in Byzantine hands, and Byzantium responded by sending troops from Constantinople, reinforced by soldiers and ships from Sicily and a powerful contingent of Visigoths from Spain. This forced the attacking Arab army to withdraw to Kairouan.

The following spring the Arabs launched a new attack on land and sea, forcing the Byzantines and their allies to evacuate Carthage. The Arabs completely destroyed the city and burned it down, as a result of which it fell desolate for the next two centuries. Another battle was fought near Utica , in which the Arabs were victorious again, forcing the Byzantines to leave this part of Africa forever.

This was followed by a Berber revolt against the new Arab rulers. Five years passed before Hassan received new troops from the caliph. By 698 AD, the Arabs had conquered most of North Africa from the Byzantines. The area was divided into three provinces: Egypt with its governor in al-Fustat, Ifriqiya with its governor in Kairouan and the Maghreb , which includes the present-day states of Tunisia , Algeria and Morocco as well as Libya and Mauritania, with its governor in Tangier .

Musa ibn Nusair , a successful Yemeni general of the campaign, was appointed governor of Ifriqiyas and was given responsibility for suppressing another Berber uprising and converting the population to Islam. Musa and his two sons triumphed over the rebels and enslaved 300,000 prisoners of war. The caliph's share was 60,000 of the prisoners. The caliph sold these into slavery, with the proceeds going to the public treasury. Another 30,000 prisoners were forced into military service.

Musa also had to deal with the constant threat posed by the Byzantine fleet. So he built his own fleet that was about to threaten the Christian islands of Ibiza , Mallorca and Menorca . On his advance in the Maghreb, he took Algiers in 700 AD .

The conclusion of the conquest

In 709 AD, all of North Africa was under the control of the Arab caliphate. The only exceptions were Ceuta on the African side of the Pillars of Hercules. Some sources claim that Ceuta was the last Byzantine outpost in Africa and that Julian, whom the Arabs called Ilyan, was an exarch or a Byzantine governor. Valdeavellano offers another possibility: “It seems more likely that he could be a Berber who is the lord and ruler of the Catholic tribe of Gomera. In any case, because he was a capable diplomat who was familiar with Visigoth, Berber and Arab politics, he may have surrendered on terms that enabled him to retain his title and authority. "

Further development

After the conquest of the Maghreb, Islamic expansion spread to the Iberian Peninsula. As a result, the Visigoth Empire was conquered by the Arabs and fell under Umayyad rule.

The population of Ceuta in AD 709 consisted of many refugees who had fled a civil war that had broken out in Spain. This included families and allies of the late King Witiza , Arian Christians who feared forced conversions at the hands of the Visigothic church, and persecuted Jews. Perhaps it was they who, through the intermediary of comes Julian, turned to the North African Muslims in order to overthrow the new Visigoth king Roderich .

Allegedly, Julian should have asked Musa's support. Although Julian's holdings were extensive and his followers bold and numerous, he had little to expect and much to fear from the new rule. Besides, he was too weak to challenge Roderich immediately.

Musa, on the other hand, will have seen the opportunity to benefit from the power struggles in the Visigoth Empire. Musa made a couple of first raids on the south coast of the Iberian Peninsula in 710 . In the spring of that year, Tariq ibn Ziyad , a freed Berber slave and Muslim general, took Tangier. Musa then appointed him governor there, supported by an army of 1,700 men.

The next year, 711 AD, Musa Tariq ordered Spain to be conquered for Islam. Tariq crossed from Ceuta on ships provided by Julian and advanced into the Iberian Peninsula, defeated Roderich and set about besieging the Visigoth capital Toledo . He and his allies also took Cordoba , Écija , Granada , Málaga , Seville and other cities. During this advance, Tariq conquered Spain for Islam rather than taking sides in the Visigoth civil war. His approach showed beyond doubt that Ceuta, the last Christian base in North Africa, now belonged to the Arab Empire. With this step, the Umayyad conquest of Spain brought the Islamic conquest of North Africa to a close.

The Fate of Native Christians in North West Africa after the Arab Conquests

The current historical opinion is that the conquest of North Africa by the Islamic Umayyad caliphate between 647 and 709 AD effectively ended Catholicism there for several centuries. The prevailing opinion is that the Church lacked the backbone of the monastic tradition and also suffered the aftermath of various heresies, one of which was the Donatist heresy, leading to the premature extinction of the Roman Catholic Church to this day in the Maghreb. Some historians compare this to the strong monastic tradition in Coptic Egypt, which is counted as a factor that allowed the Coptic Church to maintain majority belief in that country until the 14th century.

Modern historical research, however, seemed to deny this. There are reports that the Roman Catholic Church in the area of ​​Tripolitania, today's western Libya, continued to present Morocco for several centuries after the completion of the Arab conquest around 700 AD. A Christian community is recorded for 1114 AD in Qal'a in central Algeria. There is also evidence of religious pilgrimages to the graves of Catholic saints outside the city of Carthage after the year 850 AD, as well as evidence of religious contacts with Christians in Arab Spain. Furthermore, the calendar reforms adopted in Europe at that time were also disseminated among the local Christians in Tunis, which would not have been possible if there had been no contact with Rome.

Native Catholicism came under pressure as the fundamentalist rulers of the Almohad and Almoravid dynasties came to power, and records show that demands were made on Christians in Tunis to convert to Islam. From the time around 1150 AD there are still reports of Christian residents and also a bishop in the city of Kairouan - this is all the more astonishing since this city was founded by Arab Muslims around 680 AD as an administrative center after the conquest. A letter in Catholic church archives from the 14th century shows that there were still four dioceses in North Africa, which, however, shows a considerable decline compared to the more than 400 dioceses at the time of the Islamic conquest. Berber Christians continued to live in Tunis and Nefzaoua in southern Tunisia until the early 15th century. In the first quarter of the 15th century, the native Christians of Tunis, although largely assimilated, expanded their church because perhaps the last Christians from all over the Maghreb had gathered there.

When the French came to Algeria and Tunisia as colonial conquerors in 1830 , there were no more indigenous Catholic Christians there. The growth of Catholicism in the region after the French conquest was based on European colonists and settlers, who mostly left the country when the countries there became independent.

See also

• Islamic conquest of Egypt
• History of Algeria
• History of Tunisia

Remarks

1. ↑ See Brunschvig, Ibn Abd al-Hakam.
2. ↑ Rodd, Francis. "Kahena, Queen of the Berbers:" A Sketch of the Arab Invasion of Ifriqiya in the First Century of the Hijra ", Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London, Vol. 3, No. 4, (1925), 731-2
3. ^ Hans Kung, Tracing the Way: Spiritual Dimensions of the World Religions , Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006, page 248
4. ^ Western North African Christianity: A History of the Christian Church in Western North Africa . bethel.edu. Archived from the original on February 2, 2007. Retrieved May 15, 2014.
5. ↑ The Disappearance of Christianity from North Africa in the Wake of the Rise of Islam CJ Speel, II Church History, Vol. 29, no. 4 (December, 1960), pp. 379-397.
6. ^ The Last Christians Of North-West Africa: Some Lessons For Orthodox Today . orthodoxengland.org.uk. Retrieved May 15, 2014.
7. ↑ Mohamed Talbi , Le Christianisme maghrébin , in M. Gervers & R. Bikhazi, Indigenous Christian Communities in Islamic Lands ; Toronto, 1990; Pp. 344-345.

literature

• Robert Brunschvig: Ibn Abd al-Hakam et la conquète de l'Afrique du Nord par les arabes. In: Al-Andalus. 40 (1975), pp. 129-179 [cited: Ibn Abd al-Hakam].
• A. Benabbès: Les premiers raids arabes en Numidie Byzantine: questions toponymiques. In Identités et Cultures dans l'Algérie Antique. University of Rouen, 2005, ISBN 2-87775-391-3 .
• Fred M. Donner: Muhammad and the Believers. At the Origins of Islam. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA et al. 2010, ISBN 978-0-674-05097-6 .
• Robert G. Hoyland : Seeing Islam as Others Saw It. A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam . Darwin Press, Princeton NJ 1997.
• Walter E. Kaegi: Muslim Expansion and Byzantine Collapse in North Africa . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2010, ISBN 978-0-521-19677-2 .
• Hugh N. Kennedy : The Great Arab Conquests. How the Spread of Islam changed the World we live in. Da Capo, Philadelphia PA 2007, ISBN 978-0-306-81585-0 .
• Yves Modéran: Kusayla, l'Afrique et les Arabes. In: Identités et Cultures dans l'Algérie Antique. University of Rouen, 2005, ISBN 2-87775-391-3 .
• Ahmed Siraj: L'Image de la Tingitane. L'historiographie arabe medievale et l'Antiquite north africaine . École Française de Rome, 1995, ISBN 2-7283-0317-7 .

Web links

• A Taste of Maghribi History