Tunisia Way

By 661 the Umayyads had taken firm control of the new Muslim state, which it ruled from Damascus. The Caliph Mu'awiya could see the foreign lands west of Egypt in terms of the Muslim contest with the Byzantine Empire.

Islamic conques

  In 670 an Arab Muslim army under Uqba ibn Nafi, who had commanded an earlier incursion in 666, entered the region of Ifriqiya (Arabic for the Province of Africa).

Arriving by land the Arabs passed by Byzantine strongholds along the Mediterranean coast. In the more arid south, the city of Kairouan was established as their base, and the building of its famous Mosque begun. From 675 to 682 Dinar ibn Abu al-Muhadjir took command of the Arab Muslim army. In the late 670s, this army defeated the Berber forces (apparently composed of sedentary Christians mainly from the Awreba tribe and perhaps the Sanhadja confederation) led by Kusaila, who was taken prisoner. In 682, Uqba ibn Nafi reassumed command. He defeated an alliance of Berber forces near Tahirt, then proceeded westward in military triumph, eventually reaching the Atlantic coast, where he lamented that before him lay no more land to conquer for Islam. Episodes from his campaigns became legend throughout the Maghrib. Yet the Berber leader held prisoner, Kusaila, escaped. Later Kusaila led a fresh Berber uprising, which interrupted the conquest and claimed the Arab leader's life. Kusaila then formed an enlarged Berber kingdom. Yet Zuhair b. Qais, the deputy of the fallen Arab leader, enlisted Zanata tribes from Cyrenaica to fight for the cause of Islam, and in 686 managed to overturn Kusaila's new kingdom.

 

Under the Caliph 'Abd al-Malik (685-705), the Umayyad conquest of North Africa was to advance close to completion. In Egypt a new army of forty thousand was assembled, to be commanded by Hassan ibn al-Nu'man (known to Arabs as "the honest old man"). Meanwhile, the Byzantines had been reinforced. The Arab Muslim army crossed the Cyrene and Tripoli without opposition, then quickly attacked and captured Carthage.

The Berbers, however, offered stiff resistance, being led by a woman of the Jarawa tribe, whom the Arabs called the prophetess ["al-Kahina" in Arabic]; her actual name was approximately Damiya. On the river Nini, the Berbers under Damiya defeated the Muslim armies under al-Nu'man, who escaped back to Cyrenaica. Thereupon, the Byzantines took advantage of the Berber victory by reoccupying Carthage. Unlike the Berber Kusaila ten years earlier, Damiya did not establish a larger state, evidently being content to rule merely her own tribe. Some commentators speculate that to Damiya the Arabs appeared interested in booty primarily, because she then commenced to ravage and disrupt the region, making it unattractive to raiders looking for spoils of war; of course, it also made her unpopular to the residents. Yet she did not attack the Muslim base at Kairouan. From Egypt the Caliph 'Abdul-Malik had reinforced al-Nu'man in 698, who then reentered Ifriqiya. Although she told her two sons to go over to the Arabs, she herself again gave battle; she lost, al-Nu'man won. It is said that at Bir al-Kahina [well of the prophetess] in the Auras the Damiya was killed. In 705 Hassan b. al-Nu'man stormed Carthage, overcame and sacked it, leaving it a ruin. Nearby he founded Tunis as a naval base. Muslim ships began to dominate the Mediterranean coast; hence the Byzantines made their final withdrawal from al-Maghrib. Then al-Nu'man was replaced as Muslim military leader by Musa ibn Nusair, who substantially completed the conquest of al-Maghrib. He soon took the city of Tangier and appointed as its governor the Berber Tariq ibn Ziyad.