Exarchate of Africa

Background[edit]

In the Vandalic War of 533, Byzantine forces under Belisarius reconquered the Maghreb along with Corsica and Sardinia and the Balearic Islands. Emperor Justinian I (r. 527–565) organized the recovered territories as the Praetorian prefecture of Africa, which included the provinces of Africa Proconsularis, Byzacena, Tripolitania, Numidia, Mauretania Caesariensis and Mauretania Sitifensis, and was centered at Carthage. In the 550s, a Roman expedition succeeded in regaining parts of southern Spain, which were administered as the new province of Spania.


After the death of Justinian in 565, the Eastern Roman Empire came increasingly under attack on all fronts, and emperors often left the more remote provinces to themselves to cope as best they could for extended periods, although military officers, such as Heraclius the Elder (Exarch c. 598–610), continued to rotate between the eastern provinces and Africa. By the 640s and 650s, Byzantium had lost its province of Mesopotamia to the Muslims, who also extinguished the Byzantines' rival, the Sassanian Empire (651). Constantinople thereby lost an important source of experienced officers seasoned by constant border warfare with the Persians. The Heraclian dynasty (610-711) did continue to appoint some competent eastern officers to African posts, such as the Armenian Narseh, who commanded Tripoli, and John, the dux of Tigisis. Walter Kaegi speculates that some Armenian officers might have asked to transfer back to the east to defend their homes as the Muslims advanced into Armenia, but the sources are silent. Yet the officers who continued to arrive from the east after the loss of Mesopotamia would have been more accustomed to defeats like the Battle of Yarmouk (636) than the previously winning strategies used against the Sassanians, and new tactics and strategies developed slowly.^{[1]: 100–104}