Muslim conquest of the Maghreb
The Muslim conquest of the Maghreb (Arabic: فَتْحُ اَلْمَغْرِب, romanized: Fath al-Maghrib, lit. 'Conquest of the West') or Arab conquest of the Maghreb by the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates commenced in 647 and concluded in 709, when the Byzantine Empire lost its last remaining strongholds to Caliph Al-Walid I. The North African campaigns were part of the century of rapid early Muslim conquests.
Not to be confused with Arab migrations to the Maghreb.
By 642 AD, under Caliph Umar, Arab Muslim forces had laid control of Mesopotamia (638 AD), Syria (641 AD), Egypt (642 AD), and had invaded Armenia (642 AD), all territories previously split between the warring Byzantine and Sasanian empires, and were concluding their conquest of Sasanian Persia with their defeat of the Persian army at the Battle of Nahāvand. It was at this point that Arab military expeditions into North African regions west of Egypt were first launched, continuing for years and furthering the spread of Islam.
In 644 at Medina, Umar was succeeded by Uthman, during whose twelve-year rule Armenia, Cyprus, and all of modern-day Iran, would be added to the expanding Rashidun Caliphate. With Afghanistan and North Africa being targets of major invasions and Muslim sea raids ranging from Rhodes to the southern coasts of the Iberian Peninsula, the Byzantine navy was defeated in the eastern Mediterranean.
Sources for the history of the invasion[edit]
The earliest Arab accounts are those of ibn Abd al-Hakam, al-Baladhuri, and Khalifah ibn Khayyat, all of which were written in the ninth century, some 200 years after the first invasions. These are not very detailed. In the case of the most informative, the History of the Conquest of Egypt and North Africa and Spain by Ibn Abd al-Hakam, Robert Brunschvig has shown that it was written with a view to illustrating points of Maliki law rather than documenting history and that some of the events it describes are probably ahistorical.[2]
Beginning in the 12th century, scholars at Kairouan began to construct a new version of the history of the conquest, which was finalised by Ibrahim ibn ar-Raqiq. This version was copied in its entirety and sometimes interpolated, by later authors, reaching its zenith in the 14th century by scholars such as ibn Idhari, ibn Khaldun and al-Nuwayri. It differs from the earlier version not only in greater detail but also in giving conflicting accounts of events. This, however, is the best-known version and is the one given below.
Consequences[edit]
Effects on the power structure in the Mediterranean region[edit]
The loss of Africa was a severe blow to the Byzantine Empire. In 698, after Egypt, the second large granary and a significant source of taxes went here[27] was lost, which in retrospect did not detract from the empire's ability to survive, but significantly impaired the decades-long defensive struggles against the caliphate. Financially, the lost tax revenue for Eastern Rome/Byzantium could not be compensated for a long time.
The fall of Carthage brought Tiberios the imperial throne, for his officers, afraid of being held responsible for the defeat, elevated him to the position of anti-emperor and overthrew Leontios, who had his nose cut off. Another effect was that there were no longer any major Latin or Romance-speaking provinces in the Byzantine Empire and Greek finally prevailed.
With the conquest of Carthage, the Arabs laid the basis for domination of the western Mediterranean, since they could now use the African ports there as a springboard for operations against the Balearic Islands, Sardinia and Sicily. They also prepared for the invasion of Spain 13 years later by eliminating the flank threat. The capture of Septem, in turn, removed the last immediate obstacle.