The Great Arab Conquests (39 page)
Read The Great Arab Conquests Online
Authors: Hugh Kennedy
6
INTO THE MAGHREB
If you travel along the coast road it is over 2,000 kilometres from Alexandria to Carthage, capital of Roman Africa Proconsularis, and it is about 1,500 more from there to the Straits of Gibraltar.
1
At a good regular travelling pace of 20 kilometres a day, it would have taken almost half a year to make the journey. And that would be without days off, sick horses, obstructive officials or dangerous enemies. The expedition would have taken you through many varied landscapes and environments. On the eastern half of the journey, you would have had to have kept close to the coast, along the flat lands of the Egyptian littoral. In Cyrenaica the mountains of the Jabal Akhdar, the ‘Green Mountain’, came down almost to the sea and attracted enough rainfall to allow permanent settlement, not only on the coast but in the southern valleys of the range as well. A Mediterranean agriculture of wheat, vines and olives flourished.
1
At a good regular travelling pace of 20 kilometres a day, it would have taken almost half a year to make the journey. And that would be without days off, sick horses, obstructive officials or dangerous enemies. The expedition would have taken you through many varied landscapes and environments. On the eastern half of the journey, you would have had to have kept close to the coast, along the flat lands of the Egyptian littoral. In Cyrenaica the mountains of the Jabal Akhdar, the ‘Green Mountain’, came down almost to the sea and attracted enough rainfall to allow permanent settlement, not only on the coast but in the southern valleys of the range as well. A Mediterranean agriculture of wheat, vines and olives flourished.
Pushing further west, the traveller skirted the Gulf of Sirte. It was a long haul. The desert comes down to the sea and for perhaps a month the traveller passed almost nothing in the way of orchards and fields, villages and towns. Not until Tripolitania were settled lands reached once again, with farming land and pastures and the city of Tripoli, ‘a large maritime city, walled in stone and lime and rich in fruits, pears, apples, dairy products and honey’.
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West of Tripoli the route led to the settled lands of what is now Tunisia. The southern province was called Africa Byzacena, the northern, Africa Proconsularis or Zeugitania, and the whole came to be known to the Arabs as Africa, or, as they preferred to write it, Ifrīqīya. The two late Roman provinces of Byzacena and Zeugitania were the heart of Roman rule. It was here that the wheat, wine, olives and pottery that constituted the main exports were produced, and it was here that the cities and country towns were most numerous. Carthage, at the north-east corner of Africa Proconsularis, was the real capital, not just of Tunisia but of the whole of Roman North Africa. The capital of Hannibal and the ancient Carthaginians had become the Roman capital and survived as the major political centre into late antiquity.
2
West of Tripoli the route led to the settled lands of what is now Tunisia. The southern province was called Africa Byzacena, the northern, Africa Proconsularis or Zeugitania, and the whole came to be known to the Arabs as Africa, or, as they preferred to write it, Ifrīqīya. The two late Roman provinces of Byzacena and Zeugitania were the heart of Roman rule. It was here that the wheat, wine, olives and pottery that constituted the main exports were produced, and it was here that the cities and country towns were most numerous. Carthage, at the north-east corner of Africa Proconsularis, was the real capital, not just of Tunisia but of the whole of Roman North Africa. The capital of Hannibal and the ancient Carthaginians had become the Roman capital and survived as the major political centre into late antiquity.
West of Carthage the main route continues further inland along the high plateaux, which lie between the sea and the coastal mountains to the north and the beginnings of the Sahara to the south, making a sort of natural east-west corridor. On the coast there were little ports built around the mouth of wadis and sheltered anchorages. Inland, the high plateaux were the lands of the nomads. Eventually the traveller would reach the twin cities of Ceuta and Tangier, fortified settlements which looked across the straits of Gibraltar to Spain, rich and tempting. Beyond, south of Tangier, lay the flat, well-watered plains of the Atlantic coast of Morocco and finally the High Atlas mountains, which bordered the northern fringes of the Sahara.
North Africa had been one of the richest areas of the Roman world. Something of the wealth can still be seen in the great ruins of cities like Volubilis in Morocco, Timgad in Algeria and Leptis Magna in Libya, which rank among the most impressive classical sites to be found within the frontiers of the Roman Empire. The large and elegant cities were sustained by a well-tended and vigorous agricultural resource base. Naturally fertile lands were tilled, and arid and inhospitable wastes, like the pre-desert valleys of Cyrenaica, were brought into cultivation by careful irrigation and continual nurturing. Grain was grown, but it was above all the cultivation of olives that distinguished the agriculture of the area, and the export of olive oil, to Rome and all round the Mediterranean basin, was a major source of wealth. The olive oil was transported from North Africa in long cylindrical amphorae, designed to be stacked in the holds of ships. North African potters also mass-produced a fine tableware, African Red Slip, which, like the amphorae, stacked neatly in cargo holds. The shiny red bowls and plates came to be the most common and widely distributed fine pottery of the late antique Mediterranean.
Until the early fifth century, North Africa had been a prosperous part of the Roman Empire, fully integrated into the imperial system, and much of the agricultural surplus was extracted in taxes by the imperial government. The prosperity of the land depended on its links across the Mediterranean, where the markets for its exports were to be found. Its cities were as distinctively Roman as any in Italy, Gaul or Spain with their fora, temples, baths and theatres. There was a developed Latin high culture and Christianity spread early. By the beginning of the fifth century North Africa was as firmly Christian as any other area of the empire. Cities and countryside were adorned with graceful churches and St Augustine (d. 430), the greatest intellectual figure of the age, was bishop of the small North African city of Hippo.
In the fifth century North Africa, like most of the western empire, was lost to imperial control. Germanic tribes, called collectively the Vandals, crossed from Spain and between 429 and 440 conquered all the Roman provinces. The Vandals have given the English language one of its most commonly used words for violence and destructiveness. In reality, the Vandals do not seem to have wrought significantly more havoc than other Germanic invaders of the Roman world, and in many ways they sought to take over the Roman structures and ways of doing things and use them for their own ends. The Vandal kingdom survived until 533 when the emperor Justinian sent a military expedition that successfully put an end to their power and brought the area back under imperial rule once more. The North Africa of the second half of the sixth and the early seventh centuries was, however, different in many respects from that of the second and third centuries, when the great cities had been constructed and the agricultural area had reached its greatest extent. One important difference was that the language of newly revived Roman administration was Greek, a foreign tongue that had never been widely spoken in the area before: it must have made the imperial authorities seem more like alien invaders than restorers of past glories. There were also continuous religious tensions between the African Christians and the imperial authorities in Constantinople, and both Justininian in the sixth century and Heraclius in the seventh resorted to persecution to enforce obedience to their theological views.
3
As in the Fertile Crescent, many North African Christians must have been resentful and distrusting of the Byzantine authorities.
3
As in the Fertile Crescent, many North African Christians must have been resentful and distrusting of the Byzantine authorities.
Most of what is now Morocco and western Algeria, with the exception of the fortified city of Ceuta, where Justinian rebuilt the walls and constructed a new church, had ceased to be part of the empire in the third century. In the areas that did remain under imperial control, town and countryside were very different. The centres of many great cities were abandoned. Timgad, a bustling city in inland Algeria with imposing classical architecture, was destroyed by the local tribesmen, ‘so that the Romans would have no excuse for coming near us again’.
4
The major monuments in any townscape were the Byzantine fort, built in general out of the ruins of the forum, and one or more fourth-or fifth-century churches, often built in suburban areas away from the old city centre. The cities had become villages, with parish churches, a small garrison, the occasional tax or rent collector but without a local hierarchy, a network of services or an administrative structure. Even in the capital, Carthage, where some new building had occurred after the Byzantine reconquest, the new quarters were filled with rubbish and huts by the early seventh century. From the mid seventh century the city suffered what has been described as ‘monumental melt-down’ - shacks clustered into the circus and the round harbour was abandoned.
5
4
The major monuments in any townscape were the Byzantine fort, built in general out of the ruins of the forum, and one or more fourth-or fifth-century churches, often built in suburban areas away from the old city centre. The cities had become villages, with parish churches, a small garrison, the occasional tax or rent collector but without a local hierarchy, a network of services or an administrative structure. Even in the capital, Carthage, where some new building had occurred after the Byzantine reconquest, the new quarters were filled with rubbish and huts by the early seventh century. From the mid seventh century the city suffered what has been described as ‘monumental melt-down’ - shacks clustered into the circus and the round harbour was abandoned.
5
More than any other province of the empire, Africa had been dependent on the Mediterranean trading and tax system. African grain and olive oil supplied the city of Rome. Much of this was paid as tax, but it is clear that the ships that took the tax also transported African products for sale. The grain tax system was broken by the Vandal conquest of Carthage in 439, the volume of African exports began an inexorable decline and African products began to disappear from Mediterranean markets. The Byzantine reconquest of 533 did not reverse this downward trend. Western Mediterranean markets were now too poor to import much, while the eastern Mediterranean could survive without African products. By 700 African Red Slip was no longer manufactured. Africa had become marginal to the Byzantine Empire.
6
More than anything this explains the failure of Byzantine troops in North Africa to repel the Arab forces: in the end, the imperial authorities simply did not care enough.
6
More than anything this explains the failure of Byzantine troops in North Africa to repel the Arab forces: in the end, the imperial authorities simply did not care enough.
Byzantine North Africa may also have been weakened by political events. In 610 the governor Heraclius had used the army of the province to overthrow the emperor Phocas and claim the imperial title for himself. He then became involved in the struggle for survival against the Persian invasion. There is no sign that troops he had withdrawn from the province, probably the best troops in the area, were ever replaced.
Rural settlement suffered as much as the cities did. Archaeological surveys suggest a general abandonment of settled sites. For example, in the area surrounding the ancient city of Segermes (near modern Hammamet) there were eighty-three settled sites in the mid sixth century. In the next 150 years, half of these were abandoned. By 600 the city of Segermes itself was largely deserted and by the first part of the seventh century, just before the Arab conquest, only three sites in the area, all in high defensible positions, survived. This contraction of settlement happened not in some remote frontier area but in the heart of agricultural Africa Proconsularis, barely 50 kilometres from the capital and centre of government in Carthage.
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7
In Africa Proconsularis, settlement seems to have peaked in the mid sixth century, but in other areas the decline had begun earlier. In Tripolitania increasing insecurity led to the abandonment of many sites from the end of the fifth century, and there is evidence for the increase of semi-nomadic herding of animals at the expense of settled agriculture in Byzacena at the same period. In those settlements that did survive, there was a movement from open villages to communities dependent on
gasr
(sing.
gasr
, a dialect form of the classical Arabic
qasr/qusr)
, fortified farmsteads, an architectural form that was con tinued with some variations from the third century until well after the Muslim conquest.
8
gasr
(sing.
gasr
, a dialect form of the classical Arabic
qasr/qusr)
, fortified farmsteads, an architectural form that was con tinued with some variations from the third century until well after the Muslim conquest.
8
We have, of course, no population statistics, no hard economic data, but the results of archaeological surveys and some excavation suggest that the first Muslim invaders found a land that was sparsely populated, at least by settled folk, and whose once vast and impressive cities had mostly been ruined or reduced to the size and appearance of fortified villages.
This land was peopled by at least three different groups. There were no doubt Greek-speaking soldiers and administrators in Carthage and other garrisons, but there is no reason to suppose that they were very numerous. Living alongside them, in what is now Tunisia, were the Afāriqa (sometimes Ufāriqa), who may have been ultimately descended from the Carthaginians and may still have spoken a Punic dialect as well as Latin. At the time of the Muslim conquest, they were a settled Christian population, with no tradition of military activity. Ibn Abd al-Hakam describes them as ‘servants [
khādim
] of the Romans, paying taxes to whoever conquered their country’.
9
khādim
] of the Romans, paying taxes to whoever conquered their country’.
9
The vast majority of the population, however, were Berbers. The name Berber derives, of course, from the term
barbari
(foreigners) by which the Romans described these people, and it passes into Arabic as
Barbar
. The range of Berber habitation stretched from the borders of the Nile valley in the east as far as Morrocco in the west. They were in no sense politically united and belonged to a bewildering number of different tribes, but they were united by a common language, or family of languages, totally distinct from both Latin and Arabic. Narrative or administrative texts were seldom written in the language before the twentieth century and Berbers who wished to take part in government or acquire an education were obliged to learn Latin or Greek during the Roman period, or Arabic after the Muslim conquest.
barbari
(foreigners) by which the Romans described these people, and it passes into Arabic as
Barbar
. The range of Berber habitation stretched from the borders of the Nile valley in the east as far as Morrocco in the west. They were in no sense politically united and belonged to a bewildering number of different tribes, but they were united by a common language, or family of languages, totally distinct from both Latin and Arabic. Narrative or administrative texts were seldom written in the language before the twentieth century and Berbers who wished to take part in government or acquire an education were obliged to learn Latin or Greek during the Roman period, or Arabic after the Muslim conquest.
Berber society can be described as a tribal society, but there were many different Berber lifestyles. Some Berbers, mostly in mountain areas, lived in tribal villages, practising agriculture. Others were transhumants, moving their flocks up the mountains in the summer and down in the winter. Still others were ‘pure nomads’, roaming the vast deserts of the northern Sahara. Classical sources provide the names of numerous Berber tribes in North Africa and, a few centuries later, the earliest Arabic sources do the same. Even given the differences in language and script it is difficult to detect much real continuity, and it seems that the period from the sixth to the eighth centuries saw widespread movement among the Berbers and the disappearance of some tribal groups and the emergence of others. In general, Berbers seem to have been moving from east to west in the century before the Arab conquests. This reality is perhaps reflected in the way later Arabic sources report that the main Berber groups came from the Arabian peninsula or Palestine.
10
There is no real evidence for this; indeed, the fact that Berber is not a Semitic language suggests that this is unlikely, but it may reflect a memory of these western migrations. The Laguatan (Luwāta) moved from the Barqa area west into Tripolitania during the sixth century
11
and drove the Byzantine governor out of Leptis Magna in 543.
12
They were followed by the Hawāra, another Berber group moving west from Cyrenaica. The process of
taghrība
, the drive to the west, used of the movements of Arab tribes in the eleventh century, seems to have had precedents among the Berbers of the sixth and early seventh centuries.
10
There is no real evidence for this; indeed, the fact that Berber is not a Semitic language suggests that this is unlikely, but it may reflect a memory of these western migrations. The Laguatan (Luwāta) moved from the Barqa area west into Tripolitania during the sixth century
11
and drove the Byzantine governor out of Leptis Magna in 543.
12
They were followed by the Hawāra, another Berber group moving west from Cyrenaica. The process of
taghrība
, the drive to the west, used of the movements of Arab tribes in the eleventh century, seems to have had precedents among the Berbers of the sixth and early seventh centuries.
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