North Africa to 1500
About 4000 B.C. the Egyptians moved from sandy hill country down to the fertile plain of the Nile. There followed a surge in population and the growth of a brilliant civilization. Intellectually, culturally, and militarily, Egypt flourished from about 3000 to 1000 B.C. The area along the Nile to the south, a source of gold, ivory, and slaves, was annexed. Sea trade was carried on with Arabia, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, and the islands of the Aegean.
Green and prosperous Egypt attracted the Libyans (later called Berbers), nomads from the west. In an invasion in the 13th century B.C. they were defeated, but they succeeded in the 10th and ruled Egypt for more than 100 years. The Libyan rulers were followed by a dynasty from Cush, a kingdom south of Egypt. The Assyrians invaded Egypt in the seventh century B.C., and the country became subject successively to the Persians, Greeks, Romans, and Byzantines.
The Phoenicians, the first great seafaring people of the Mediterranean, began colonizing the Tunisian coast in the ninth century B.C. Utica was settled first, then Carthage, which became the center of an empire stretching west to Morocco and across the Mediterranean to Spain and Sicily.
In the seventh century B.C. the Greeks founded Cyrene, on the coast directly opposite Greece, as the nucleus of a colony. However, the Carthaginian language, Punic (from the Latin for “Phoenician”), became the common trade tongue of North Africa, even for the Greeks. Cyrenaica allied itself with the Persian masters of Egypt about 500 B.C., and passed with Egypt into the empire of Alexander the Great (332 B.C.) and the later Ptolemaic kingdom (323 B.C.).
By the third century B.C. Rome had grown strong enough to challenge Carthage for the control of the Mediterranean. The Punic Wars started in 264 B.C. and ended in 146 B.C., with the complete destruction of Carthage. The Carthaginian region became a province named “Africa.” Rome gradually extended its North African holdings both east and west. It annexed Cyrenaica in 96 B.C., Numidia (roughly the coastal area of modern Algeria) in 46 B.C., Egypt in 30 B.C., and Mauretania (Morocco) in 42 A.D. Some of the Berbers were converted to a settled agricultural life.
The Romans in Africa west of Egypt were concentrated along the western portion of the Mediterranean coast, where rainfall was sufficient to grow crops. Cyrene fell into ruin before the Christian Era began. The major cities were Leptis Magna (near modern Tripoli), Carthage (rebuilt by Julius Caesar and Augustus), Hippo Regius (Bône), Cirta (Constantine), Caesarea (Cherchel), and Tingis (Tangiers). The Berbers living beyond the area of cultivation came to resent Roman rule, and in the latter part of the fourth century they began raiding the settled areas.
In 429 the barbarian Vandals crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to Mauretania. Their landing was unopposed by the Romans and the Berbers. The Vandal leader, Genseric, and his horde moved eastward along the coast, murdering and pillaging as they went. Numidia was quickly occupied, and Carthage fell to the barbarians in 439. In 455 Genseric raided lower Italy and Rome. Back in Africa, he easily repulsed a Roman attack in 468.
Under Genseric's heirs, the Vandal kingdom went into decline. By the end of the fifth century it was unable to check the raids of the desert Berbers. In 533 the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Emperor Justinian sent his general Belisarius to Africa, and by the following year Vandal power had been destroyed. The Berbers, however, continued in revolt, and European influence receded toward the coast. In the early 600's the Persians seized Egypt, but were driven out by the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius.
In 639 Muslim armies from Arabia, dedicated to spreading their Islamic faith, swept into Egypt. Members of the Coptic (Egyptian) Church, who had split away from the Byzantine Church, agreed to support the invaders in return for religious freedom. In 642 the Byzantines were forced from the country, and Egypt became part of the Muslim world.
The Arabs moved on westward to the borders of Tunisia in 647, but withdrew upon receiving tribute. In 670, however, they returned to seize most of the area (which they called Ifriqiya) and to found the city of Kairouan. A march to the Atlantic in 681–83 aroused resistance that briefly halted Arab expansion. The fall of Carthage in 698 and the conversion of the Berbers to Islam brought all of the Maghrib (northwest Africa) under Arab control. Spain, where the North Africans were known as Moors, was conquered in 711–13. Sicily, where they were known as Saracens, fell in the next century.
In 750 the Omayyad caliphate, which had ruled the Muslim world since 661, was replaced by the Abbasid caliphate. Bitter factional differences among the Muslims followed. In North Africa many Berbers joined the fanatical Kharijite sect and slaughtered orthodox Muslims. New African Muslim dynasties arose—among others, the Idrisids and the Aghlabids in the 9th century; the Fatimids in the 10th; the Almoravids in the 11th; the Almohads in the 12th; and the Hafsids and Marinids in the 13th. The Almoravids and other western dynasties were Berber rather than Arab. In Egypt the Fatimids were succeeded by the Ayyubids, who, in turn, were succeeded by the Mamelukes.
Savage fighting accompanied the constant struggle for power. In addition to internal conflict, there were invasions by various outsiders. At the beginning of the 11th century hordes of Arabian nomads known as Bedouins surged into Egypt. Sent on westward by the Fatimids to help subdue insubordinate areas, the Bedouins sacked and pillaged their way across North Africa, absorbing all but the urbanized coastal fringe.
The Normans, who had expelled the Saracens from Sicily, annexed the coastal area of Tunisia in the 12th century and held it for two decades. The Crusaders, fighting against the Muslims in the Holy Land, also attacked them in North Africa. There were invasions of Egypt in the Fifth Crusade (1218–21) and the Seventh (1248–54), and of Tunisia in the Eighth (1270–72). A Christian victory at Las Navas de Tolosa, Spain, in 1212 was followed by the expulsion of the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula.
In spite of their political and religious dissension, the Islamic peoples developed a rich culture. From Persia, which had been overrun in the first Arabic conquest, a highly developed art, literature, and science were spread westward. Mingling with elements of Syrian, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman civilization, Islamic culture was carried across North Africa.
In the early centuries of Muslim rule, North Africa was completely cut off from Europe. Gradually small-scale trading was established, mainly by Jewish merchants who transported furs and swords from Europe and carried back precious spices and drugs.
At the time of the Crusades, Venetian and Genoese sailors discovered that their trade was welcome at North African ports. Soon business was flourishing in iron and lumber from Europe and gold, ivory, and spices from Africa. The spices, whether from eastern Africa or the East Indies, were brought to Egypt to be traded. So little was known of Africa and Asia that one European who visited Egypt reported that cinnamon, ginger, and rhubarb came from the Nile and were harvested with nets.
In the 13th century the Franciscan and Dominican orders of the Roman Catholic Church were permitted to establish missions in Morocco. In the 15th century the Portuguese, who had already explored the Canary Islands, visited Madeira and attempted to set up trading centers on the coast of Barbary, as Europe called the Maghrib. (The inhabitants were non-Christian, therefore barbarian.) Several ports were taken by Portugal, but Moorish resistance was fierce. The Portuguese determined to bypass the Moors and trade directly, by sea, with the African gold merchants and the Indies.
