Chapter III: The Arab Conquest of Africa

At the beginning of the 7th century of our era the condition of
affairs in North Africa stood thus. In Egypt, which continued to be
governed from Greek Alexandria, the semblance of Roman rule was
wielded, in things temporal as well as spiritual, by the Greek
Orthodox Patriarch, who was usually appointed by the Emperor at
Byzantium to be Prefect as well. He occupied himself chiefly in
persecuting non-orthodox Christian churches, such as the Monophysite
or Jacobite Church, which, arising first in Syria, had become the
national church of the Egyptians or Copts, as contrasted with the
people of Greek race. The outposts of Upper Egypt were abandoned or
left but feebly garrisoned; the Hamitic Blemmyes or Bisharin, the
“Fuzzie-wuzzies” of the Red Sea coast-lands, and the negroid Nubians
overwhelmed the Nabatæan kingdom of Ethiopia and burst into Upper
Egypt, and, although they were once or twice severely chastised,
remained, and barbarized a land which at the beginning of the Roman
empire over Egypt had attained a high degree of culture.

In 616 A.C. the Persian armies once more entered Egypt, assisted in
their easy conquest by the disaffection of the Copts; at the same
period they drove the Abyssinians out of western Arabia and even
followed them up into eastern Abyssinia. Then the Persian power
became paralysed in its turn. In 626 Heraclius sent an army into
Egypt which drove out the Persians; and for a few years Egypt was
fairly well governed by a Greek governor sent from Byzantium. Then
once more the rule passed into ecclesiastical hands; and Kuros, the
last Greek patriarch, ruled Egypt from 630 till the invasion of the
Arabs, excepting for one short period of exile due to his fierce
persecution of the Jacobite Copts. Cyrenaica had been practically
abandoned to the Libyans after the terrible Jewish uprising and the
massacre of Greek colonists in 117 A.C. Along the rest of the
littoral of North Africa there were still flourishing Roman colonies
and cities under Byzantine rulers or Berber chiefs, from Leptis
Magna and Tripolis (Oea) on the east to Tangis (Tangier) on the
west; while other Roman or Byzantine towns still persisted far
inland in Tunisia and Algeria, notably Gafsa, Thala, Tebessa, and
Timgad. Elsewhere, beyond the walls of the Roman cities, the Berber
tribes had regained their independence and ruled over Romans and
Berbers alike.

At this period the great Libyan or Berber race of North Africa,
which inhabited the whole region between the western frontiers of
Egypt (Siwa) on the east and the Atlantic coast of Morocco on the
west (practically but one language, the Libyan, being spoken
throughout this vast breadth of Africa) were divided into three main
branches: (1) the Berbers of the East or Libyans proper (Luata,
Huara, Aurigha, Nefusa) occupying the Cyrenaica, Tripolitaine,
Tunisia and a portion of eastern Algeria; (2) the Berbers of the
West, or Sanhaga (Sanhaja), who peopled the Algerian coast-lands and
western Algeria and all Morocco as far down as the limits of the
Sahara; and (3) the Zeneta, a darker race, the descendants of the
Getulians, perhaps in origin akin to the Fula, who in the 7th
century A.C. peopled the more or less desert regions at the back of
eastern Algeria, southern Tunis and Tripoli. From these Zeneta are
descended the modern Mzab Berbers, the Wargli people, and the
Beni-Merīn who founded one of the ruling dynasties of mediaeval
Barbary. Several of these Zeneta dark-skinned Berber peoples pushed
down to the Mediterranean coast in later times. On the other hand,
many of the Eastern Berbers or Libyans were thrust back into the
desert by the Arab invaders; and some of them have become the semi
nomad “Tuareg” (Tawareq)[27] of to-day. Sections of the Western
Berbers of the Sanhaga group also passed down into the Sahara from
the 7th century onwards (though no doubt Berber invasions of Negro
Africa had occurred in previous times), and settled on or near the
northern Niger and the northern Senegal coast. In fact from Sanhaga
comes no doubt the Berber tribal name of “Zenaga” which the
Portuguese corrupted into “Senegal.”

In the 7th century, also, the negroid Garamantes, who shared
Phazania with the incoming Berbers and were no doubt identical with
the modern Tibu or Teda (whose language is utterly unlike Libyan,
and belongs to an unclassified negro speech-group), carried on a
good deal of trading intercourse south and eastward across the
Libyan Desert with Kanem and Lake Chad, Darfur and Kordofan, and no
doubt in this way facilitated the subsequent Arab penetration of the
Sudan and the Tripolitaine. The domesticated camel had been
introduced into North Africa before this period, and greatly
facilitated these race movements across the Desert.

In the year 623 A.C. an Arab of the Quraish Tribe of Western Arabia,
probably born in Mecca (anciently known as Bakka and really called
Makka at the present day), and named Muhammad or the Praiser,
attracted attention by establishing himself at the Palm Oasis of
Yathrib or Medina, not only as a bandit who led masterless men to
the attack of trading caravans, but also as a mystic who was
conceiving and promulgating a new form of religion, one which was
largely based on Jewish teaching and the Jewish Scriptures and yet
incorporated a few ideas from Christianity and perhaps even from the
Zoroastrian faiths of Persia. Muhammad opposed the degraded beliefs
in a variety of gods and goddesses which still lingered in Western
Arabia and, above all, at Mecca itself, where a wonderful fetish
stone—the remains of an immense meteorite—was exhibited for
reverence, and where, together with the rude representations of old
Semitic gods and a goddess named Allat[28], existed—as in
Coelo-Syria and Ancient Phoenicia—the idea of the Mahrab or Sacred
Shrine. This last was a sexual symbol and a relic of the
nature-worship of Phoenicia. It has also been the parent of the
horseshoe arch. The Sacred Shrine is an essential feature in all
Muhammadan mosques, though its original purport has long since been
forgotten.

Muhammad prevailed partly by his successes in warfare and the rich
booty they brought to his Arab adherents, partly by his sweetness of
disposition, the magnetism of his appearance and manner, and his
gift for pouring out conceptions of God and religion and garbled
versions of the Jewish Scriptures and Christian beliefs in rhyming
couplets easily committed to memory. He united gradually under his
sceptre, as a religious teacher and legist, all the clans of
fighting men in Western Arabia; and, in search of greater spoil than
the poverty-stricken peninsula of that day could afford, he marched
northwards to convert the Roman world and the great kingdom of
Persia to his new faith. Almost like another Moses, he died on the
threshold of the promised land; for within a few years of his death
(632 A.C.) the Arab armies had not only smashed the Byzantine rule
over Syria but were pouring into Byzantine Egypt and were rapidly
conquering for the Muhammadan faith the states of South-west, South
and East Arabia, and the whole kingdom of Persia, to the very heart
of Asia.

In 640-2 Amr-bin-al-As (an early opponent and a later convert of
Muhammad) invaded Egypt from Arabia; and he or his lieutenants
pushed thence into Tripoli, and even into Fezzan. A little later
(647-8), under Abdallah-bin-Abu-Sarh and Abdallah-bin-Zubeir, the
Arabs invaded Tripoli, and fought with a Byzantine governor known as
Gregory the Patrician, who had just before rebelled from Byzantium,
and proclaimed himself Emperor of Africa, with his seat of
government in central Tunisia. The battle lasted for days, but
Gregory was overmastered by a ruse and killed. The Arabs pursued his
defeated army into the heart of Tunisia, and even into Algeria. For
a payment of 300 quintals of gold they agreed to evacuate Tunisia,
but they left behind an agent or representative at Suffetula (the
modern Sbeitla), which had been Gregory’s capital.

In 661 the first dissenting sect of Islam arose, the Khariji. These
schismatics preached the equality of all good Muslims—a kind of
communism—the need for a Puritan life and the cessation of the
hereditary Khalifat (Caliphate) with the death of Ali. As they were
much persecuted, some of the Khariji fled at this period to the
coast of Tunis, and in the island of Jerba their descendants remain
to this day; while their doctrines were adopted by the bulk of the
Berber population of that island[29], and spread thence right across
inner North Africa to the Atlantic coast of Morocco, becoming after
720 almost a national religion of the Berbers as contrasted with the
orthodox Sunni Muhammadanism of the Arab governors or the Omaiyad
dynasties of Spain, or the Shia faith of the Fatimites of Tunis and
Egypt. The industrious Mzab Berbers of south central Algeria and the
Nefusa tribes of western Tripoli are also Khariji still at the
present day.

In 669 the Arab invasions of North Africa were resumed.
Oqba-bin-Nafa overran Fezzan, and was appointed by the Omaiyad
Khalif governor of “Ifriqiah” (modern Tunis). The Byzantines were
defeated in several battles, and Kairwan[30] was founded as a
Muhammadan capital about 673. Oqba was replaced for a time by Dinar
Bu’l-Muhajr, who pushed his conquests as far west as Tlemsan, on the
borders of modern Morocco. Oqba resumed command in 681, and advanced
with his victorious army to the Sūs country and shore of the
Atlantic Ocean, afterwards receiving a somewhat friendly reception
from Count Julian at Ceuta[31] (Septa).

But now the Berbers began to turn against the Arab invaders, finding
them worse for rapacity than Roman or Greek. A quondam ally, the
Berber prince Kuseila, united his forces with the Greek and Roman
settlers, and inflicted such a severe defeat on Oqba near Biskra
that he was enabled afterwards to rule in peace as king over
Mauretania for five years, being accepted as ruler by the European
settlers. Kuseila, however, was defeated and killed by other Arab
invaders in 688, though the victors subsequently retired and
suffered a defeat at the hands of the Byzantines in Barka. Queen
Dahia-al-Kahina[32] succeeded her relative Kuseila. The Arab
general, Hassan-bin-Numan, was successful in taking Carthage (698),
but afterwards was defeated and driven out of Tunisia by Queen
Kahina. Unfortunately this brave woman ordered a terrible
devastation of the fertile district or sub-province of Byzacene, so
that the want of food supply might deter the Arabs from returning;
and this action on her part was the beginning of the marked
deterioration of this magnificent country, the southern half of
Tunisia. Kahina was finally defeated and slain by the Arabs under
Hassan-bin-Numan in 705. Arab conquests then once more surged ahead
under Musa-bin-Nusseir. The whole of Morocco was conquered except
Ceuta, where the Arabs were repelled by Count Julian. To some extent
also Morocco was Muhammadanized; and no doubt through all these
invasions the Arabs experienced little difficulty in converting the
Berbers to Islam, even though they might subsequently enrage them by
their depredations. Before the arrival of the Arabs the Berbers in
many districts had strong leanings towards Judaism[33]. Amongst the
Berber chiefs converted to Muhammadanism by the invasion of Morocco
was a man of great gallantry known as Tarik, who became a general in
the Arab army. Tarik was left in charge of Tangiers by Musa, and
entered into friendly relations with Count Julian at Ceuta. Count
Julian, having quarrelled with the last Gothic king of Spain, urged
Tarik to invade that country. After a reconnaissance near the modern
Tarifa, Tarik invaded Spain at or near Gibraltar[34] with 13,000
Berbers officered by 300 Arabs, and was shortly afterwards followed
by Musa with reinforcements; and Spain was thus conquered.

For a few years longer all North Africa remained loosely connected
with the Khalifs (Caliphs) of Baghdad; then Idris, a descendant of
Ali, and consequently of Muhammad, established himself in Morocco as
an independent sultan, afterwards asserting his claim to be Khalif
and Imam, though he and his successors were of the Sunni, not the
Shia faith. At his death he was succeeded by his son Idris II; and
his blood is supposed to have filtered down through many generations
and devious ways to the present ruling family in Morocco. Until
about 800 A.C. Eastern Barbary, at any rate, was ruled by an Arab
governor from Baghdad; but soon after that date Harun-al-Rashid
appointed a brave Berber-Arab soldier, Ibrahim-bin-Aghlab, to be his
viceroy in Ifriqiah (as the Arabs called “Africa,” i.e. Tunisia).
Ibrahim-bin-Aghlab founded a dynasty which ruled over Tunis and
Tripoli for a hundred and ten years. Concurrently with the Aghlabite
viceroys or sultans in Roman “Africa,” there was the independent
Moorish kingdom of the Idrisites with its capital at Fez (near the
Roman Volubilis); a Berber principality of the Beni-Midrar at
Sigilmessa in Tafilalt (S.E. Morocco); and another of the Beni
Rustam at Tiaret (Western Algeria). These two last were Khariji or
heretic states.

Spain had remained from 715 till about 760 an appanage of the
Abbaside Khalif of Baghdad. But in 758 there arrived in southern
Spain a refugee prince of the rival house of Omar, Abd-ar-rahman bin
Mūawiya, who after thirty years of almost incessant warfare wrested
all Spain from the Baghdad Caliphate and founded the most splendid
of the Arab dynasties in Spain, that of the Omaiyads, which lasted
till about 1020. The Omaiyad Amirs or Khalifs frequently invaded
Morocco and derived thence numbers of negro slaves, who, together
with Slav prisoners bought in Germany through the Jews, made up
their powerful mercenary armies. As Mamluks or slave-soldiers, quite
a number of Slavs from Germany and Austria—made prisoners and sold
to the Moslems of Spain by Charlemagne and his successors—settled in
North Africa from the 8th to the 10th century.

In the ninth century numerous Shia Arabs, who were advocates of the
caliphate of the descendants of Ali and Fatima (Muhammad’s
daughter), had converted to the Shia faith the powerful Berber tribe
of the Ketama (of the Sanhaga group dwelling in Eastern Algeria);
and an emissary of the “hidden” Khalif of the Alide
family—Obeid-Allah—arrived in North Africa about 890 and preached
the Shia faith and the coming of a Madhi or Divine messenger. Having
by the aid of the Berbers overthrown the Aghlabite dynasty of
Kairwan, this emissary, who was named Abu-AbdAllah, sent for the
Mahdi, Obeid-Allah, the descendant of Ali and Fatima. Obeid-Allah
came and founded the great Fatimite dynasty which played such a part
in Tunisia, Sicily and Egypt; but ungratefully enough he caused
Abu-AbdAllah to be slain and the Ketama tribe to be massacred. He
then moved his capital from Kairwan to Mahdia, or Mehdia, on the
coast of Tunisia, a city which he founded on the ruins of a Roman
town. His son and successor, who nicknamed himself “The sustainer of
God’s orders” (Al-Kaïm bi Amr Allah), instituted the practice of
never appearing in the open in public without a sunshade being held
over his head—the Royal Umbrella which still figures in Moroccan
court ceremonial. Under the third sovereign, Al Mu’izz, the dynasty
of Fatimite Caliphs reigned over all North Africa, from Morocco to
Egypt, and thence to Damascus. The Fatimite general commanding the
army in Egypt, Jauhar-al-Kaid, founded the citadel and town of Cairo
(Al Kahirah) in 969-71[35], more or less on the sites of the
previous Arab capitals of Al-Masr, Al-’Askar, and Al-Katai; and here
the Fatimite Caliph transferred his capital and his presence from
Kairwan, giving up the rule over Tripoli, Tunis, Algeria and Morocco
to Berber viceroys.

From the 7th to the middle of the 11th century, the Arab element in
North Africa was small and represented chiefly by a few thousand
warriors, statesmen and religious teachers, who had in a marvellous
manner, difficult to explain, forced their religion, and to some
extent their language and rule, on several millions of Berbers, on
some 300,000 Christians of Roman, Greek and Gothic origin, and
100,000 Jews. But in the 11th century took place those Arab
invasions of North Africa which have been the main source of the
Arab element in the northern part of the continent, and without
which Muhammadanism might in time have faded away; and a series of
independent Berber states have been formed once more under Christian
rule.

About 1045 two Arab tribes, the Beni-Hilal and the Beni-Soleim
(originally from Central Arabia, and deported thence to Upper
Egypt), left the right bank of the Nile to invade Barbary. They had
made themselves troublesome in Upper Egypt; and the weakened rulers
of that country, to get rid of them, had urged them to invade
north-western Africa. About two or three hundred thousand crossed
the desert and reached the frontiers of Tunis and Tripoli. They
defeated the Berbers at the battle of Haiderān, and then settled in
southern Tunis and western Tripoli. During their raids they
destroyed the city of Kairwan, which never regained its former
importance. Eventually some portion of them was unseated by the
Berbers and driven westward into Morocco. They were succeeded by
fresh drafts from Egypt and Arabia, but many of these later invaders
settled in Barka and eastern Tripoli[36]. Later on other Arab tribes
left the west coast of Arabia, and settled on the central Nile,
avoiding the Abyssinian highlands, where they were kept at bay by
their Christianized relatives of far earlier immigrations; and on
the Blue Nile (Sennār), where they founded the powerful Funj empire
which lasted from the 14th to the early 19th century. From the upper
Nile they directed many and repeated invasions of Central and
Western Africa. To this day tribes of more or less pure Arab descent
are found in the districts round Lake Chad, in Darfur, Wadai, and in
the western Sahara north of the Senegal and Niger rivers.

In the 11th century began the real revival of the Roman Empire from
the onslaught of Arabia and the prior Teutonic invasions. The
Normans recovered Sicily and Malta from the Berbers; earlier still,
the Pisans drove the Berbers out of Sardinia and crushed them in
Majorca. The cities of Italy, forming themselves into republics,
were tempted by their extending commerce to interfere with North
Africa. The Venetians, in spite of the hare-brained crusades and the
damage that they did by reviving Muhammadan fanaticism, began to
open up those commercial relations with Egypt, which for four and a
half centuries gave them the monopoly of the Levant and Indian
trade. The Normans, after founding the kingdom of Naples and Sicily,
commenced a series of bold attacks on the coasts of Algeria, Tunis
and Tripoli, which did not however lead to an occupation of more
than forty years (about 1123 to 1163). The Pisan and Genoese natives
in the 11th and 12th centuries carried out a series of such sharp
reprisals against the Moorish pirates, that they inspired some
respect for Italy in the minds of Tunisians and Algerians.
Afterwards they were enabled to open up commercial relations,
especially with the north coast of Tunis; and these, to the
advantage of both Italy and Barbary, continued, with fitful
interruptions, until the 16th century.

In the 11th century another great Berber movement took place—the
rise of the “Almoravides.” The name of this sect of Muhammadan
reformers is a Spanish corruption of _Al-Murabitin_, which is the
plural of _Marabut_; and _Marabut_ is derived from the place-name
_Ribat_ (a monastery or school), meaning “the people living at the
Ribat,” though the word has since come to mean in North Africa and
elsewhere a Muhammadan saint. The Almoravides owed their origin to
one of the early African Mahdis or Messiahs, of whom the tale has
subsequently been repeated and repeated with such servile imitation
of detail that one can only imagine the mass of African Muhammadans
to have been without any philosophical reflections on history or any
sense of humour; since Mahdi after Mahdi arises as an ascetic saint,
and dies a licentious monarch, whose power passes into the hands of
a lieutenant, who is the first in the line of a slowly crumbling
dynasty. Far away across the Sahara Desert, and near the Upper
Niger, was a tribe of Tawareq Berbers known as the Lamta or Lemtuna,
who had been in the 10th century converted to Muhammadanism. The
chief of this tribe, returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca, met a
Berber of South Morocco known as Ibn Yaṣin, who on his Meccan
pilgrimage had acquired a great reputation for austere holiness. The
chief of the Lemtuna invited Ibn Yaṣin to his court; and the latter,
after arriving in the Niger countries, established himself on an
island named Ribat, on the upper Niger, where he collected adherents
round him and promulgated his puritanical reforms. Gradually Ibn
Yaṣin’s influence extended over the whole Lamta or Lemtuna tribe,
and he urged these Berbers towards the conversion of Senegambia. It
was mainly through his influence that the Berbers were carried by
their conquests into Senegambia and Nigeria. Then he led them (about
1050) north-west across the Sahara Desert; and they conquered
Morocco, and from thence invaded Muhammadan Spain. By this time Ibn
Yaṣin, the teacher, was dead, but the warrior chief of the Lamta
tribe—Yussuf-bin-Tashfin—had become sovereign of Morocco and Spain,
and had assumed the title of Amir-al-Mumenin[37].

A hundred years later another Berber Mahdi arose in the person of
Ibn Tumert, who was “run” by Abd-al-Mumin of Tlemsan (West Algeria),
and whose fighting force was the great Berber tribe of the Masmuda
from the High Atlas Mountains. The programme was the same—to start
with puritanical reform, afterwards degenerating rapidly into mere
lust of conquest. This small sect known by us as the “Almohades”
(from Al-Muāḥadim or Muaḥidūn, meaning “(Disciples of) the Unity of
God[38]”) attacked the decaying power of the Almoravides. Ibn
Tumert—an exact parallel of all the Mahdis—died early in the
struggle, but was succeeded as “Khalifa” by his warlike lieutenant,
Abd-al-Mumin, who pursued his conquests until he had brought under
his power all North Africa and Muhammadan Spain, and had founded the
greatest Berber empire that ever existed. Concurrently, however,
with the sway of his overlordship, the Ziri and Hamadi dynasties of
Berber sultans continued to exist at Tunis and in eastern Algeria.
After ruling for a century the Almohade empire broke up, and was
succeeded by independent Berber rulers in Tunis and Tripoli (the
Hafsides), in Algeria (the Abd-al-Wadite or Zeyanite kings of
Tlemsan), and in Morocco (the Marinide or Beni-Marin). Remarkable
among these was the Hafs dynasty, which governed Tunis and part of
Tripoli for 300 years, and proved the most beneficent of all
Muhammadan rulers in North Africa. Abu Muhammad Hafsi was a Berber
governor of Tunis under one of the last of the Almohade emperors,
and eventually became the independent sovereign of Tunisia. The
Almohade rulers, towards the end of the 12th century, had
transported most of the turbulent Arabs of southern and central
Tunisia to Morocco, where for the first time the Arabs began to form
an appreciable element in the population. About this time Kurdish
and Turkish mercenaries began to find employment in Tunisia and in
Tripoli under chiefs who rebelled against the Almohade empire.
During the period between 1250 and 1500 the Moorish civilization,
art, architecture, letters, and industries reached their highest
development: especially at Kairwan, Tlemsan, and Fas (Fez).

In 1270 that truly good but erratic monarch, St Louis of France,
deflected a crusade intended for the Levant to Tunis as being a
Muhammadan country much nearer at hand and more accessible. Moreover
his brother, Charles of Anjou, claimed the sovereignty of Sicily and
Naples, and thought the possession of Tunis would better establish
his precarious kingdom. Louis IX landed at Carthage, but owing to
failing health his imposing invasion was followed by military
inaction. He died at Carthage, and a capitulation subsequently took
place by which the Crusaders retired from Tunisia. After their
departure the Muhammadans entirely destroyed all that remained of
Roman Carthage, as the buildings had afforded to the invaders the
protection of fortresses. Up till that time a good deal of Roman
civilization had lingered in Tunisia, but now the country became
more and more Arabized. Christian bishops probably ceased to exist
in the 13th century, but Christians were not persecuted for another
two or three hundred years, until the attacks of the Spaniards and
the intervention of the Turks roused Muhammadan fanaticism to a high
degree which is only beginning to abate with the opening of the 20th
century and the spread of education.

In the 13th century the Spanish and Portuguese kings reduced the
area of Muhammadan rule in the Iberian Peninsula to the kingdom of
Granada in S.E. Spain; and early in the 15th century the kingdom of
Portugal felt itself sufficiently strong to carry the war into the
enemy’s country. In 1415 the Portuguese army, to which was attached
Prince Henry, afterwards known as the Navigator, captured the
Moorish citadel of Ceuta on the Moroccan coast; and from this
episode started the magnificent Portuguese discoveries initiated by
Prince Henry which will be described in the next chapter. The
Portuguese subsequently acquired Tangier, Tetwan, and most of the
ports along the Atlantic coast of Morocco. Castile-Aragon, bursting
out a little later, when her monarchs had conquered the last Moorish
kingdom on Spanish soil (Granada), seized Melilla in 1490, and, on
one pretext or another, port after port along the coasts of Algeria
and Tunis, until by 1540 the Spanish empire had established
garrisons at Oran, Bugia, Bona, Hunein, and Goletta[39]. They also
instigated the Knights of Malta—an outcome of the crusades—to hold
for a time the town of Tripoli in Barbary, and the Tunisian island
of Jerba. The Portuguese kings by the middle of the 16th century
were practically suzerains of Morocco. The penultimate ruler of the
brilliant House of Avis—young Dom Sebastião—determined in 1578, soon
after his accession to the throne of Portugal at the age of 23,
thoroughly to conquer Morocco. He landed with 100,000 men at
Acila[40], then marched inland and took up a position behind the
Wad-al-Makhazen on the fatal field of Kasr-al-Kabir. But he was
utterly defeated by the Moors under Mulai Abd-al-Malek (who died
during the battle) and Abu’l Abbas Ahmad-al-Mansur. The latter
became Sultan of all Morocco after the defeat and death of the
unfortunate Dom Sebastião. Al-Mansur belonged to a family of Sa’adi
Sharifs[41] (noblemen—descended from Fatima and Ali and therefore
from Muhammad) from the upper valley of the river Draa in South
Morocco. His ancestor, Muhammad-al-Mahdi, had overturned the
Marinide Sultan and founded the second Sharifian (Arab) or Saadian
dynasty. Nevertheless, the Portuguese retained most of their
fortified ports on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, and also Ceuta.
During the 60 years of the abeyance of the Portuguese monarchy
(1580-1640) these places became nominally Spanish, but returned to
Portugal with the restoration of the House of Bragança, though Ceuta
and Melilla were subsequently ceded to Spain, and Tangier to
England. Thus ended what might very well have been, but for the
battle of Kasr-al-Kabīr, the Portuguese Empire of Morocco.

At the end of the 12th century, other Sharifs of Yanbu, the coast
port of the holy city of Medina in Arabia, following returning
Moorish pilgrims, established themselves at Sijilmassa in Tafilalt,
or Filal, a country of Southern Morocco. One of them,
Hassan-bin-Kassim, increasing greatly in power, became in the 15th
century the founder of the present Sharifian dynasty of Morocco;
though some centuries elapsed before these Filali chiefs succeeded
in becoming supreme rulers over both Fez and Marrakesh. The Filali
Sultans did not displace the Saadian Sharifs till 1658.

But during the reign of the sixth Saadian monarch—Al-Mansur, also
surnamed “the Golden”—Morocco reached the acme of her power and
acquired a vast Nigerian dominion. At the close of the 15th century
a Muhammadan negro dynasty had arisen on the upper Niger, and in the
western Sudan. One of these negro kings, who made a pilgrimage to
Mecca, obtained from the descendant of the Abbaside khalifs residing
at Cairo the title of “Lieutenant of the Prince of Believers in the
Sudan.” He made Timbuktu[42] his capital, and it became a place of
great learning and flourishing commerce. His grandson,
Ishak-bin-Sokya[43], became rich and powerful, and attracted the
rapacity of the Saadian Sharifian Khalif of Morocco (Abu’l Abbas
al-Mansur, who had distinguished himself by wiping out the
Portuguese under Dom Sebastião at the battle of Kasr-al-Kabīr), and
had recently extended his rule across the Sahara to the oasis of
Twat[44]. The Moorish emperor attempted to pick a quarrel by
disputing this negro king’s right to the title of Lieutenant of the
Khalifs in the Sudan, demanded his vassalage, and a tax on the
Sahara salt mines along the route to Timbuktu. Ishak-bin-Sokya
refused, whereupon a Moorish army under Juder Basha was despatched
by Abu’l Abbas-al-Mansur in 1590 to conquer the Sudan. This army
crossed the Sahara, defeated Ishak-bin-Sokya, and captured Timbuktu,
but raised the siege of Gaghu or Gao, lower down the Niger, whither
Ishak had fled. A more vigorous commander, Mahmud Basha, completed
the Moorish conquest of the Sudan, a conquest which extended in its
effects to Bornu on the one hand and to Senegambia on the other, and
only faded away in the 18th century, mainly owing to the uprise of
the Fula and the attacks of the Tawareq. Gradually all Morocco was
brought under Sharifian rule; all European hold over the country was
eradicated; and the reign of culminating glory was that of the
Filali emperor Mulai Ismail, the “Bloodthirsty,” who ruled for 57
years, and is said to have left living children to the number of 548
boys and 340 girls. Mulai Ismail died in 1727. He had attained to
and maintained himself in supreme power by the introduction of
regiments of well-drilled Sudan Negroes; but the “nigrification” of
Morocco—the importation on a large scale of negro slaves and
soldiers—had begun much earlier in the conquest of North Africa by
the Lamtuna Berbers from the northern Niger, the “Almoravides.” But
the civilization and the conquering power of Morocco were largely
due to the “Ruma” or “Rumi” element, the Spanish Moors emigrating
from Spain and bringing into North-West Africa a powerful “White
Man” element—for they were often the descendants of the
Roman-Iberian people of Gothic Spain. They were remarkable for their
knowledge of firearms and their skill as artisans; and their
descendants are everywhere the “aristocracy” of Muhammadan North
Africa.

Morocco might have conquered and ruled all North Africa in the 16th
century but for the arrival of the Turks. The Turks, who had
replaced the Arabs of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Asia Minor as
Muhammadan rulers, had captured Constantinople in 1453, had seized
Egypt in 1517, and were becoming the backbone of the Muhammadan
power. When the Algerians and Tunisians appealed to Turkish pirates
for help against the attacks of the Christian Spaniards in the 16th
century, the Sultan of Constantinople took advantage of their
intervention to establish, through the Turkish Corsairs, Turkish
regencies in Algeria (1519), Tunis (1573), and Tripoli (1551)[45].
Morocco, however, always remained independent; and indeed, after the
extinction of the line of Abbasid Baghdad Khalifs at Cairo in 1538,
the great Sharifian sovereign, Al-Mansur, after his victory over the
Portuguese, declared himself Khalif over the Muhammadan world in
right of his descent from Fatima and Ali, and refused to recognize
the claim of the Ottoman Emperor of Constantinople to have acquired
the transfer of the Caliphate from Motawakkiq the last of the
Abbasids in 1517. Nevertheless, though Morocco remained a great
independent Muhammadan power, her princes borrowed many customs from
Turkey, such as the Turkish style of clothing, the Turkish method of
arranging troops in battle, and the title of Pasha (Basha).

Except in Morocco, Turkish control replaced Arab influence in
northern Africa, and extended by degrees far into the old Garamantan
kingdom of Fezzan, and across the Libyan Desert to the Red Sea. But
no matter whether Turk, Circassian, Greek, Albanian, Slav, or
Arabized Negro ruled in Berber North Africa, Muhammadan influence
and Arab culture continued to spread over all the northern half of
Africa. Somaliland, Sennār, Nubia, Kordofan, Darfur, Wadai, Bornu,
Hausa-land and the Sahara, much of Senegambia, and most of the
country within the bend of the Niger and along the banks of the
upper Volta were converted to Muhammadanism, and became familiar
with the Arab tongue as the religious language, and with some degree
of Arab civilization.

Egypt after the Arab invasion of 640-2 was governed from the Delta
of the Nile to the First Cataract by Arab governors deputed by the
Khalif of Baghdad. The Christian Copts and Greeks were not
materially interfered with, provided they paid their taxes
regularly. In 706 Arabic finally displaced Greek as the official
language of the country, and never subsequently lost its hold over
Egypt. Coptic (the degenerate form of Ancient Egyptian) gradually
sank into the position of a ritual language only connected with
religious exercises and literature; and Arabic since the 8th century
has been the universal speech of all Egypt, except in the Oasis of
Siwa, where a Berber dialect is still spoken, and among the tribes
inhabiting the lands between the Cataract Nile and the Red Sea, who
preserve their Hamitic (Gala-like) languages. A good deal of Arab
colonization of Upper and Lower Egypt, and of Nubia and Dongola,
took place between the 8th and the 12th centuries. In 828-32 a
serious rebellion of Copts and of malcontent Arabs was only
suppressed by the Baghdad Khalif introducing an army of 2000 Turks;
and from this time onwards the Turks had much to do with Egypt, as
they had with Syria and Mesopotamia, because the Arabs were losing
their energy and fighting capacity. After 856 most of the
functionaries in Egypt were Turks; and in 875 a Turkish governor,
Ahmad bin Tulūn, turned his governorship into a hereditary
sovereignty. The Tulunid dynasty of sultans governed Egypt till 905,
when the direct rule of the Baghdad Khalifs was resumed. Then, once
more, a Turkish governor was appointed to rule Egypt for the Khalif,
in 935, to whom was granted the kingly title of Ikshid. The Ikshids
governed until 969, when they were supplanted by the establishment
of the Fatimite Khalif Mu’izz-li-din-Allah already referred to, who
left Tunisia in 973 to take up his residence first in Alexandria and
then in newly-founded Cairo.

This revolution was really effected by a Jewish official, Yakub bin
Killis, and a Slav or Greek general, Jauhar, both of them converts
to Islam. The Fatimite Khalifs of Egypt rose for a short time to be
the greatest power in Islam, their empire extending from Tangier to
Aleppo, and nearly always including Syria. But the Khalifs soon
became puppet sovereigns, the rule being carried on in their name by
Jewish, Syrian, Negro, Turkish, or Kurd ministers. Between 1163 and
1170 the French and German crusaders invaded Egypt and for a short
time garrisoned Cairo. They were driven out by a Kurdish prefect of
Alexandria, Salah-ad-din Yusaf bin Ayub (“Joseph the son of Job”—the
famous “Saladin”), who at last swept away the fiction of these Shia
Khalifs, restored the Sunni form of Muhammadanism and proclaimed the
Abbasid Khalifs of Baghdad as spiritual leaders. Egypt has remained
Sunni ever since. Saladin however made himself “Malik” or King of
Egypt and Syria. His descendants ruled Egypt, Western Arabia and
such parts of Palestine as were not occupied by the Crusaders until
1260, when this Ayubite dynasty was replaced by that of the Turkish
slave, Bibars. The Ayubite kings of Egypt purchased large numbers of
boy slaves (_Mamluk_) and trained them as soldiers. They were
European Slavs, Greeks and Italians, Asiatic Turks, Circassians,
Kurds and Mongols. These dynasties of slave sultans recognized and
kept in their midst a puppet Abbasid Khalif, who after the capture
of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1260 resided in Cairo. The Mamluk Kings
governed Egypt until 1517, when this land was conquered by the
Ottoman Turks and the last of the Abbasid Khalifs was compelled to
confer the Muhammadan Caliphate (most illegally) on the Ottoman
Emperor of Rūm (Rome, i.e. Constantinople). But the Mamluk or slave
soldiers, derived from the races above mentioned, continued to exist
and to some extent to administer Egypt even under Turkish governors
till the invasion of the French in 1798; they revived again after
the French quitted Egypt (1801), till the last of them were
massacred by a Turkish (Macedonian-Albanian) major of artillery,
Muhammad Ali, who became the almost independent Pasha of Egypt and
founded the present dynasty of the Khedives.

During all this period of twelve hundred and twenty years (between,
let us say, 690 and 1910) while Northern Africa lay under Islamic
control, enormous numbers of Asiatics and Europeans colonized Egypt
and Mauretania—Arabs, Jews, Syrians; Turks, Kurds and some Persians;
Greeks, Slavs (sold by the conquering Germans to Jewish dealers who
resold these Poles, Chekhs, Wends, Croats and Serbs to the Spanish
Arabs, the Berbers, Egyptians and Turks); Italians, Spaniards,
Germans; French; and even English and Irish. One is also struck with
the power wielded over the Muhammadan world of North Africa by the
Jew, which was not displaced till the modern Christian European
conquest of North Africa.

Arabs completely displaced the Hamitic tribes on the Desert Nile in
Nubia, Dongola and Sennār after the 11th and 12th centuries, and in
the last-named country, Sennār, founded the Funj dynasty of kings
which powerfully affected North-East Africa from the 13th to the
18th centuries. In the 12th century, Somaliland was converted to
Islam and from that period onwards permeated by Arabs. From the
middle of the 8th century, the pre-Islamic settlements of southern
Arabs along the East coast of Africa were revived by fresh bands of
militant traders and missionaries of Islam. Arabs established
themselves once more at Sofala, at Sena and Quelimane on the lower
Zambezi, at Moçambique, Kilwa, Zanzibar, Mombasa, and various ports
on the Somali coast. A colony of Muhammadanized Persians joined them
in the 10th century at Lamu; and Persian as well as Muhammadan
Indian influence began to be very apparent in architecture on the
East coast of Africa. The powerful Sultanate of Kilwa was founded in
the 10th century, and exercised for some time a dominating influence
over all the other Arab settlements on the East coast of Africa.
Arabs, as already related, had discovered the island of Madagascar,
which they first made clearly known to history. In Islamic times
they again settled as traders on its north and north-west coasts,
while the adjoining Comoro Islands or Islands of the “Full Moon”
(Komr) became little Arab sultanates practically in the hands of
Arabized Negroes. Until the coming of the Portuguese in the 16th
century these Arab East African states were sparsely colonized by
Himyaritic or South Arabian Arabs from the Hadhramaut, Yaman, and
Aden. But a development of power and enterprise amongst the Arabs of
Maskat, which led to their driving away the Portuguese from the
Persian Gulf and subsequently attacking them on the East coast of
Africa, caused the Maskat[46] Arab to become the dominant type. The
Maskat Arabs founded the modern Zanzibar sultanate, which quite late
in the 19th century was separated by the intervention of the British
Government from the parent state of ’Oman.

As the result of the Muhammadan invasion of Africa from Arabia—only
brought to a close at the end of the 19th century—it may be stated
that Arabized Berbers ruled in North and North-West Africa; Arabized
Turks ruled in North and North-East Africa; Arabized Negroes ruled
on the Niger, and in the Central Sudan; Arabs ruled more directly on
the Nile, and on the Nubian coast; and the Arabs of south Arabia and
of ’Oman governed the East African coast, and eventually carried
their influence, and to some extent their rule, inland to the great
Central African lakes, and even to the Upper Congo.

The Muhammadan colonization of Africa was the first event which
brought that part of the continent beyond the Sahara and Upper
Egypt within the cognizance of the world of civilization and
history. The Arabs introduced from Syria and Mesopotamia an
architecture—“Saracenic”—which was an offshoot of the
Byzantine[47], with a dash of Persian or Indian influence. This
architecture received at the hands of the Berbers and Egyptians an
extraordinarily beautiful development, which penetrated northwards
into Spain and Sicily and in a modified type into Italy, and
southwards reached the Lower Niger, the Upper Nile, the vicinity
of the Zambezi, and the north coast of Madagascar. They gave to
all the northern third of Africa a _lingua franca_ in Arabic, and
besides spreading certain ideas of Greek medicine and philosophy,
they taught the Koran, which admitted all those Berber and Negro
populations into that circle of civilized nations which has
founded so much of its hopes, philosophy and culture on the
Semitic Scriptures. The Arabs, especially of Yaman and ’Oman, were
the means, more or less direct (especially through their seafaring
trade with India), of enlarging the food supply and means of
transport of the negro and negroid, and of conveying to Europe a
few useful African products, such as coffee. They had much to do
with the introduction of the Indian buffalo into Egypt, and the
camel into the Sahara and Libyan deserts, Nigeria and Somaliland.
Similarly they extended the range of the domestic horse and ass,
of goats, and sheep and poultry in Negro Africa. They certainly
introduced the lime and orange, and the sugar cane, and possibly
the banana; though this last may date back to pre-Islamic times,
like wheat and rice.

----------------------------------------------------------------

MUHAMMADAN AFRICA

Plate II.

Sir H.H. Johnston del^t. W.&A.K. Johnston Limited. Edinburgh &
London

EXPLANATORY NOTE
[yellow] Indicates approximate area over which Islam is the
dominating religion at the present day
(_N.B.—The present area is larger than it has ever been in the
past_)

_Dotted spots of colour illustrate sporadic establishments of
Muhammadanism_

_The Boundaries of most important Muhammadan Empires when at their
greatest extent are shown in coloured lines_

----------------------------------------------------------------

Through their contact with Europeans, Arabs and Arabized Berbers
first sketched out with some approach to correctness the geography
of Inner Africa, and of the African coasts and islands. The direct
and immediate result of this Muhammadan conquest of Africa was the
drawing into that continent of the Portuguese—themselves but
recently emancipated from Muhammadan rule, and still retaining some
conversance with Arabic, a language already used in African and
Eastern commerce from Tangier and the Senegal to Ternate and the
Spice Islands off the coasts of New Guinea. Thanks to this intimate
acquaintance with Muhammadans, and their _lingua franca_, the
Portuguese were now to advance considerably the colonization of
Africa by the Caucasian race.

-----

Footnote 27:

Tawareq is the plural of an Arabic word, Tarqi, a raider.

Footnote 28:

The origin of the name Allah applied by Muhammadans to the Supreme
God. Allah acquired a masculine sense although in its original
form the word was feminine.

Footnote 29:

Jerba, usually called Meninx by the ancients, is supposed to have
been the Island of Lotos-Eaters of Greek mythology.

Footnote 30:

The origin of the name Kairwan has been much disputed. The present
writer, visiting this place some years ago, was told by a native
that the word was the Arab name for a small bustard-like courser
(a bird which the French call Poule de Kairouan), and that, seeing
this bird in large numbers—where it is still to be found—in the
marshy plain on which the city was built, the Arabs gave its name
to the town. Kairwan was chosen as the site for the Muhammadan
capital by the early Arab invaders because it was considered
sufficiently far from the sea-coast to be beyond the reach of
attack from a Byzantine fleet.

Footnote 31:

Count Julian appears to have been a Byzantine governor on the
coast of Morocco, who after the Byzantine downfall to some extent
attached himself to the Romanized Gothic kingdom of Spain.

Footnote 32:

This is the Arab rendering of her name. Dahia meant “queen” and
Al-Kahina “the wise woman” or “prophetess.” This remarkable
personage was from a Berber tribe, the Jorāwa, which had been
converted to Judaism and was partly Jewish in blood.

Footnote 33:

Jewish colonies began to settle in North Africa soon after the
destruction of Jerusalem, or even as far back as the Ptolemaic
rule over Egypt. The Jews were particularly attracted to Tunisia
and Tripoli (the former Carthaginian coast) by their kinship in
race and language with the Phoenicians.

Footnote 34:

The rocky peninsula where Tarik landed was called by the Arabs
Jibl-al-Tarik, a name which subsequently became corrupted by the
Spaniards into Gibraltar.

Footnote 35:

There has been a succession of great cities since prehistoric
times ranging round about or situated on the site of Cairo—an
“inevitable” city site, because it is at the head of the Nile
Delta. Memphis was only 12 miles away, and Heliopolis or On less
than half that distance. Babel or Babylon was built by emigrants
from old Babylon on the Euphrates on the actual site of Cairo in
about 525 B.C. This became a Roman city and was succeeded by the
Arab Al Fostat or Masr.

Footnote 36:

A little more than one-third of the modern population of
Cyrenaica, Tripoli, and Mauretania is of Arab race; but
seven-tenths of the North African population speak Arabic and not
Berber.

Footnote 37:

Prince of the Faithful.

Footnote 38:

From the Arabic _Wahad_, “The One.”

Footnote 39:

It also later on left traces of its temporary occupation on the
island of Jerba, where a fine Spanish fortress remains intact to
this day.

Footnote 40:

Arzila.

Footnote 41:

_Sharif_, plur. _Shorfa_, means in Arabic “nobly born.” The first
Sharifian Arab dynasty ruled Morocco from 788 to 970. Then
followed a long succession of Berber dynasties till 1524, when the
Sa’adi Sharifs from the upper Draa began to rule Morocco. The
third Sharifian Arab dynasty—Filali, from Ta-filal-t—succeeded the
Sa’adi Sultans in the 17th century and still occupies the Moroccan
throne.

Footnote 42:

Timbuktu had been founded by a Tawareq (Berber) tribe about 1100
A.C.

Footnote 43:

or Askia.

Footnote 44:

Now in the hinterland of Algeria, and occupied by the French.

Footnote 45:

Algeria and Tunis were conquered by Turkish pirates, quite as much
from the mild Berber dynasties possessing them as from the Spanish
encroachments. Tripoli was taken from the Knights of Malta.
Gradually all these three Regencies detached themselves from the
Turkish Empire in everything but the mere acknowledgment of
suzerainty; but, in 1835, the Turks abruptly resumed the direct
control of Tripoli and Barka, to which they added Fezzan in 1842.

Footnote 46:

or ’Oman. Maskat is the capital of the principality of ’Oman (a
word which is really pronounced ’ūman) in East Arabia, ruled by an
“Imam” or laicized descendant of a line of preacher-kings or
“Prince Bishops,” leaders of the Ibadite sect of Puritan
Muhammadans, believing mostly that sin was worse than unbelief.
The Ibadites were identical in origin with the N. African Khariji
already described, whose tenets, in the 18th and 19th centuries,
were unconsciously repeated by the followers of Muhammad ibn
Abd-al-Wahhab, the conquering “Wahhabis” of Nejd.

Footnote 47:

The architectural style known as Saracenic made its beginnings in
Inner Syria and Mesopotamia a century or nearly so before the
Muhammadan invasion; and the “Horseshoe Arch” or the arch
prolonged for more than half a circle was invented by Hellenized
Syrians in the sixth century of this era. The “Mahrab” of the
Mosque and some of the doming were added by the Arabs and actually
descend from the symbols of phallic worship.