The Muslim invasion and takeover of Christian North Africa

North Africa in the 7^th century, was like Egypt, a rich and fertile land.  Corn, wheat, vegetables, fruit, wine, flax, honey and other commodities were produced.  Mining, metallurgy, industry, linens, ceramics moved were deposited for exchange in large and established ports which proliferated along the Mediterranean coast, plied and supported by large merchant navies.  It was an advanced Christian civilisation, under the control and some would say the ‘yoke’ of the Byzantines.  Heavy taxes, civil wars, and the usual Roman preoccupation with corruption and intrigue marred and scarred the civil society.  In general, however, there is no doubt that Christian North Africa, once the granary and resource entrepot for the Roman empire along with Egypt, was a very civilised and rich area. 

North Africa’s decline, still evident today, can be directly linked to the Muslim invasions and forced Muslim conversions of the North African Romano-Christian-Berber populations.  North Africa’s poverty is a direct result of this devastation.  The eradication of the foundations of agriculture, industry, learning and administration were so complete, that by the end of the 12^th century, it was clear that North Africa was not only going to be eclipsed by a more dominant, advanced Christian Europe, but would be completely controlled by the Christian states to the north, who were by the 12th century far ahead of North Africa in every aspect of socio-economic-cultural and religious life.

During the course of the 7^th century the Muslim invasions decimated one of the richest regions on the planet.  The great expansion from Egypt ‘west’ to the Atlantic was deemed ‘destiny’ for the Muslim Jihad.  It began in earnest in 666 a Muslim general bin Nafi, set out with a force of 10.000 men, entered southern Tunisia and slaughtered thousands of Christians, pulled down their churches, and established Muslim rule in the hinterland of what had been the ancient Carthaginian empire.  Muslim sources delighted in recounting entire cities being enslaved by Nafi, and the endless destruction of Christian churches en route.  The carnage was so awful, the pile of dead and the chains of the enslaved so deep and long, that many Berber chieftains without knowing anything about Muhammad’s cult, said the Shahada and converted.  Tribes from Tunisia down to the Sudan which means ‘Black Lands’ in Arabic, were thus coerced into joining the Jihad.  The Muslim chroniclers at the time thought the Berbers were largely worthless and treacherous, with their conversions being no more than aesthetic covering, more for personal survival than out of any solid convictions.  Endless revolts and rebellions over 30 years would prove this assessment to be correct.

Nafi’s reign of Jihad terror took his armies across North Africa, into Morocco and to the Atlantic.  Countless Berbers and natives were forcibly converted, at least ostensibly to the Arab-Muslim cult.  In 683 Nafi was killed in battle.  He is still venerated by Muslims as one of the great Jihadi’s on a par with Khalid ‘The Sword of Allah’ who conquered Syria.  Like Khalid Nafi enjoyed limitless sex slaves, traded in both male and female slaves and had little trouble in killing and murdering Christian or Berber innocents in order to spread his terror and force acquiescence from the general population. 

Nafi’s example of Jihad, rape and slavery was enthusiastically taken up by his successors.  An example is the Yemenite born governor of Africa, a Nusayr, who in 698, began to wage battles of genocide to completely eradicate Christian-Romano and Berber tribes who resisted the Muslim occupation.  A Muslim historian al-Maqqari (1578-1632) documented the Jihad in North Africa, wrote that the Christian and Berbers would regularly revolt and renounce their conversion to Muhammad’s cult.  Starting in 698, Nusayr embarked on a bloody and genocidal series of campaigns in which according to Maqqari, hundreds of thousands were killed, and hundreds of thousands more enslaved, perhaps even more than half a million were captured as used as slave-sex chattel.  In total there is no reason to doubt that a million Christian and Berber men, women and children, within 15 years, were either taken as slaves or killed by Muslims in North Africa.  It was truly a campaign that the modern human-rights activist would catalogue as a genocide.

An energetic Berber Queen named Kahina persisted against the Muslim Jihad but was defeated and beheaded.  That seemed to end the resistance of the Christian and Berber tribes.  In 698 Carthage finally fell amid great slaughter and captivity.  Nusayr destroyed and razed the entire city – the ruins of which are still visible today.  According to al-Maqqari, when the tribes of the ‘dreary plains’ of Africa saw the fate of Kahina and her tribe (many of whom were slaughtered or enslaved of course), they consented to conversion.  Nusayr took many of the men from the African tribes and in Arabic, taught them the details and benefits of Jihad – beneficial that is if you are on the winning side.  By 709 North Africa was under Muslim control.

Ironically it would be the non-white Berbers, former slaves of the Muhammadan cult who would provide the core and nexus of the great Muslim invasion of Spain in 710 A.D. and again in the 11^th century; and who would become the enslavers of non-Muslims and Christians in Spain and beyond.