User:Alexanderkowal/sandbox/History of Africa: North Africa

Please don't delete, I'm going to draft the other sections of History of Africa#Post-classical period (500–1500) before adding it to the page.

intro/premise

North-East: Roman Egypt, religion, Nubia
Maghreb: Berber kingdoms, religion

birth of Islam - context for invasion - Arab conquest

North-East: Tulunids - Ikhshidids
Maghreb: Rustamids, Idrisids, Aghlabids

Fatimid Caliphate, relations with Muslim world

Maghreb: Almoravids, Zirids, Hammadids - Hilalian invasion - interior; Banu Khattab, Mzab, Tuggurt - Almohads - Hafsids, Marinids, Zayyanids - Wattassids

North-East: Ayyubids - Mamluks - Nubia?, Daju, Tunjur

Quick Rashidun conquest of Egypt following Byzantine collapse in region (Syria) Rashidun defeated Exarchate but didn't annex and accepted annual tribute. Ummayyads invaded but were beaten back by Exarchate and Altava. Kahina and Aures ruled the whole of the Maghreb for 5 years.

pg 51 empire's disintegration, Zanj Rebellion and Fatimids attempt to control whole of Muslim world pg 52, Zirids, Hilalian invasion, Khurasanids

Khäridjite sects, the Ibädites, the Nukkärites and the Sufrites found a fertile soil for their doctrines among many Berbers dissatisfied with the oppressive Umayyad regime. Followers of Abrahamic religions/'revealed books' were not forcibly converted, Dhimmi tax. Followers of traditional religion chose either conversion or defeat in death or slavery. The Fatimids struggled to convert Berbers from Kharidjite to Shiite.pg=66 Almoravids returned Maghreb to Sunnism.pg=67

Northern Africa

The turn of the 6th century saw much of North Africa controlled by the Byzantine Empire. Christianity was the state religion of the empire, and Semitic and Coptic subjects faced persecution due to their 'heretical' Monophysitic churches, and paid a heavy tax. Roman Egypt covered Egypt whilst the Exarchate of Africa, which had a sizeable Jewish minority, covered much of Ifriqiya and the eastern Maghreb, surrounded by numerous Berber kingdoms that followed a version of Christianity heavily syncretised with traditional Berber religion. The interior was dominated by various groupings of tribal confederations, namely the nomadic Zenata, the Masmuda of Sanhaja in modern-day Morocco, and the other two Sanhaja in the Sahara in modern-day Algeria, who all mainly followed traditional Berber religion.

In the 7th century, the inception of Islam facilitated the unification of nomadic Arab tribes by bond of a common faith, preventing their historical internecine fighting along religious divisions. The main motivation for expansion was to spread Islam and convert pagans, with emphasis on the toleration of people practising other monotheistic or Abrahamic religions. Led by ingenious generals, the nascent Rashidun Caliphate won a series of crucial victories against the established powers to expand rapidly. The Byzantines, exhausted financially and militarily from previous wars in the region, evacuated Syria in 643. With the regional Byzantine presence and power shattered, the Muslim armies quickly conquered Egypt by 642, generally facing little resistance by subjects odious of Byzantine rule. Their attention would then turn west to the Maghreb where the Exarchate of Africa had declared independence from Constantinople under Gregory the Patrician. The Muslims readily annexed Ifriqiya (modern-day Libya and Tunisia) and in 647 defeated and killed Gregory and his army decisively in battle. Not wishing to annex the territory, they accepted the proposal of annual tribute from the populations of the Maghreb. After a brief civil war, the Rashidun were supplanted by the Umayyad dynasty in 661 and the capital of the Muslim empire moved from Medina to Damascus. With intentions to expand further in all directions, the Muslims returned to the Maghreb to find the Byzantines had reinforced the Exarchate and allied with the Kingdom of Altava under Kusaila, who was approached prior to battle and convinced to convert to Islam. Initially having become neutral, Kusaila objected to integration into the empire and in 683 destroyed the poorly supplied Arab army and took the newly-found Kairouan, causing an epiphany among the Berber that this conflict was not just against the Byzantine's. The Arabs returned and in 690 defeated Kusaila and Altava, and, after a set-back, expelled the Byzantines from North Africa. To the west, Kahina of the Kingdom of the Aurès declared opposition to the Arab invasion and repelled their armies, securing her position as the uncontested ruler of the Maghreb. After five years had passed, the Arabs received reinforcements and in 701 the kingdom was defeated and Kahina killed. They completed their conquest of the rest of the Maghreb, with large swathes of Berbers embracing Islam, and the combined Arab and Berber armies would use this territory as a springboard into Iberia to expand the Muslim empire further.

Mass amounts of Berber and Coptic people willingly converted to Islam, and under the Umayyads followers of Abrahamic or monotheistic religions comprising the Dhimmi class were permitted to practice their religion and exempted from military service in exchange for a tax, which was improperly extended to include converts. Followers of traditional Berber religion, which were mostly those of tribal confederations in the interior, were violently oppressed and often given the ultimatum to convert to Islam or face either death or enslavement. Converted natives were permitted to participate in the governing of the Muslim empire in order to quell the enormous administrative problems owing to the Arab's lack of experience governing and rapid expansion. Unorthodox sects such as the Kharijite, Ibadi, Isma'ili, Nukkarite and Sufrite found fertile soil among many Berbers dissatisfied with the oppressive Umayyad regime, with religion being utilised as a political tool to foster organisation. In the 740s the Berber Revolt rocked the caliphate and the Berbers took control over the Maghreb, whilst revolts in Ifriqiya were suppressed. The Abbasid dynasty came to power via revolution in 750 and attempted to reconfigure the caliphate to be multi-ethnic rather than Arab exclusive, however this wasn't enough to prevent gradual disintegration on its peripheries. Various short-lived native dynasties would form states such as the Barghawata in west modern-day Morocco hailing from the Masmuda tribal grouping, the Ifranid dynasty in modern-day Algeria, and the Midrarid dynasty in Sijilmasa, both hailing from the Zenata. The Idrisid dynasty, descending from Muhammad, would come to rule most of modern-day Morocco with the support of the Masmuda, whilst the growing Ibadi movement among the Zenata culminated in the Rustamid Imamate, an Ibadi theocracy centred on Tahert, modern-day Algeria. At the turn of the 9th century the Abbasids sphere of influence would degrade further with the Aghlabids controlling Ifriqiya under only nominal Abbasid rule and in 868 when the Tulunids wrestled the independence of Egypt for a four decades before again coming under Abbasid control. Late in the 9th century, a revolt by East African slaves in the Abbasid's homeland of Iraq diverted its resources away from its other territories, devastating important ports in the Persian Gulf, and was eventually put down after decades of violence, resulting in between 300,000-2,500,000 dead.

This gradual bubbling of disintegration of the Middle Eastern caliphate boiled over when the Fatimid dynasty rose out of the Bavares tribal confederation and in 909 conquered the Aghlabids to gain control over all of Ifriqiya. Holding the ambition to rule the Muslim world proclaiming Isma'ilism, they established a caliphate rivalling the Abbasid Caliphate, who followed Sunni Islam. The nascent caliphate quickly conquered the ailing Rustamid Imamate and fought a proxy war against the remnants of the Umayyad dynasty centred in Cordoba, resulting the eastern Maghreb coming under the control of the vassalized Zirid dynasty, who hailed from the Sanhaja. In 969 the Fatimids finally conquered Egypt against a weakened Abbasid Caliphate after decades of attempts, moving their capital to Cairo and deferring Ifriqiya to the Zirids. From there they conquered up to modern-day Syria and Hejaz, securing the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The Fatimids became absorbed by the eastern realms of their empire, and in 972, after encouragement from Fakirs, the Zirids changed their allegiance to recognise the Abbasid Caliphate. In retaliation the Fatimids commissioned an invasion by nomadic Arab tribes to punish them in the Hilalian invasion of Ifriqiya, leading to their disintegration with the Khurasanid dynasty and Arab tribes inhabiting Ifriqiya, to be later displaced by the Norman Kingdom of Africa. In the late 10th and early 11th centuries the Fatimids would lose the Maghreb to the Hammadids in modern-day Algeria and the Maghrawa in modern-day Morocco, both from Zenata. In 1053 the Saharan Sanhaja, spurred on by puritanical Sunni Islam, conquered Sijilmasa and captured Aoudaghost from the Ghana Empire to control the affluent trans-Saharan trade routes in the Western Sahara, forming the Almoravid dynasty before conquering Maghrawa and intervening in the reconquest of Iberia by the Christian powers on the side of the endangered Muslim taifas, which were produced from the fall of the remnant Umayyad Caliphate in Cordoba. The Almoravids incorporated the taifas into their dynasty, enjoying initial success, until a devastating ambush crippled their military leadership, and throughout the 12th century they gradually lost territory to the Christians. To the east, the Fatimids saw their empire start to collapse in the Middle East in 1061, beginning with the loss of the holy cities to the Sharifate of Mecca and exacerbated by rebellion in Cairo. The Seljuk Turks, who saw themselves as the guardian of the Abbasid Caliphate, capitalised and conquered much of their territories in the east, however the Fatimids repelled them from encroaching on Egypt. Amid the Christians' First Crusade against the Seljuks, the Fatimids opportunistically took back Jerusalem, but then lost it again to the Christians in humiliating defeat. The Fatimid's authority collapsed due to intense internal struggle in political rivalries and religious divisions, amid Christian invasions of Egypt, creating a power vacuum in North Africa. The Zengid dynasty, nominally under Seljuk suzerainty, invaded on the pretext of defending Egypt from the Christians, and usurped the position of vizier in the Caliphate.

Following the assassination of the previous holder, the position of vizier passed onto Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub (commonly referred to as Saladin). After a joint Zengid-Fatimid effort repelled the Christians and he had put down a revolt from the Fatimid army, Saladin eventually deposed the Fatimid caliph in 1171 and established the Ayyubid dynasty in its place, choosing to recognise the Abbasid Caliphate. From there the Ayyubids captured Cyrenaica, and went on a prolific campaign to conquer Arabia from the Zengids and the Yemeni Hamdanids, Palestine from the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem, and Syria and Upper Mesopotamia from other Seljuk successor states. To the west, there was a new domestic threat to Almoravid rule; a religious movement headed by Ibn Tumart from the Masmuda tribal grouping, who was considered by his followers to be the true Mahdi. Initially fighting a guerilla war from the Atlas mountains, they descended from the mountains in 1130 but were crushed in battle, with Ibn Tumart dying shortly after. The movement consolidated under the leadership of self-proclaimed caliph Abd al-Mu'min and, after gaining the support of various tribes of the Zenata, swept through the Maghreb, conquering the Hammadids, the Hilalian Arab tribes (who's militaristic display caused them to be invited to inhabit modern-day Morocco), and the Norman Kingdom of Africa, before gradually conquering the Almoravid remnant in Al-Andalus, extending their rule from the western Sahara and Iberia to Ifriqiya by the turn of the 13th century. The Christians capitalised on internal conflict within the Almohads in 1225 and mercilessly swept through the anarchy with the Almohads unable to hold against the momentum, leading to the loss of Iberia to the Christians and the Emirate of Granada by 1228. Following this the embattled Almohads of Sanhaja gradually lost territory to the Marinids of Zenata in modern-day Morocco, the Zayyanids of Zenata in modern-day Algeria, and the Hafsids of Masmuda in modern-day Tunisia, before finally being extinguished in 1269. Meanwhile, after defeating the Christians' Fifth Crusade in 1221, internal divisions involving Saladin's descendants appeared within the Ayyubid dynasty, crippling the empire's unity. In 1248 the Christians began the Seventh Crusade with intent to conquer Egypt, but were decisively defeated by the embattled Ayyubids who had relied on Mamluk generals. The Ayyubid sultan attempted to alienate the victorious Mamluks, who revolted, killing him and seizing power in Egypt, with rule given to a military caste of Mamluks headed by the Bahri dynasty, whilst the Ayyubid empire was destroyed in the Mongol invasions of the Levant. Following the Mongol Siege of Baghdad in 1258, the Mamluks re-established the Abbasid Caliphate in Cairo, and over the next few decades conquered the Crusader states and, assisted by civil war in the Mongol Empire, they defeated the Mongols, before consolidating their rule over the Levant.

Nubia

To their south-west, the kingdoms of Makuria, Alodia, and Nobatia divided the region of Nubia, however Makuria would conquer Nobatia in the early 7th century to become the dominant power in the region.

The Muslims launched a campaign against the Makurians but were beaten back in battle, in a rare defeat owing to skilled Nubian archery and natural defences. The Rashidun armies returned to Egypt and would again invade Makuria in 652 only to again be repelled in battle, leading them both to sign a treaty stipulating peace, which would dictate the relations between Egypt and Nubia for over seven centuries.