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.

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.