The history of early Islamic North Africa remains in great part to be written, especially in light of a new approach to the evidence and key debates about the Arab conquest. In keeping with this perspective, Corisande Fenwick offers in this short book, written for a wider audience, a useful introduction to the material data and an archaeological overview on life in early Islamic North Africa. Different kinds of hurdles, historiographical, evidential and disciplinary, explain why our knowledge, not to say our vision, of the Arab conquest and the progressive spread of Muslim rule in North Africa by the seventh to the ninth centuries remains partial or even biased. This state of knowledge, recalled by Fenwick in the preamble of her study, is linked to both the weight of history and the consequences of European colonisation in the Maghreb. The colonial project, which used Roman heritage as a veil of historical legitimacy, contributed to delaying the development of archaeological research dedicated to the period following the Arab conquest in North Africa that is commonly referred to as ‘Islamic archaeology’. Previous scientific investigations have been prone to certain biases. From a methodological point of view, as Fenwick points out, the emphasis has been regularly placed on a handful of sites, because they were either famous Roman towns that failed at some point in the Middle Ages, or they were spectacular but short-lived Islamic dynastic foundations. Archaeological investigations have focused on these sites and consequently they provide the dataset; that focus in turn leads to problematic interpretative issues. This emphasis of the archaeological research and its resulting data, especially the evidence from abandoned Roman towns, lent support to narratives of depopulation, urban ruin and societal collapse in the seventh and eighth centuries, purportedly as a result of the Arab conquest. It is clear that the segregation of disciplines has hindered the scientific dialogue relating to the period of transition between the end of antiquity and the Middle Ages in North Africa. The lack of data and published studies has major consequences. Our limited understanding of ceramics produced immediately before and after the Arab conquest, and the consequent absence of tight ceramic chronologies, explains more broadly why the eighth century and much of the ninth remain ‘invisible’ to archaeologists, who have major difficulties in dating activity in North Africa during these centuries. The dearth of evidence for this period is then routinely used to support arguments that the Arab conquest and the years between AD 650 and 700 represent the chronological terminus of both the ancient world and ‘classical Africa’. The promising results obtained by recent archaeological investigations such as those undertaken in Morocco (in Volubilis, for example) demonstrate, however, the possibility of supplementing our knowledge and challenging traditional interpretations.
Fenwick uses the available archaeological data to propose a fresh approach to understanding the implications of the Arab conquest for the occupation of cities and the countryside, and more broadly its impact on the economy and social life. The intervention of the Umayyad caliphate had important consequences for the urban network from the beginning of the conquest, with major regional differences between, on the one side, eastern Maghreb, that is to say Ifriqiya, and central and western Maghreb on the other. Compared to the dense urban network that was established by the end of the late antique period, ninth-century Ifriqiya appears a sparsely urbanised landscape of large towns, characterised by an economic demand and urban growth linked to the presence of a Muslim garrison, while the new cities of Kairouan and Tunis became the most important. By comparison, in central and western Maghreb, the period from the late eighth to the eleventh centuries saw a process of urban expansion involving local populations. Beyond regional trajectories, old cities descended from ancient classical Africa, along with newly founded cities, had varied fortunes. The examples developed by Fenwick illustrate how variable were the speed and chronology of changes in urban patterns. All these cities nevertheless share a common trajectory, marked by the emergence of a fully Islamic urban aesthetic by the late eighth and more commonly ninth century that replicated the model of the walled medieval Islamic city centred around a mosque.
In terms of religious evolution, different regional patterns can be perceived. Islam was propagated quickly in the central and southern Maghreb in the eighth century, although this was more superficial in some places than others. This rapid evolution contributed to the emergence of competing states to the caliphate, which used Islam as a source of legitimacy. In Ifriqiya the spread of this religion and the decline of Christian practices were more progressive phenomena. Indeed, an initial phase of coexistence between churches and mosques seems to have preceded an increased abandonment or re-use of churches in the ninth century with the rise of the Aghlabids. By the eleventh century, Islam became the dominant religion across North Africa with major consequences on the daily life of its inhabitants.
If social and economic implications of the Arab conquest can more easily be perceived in urban contexts, the signs of the increase in agriculture during the ninth century confirm that this period was not one of a complete collapse of agriculture and abandonment of the countryside. In the same way, the assumption that the Arab conquest had immediate negative consequences for trade in North Africa must also be reassessed.
In summary, this illuminating synthesis by Fenwick offers a fresh understanding of why the traditional generalised perception of the Arab conquest of the Mediterranean and North Africa should, and must, be nuanced as well as urgently better studied.
