Ifriqiya

Tunisia’s history with Africa is exceptional, and what could be more symbolic than the fact that the African continent is called by Tunisia’s former name ‘Africa’ and ‘Ifriqiya’?

Abd al-Rahman was only one of several surviving Umayyad family members to make their way to Ifriqiya at this time.

After the conquest and following the popular conversion, Ifriqiya constituted a natural and proximous center for an Arab-Islamic regime in North Africa, the focus of culture and society.

As the Banu Halali tribes took control of the plains, the local sedentary people were forced to take refuge in the mountains; in prosperous central and northern Ifriqiya farming gave way to pastoralism.

At this time, Ifriqiya was in ferment.

A type of volume then current, the tabaqat (concerning the handling of documents), indirectly illuminates elite life in Aghlabid Ifriqiya.

From Egypt the Caliph 'Abdul-Malik had reinforced al-Nu'man in 698, who then reentered Ifriqiya.

His armies intervened in Zirid Ifriqiya, removing the Christian Sicilians by 1160.

In 1048 the Zirid ruler Al-Muizz ibn Badis rejected his city's obedience to the Fatimids and re-established Sunni rites throughout all of Ifriqiya.

In Morocco, the Almohads were to be followed by the Merinids ; in Ifriqiya (Tunisia), by the Hafsids (who claimed to be the heirs of the unitarian Almohads).

See below, section Berber Role per the Umayyad Conquest of Ifriqiya.

Shortly thereafter, Berber Kharijites set up an independent state in North Africa in 801. Within 50 years the Idrisids in the Maghreb and Aghlabids of Ifriqiya and a little later the Tulunids and Ikshidids of Misr were effectively independent in Africa.

The ambitious Ibn Habib, a member of the illustrious Fihrid family, had long sought to carve out Ifriqiya as a private dominion for himself.

The Maliki school was introduced to Ifriqiya by the jurist Asad ibn al-Furat (759-829), who nonetheless wavered between these two schools of law.

The Muhallabids (771-793) negotiated with the 'Abbasids a wide discretion in the exercise of their governorship of Ifriqiya.

These men bragged about the country of the Kutama in western Ifriqiya (today part of Algeria), and the hostility of the Kutama towards, and their complete independence from, the Aghlabid rulers.

These rough Arab newcomers did constitute a second large Arab immigration into Ifriqiya, and accelerated the process of Arabization, with the Berber languages decreasing in use in rural areas as a result of this Bedouin ascendancy.

To the south in Ifriqiya, the Fatimids had created an independent caliphate that threatened to attract the allegiance of the Muslim population, who had suffered under the harsh rule of Abdullah.

Yet once installed Fatimid rule greatly disrupted social harmony in Ifriqiya; they imposed high, unorthodox taxes, leading to the Kharijite revolt.

Yet twenty years later, by 1184, the revolt by the Banu Ghaniya had spread from the Balearic Islands to Ifriqiya ( Tunisia ), causing problems for the Almohad regime for the next fifty years.