The Muslim Conquest of North Africa, by Agha Ibrahim Akram

“How did North Africa, alternately bastion of Carthage, Rome and Byzantium, land of the Berbers but also of the Vandals, Greeks or Latins, stronghold of the first Christians, come into the orbit of the young Islamic civilization to become the Muslim and Arab-Berber Maghreb that we know today? (…)

It was undoubtedly the longest, and toughest, of the first conquests of the Muslim era. Eight major campaigns, spread over more than half a century, were necessary to open the country to Islam and overcome the fierce resistance of King Gregory of Africa, the emperors of Constantinople, but also the famous Kahina or again of the Berber chief Koceila. They were often bloody and pitiless, and excesses were legion, on one side as on the other; the times wanted it. (…)