2 - The central lands of North Africa and Sicily, until the beginning of the Almohad period

Summary

Introduction

The crisis of the Islamic world in the fifth/eleventh century, when the lands of the former Arab empire were overrun by barbarians from beyond its borders – Turks in the east, Berbers in the west – was brought about in the central Mediterranean by the invasion of Ifrīqiya by the Arab tribes of the Banū Hilāl and the invasion of Sicily by the Normans. Ifrīqiya was the old Byzantine province of Africa, from eastern Algeria to Tripolitania; Sicily had been conquered and annexed to Ifrīqiya in the third/ninth century, but had become independent when the Fāṭimids left for Egypt in 361/972. The Arab invasion put an end to central government in Ifrīqiya, while that of the Normans imposed a Christian monarchy upon Sicily. In the middle of the sixth/twelfth century the Normans briefly took possession of the Ifrīqiyan littoral, but the adventure ended with the Almohad conquest in 554–5/1159–60. In the interval, Ifrīqiya had become a land of city-states and tribal lordships, while Norman rule in Sicily had prepared the way for the disappearance of its Muslim population in the course of the next century.