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12th century Norman area in North Africa
The Kingdom of Africa was an extension of the frontier zone of the Kingdom of Sicily in the former Roman province of Africa, corresponding to Tunisia and parts of Algeria and Libya today. The main primary sources for the kingdom are Arabic (Muslim); the Latin (Christian) sources are scanter.
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The Kingdom of Africa was an extension of the frontier zone of the Kingdom of Sicily in the former Roman province of Africa (Ifrīqiya in Arabic), corresponding to Tunisia and parts of Algeria and Libya today. The main primary sources for the kingdom are Arabic (Muslim); the Latin (Christian) sources are scanter.
While the island of Djerba was conquered by Roger II in 1135, conquests of mainland Africa started between 1146–1148. Sicilian rule consisted of military garrisons in the major towns, exactions on the local Muslim population, protection of Christians, and the minting of coin. The local aristocracy was largely left in place, and Muslim princes controlled the civil government under Sicilian oversight. Economic connections between Sicily and Africa, which were strong before the conquest, were strengthened, while ties between Africa and northern Italy were expanded. Early in the reign of William I, the Kingdom of Africa fell to the Almohad Caliphate (1158–1160). Its most enduring legacy was the realignment of Mediterranean powers brought about by its demise and the Siculo-Almohad peace finalised in 1180.
Regarding the motive for the Normans' military involvement in Africa, historian David Abulafia raises three possibilities: religious ("the extension of crusading activity into a relatively neglected arena"), economic (such as "the protection of key trade routes"), or imperialistic ("an attempt to build a vast Mediterranean empire").
Sicily and Africa had close and growing economic ties during the period 1050–1150. The Sicilians imported gold, shipped by caravan across the Sahara to Kairouan (Qayrawan) and Mahdia (al-Mahdiyya), and cloth manufactured of Egyptian and local flax or cotton imported from India and Sicily. Besides this cotton, the Sicilians exported large quantities of wheat, cheese and processed meats. The Greek Orthodox monastery of San Salvatore in Messina was permitted to export its surplus wheat to north Africa in return for wax for its candles. During this time, Africa (i.e., the old Roman province) underwent rapid urbanisation as famines depopulated the countryside and industry shifted from agriculture to manufactures. The depredations of the Banū Hilal and the Banū Sulaym also destroyed many fields and orchards, and forced the population to seek refuge in the towns.
Count Roger I of Sicily (1071–1101) is known to have maintained men in Mahdia to collect export duties, while Roger II (count from 1105, king 1130–1154) twice sent forces against African towns when their rulers defaulted on payments for grain imports. In 1117, when Rafi, governor of Gabès, challenged the trading monopoly of his overlord, Ali ibn Yahyā, emir of Mahdia, he asked Roger for assistance. Rafi was trying to send out a merchant ship from his own port, and Roger responded by sending a small flotilla, which fled when confronted by Mahdian forces. Ali then arrested the Sicilian agents in his town and requested help from his allies, the Almoravids, and Roger pleaded with him to return relations to normal. A low-level naval war of raids and counter-raids ensued between the Normans and the Almoravids into the 1120s. The most serious raid took place against Nicotera in 1122, when women and children were taken captive.
In 1135 Roger II made his first permanent conquest (excluding Pantelleria in 1123). The isle of Djerba, which, according to Arabic sources, "acknowledged no sultan" and was a den of pirates, was captured by Roger, who carried off many of its inhabitants. Sicilian Muslims participated in the conquest of Djerba, but it is unknown what happened to the ancient Jewish community on the island, which was still there (or re-established) in the early thirteenth century. Djerba gave Roger a base from which to exert more influence over Mahdia, which, unable to pay for its grain, was forced to become a protectorate of Sicily by 1142. Its foreign affairs fell to Roger, who forbade alliances with other Muslim states inimical to Sicily, and probably received its customs revenues in lieu of payment for the grain needed to feed it. Roger also had a right to seize any city rebelling against the lordship of the emir of Mahdia. The emir himself, Al-Hasan ibn Ali, whom Ali ibn al-Athīr calls the "prince of Africa", was personally indebted to the Sicilian fisc, quite possibly as a result of his luxurious tastes. One Arabic chronicler noted how "the accursed one [the king of Sicily] imposed the toughest conditions, and he [the emir] had to accept them, and he offered him obedience so that to all intents he became a mere ‘āmil [governor] for Roger".
Two Latin chronicles, Robert of Torigny's Chronica and the anonymous continuation of Sigebert of Gembloux's Chronica, are the only sources to assign religious motives to Roger's conquest of Africa, coming as it did at the same time as the Second Crusade and the Wendish Crusade. Roger is not known to have received any papal approval for his African venture. The Arabic sources do, however, refer to his army as being recruited from all around Christendom, an assertion which may be more hyperbole than fact. Ibn Idhari says that Roger "called to arms the people of every Latin country". One non-Italian knight, Richard de Lingèvres, did participate in the capture of Tripoli and was rewarded with land in Apulia. He is perhaps the same person as Count Richard of Andria.
There is evidence that at least some of Roger's contemporaries, mostly his enemies, saw his conquests in Africa as usurpations. Gervase of Tilbury, in a suspect passage of his Otia imperialia, implies that the Emperor Frederick I, who regarded Roger as a usurper in southern Italy, was upset by his extending his power into the old Roman province of Africa. And according to the Erfurt chronicles, at the Diet of Merseburg in 1135, a delegation from the Republic of Venice complained to the Emperor Lothair III that Roger had seized Africa, "one third of the world", from the king of Gretia (Greece). This garbled report completely detaches Roger's actions from the interreligious context by making the victim of his predations a Christian ruler. The Venetians' primary concern was Roger's ambition.
Even the chroniclers of Roger's own kingdom believed his ambition played a primary role in his involvement in Africa. Archbishop Romuald II of Salerno in his Chronicon wrote that "because he had a proud heart and a great will to rule, because he was not simply content with Sicily and Apulia, he prepared a vast fleet, which he sent to Africa with very many troops, and [Roger] took and held Africa." The pseudonymous court historian "Hugo Falcandus", in his Liber de regno sicilie e epistola ad Petrum panormitane ecclesie thesaurarium, also emphasised Roger's desire to expand his kingdom:
[H]e took care no less by force than by prudence to defeat his enemies and to extend his kingdom to its furthest limits. For he conquered Tripoli in Barbary, Mahdiyya, Sfax, Gabès and many other barbarian cities after undergoing many labours and dangers.
The incorporation of northern Africa into the Sicilian kingdom would have posed no problems for Roger. The cultural connections between Sicily and northern Africa were stronger than those between Sicily and his own peninsular Italian domains.
In 1087, when the organisers of the Mahdia campaign asked him for his assistance, Roger I, who since 1076 had an economic treaty with the Tamīm ibn Muʿizz, emir of Tunis, refused, saying, "As far as we are concerned, Africa is always there. When we are strong we will take it."
In 1142/3, Roger II attacked Tripoli but failed, further south down the coast from Mahdia. In 1146 he successfully besieged it. The city had already been depleted by a series of famines and was practically in a state of civil war when Roger's troops assaulted it. It was still an important port on the sea route from the Maghreb to Egypt. Several of the minor emirs in the vicinity of Tripoli sought Sicilian overlordship after this. Yūsuf, the ruler of Gabès, wrote to Roger requesting "the robes and letter of appointment making me wāli of Gabès, and I shall be your deputy there, as are the Banū Matrūh who hold Tripoli from you." Roger complied and Yūsuf, in his new robes, read out the letter of appointment to an assemblage of notables. Gabès had long been an irritant to Mahdia, and al-Hasan of Mahdia attacked it and brought back Yūsuf to Mahdia, and stoned him to death. It is possible that Roger's attack on Mahdia in 1148 was a response to this insubordination on the part of its emir, but Ibn al-Athīr suggested that Roger was merely taking advantage of a famine in Africa, despite the fact that he had a treaty with al-Hasan until 1150.
In June 1148 Roger sent his admiral George of Antioch, a former Mahdian officer, against al-Hasan. Off the island of Pantelleria the Sicilian fleet encountered a Mahdia ship bearing some carrier pigeons. George had the birds sent home with false messages that the fleet was headed for Byzantium. When the Sicilians reached Mahdia on 22 June, the emir and his court fled the unprepared city leaving their treasure behind. This was seized as booty, but the Sicilians were given only two hours to plunder the city while its Muslim inhabitants took refuge in Christian homes and churches. Roger quickly issued a royal protection, or amān, to all the city's inhabitants. According to Ibn Abī Dīnār, George "restored both cities of Zawīla and Mahdiyya; lent money to the merchants; gave alms to the poor; placed the administration of justice in the hands of qadi acceptable to the population; and arranged well the government of these two cities." Food was released to encourage refugees to return.
On 1 July the city of Sousse (Susa), ruled by al-Hasan's son ‘Ali, surrendered without a fight, and ʿAli fled to his father in Almohad Morocco. On 12 July Sfax fell after a short resistance. The Africans "were treated humanely" and an amān full of "fine promises" was granted for the entire province, according to Ibn al-Athīr. Ibn Khaldun, in his Kitab al-Ibar, records the abuse the Christians of Sfax heaped on their Muslim neighbours. The Banū Matrūh were left in power in Tripoli, and in Sfax Roger appointed Umar ibn al-Husayn al-Furrīānī, whose father was brought to Sicily as a hostage for his son's good behaviour. The Arabic sources are unanimous in presenting Umar's father as encouraging his son to rebel nonetheless. The town of Barasht (Bresk, in Algeria) and the isles of Kerkennah fell to Roger, as did the unruly desert tribes. After the brief period of conquest and acquisition, "the dominion of the Franks [Normans] extended from Tripoli to the borders of Tunis, and from the western Maghrib to Qayrawan".
After the Almohads took the city of Bougie, upon which Roger may have had designs, in 1152, a fleet under Philip of Mahdia was sent to conquer Bône. According to Ibn al-Athīr, Philip was a secret Muslim who treated the inhabitants of Bône gently.
Roger became involved in a war with Byzantium after 1148, and so was unable to follow up his conquests with an attack on Tunis. In fear, the Tunisians sent grain to Sicily in hopes of averting an attack, according to Ibn Idhari. This should probably be seen as tribute and submission, since Ibn Idhar writes that Roger was still in power in the city when the Almohads attacked it in 1159, although he was in fact dead. The Venetian chronicler Andrea Dandolo is probably correct in asserting: "and the kings of Tunis paid him [Roger] tribute" (regemque Tunixii sibi tributarium fecit). Roger died in 1154, and was succeeded by his son William I, who continued to rule Africa. His accession was taken for an opportunity by the native officials, who clamoured for more powers to tax. The Arabic historians Ibn al-Athīr and Ibn Khaldun, both hoped that Roger would defend his African lands against Almohad extremism and intolerance. After his death, some Muslim officials demanded that sermons be preached against the Almohads in the mosques.
The inhabitants of Africa, overwhelmingly Muslim by this time, generally preferred Muslim rule to Christian, and as the Almohads advanced eastward, William I's native governors made contacts with his Moroccan foes. The local uprisings in favour of the Almohads were well-organised, and Ibn al-Athīr and Ibn Khaldun connect them with the contemporaneous Sicilian uprising engineered by Maio of Bari. Among the rebels was Umar ibn al-Husayn al-Furrīānī, and among the cities lost was Zawīla, a suburb of Mahdia. It was reconquered, and served as a place of refuge for Christians escaping Almohad persecution in the last days of Norman Africa.
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