Roman-Moorish kingdoms

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The Roman Empire in 477 AD.

Roman-Moorish kingdoms existed in much of present-day Morocco and Algeria between the end of effective Roman rule in the area (after the Vandal conquest) and the Byzantine & Muslim conquest of the Maghreb, during the 4th to 6th centuries.[1]

History

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Romano-Berber states or Roman-Moorish states (called even "Neo-Latin Berber States") are a group of political entities that developed in the central-eastern area of the Maghreb region after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the mid-fifth century. They lasted nearly three centuries until 703 AD, while the Arab conquest of North Africa was completed in 708 AD with the occupation of western Morocco and Septum.

From the late 3rd century in Mauretania Tingitana direct Roman rule became confined to a few coastal cities (such as Ceuta in Mauretania Tingitana and Caesarea in Mauretania Caesariensis) [2] and after the Vandal invasion of 429 AD in Mauretania Caesariensis.[3]

Historical sources about inland areas are sparse, but these were apparently controlled by local Berber rulers who, however, maintained a degree of Roman culture, including the local cities, and usually nominally acknowledged the suzerainity of the Roman Emperors.[4]

In an inscription from Altava in western Algeria, one of these rulers, Masuna, described himself as Rex gentium Maurorum et Romanorum (King of the Roman and Moorish peoples).[5] Altava was later the capital of another ruler, Garmul or Garmules, who resisted Byzantine rule in Africa but was finally defeated in 578 AD.[6] The Byzantine historian Procopius also mentions another independent ruler, Mastigas, who controlled most of Mauretania Caesariensis in the 530s with his Mauro-Roman kingdom.

Most of the area of this Mauro-Roman kingdom was later reunited with the Byzantine Empire as a result of Justinian's campaigns of 533 AD; but it was finally conquered by the Arabs at the end of the next century. Other areas near the limes remained out of byzantine control in the sixth and seventh centuries: some small berber kingdoms developed there, with some Roman characteristics (like a minor Christianization).

There were eight of these Romano-berber states in the seventh century: Altava, Ouarsenis, Hodna, Aures, Nemenchas, Capsa, Dorsale and Cabaon.[7]

Characteristics

The "Romano-Moorish" states are so called because they had a Berber population Romanized at different levels: the coastal and urban areas were populated by descendants of Roman colonists and by Romanized Berbers, while in the mountainous interior the population was made by semi-Romanized Berbers and by some Roman colonists in a few military centers (like Lambaesis[8] in the Aures region, headquarters of the Legio III Augusta). Sometimes these states were called "Romano-Berber" States, but this name was referred properly to those in Mauritania (Tingitana and Caesariensis) while the Neo-Latin Berber States were all in Numidia (actual Tunisia and central-eastern Algeria).

Indeed many Berber tribes were, as one ventured further south and west from Roman Carthage in the fourth and fifth centuries, progressively less Romanized. The first three Romano-Berber tribal leaders whose names have come down to us (Masuna, Mastigas and Garmul), ruled in the former Mauretania west of the territories occupied by the Vandals and later by the Byzantines and styled themselves Rex Romanorum et Maurorum. These were the less Romanized kings, who took more care to emulate the Roman culture and were settled leaders, but not "pastoralists". They more often than not ruled over a former Roman city or Military camp turned town, together with many Latinized Berbers and Latins themselves.

These kings had the most independence of any post-Imperium kingdom. They only gave nominal allegiance to Constantinople, and unlike the Byzantine Exarchate of Africa did not interact on any level with Constantinople, except during the Vandalic War of Belisarius. Roman emperor Justinian I is actually credited with essentially giving them free authority (although how he did so hasn't come down to us) and further legitimized their rule. After the Vandals conquered Carthage, the areas of Numidia bordering the Romano-Moorish kingdoms achieved independence under Berber kings, from Caesarea to Capsa: these areas during the fifth century were populated by a Romanized population in the cities (mostly related to Roman colonists and legionaries, liked Timgad[9]) and in the mountains by a Berber population speaking a Latinized Berber according to Saint Augustine (who wrote that the original native Berber was spoken only by the nomad tribes).

Many tribes, however, especially west and south of the salt lakes in Tunisia and Algeria, were mainly pastoral and semi-barbarians. They were very "tribal", and although no doubt many of them had absorbed superficial features of Roman culture, they were easily recognizable as the common type of Berber found through the Atlas range: semi-Romanized in language, religion, and not much else.

The most Romanized "Tribal confederation" actually existed in the Aures mountains, or even in the settled and most Latin regions of the Byzantine Exarchate (like Ammaedara and surroundings[10]). They were only recognizable as Berbers, however, because of their familial ancestry. They were of the type one could find throughout Spain, Italy, and Gaul during the fourth century: the native, Latinized, regional "Aristocracies". They conducted themselves in a manner similar to that of the Rome's Senatorial aristocracy: owned "Villae", participated in the local City Politics, and even had representation along with the major Roman Senatorial families of the region at the Administrative capital.

Furthermore nearly all Berbers were Christians since the third century, to the point that one of the most famous and important Christian saints was Berber: Saint Augustine.[11] But in the Atlas mountains was still worshipped some form of paganism and idolatry when the Vandals arrived: Pope Gelasius I, a Berber born in what is now Kabylia, successfully converted to Christianity around 492 AD all the Berbers of the Aures (who were the last to defend Romanised north western-Africa with their queen Kahina from the Moslem invasion).

However after eight centuries secure from foreign attack, Rome fell to the Visigoths in 410 AD and Carthage had been captured in 439 AD by Vandals under Gaiseric.[12] These changes were traumatic to Roman citizens in the Africa Province including, of course, those acculturated Berbers who once enjoyed the prospects for livelihood provided by the long fading, now badly broken Imperial economy.

Yet also other Berbers saw a chance for betterment if not liberation in the wake of Rome's slide toward disorder. Living within the empire in urban poverty or as rural laborers, or living beyond its frontiers as independent pastoralists primarily but also as tillers of the soil, were Berbers who found new political-economic opportunities in Rome's decline, e.g., access to better land and trading terms. The consequent absence of Imperial authority at the periphery soon led to the emergence of new Berber polities. These arose not along the sea coast in the old Imperial cities, but centered inland at the borderland (the limes) of empire, between the steppe and the sown.

This "pre-Sahara" geographic and cultural zone ran along the mountainous frontier, the "Tell", hill country and upland plains, which separated the "well-watered, Mediterranean districts of the Maghreb to the north, from the Sahara desert to the south." Here Berber tribal chiefs acted through force and negotiation to establish a new source of governing authority.[13]

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...the builders of the first Djeddars were kings who ruled in the territories of Mauretania Caesariensis from the fifth century...One of them named Masuna, contemporary of the Vandal kings, in 508 AD said that ruled as "King of the Mauri and of the Romans". We know only a few of the names of these kings, like Mastinas and Garmul. Another named Vartaia (called Ortaias by Procopius) ruled former Mauretania Setifiana, while some years before Masties ruled the Aures region, and a king whose name has been lost but who -like Masties and Masuna- proclaimed his faith in a Christian God, used to say that he was king of the Ucutamani...and was the ruler of little Kabylia - Roger Camps

These Berber states are often called "Neo-Latin" because were post-Roman (meaning: no more under the Roman Empire authority), with a local and differentiated Latin language mixed with many local Berberisms, and with a Christian religion. They even initially developed a local form of heresy called Donatism: this "Donatismus" was a Christian sect within the Roman Province of Africa that flourished in the fourth, fifth and early sixth centuries inside communities of Berber Christians. The "Donatists" (named for the Berber Christian bishop Donatus Magnus) were members of a schismatic church not in communion with the churches of the Catholic tradition in Late Antiquity. Some of their Christian kings left the monuments called now "Djeddars". Their original Berber name is unknown. Indeed during the fifth century the area was fully Christianized, according to historian Theodore Mommsen, and the kings were probably buried in a mausoleum called "Djeddar" in berber.[14] Historian Gabriel Camps[15] thinks that some Berber kings (like Masuna and Garmul) were buried in a Djeddar near Frenda.

See also

Notes

  1. Diehl, Charles. "L'Afrique Byzantine. Histoire de la Domination Byzantine en Afrique (533–709)" Paris, 1896
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  7. Map showing the eight Roman-Moorish kingdoms in the seventh century
  8. Lambaesis. History & photos
  9. Timgad was the last Roman colony created in Numidia and populated by colonists from Italy
  10. Romano-Berber Ammaedara: Recherches archéologiques à Ammaedara (Haïdra)
  11. Christianity and the Berbers
  12. Laroui, The History of the Maghrib (Paris 1970; Princeton Univ. 1977) at 67-69
  13. Alan Rushworth, "From Arzuges to Rustamids: State Formation and Regional Identity in the Pre-Saharan Zone" at 77-98, 77-78, in Vandals, Romans and Berbers. New perspectives on late antique North Africa (Aldershot: Ashgate 2004), edited by A. H. Merrills
  14. Christian Djeddars
  15. Gabriel Camps. "Rex gentium Maurorum et Romanorum. Recherches sur les royaumes de Maurétanie des VIe et VIIe siècles"

Bibliography

  • Camps, Gabriel. Rex gentium Maurorum et Romanorum. Recherches sur les royaumes de Maurétanie des VIe et VIIe siècles. Antiquités africaines. (Volume 20;Issue 20 pp. 183–218) Paris, 1984
  • Conant, Jonathan. Staying Roman : conquest and identity in Africa and the Mediterranean (pag.439-700). Cambridge New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 280–281. ISBN 0521196973. Cambridge, 2012
  • Diehl, Charles.L'Afrique Byzantine. Histoire de la Domination Byzantine en Afrique (533–709). Editor Ernest Leroux. Paris,1896 ([1])
  • Fanciullo, Franco. Un capitolo della "Romania submersa": il latino africano, D. Kremer ed., "Actes du XVIII. Congrès International de Linguistique et de Philologie Romane - Universitè de Trèves (Trier) 1986, tome I, Tübingen, Niemeyer, 1992,162-187 pp.
  • Leveau,Philippe. Caesarea de Maurétanie, une ville romaine et ses campagnes. Paris - Rome, 1984
  • Lepelley, Claude. Rome et l’intégration de l’Empire « Approches régionales du Haut-Empire romain », Nouvelles Clio, 1998
  • Magali Boisnard, M. Le roman de la Kahéna, d'apres les anciens textes arabes édition d'art, H. Piazza. Paris, 1925
  • Mommsen, Theodore. The Provinces of the Roman Empire Section: Roman Africa. (Leipzig 1865; London 1866; London: Macmillan 1909; reprint New York 1996) Barnes & Noble. New York, 1996eu:Mairuen Domeinuak