Medieval Muslim Algeria was a period of Muslim dominance in Algeria during the Middle Ages, spanning the millennium from the 7th century to the 17th century. The new faith, in its various forms, would penetrate nearly all segments of society, bringing with it armies, learned men, and fervent mystics; in large part, it would replace tribal practices and loyalties with new social norms and political idioms.
Ifriqiya, also known as al-Maghrib al-Adna, was a medieval historical region comprising today's Tunisia, eastern Algeria, and Tripolitania. It included all of what had previously been the Byzantine province of Africa Proconsularis and extended beyond it, but did not include the Mauretanias.
The Zirid dynasty, Banu Ziri, was a Sanhaja Berber dynasty from what is now Algeria which ruled the central Maghreb from 972 to 1014 and Ifriqiya from 972 to 1148.
Mahdia is a Tunisian coastal city with 76,513 inhabitants, south of Monastir and southeast of Sousse.
Al-Muʿizz ibn Bādīs was the fourth ruler of the Zirids in Ifriqiya, reigning from 1016 to 1062.
El-Mansuriya or Mansuriya, also known as Sabra or Sabra al-Mansuriyya, near Kairouan, Tunisia, was the capital of the Fatimid Caliphate during the rule of the Ismaili Imams al-Mansur bi-Nasr Allah and al-Mu'izz li-Din Allah.
The Kalbids were a Muslim Arab dynasty which ruled the Emirate of Sicily from 948 to 1053. They were formally appointed by the Fatimids, but gained, progressively, de facto autonomous rule.
Tamim ibn al-Mu'izz was the fifth ruler of the Zirids in Ifriqiya (1062–1108).
The island of Sicily was under Islamic rule from the late ninth to late eleventh centuries. It became a prosperous and influential commercial power in the Mediterranean, with its capital of Palermo serving as a major cultural and political center of the Muslim world.
George of Antioch was a court official and military officer in the Norman Kingdom of Sicily that played a significant role in the transformation of Norman Sicily into a multicultural society and naval power. He did so as chiefly as an advisor to Roger II of Sicily. He was a Greek Eastern Orthodox Christian from the Byzantine Empire. George lived in Antioch for a part of his life before he and his family found work with the Byzantine Emperor Alexios Komnenos until their exile from the Empire. He and his family then worked for the Emir of Ifriqiya, Tamim ibn al-Muizz, becoming governor of the city of Sousse. After the death of George's brother at the hands of Tamim's successor, Yahya, George fled the court and found refuge in Norman Sicily. There he spent the remainder of his life, serving as both an administrator and military commander with profound influence within the Kingdom of Sicily until his death.
The Republic of Pisa was an independent state existing from the 11th to the 15th century and centered on the Tuscan city of Pisa. It rose to become an economic powerhouse, a commercial center whose merchants dominated Mediterranean and Italian trade for a century, before being surpassed and superseded by the Republic of Genoa.
The history of Islam in Sicily and southern Italy began with Arab colonization in Sicily, at Mazara, which was captured in 827. The subsequent rule of Sicily and Malta started in the 10th century. The Emirate of Sicily lasted from 831 until 1061, and controlled the whole island by 902. Though Sicily was the primary Muslim stronghold in Italy, some temporary footholds, the most substantial of which was the port city of Bari, were established on the mainland peninsula, especially in mainland southern Italy, though Arab raids, mainly those of Muhammad I ibn al-Aghlab, reached as far north as Naples, Rome and the northern region of Piedmont. The Arab raids were part of a larger struggle for power in Italy and Europe, with Christian Byzantine, Frankish, Norman and indigenous Italian forces also competing for control. Arabs were sometimes allied with various Christian factions against other factions.
The medieval era of Tunisia began with what would eventually return Ifriqiya to local Berber rule. The Shia Islamic Fatimid Caliphate departed to their newly conquered territories in Egypt leaving the Zirid dynasty to govern in their stead. The Zirids would eventually break all ties to the Fatimids and formally embrace Sunni Islamic doctrines.
In 1015 and again in 1016, the forces of Mujāhid al-ʿĀmirī from the taifa of Denia and the Balearics, in the east of Muslim Spain (al-Andalus), attacked Sardinia and attempted to establish control over it. In both these years joint expeditions from the maritime republics of Pisa and Genoa repelled the invaders. These Pisan–Genoese expeditions to Sardinia were approved and supported by the Papacy in aid of the sovereign Sardinian medieval kingdoms, known as Judicates, which resisted autonomously after the collapse of the Byzantine rule on the island. and modern historians often see them as proto-Crusades. After their victory, the Italian cities turned on each other. For this reason, the Christian sources for the expedition are primarily from Pisa, which celebrated its double victory over the Muslims and the Genoese with an inscription on the walls of its Duomo.
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.
The Banu Khurasan or Khurasanid dynasty was a Sunni Muslim dynasty that ruled an independent principality centered on Tunis, in present-day Tunisia, between approximately 1058 and 1159. They rose to power following the political vacuum left behind by the Zirids when they abandoned Kairouan for Mahdia in 1157, in the face of pressure from the Banu Hilal. While de facto independent, they continued to recognize the suzerainty of either Zirids or the Hammadids for much of this period. Their rule was interrupted by Hammadid annexation from 1128 and 1148, and their authority came to a final end with the Almohad conquest in 1159.
Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Omar ibn Muhammad al-Tamimi al-Maziri, simply known as Al-Maziri or as Imam al-Maziri and Imam al-Mazari, was an important Arab Muslim jurist in the Maliki school of Sunni Islamic Law. He was one of the most important figures in the school and his opinions are well known and respected to this day. Al-Maziri was one of four jurists whose positions were held as authoritative by Khalil ibn Ishaq in his Mukhtassar, which is the most important of the later texts in the relied upon positions of the school. It is for this reason that he is referred to simply as al-Imam within the Maliki school.
The navy of the Fatimid Caliphate was one of the most developed early Muslim navies and a major force in the central and eastern Mediterranean in the 10th–12th centuries. As with the dynasty it served, its history is in two phases. The first was c. 909 to 969, when the Fatimids were based in Ifriqiya ; the second lasted until the end of the dynasty in 1171, when they were based in Egypt. During the first period, the navy was employed mainly against the Byzantine Empire in Sicily and southern Italy, where it enjoyed mixed success. It was also in the initially unsuccessful attempts to conquer Egypt from the Abbasids and brief clashes with the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba.
The Mahdia campaign of 1123 was a military operation launched by the Normans against the Zirid dynasty as revenge for a raid that happened in Nicotera launched by the Almoravids in which the Zirids were accused of helping them.
The Zirid Campaign in Illyria was a series of naval raids conducted by the Zirid dynasty, alongside the Kalbid Emirate of Sicily, against Byzantine territories in the eastern Adriatic Sea (Illyria), Greece, and Thrace, between 1026 and 1035.
