The Phoenician settlement of North Africa or Phoenician expedition to North Africa was the process of Phoenician people migrating and settling in the Maghreb region of North Africa, encompassing present-day Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia, from their homeland of Phoenicia in the Levant region, including present-day Lebanon, Israel, and Syria, in the 1st millennium BC.
The Phoenicians originated in the Northern Levant sometime circa 1800 BC [1] and emigrated to North Africa around 900 BC. [2] The causes of Phoenician emigration to North Africa as far as the Atlantic coast are debated, but could include overpopulation in the Levant and economic opportunities and precious metals in North Africa. These precious metals in particular may have been given up to the Assyrian Empire as they expanded into the Phoenician homeland in the Levant, though whether this caused the Phonecians to need to search for more through expansion into Northern Africa has been disputed. [3]
The first Phoenician settlers immigrated to North Africa around 900 BC as traders and merchants, mainly from Tyre and Sidon in modern-day Lebanon. [2] [4] They settled predominantly in what is now Tunisia, [5] but they also established over 300 colonies and settlements in the lands currently part of modern Algeria and Morocco. [6] These included the settlements of Thapsus, Leptis and Hadrumetum, Tunis, Carthage, Utica, Hippo, Igilgili (Jijel), Icosium (Algiers), Iol (Cherchell), Gunugu (Gouraya), Cartennae (Ténès), Tingi (Tangier), Lixus (Larache), Mogador (Essaouira) and Thymiateria (Mehdya). [5] These settlements displaced the local peoples, and caused the importance of the Greek culture and language to diminish in importance west of Tripoli. [7] The descendants of the Phoenician settlers in Ancient Carthage came to be known as the Punic people. From the 8th century BC, most inhabitants of present-day Tunisia were Punic. [8]
In the late seventh and early sixth centuries BC, Phoenician settlements in Northern Africa grew politically distant from Phonecia. In particular, the city of Carthage became an independent entity, known as the Punics and expanded control over the western Maghreb and Europe. [3] Evidence from Sicily shows that some western Phoenicians themselves may have identified as under the term "Phoinix", [9] or 𐤊𐤍𐤏𐤍𐤌 (knʿnm, "Canaanites"). [10]
1 in 17 men in coastal North Africa and Southern Europe have a Phoenician paternal ancestor, according to a 2008 study. [11]
There is relatively little information about the Phonecian migration into North Africa when compared to Phonecian migration into other areas. The majority of primary sources detailing the settlements are Greece or Roman in origin and, as of the early 2020s, few archeological sites have been excavated. [6] : 197
Carthage was an ancient city in Northern Africa, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now Tunisia. Carthage was one of the most important trading hubs of the Ancient Mediterranean and one of the most affluent cities of the classical world. It became the capital city of the civilisation of Ancient Carthage and later Roman Carthage.
North Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of the Western Sahara in the west, to Egypt and Sudan's Red Sea coast in the east.
Berbers, or the Berber peoples, also known as Amazigh or Imazighen, are a diverse grouping of distinct ethnic groups indigenous to North Africa who predate the arrival of Arabs in the Maghreb. Their main connections are identified by their usage of Berber languages, most of them mutually unintelligible, which are part of the Afroasiatic language family.
The history of North Africa during the period of classical antiquity can be divided roughly into the history of Egypt in the east, the history of ancient Libya in the middle and the history of Numidia and Mauretania in the west.
The Maghreb, also known as the Arab Maghreb and Northwest Africa, is the western part of the Arab world. The region comprises western and central North Africa, including Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. The Maghreb also includes the disputed territory of Western Sahara. As of 2018, the region had a population of over 100 million people.
Africa was a Roman province on the northern coast of the continent of Africa. It was established in 146 BC, following the Roman Republic's conquest of Carthage in the Third Punic War. It roughly comprised the territory of present-day Tunisia, the northeast of Algeria, and the coast of western Libya along the Gulf of Sidra. The territory was originally and still is inhabited by Berbers, known in Latin as the Mauri, indigenous to all of North Africa west of Egypt. In the 9th century BC, Semitic-speaking Phoenicians from West Asia built settlements along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea to facilitate shipping. Carthage, rising to prominence in the 8th century BC, became the predominant of these.
Maghrebi Arabic, often known as ad-Dārija to differentiate it from Literary Arabic, is a vernacular Arabic dialect continuum spoken in the Maghreb. It includes the Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Libyan, Hassaniya and Saharan Arabic dialects. Maghrebi Arabic has a predominantly Semitic and Arabic vocabulary, although it contains a significant number of Berber loanwords, which represent 2–3% of the vocabulary of Libyan Arabic, 8–9% of Algerian and Tunisian Arabic, and 10–15% of Moroccan Arabic. Maghrebi Arabic was formerly spoken in Al-Andalus and Sicily until the 17th and 13th centuries, respectively, in the extinct forms of Andalusi Arabic and Siculo-Arabic. The Maltese language is believed to have its source in a language spoken in Muslim Sicily that ultimately originates from Tunisia, as it contains some typical Maghrebi Arabic areal characteristics.
The history of North Africa has been divided into its prehistory, its classical period, the arrival and spread of Islam, the colonial period, and finally the post-independence era, in which the current nations were formed. The region has been influenced by many diverse cultures. The development of sea travel firmly brought the region into the Mediterranean world, especially during the classical period. In the 1st millennium AD, the Sahara became an equally important area for trade as camel caravans brought goods and people from the south of the Sahara. The region also has a small but crucial land link to the Middle East, and that area has also played a key role in the history of North Africa.
La Marsa is a coastal city located in the northeastern part of Tunisia, situated along the Mediterranean Sea. It is part of the Tunis Governorate and has a population of around 100,000 people. The city is known for its beaches, upscale residential areas, and lively atmosphere, with numerous restaurants, cafes, and shops. It is connected to Tunis by the TGM railway. Gammarth is adjacent to El Marsa further up the coast.
The Punic religion, Carthaginian religion, or Western Phoenician religion in the western Mediterranean was a direct continuation of the Phoenician variety of the polytheistic ancient Canaanite religion. However, significant local differences developed over the centuries following the foundation of Carthage and other Punic communities elsewhere in North Africa, southern Spain, Sardinia, western Sicily, and Malta from the ninth century BC onward. After the conquest of these regions by the Roman Republic in the third and second centuries BC, Punic religious practices continued, surviving until the fourth century AD in some cases. As with most cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, Punic religion suffused their society and there was no stark distinction between religious and secular spheres. Sources on Punic religion are poor. There are no surviving literary sources and Punic religion is primarily reconstructed from inscriptions and archaeological evidence. An important sacred space in Punic religion appears to have been the large open air sanctuaries known as tophets in modern scholarship, in which urns containing the cremated bones of infants and animals were buried. There is a long-running scholarly debate about whether child sacrifice occurred at these locations, as suggested by Greco-Roman and biblical sources.
Tunisians are the citizens and nationals of Tunisia in North Africa, who speak Tunisian Arabic and share a common Tunisian culture and identity. In addition to the approximately 12 million residents in Tunisia, a Tunisian diaspora has been established with modern migration, particularly in Western Europe, namely France, Italy and Germany. The vast majority of Tunisians identify as Arabs who adhere to Sunni Islam.
The traditional Berber religion is the sum of ancient and native set of beliefs and deities adhered to by the Berbers. Originally, the Berbers seem to have believed in worship of the sun and moon, animism and in the afterlife, but interactions with the Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans influenced religious practice and melted traditional faiths with new ones.
The Punic people, usually known as the Carthaginians, were a Semitic people who migrated from Phoenicia to the Western Mediterranean during the Early Iron Age. In modern scholarship, the term Punic, the Latin equivalent of the Greek-derived term Phoenician, is exclusively used to refer to Phoenicians in the western Mediterranean, following the line of the Greek East and Latin West. The largest Punic settlement was Ancient Carthage, but there were 300 other settlements along the North African coast from Leptis Magna in modern Libya to Mogador in southern Morocco, as well as western Sicily, southern Sardinia, the southern and eastern coasts of the Iberian Peninsula, Malta, and Ibiza. Their language, Punic, was a variety of Phoenician, one of the Northwest Semitic languages originating in the Levant.
The city of Carthage was founded in the 9th century BC on the coast of Northwest Africa, in what is now Tunisia, as one of a number of Phoenician settlements in the western Mediterranean created to facilitate trade from the city of Tyre on the coast of what is now Lebanon. The name of both the city and the wider republic that grew out of it, Carthage developed into a significant trading empire throughout the Mediterranean. The date from which Carthage can be counted as an independent power cannot exactly be determined, and probably nothing distinguished Carthage from the other Phoenician colonies in Northwest Africa and the Mediterranean during 800–700 BC. By the end of the 7th century BC, Carthage was becoming one of the leading commercial centres of the West Mediterranean region. After a long conflict with the emerging Roman Republic, known as the Punic Wars, Rome finally destroyed Carthage in 146 BC. A Roman Carthage was established on the ruins of the first. Roman Carthage was eventually destroyed—its walls torn down, its water supply cut off, and its harbours made unusable—following its conquest by Arab invaders at the close of the 7th century. It was replaced by Tunis as the major regional centre, which has spread to include the ancient site of Carthage in a modern suburb.
Phoenicia under Roman rule describes the Phoenician city states ruled by Rome from 64 BCE to the Muslim conquests of the 7th century. The area around Berytus was the only Latin speaking and Romanized part of Aramaic-speaking Phoenicia.
Hamilcar I was a Magonid king of Carthage in present-day Tunisia from 510 to 480 BC.
Ancient Carthage was an ancient Semitic civilisation based in North Africa. Initially a settlement in present-day Tunisia, it later became a city-state and then an empire. Founded by the Phoenicians in the ninth century BC, Carthage reached its height in the fourth century BC as one of the largest metropoleis in the world. It was the centre of the Carthaginian Empire, a major power led by the Punic people who dominated the ancient western and central Mediterranean Sea. Following the Punic Wars, Carthage was destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC, who later rebuilt the city lavishly.
The culture of the ancient Phoenicians was one of the first to have had a significant effect on the history of wine. Phoenicia was a civilization centered in current day Lebanon. Between 1550 BC and 300 BC, the Phoenicians developed a maritime trading culture that expanded their influence from the Levant to North Africa, the Greek Isles, Sicily, and the Iberian Peninsula. Through contact and trade, they spread not only their alphabet but also their knowledge of viticulture and winemaking, including the propagation of several ancestral varieties of the Vitis vinifera species of wine grapes.
In several ancient Semitic-speaking cultures and associated historical regions, the shopheṭ or shofeṭ was a community leader of significant civic stature, often functioning as a chief magistrate with authority roughly equivalent to Roman consular powers.
The Phoenicians were an ancient Semitic group of people who lived in the Phoenician city-states along a coastal strip in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily modern Lebanon. They developed a maritime civilization which expanded and contracted throughout history, with the core of their culture stretching from Arwad in modern Syria to Mount Carmel. The Phoenicians extended their cultural influence through trade and colonization throughout the Mediterranean, from Cyprus to the Iberian Peninsula.
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