The Saharan Berber Diaspora and The Sout PDF

North Africa under
Byzantium and Early Islam
DU M BA RTON OA K S BY Z A N T I N E S Y M P OSI A A N D COL LO QU I A
Series Editor
Margaret Mullett
Editorial Board
Dimiter G. Angelov
John Duffy
Ioli Kalavrezou
North Africa under

Byzantium and Early Islam
Susan T. Stevens and Jonathan P. Conant

Editors
DU M B A RTO N OA K S R E S E A RC H L I B R A RY A N D C O L L E C T IO N
Copyright 2016 by Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection

Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, D.C.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
libr ary of congress cataloging-in-publication data
North Africa under Byzantium and early Islam / edited by Susan T. Stevens and
Jonathan P. Conant.
pages cm.(Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine symposia and colloquia)
Papers originally presented at the seventieth Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Studies
Symposium, Rome Re-Imagined: Byzantine and Early Islamic North Africa,
ca.500800 (2729 April 2012).
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-88402-408-8 (alk. paper)
1. Africa, NorthHistoryTo 647. 2 Africa, NorthHistory6471517.
3. VandalsAfrica, NorthHistory. 4. Africa, NorthRelationsByzantine
Empire. 5. Byzantine EmpireRelationsAfrica, North.
I. Stevens, Susan T. II. Conant, Jonathan, 1974
III. Series: Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine symposia andcolloquia.
dt171.n672015
961'.022dc23
2015000844
Design and composition: Melissa Tandysh

Jacket photographs: Front: Basilica at Hadra, Tunisia.
Photograph by Susan Stevens. Back: Funerary inscription
of Quadratianus, Chigarnia, Muse archologique dEnfidha.
Photograph by A. M. Yasin.
www.doaks.org/publications
To Yves Modran,
ad astra virum quem claro lumine fulgens
scilicet tunc placido nostro de pectore tolli
Sigisteus comes, Parthemii rescriptum (PLS 3:448)
contents
Acknowledgments
ix
Maps
x
Introduction
Reimagining Byzantine Africa
Susan T. Stevens and Jonathan P. Conant
1
C ON T E S T I NG BY Z A N T I N E A F R IC A
1 Procopiuss Vandal War

Thematic Trajectories and Hidden Transcripts
Anthony Kaldellis
13
2
Gelimers Slaughter
The Case for Late Vandal Africa
Andy Merrills
23
3 The Saharan Berber Diaspora

and the Southern Frontiers of Byzantine North Africa
Elizabeth Fentress and Andrew Wilson
41
4
The Islamic Conquest and the Defense of Byzantine Africa

Reconsiderations on Campaigns, Conquests, and Contexts
Walter E. Kaegi
65
SH I F T I NG S T RUC T U R E S OF DA I LY L I F E
Carthage in Transition
From Late Byzantine City to Medieval Villages
Susan T. Stevens
89
The Transformation of Ancient Land- and Cityscapes

in Early Medieval North Africa
Philipp von Rummel
105
The Contribution of Medieval Arabic Sources

to the Historical Geography of Byzantine Africa
Mohamed Benabbs
119
8 From Vandal Africa to Arab Ifrqiya

Tracing Ceramic and Economic Trends through the Fifth to the Eleventh Centuries
Paul Reynolds
129
9 Regio dives in omnibus bonis ornata
The African Economy from the Vandals to the Arab Conquest in the Light of Coin Evidence
Ccile Morrisson
173
A F R IC A I N T H E CH R I S T I A N E M PI R E
10
Sanctity and the Networks of Empire in Byzantine North Africa

Jonathan P. Conant
201
11 Beyond Spolia
Architectural Memory and Adaptation in the Churches of Late Antique North Africa
Ann Marie Yasin
215
12
Marriage, Law, and Christian Rhetoric in Vandal Africa

Kate Cooper
237
13
Exegesis and Dissent in Byzantine North Africa

Leslie Dossey
251
14 Sounds from a Silent Land

The Latin Poetry of Byzantine North Africa
Gregory Hays
269
15
Byzantine and Early Islamic Africa, ca. 500800

Concluding Remarks
Peter Brown
295
Abbreviations
303
About the Authors
307
Index
311
Acknowledgments
n t h e produc t ion of t h i s b o ok w e h av e i nc u r r e d m a n y de b t s of
gratitude. We would especially like to thank Jan Ziolkowski, Margaret Mullett, and the Senior Fellows
of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection for their generosity, enthusiasm, and support
in organizing the seventieth Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Studies Symposium, Rome Re-Imagined:
Byzantine and Early Islamic North Africa, ca. 500800 (2729 April 2012), at which the papers gathered here were first presented. Philipp von Rummel was instrumental to the inception and development
of the original symposium idea. That idea could not have become a reality without the interest, encouragement, and advice of Alice-Mary Talbot. Special thanks are also due to Margaret Mullett (again),
Susannah Italiano, Amanda Daxon, Lisa Bessette, Kathleen Sparkes, and Joel Kalvesmaki, who have
shepherded the volume through the production process with a firm and steady hand, as well as to the
anonymous readers, whose comments and insights inestimably improved the book as a whole.
ix
Bordeaux
Vigo
Milan
Rhne R
iver
Galicia
Ravenna
Marseille
Madrid
Tarragona
Rome
Pollena
(Pollentia)
Ca
Fornells
Melilla
Chlef
Tiaret
El Gour
Cherchel
(Caesarea) Tipaza (Tipasa)
Mauretania
Mauretania Sitifensis
Caesariensis
As r-ouest
(Ausum)
Volubilis
Stif
Chott
el Hodna
Annaba
(Hippo Regius)
Numidia
Constantine
Timgad
Ngrine
Tafilalt
Trapani
Carthage
Africa
Proconsularis
(Zeugitana)
Palermo
l a b r ia
Cagliari
Cartagena
Ceuta
ia
Mlaga
SARDINIA
an
BALEARIC
ISLANDS
Miseno
Naples
mp
Crdoba
Sevilla
Adriatic
Sea
CORSICA
Ca
Mrida
SICILY
Agrigento
Syracuse
Kairouan
Byzacena
Mahdia
Sfax
aurs
mountains
djebel
nafusa
Sabratha Tripoli (Oea)

Lepcis
Magna
Tripolitania
300
Towns and Cities
Mountains
Province Border
600 km
Ghirza
Fazz
Black Sea
Danub iver
eR
c
Constantinople
Nicopolis
Euchata
Nicomedia
Thessalonica
Aegean
Sea
Phocaea
Ephesus
Cilicia
Antioch
Mediterranean
Sea
CYPRUS
CRETE
Salamis
Homs
Acre
Beirut
Caesarea
Jerusalem
Gaza
Bethlehem
Alexandria
Cyrenaica
Ab Mn
zan
Kellia
Bahariya
Nile River
Siwa
Cairo
xi
Palermo
Trapani
Marsala
Bizerte
Mazzara
Tabarka
Raf Raf
del Vallo
Sedjenane
Utica
Agrigento
An Draham
El Mahrine
Carthage
Bulla Regia
Oudhna
Chimtou
Dougga
Sidi Jdidi
(Simitthus)
Uchi
Guelma
Nabeul (Neapolis)
e
Thuburbo
Maius
(Calama)
v
da i
Pupput
jer R
Pheradi Maius
Sidi Marsouk Tounsi Cululis
Sousse (Hadrumetum)
Mactar
Kairouan Monastir
Leptiminus
Hadra
Raqqada
Tbessa
Mahdia
S abra al Mansuriyya
Ksour es-Saf
Sbeitla El Djem
Salakta (Sullecthum)
Kasserine
Rougga
Thelepte
SICILY
Syracuse
Med
Annaba
(Hippo Regius)
MALTA
Gafsa
(Capsa)
Iunca
Mediterranean
Sea
JERBA
Sabratha
Tripoli
(Oea)
Towns and Cities
300
xii
600 km
C ON T E S T I NG BY Z A N T I N E A F R IC A
chapter thr ee
The Saharan Berber Diaspora

and the Southern Frontiers
of Byzantine North Africa
n 4 84 , or n e a r e nough, t h e Moor s of t h e Au r s dest roy e d Ti mg a d so

that the enemy (i.e., the Vandals) should not have a base from which to approach the Aurs Mountains,
or an excuse to come near them; so we are told by Procopius.1 The assertion is flat, the explanation
presumably hearsay. While we can, and some do,2 quibble as to the actual proof that Timgad was
destroyed, there has never been evidence that the statement was false, nor a legitimate query as to why it
should have been made up. The culprit has not been hard to find: Masties, Moorish king of the Aurs,
who around 484 declared himself imperator on an inscription and set about sorting out his kingdom
by eliminating the most visible urban presence.3 But there remains a certain whodunit quality, which
can be best summed up with the question, What Moors? Locals from the mountains, playing out
centuries-old resentments against Rome and its dominance? Peasants, fed up with urban exactions?
Or hairy, warlike, barbarian nomads, arriving from the east with a new technology, the camel, and a
vocation for destruction? On the first side were ranged Christian Courtois, Michel Janon, and, much
more recently, the late Yves Modran, whose deeply learned and detailed thesis on this question eliminated, at the very least, any question of eastern invaders.4 Alan Rushworth, identifying in the Moors
the Arzuges of the pre-desert zone, who simply wrested control from the Vandals and established political independence, could also be counted among these.5 For Modran, Procopiuss definition of Moors
was essentially political: they were Moors only in that they were, in most cases, anti-Roman and without political institutions, not that they were otherwise Other.6 On the second side are found what
1 B.Vand. 3.8.5; 14.13.26; see also Aed. 6.7.111. On Procopiuss account of the destruction of Timgad see J. Durliat, Les ddi-
cacesdouvrages de dfensedans lAfrique byzantine (Rome, 1981), 49; C. Courtois, Les Vandales et lAfrique (Paris, 1955), 81; M. Janon,
LAurs au VIe sicle: Note sur le rcit de Procope, AntAfr 15 (1980): 34647. The date is established by the fact that the event took
place during the reign of Huneric.
2 Y. Modran, Les Maures et lAfrique romaine (IV eVII e sicle), BEFAR 314 (Rome, 2003), 384.
3 CIL 8:9835; Modran, Maures, 398415, with previous bibliography. Note that the date is hardly certain: P. Morizot, Masties a-t-il
t imperator? ZPapEpig 141 (2002): 23140, argues from letter forms and historical context for a sixth-century date, and substitutes
for the reading imp(e)r(ator) that of Lim(iti) p(rae)p(ositus).
4 Courtois, Vandales; Janon, LAurs au VIe sicle; Modran, Maures.
5 A. Rushworth, From Arzuges to Rustamids: State Formation and Regional Identity in the Pre-Sahara Zone, in Vandals,
Romans, and Berbers: New Perspectives on Late Antique North Africa, ed. A. H. Merrills (Aldershot and Burlington, 2004), 7798.
6 Modran, Maures, 481.
41
Modran called the no-berbristes: Charles

Diehl, Gabriel Camps, and Pierre Morizot, all
of whom believed, although for different reasons, that the Moors of the Aurs were recent
arrivals from outside over there.7 These two
positions, of course, fit into the larger historiographical debate as to the effective importance of
nomads and tribal invaders in the collapse of the
Roman, or indeed other, empires.8 Between the
actions of hairy barbariansLombards, Goths,
or Moorsand systemic collapse, the latter has
recently had much more appeal, and it hardly
need be mentioned that even if we accept the
existence of destructive invaders, the inability
of a society to defend itself, or to make good the
damage, points to some systemic dysfunction.
Our title makes it clear that we are going to
argue a position emphasizing migration, though
not from the Western Desert of Egypt as the noberbristes would have it, but from the south, putting ourselves firmly on the revisionist side. We
are going to do this in two ways: by looking first
at the admittedly scant archaeological evidence,
particularly for tombs, and then at a new source,
modern linguistics, to suggest that there was a
significant change in culture in the late fifth century, and that the new elements were Saharan in
origina view that, of course, fits with Corip
puss multiple descriptions of the Moors camels and horses and the fact that they traveled
with their wives, children, and cattle. In the second half of the paper we will examine developments in the Fazzan and the chain of oases that
stretches to the west, giving an outline of the circumstances in which this movement might have
come about. We will finally touch on some of
7 C. Diehl, LAfrique byzantine: Histoire de la domination
byzantine en Afrique, 533709 (Paris, 1896; repr. New York,

1959); G. Camps, Aux origines de la Berbrie: Monuments et
rites funraires protohistoriques (Paris, 1960); idem, Le Gour,
mausole berbre du VIIe sicle, AntAfr 8 (1974): 191208;
P.Morizot, Archologie arienne de lAurs (Paris, 1997); idem,
Les recherches en matire de protohistoire: Ltat de la question pour lAurs; Indices cartographiques pour le djebel
Amour, in Actes du VIIIe Colloque international sur l histoire et
larchologie de lAfrique du Nord: 1er Colloque international sur
l histoire et larchologie du Maghreb, ed. M. Khanoussi (Tunis,
2003), 6598.
8 P. Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire (London, 2005);
B. Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization

(Oxford, 2005); G. Halsall, Barbarian Migrations and the
Roman West, 376568 (Cambridge, 2007).
42
the consequences of a movement from the desert toward the Tell, tying it to the picture already
well developed by Alan Rushworth.
Among the best arguments put forward by, in
particular, Pierre Morizot, for looking elsewhere
for the Moors of the Aurs are his remarkable
surveys of the valleys of the mountains, carried
out over fifty years.9 In every valley are found
farms, villages, olive presses, churches: very few
large structures, but a myriad small ones, built in
Roman opus africanum, with square corners and
occasional inscriptions. Far from being a Roman
imposition, he sees these as indigenous sites that
had benefitted from the economic and political
effects of the Roman occupation of the area, and
show a fairly intense penetration of Christianity
in the region during the fourth and fifth centuries. His vision is, indeed, so convincing that in
giving the Moors a local origin, Modran was
forced to see a second, non-Romanized tribal
group in the Aurs, occupying, perhaps, the
peaks and cut off from the prosperity apparently
brought by Rome, biding their time and striking
when they had the chance.10
Archaeological evidence for destruction is
harder to come by. There have been almost no
modern surveys in the region in the sense of
recording pottery. An exception is a little survey
carried out in the region of Zana, Roman Diana
Veteranorum, in 1991.11 This revealed a large
number of Roman sites. They ranged from opus
africanum farms, the majority, to villages, some
of which had a decidedly more indigenous
aspect, like the site of Gergour, high on a hill
and cut off from its surroundings by deep ravines
(fig.3.1). But while all of them had pottery dating
to the fifth century, only at Diana Veteranorum
itself, where a Byzantine fort was built, and at one
other site on the main road, was sixth-century
9 Morizot, Archologie arienne de lAurs, and other works
in his long bibliography found at http://tabbourt.perso.sfr.

fr/maghreb/page2.html, accessed 18 December 2014. See
also A. Nasraoui, Les vestiges romains dans lAurs profond: Tmoins dun important brassage de cultures romaine
et berbre, in Identits et cultures dans lAlgrie antique, ed.
C.Briand-Ponsart (Rouen, 2005), 293304.
11 E. Fentress, Diana Veteranorum and the Dynamics of
an Inland Economy, in Local Economies? Production and

Exchange of Inland Regions in Late Antiquity, ed. L. Lavan and
W. Bowden, Late Antique Archaeology 6 (Leiden, 2013), 31542.
Fig. 3.1.
The fortified village
at Gergour, in the
mountains near Zana,
35 42 11.34N, 6 06
19.77 E. The settlement
to the east of the plateau
is late Roman, that to
the west more recent
(Google Earth, image
2015 Digital Globe)
pottery found. Further east, in the area of Kas

serine, Bruce Hitchners survey shows a similar collapse in settlement in the fifth century,12
while the Albertini Tablets, the latest of which
is dated to 496, were buried shortly thereafter,
presumably for protection. Like Timgad, the
town of Baghai, just north of the Aurs range, is
described by Procopius as deserted,13 although
its irrigation systems were understood and used
by the Moors.14 Further east still, at Leptiminus
and Sullecthum on the coast (fig. 3.2), poorly constructed fortified enclosures are probably to be
identified as fortifications hastily erected against
Moorish attacks in the Vandal period. The one
at Sullecthum seems to be that mentioned by
Procopius as predating the Byzantine reconquest
of North Africa: the wall of this city had been
torn down for a long time, but the inhabitants
of the place had made a barrier on all sides by
means of the walls of their houses, on account of
the attacks of the Moors, and guarded a kind of
12 R. B. Hitchner, The Kasserine Archaeological Survey:
19821986, AntAfr 24 (1988): 741; idem, The Kasserine

Archaeological Survey: 1987, AntAfr 26 (1990): 23159;
E.Fentress et al., Accounting for ARS, in Side-by-Side Survey,
ed. S. E. Alcock and J. F. Cherry (Oxford, 2004), 14762.
13 Procop. B.Vand. 4.19.7.
14 Janon, LAurs au VIe sicle, n. 4, observes that these have
not been found, and are not necessarily plausiblealthough at
the same time he uses the passage as proof that the Moors of the
Aurs had been long settled. A fort was built at Baghai by the
Byzantines and its occupation continued into the middle ages:
D. Pringle, The Defence of Byzantine Africa from Justinian to the
Arab Conquest, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1981), 2:18385.
The Saharan Berber Diaspora and the Southern Frontiers of Byzantine North Africa
43
Fig. 3.2.
The Maghreb and the
west-central Sahara,
showing the distribution
of the tombs and sites
mentioned in the text
(map by A. Wilson
and M. Anastasi)
fortified enclosure.15 A landscape, then, of some

desolation, with no new sites until the few forts
put up in the region by Solomon and his successors.16 It might, however, reasonably be argued
that the archaeological evidence is more than
usually weak, in that we cannot be sure that the
local industries producing African Red Slip Ware
had not gone out of business, leaving the settlements occupied but ceramically mute.17
15 Procop. B.Vand. 3.16.911; trans. H. B. Dewing, Procopius,
7 vols. (London and Cambridge, MA, 191435), 2:145.

Sullecthum: A. Wilson, personal observation. Leptiminus:
ibid.; cf. A. I. Wilson et al., Gazetteer of Sites in the Urban
Survey, in Leptiminus 3:495628, structure S55; D. L. Stone
et al., Urban Morphology, Infrastructure and Amenities,
in ibid., 199; D. J. Mattingly and D. L. Stone, Leptiminus:
Profile of a Town, in ibid., 27778, fig. 7.4. The enclosure at
Leptiminus is similar in construction to that at Sullecthum.
Saharan Tombs in the Tell

There is, however, another set of archaeological evidence that can be used to point to real
change in settlement in the area, and this is
tombs (fig. 3.2). In an article that has attracted
little attention, Morizot points out that there are
numerous indigenous tombs built from, and
often on top of, Roman ruins.18 Some of these
are simple tumuli or cairns, round piles of stones
incorporating those of the Roman buildings on
which they sit. A striking example comes from the
fort at Ausum, at the foot of the Saharan Atlas,
where eight great tumuli are found on the surface
(fig.3.3).19 Others are more carefully built: again,
they are generally circular, with a drum, and are
characterized by a small niche on their east face,
like one from El Esnam, near Msila (fig.3.4a), or by
16 Pringle, Defence.
17 M. Nasr, La sigille claire africaine de la Byzacne du sud-
ouest: Productions et circuits commerciaux (PhD diss., AixMarseille, 2005) apparently argues that the ARS E industries
of Sidi Aich continued some production until the early seventh
century, and those of Thelepte until even later, but we have not
been able to consult this work.
44
18 Morizot, Les recherches en matire de protohistoire,
6597.
19 J. Baradez, Fossatum Africae: Vue-Arienne de lorganisation
romaine dans le Sud-Algrien (Paris, 1949), pl. p.125; Morizot,

Les recherches en matire de protohistoire (n. 7 above), 70.
Fig. 3.3.
Tumuli covering the
Roman fort at Ausum,
34 51 42.92 N, 4 55
28.44E (Google Earth,
image 2015 Digital Globe)
extended antennae, as at the Roman town of Sila

(fig. 3.4b).20 They can be very large, like two drum
tumuli from the region of Ngrine (fig. 3.4c), with
carefully built trefoil chapels to the east, or quite
small, like a tomb found on the Zana survey, built
out of the orthostats of the farm it covers, with a
clear niche, probably for offerings (fig. 3.5).21 In
1879 mile Masqueray reported tombeaux mgalithiques at An-Ghorb in the Gurt plain of the
Nemencha mountains, with cover slabs 12 meters
long supported on orthostats reused from Roman
structures, and one tomb with a stone cist in the
middle of a ring of upright stones, the cists cover
slab also being a reused Roman stone. Masqueray
saw that these tombs represented a Berber tradition and must belong to a period between the fifth
century and the Arab conquest, after the collapse

of Roman control.22
Drum tombs and tumuli dating from around
or just after the middle of the first millennium
ce cover a very wide arealarge tombs with chapels very close to the examples from Ngrine are
found in the Tafilalt in Morocco,23 while drum
tumuli are found in the far western Sahara south
of Morocco: radiocarbon dates from the latter yield 1429 80 bp and 1394 85 bp, or cal.
(calibrated) 430769 ce (95.4 percent probability) and cal. 432809 ce (95.4 percent
probability).24 A monument in a related style,
22 . Masqueray, Ruines anciennes de Khenchela (Mascula)
Besseriani (Ad Majores) (Algiers, 1879), 2122.
23 For a map of tumuli with chapels see G. Camps, Rex gen20 An examination of the site by the authors in 2013 failed
to reveal this tomb.
21 Fentress, Diana Veteranorum. Further tombs made of
Roman building materials are found in the Aurs mountains,

for example, the tumuli made out of Roman ruins along Oued
Asker just above the confluence with the Mellagou: J. Birebent,
Aquae romanae: Recherches d hydraulique romaine dans lest
Algrien (Algiers, 1962), 162.
tium Maurorum et Romanorum: Recherches sur les royaumes

de Maurtanie des VIe et VIIe sicles, AntAfr 20 (1984): 207.
For the Tafilalt: J. Margat and A. Camus, Le ncropole de
Boula au Tafilalt, BAM 3 (1958): 34570, 362.
24 N. Brooks et al., The Archaeology of Western Sahara:
Results of Environmental and Archaeological Reconnaissance,

Antiquity 83 (2009): 928. The calibration of this and subsequent
dates is carried out using OxCal 4.1, radiocarbon calibration
program written by C. Bronk Ramsey, OxCal 4.1 (available at
45
Fig. 3.4.
Saharan-type tombs in
the Maghreb: (a)drum
tomb from El-Esnam;
(b)drum tomb with
antennae from Sila;
(c)tumulus with chapel
from Hr. Bessariani,
near Ngrine
(E.Fentress after
Camps, Aux origines
de la Berbrie, figs. 4,
66, 70, and 71)
without a chapel but built in two concentric

steps, is the best known of this series. This is the
mausoleum of El Gour, near Mekns (fig. 3.6).25
It is almost certainly a late Roman building:
http://c14.arch.ox.ac.uk/embed.php?File=oxcal.html, accessed
1 December 2014), with atmospheric data from P. J. Reimer
etal., IntCal09 and Marine09 Radiocarbon Age Calibration
Curves, 050,000 Years Cal BP, Radiocarbon 51, no. 4 (2009):
111150.
25 Camps, Le Gour, with previous bibliography (n. 7 above).
46
radiocarbon dates it to the seventh or even

eighth century.26 However, while this is again
26 Cal. 565945 ce at 95.4% probability (2 sigma): calibra-
tion of the original uncalibrated date of 1310 90 bp. Camps,

Le Gour, 206, fails to calibrate the date, wrongly considering radiocarbon years as equivalent to calendar years and simply subtracting the radiocarbon age from 1950 (to give, in his
opinion, 640 ce). This is a common error in the francophone
literature on North Africa, made also by him for the tomb
of Tin Hinan (G. Camps, Recherches sur les plus anciennes
inscriptions libyques de lAfrique du Nord et du Sahara, BAC
Fig. 3.5.
Drum tomb built
with spolia from a late
Roman farm, Zana
survey, from north
(drawing by E. Fentress)
built in an indigenous, prehistoric tradition

Campss bazina degrswe have no evidence
whatsoever for any similar monuments built during the Roman period; or, more precisely, after the
erection of the Tombeau de la Chrtienne near
Tipasa, probably by the Hellenistic king Juba II
(25 bceca. 23 ce). The hundreds of Roman cemeteries of North Africa, even in the Aurs, do not
contain a single tumulus or drum tomb. They are,
however, a very common tomb type in the Sahara.
Even more striking are the little structures next
to the Zana tomb, again built out of the orthostats of the villa on the site (fig. 3.5). These are
three-sided rectangles, of a type generally interpreted as a chapel for incubation, the practice
of sleeping in tombs, which is well-attested in
earlier sources.27 Again, nothing of the sort is
known from Roman cemeteries. Good parallels,
n.s. 1011 B [197778]: 164), and for Djedars B and C by J.-P.
Laporte, Les djedars, monuments funraires berbres de la
rgion de Frenda et de Tiaret, in Briand-Ponsart, Identits et
cultures (n. 9 above), 360, 367. Camps, Rex gentium Maurorum
et Romanorum, shows some awareness of the problem of calibration, but fails fully to follow through the implications.
27 M. Brett and E. Fentress, The Berbers (Oxford, 1996),
3436.
however, come from the deep Sahara: the threesided structures are known from the Hoggar and
Tassili, as well as from the Fazzan.28 Circular
drum tombs with niches and offering tables on
the east side, occasionally with antennae, are also
very common in the Garamantian cemeteries of
the Wadi al-Ajal in Fazzan, and more generally
in Garamantian territory.29 The most striking
example of a drum tomb with antennae, with
multiple small cairns covering offerings of animal
bones, as well as U-shaped structures, comes from
In Aghelachem, in the Tadrart Acacus (figs.3.7
and 3.2).30 Radiocarbon from the tomb returns
a calibrated date of 246420 ce (95.4 percent),
28 M. Reygasse, Monuments funraires prislamiques de
lAfrique du Nord (Paris, 1950), 50. A similar annex is found on

the Saharan tomb excavated by N. Brooks et al., Funerary Sites
in the Free Zone: Report on the Second and Third Seasons of
Fieldwork of the Western Sahara Project, Sahara 17 (2006):
85, fig. 14.
29 D. J. Mattingly, The Garamantes of Fazzan: An Early
Libyan State with Trans-Saharan Connections, in Money,

Trade and Trade-Routes in Pre-Islamic North Africa, ed.
A.Dowler and E. Galvin (London, 2011), 4960.
30 S. Di Lernia et al., From Regions to Sites: The Excava
tions, in Sand, Stones and Bones: The Archaeology of Death in

the Wadi Tanezzuft Valley (50002000 BP), ed. S. Di Lernia
47
Fig. 3.6.
Mausoleum of ElGour,
33 51 0.79N, 5 18
31.97E ; the white
arrow indicates a
platform that may
represent an altar
(Google Earth, image
2015 Digital Globe)
refined with Bayesian analysis of associated dates

to cal. 235372 ce.31
The most extreme example of the Saharan
tomb types in North Africa are, as many have
pointed out, the Djedars, near Tiaret, two groups
of great monumental tombsstepped pyramids
on a square base that tower over the surrounding
landscapebuilt between the fifth and the sixth
centuries (fig. 3.8).32 Although they bear a distant
and G. Manzi, Arid Zone Archaeology Monographs (Florence,
2002), 1035.
31 We calculate the date for the In Aghelachem site using
Bayesian analysis in OxCal 4.2 with the IntCal13 calibration

curve of three radiocarbon dates given by Di Lernia et al.,From
Regions to Sites, 115. These are: 1700 40 bp (GX-27385-AMS)
for a date stone from the main burial = cal. 246416 ce at 95.4%
probability; and 1850 80 bp (GX-27383) for charcoal from SF
25 Group 1, an altar or fireplace in front of the tomb = cal. 18
bce380 ce at 95.4%; and 1740 40 bp (GX-27384) for charcoal from a second altar/fireplace = cal. 174400 ce at 95.4%.
Assuming that the altars or fireplaces were built with or after the
main tomb (SF 25 Group 1 is on axis with the main tomb and its
horseshoe structure, and can hardly have been built before it),
the dates from the main tomb and the sacrifices here should constrain each other. Bayesian analysis in OxCal 4.2 gives a date for
the main tomb of 235372 ce, and dates of 246389 ce and 253
386 ce for the two sacrifices. We are grateful to Martin Sterry
for advice on Bayesian dating of radiocarbon dates.
32 For the Djedars, see most recently Rushworth, From
Arzuges to Rustamids (n. 5 above); Laporte, Les djedars.
48
relation to contemporary tumuli such as the

Gour, particularly in the platform outside Djedar
A, which served cult purposes, they are otherwise
entirely original.33 Carrying inscriptions, largely
illegible, and decorated with reliefs, they have been
justly identified as princely tombs of a dynasty
that ruled Mauretania, who used local builders
but were themselves from a different cultural tradition. The point is an obvious one: we have to
search for the origins of the type in the Sahara,
where, besides the obvious Egyptian reference, the
Royal cemetery of Garama immediately comes
to mind.34 Stepped square tombs and pyramids,
in both stone and mud brick, are common tomb
types in classic and late Garamantian cemeteries
in the Wadi al-Ajal, although on a much smaller
scale than the Djedars.
The most complete study is F. Kadra, Les Djedars, monuments

funraires berbres de la rgion de Frenda (Algiers, 1983), with
previous bibliography.
33 Laporte, Les djedars, 342 (Djedar A), 355 (Djedar B), and
372 (Djedar F): a similar platform is found outside the Gour. At

Djedars A and B altars are found on the platform, suggestive of
a funerary cult.
34 Mattingly, The Garamantes of Fazzan, with previous
bibliography.
Thus late Roman tombs, both in the west

and in the Aurs area, represent a radical break
with the immediate past, and are hardly likely
to represent a local cultural memory from half a
millennium earlier. Their distribution is significant: no late tumuli are known from the northern Tell, but they are found well inland from the
pre-desert zone, as far north as Sila, and, in the
Oranais, almost on the coast at Maghnia. These
tombs seem to suggest an influx of new people,
whose origins could be found deep in the Sahara,
rather than in the pre-desert.35 These tombs are,
furthermore, clearly demonstrative, squatting on
Roman fortifications, as at Ausum, using their
spolia, creating monuments that deliberately
35 This is also the view of Camps, Rex gentium Maurorum
et Romanorum.
stress their Saharan roots and using styles of

building that, though characteristic of and visible
in the desert, were anything but contemporary.
The tombs stress an identity that is deliberately
un-Roman, and in most cases un-Christian, as
the trefoil chapels (which regularly face west)
of Ngrine and Taouz, or the altar platforms in
front of the Gour and Djedar C, clearly show.
It is surely not accidental that Djedar C is built
from spolia belonging to a church.36 The superposition of religions is striking evidence that we are
dealing with newcomers.37
36 P. Cadenat, Vestiges palo-chrtiens dans la region de
Tiaret, Libyca: Archologiepigraphie 5 (1957): 8184.
37 The exception among the Moorish monuments is the
inscription of Masties, on which he writes sic /mecu(m)

Deus egit bene, leaving no doubt of his Christianity: J. Car
copino, Un empereur maure inconnu, daprs une inscription
49
Fig. 3.7.
The tomb and
related structures
at In Aghelachem
(courtesy Savino Di
Lernia, from idem,
From Regions to
Sites, 103)
Fig. 3.8.
Djedar A from the
east (photograph
by C. Fenwick)
Linguistic Change
If there is no doubt that Berber languages
were spoken throughout North Africa in the
Hellenistic and early Roman periods, as the
Dougga inscription and many others show, this
is far less clear in the late Roman period. J.-B.
Chabots Recueil des inscriptions libyques lists
1,125 inscriptions from Tunisia and Algeria, none
of which is clearly datable later than the third
latine rcemment dcouverte dans lAurs, REA 46 (1944):
94120. P. Morizot, Pour une nouvelle lecture de lElogium de
Masties, AntAfr 25 (1989): 280, argues for a sixth-century date,
with Masties dying around 533; Modran, Maures, 4048 (n.
2 above), would put Mastiess career somewhat earlier. In any
case the inscription is as much as two generations later than
Djedar C, and it seems fairly clear that Christianity had begun
to penetrate outside the old Roman area by this time. For the
Christian images on the tomb of Djorf Torba: M. Lihoreau,
Djorf Torba ncropole saharienne antislamique (Paris, 1993);
G. Camps, Djorf Torba, EB 16:2485. For an interesting
view of the use of Christianity by Masties: G. Fisher and A.
Drost, Structures of Power in Late Antique Borderlands:
Arabs, Romans, and Berbers, in European and American
Borderlands: A New Comparative Approach, ed. J. W. I. Lee and
M. North(forthcoming).
50
century. The Libyan alphabets seem to have

died out in most of the Maghrib by the end of the
third century under the pressure of the Latin epigraphic habit and also the continued vitality of
Punic, at least as a spoken language. While the
epigraphy is unlikely to reflect the full range of
language use, it does strongly suggest that in the
Roman period, Berber languages gave ground
in North Africa in the face of Latin and Punic,
languages spoken by economically and politically more powerful groups. This is supported
by the references in Latin authors to the use of
Punic even in late antiquity and their localization of Berber (African) speakers in the south.
As Claude Lepelley, following many others,
has commented, the absence of any trace of the
Berber languages in Saint Augustine is striking.38 He mentions them on only one occasion,
in the City of God, where he comments that we
38 C. Lepelley, Tmoignages de saint Augustin sur
lampleur et les limites de lusage de la langue punique dans

lAfrique de son temps, in Briand-Ponsard, Identits et cultures,
13753 (n. 9 above).
know numerous nations of barbarians in Africa

and they have only one language.39 In the countryside Punic was spoken, and Augustine was
concerned to find enough priests who could
communicate in that language. This was true of
the coast around Hippo, but also as far south as
Constantine (ancient Cirta) and in Tripolitania,
where numerous neo-Punic inscriptions are
recordedindeed, in Tripolitania, Latino-Punic
inscriptions attest the continued use of the language in the pre-desert into the fourth century.
The fact that the southern part of the area around
Hippo coincides with the greatest concentration
of inscriptions in Libyan squares oddly with this,
but the latest of these dates to the second century.40 After that, there is no further trace of the
northern Libyan alphabet in the Tell. Of course,
there is no reason to doubt that the Libyan language continued to be spoken in some places,
surviving perhaps in areas like the Kabylie, the
Moroccan Rif, and Mauretania Sitifensis where,
as Augustine records, no Punic was spoken.41
Latin may indeed have spread even farther west
among ordinary people, as the very late inscriptions from Altava and Volubilis testify: we should
note the use even today of the Julian, rather than
the Islamic, calendar in the Moroccan Atlas.42
But if Latin and Punic did not eliminate the
African languages they certainly isolated them:
we can imagine pockets of Berber speakers, with
no contact with each other. Indeed, the languages they spoke may already have been mutually incomprehensible: it is hard to imagine that
there was much homogeneity between the Rif
and the Tunisian Tell even in an earlier period.
In recent years, Christopher Ehret (UCLA),
Andrew Kitchen (University of Iowa), and their
teams have worked on the chronology of the
Semitic and Afroasiatic languages, applying
Bayesian statistical methods used in dating gene
lineages to estimating divergences among the
39 De civ. D. 16.6.2, ed. B. Dombart and A. Kalb, 2 vols.,
CCSL 4748 (Turnhout, 1955), 2:507.
40 G. Camps, Punica lingua et pigraphie libyque dans la
Numidie dHippone, BAC n.s. 23 B (199092): 3349, makes

the same point.
41 Augustine Ep. 84: Lepelley, Tmoignages, 140.
42 R. Rebuffat, Nomadisme et archologie, in LAfrique
dans lOccident romain (Ier sicle av. J.-C. IVe sicle aprs J.-C.),
Coll. EFR 134 (Rome, 1990), 243.
language lineages of Afroasiatic. The foundation

of this technique is the empirical count of the
quantities of shared old cognate words retained
in the different languages for 90 highly basic
meanings.43 Because a number of the Afroasiatic
languages are known from ancient epigraphic or
other written sources, the quantities of retention
in those languages at specific time periods can
be determined, with implications for the rates of
change that can then be extended to the rest of
the family. Their dating proposals for the Semitic
branch of Afroasiatic have already been published.44 Work on the remainder of Afroasiatic is
still in progress, so the interim findings for Berber
may be subject to future modification. There are,
of course, questions as to the fixed rate of change
implied by these estimates, and the use of lexical,
rather than morphological, criteria for grouping
the dialects.45
Ehret and Kitchens current estimate is that
the ancestor of all of the modern languages, which
they refer to as proto-Berber,46 would have been
spoken around 20001500 bce (fig. 3.9).47 It
would have been one among probably a number
of related languages belonging to a former macroBerber branch of Afroasiatic spoken across the
43 By comparing the divergence of, say, Italian from Latin,
or Hindi from Sanskrit, it can be seen that the amount of word

replacement over a given time clusters around the same median
figure. This sort of study gives an idea of the order of magnitude,
the median lexico-statistical figure for the divergence between
two languages over about 1,000 years lies at around 74%, and
for 2,000 years at about 55%: C. Ehret, Linguistic Evidence
and its Correlation with Archaeology, World Archaeology 8,
no. 1 (1976): 518; idem, History and the Testimony of Language
(Berkeley, 2010).
44 For a recent account of this technique, see A. Kitchen,
C. Ehret, et al., Bayesian Phylogenetic Analysis of Semitic

Languages Identifies an Early Bronze Age Origin of Semitic
in the Near East, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological
Sciences, 276 no. 1668 (2009): 270310.
45 We are grateful to Maarten Kossmann for his com-
ments and bibliographical suggestions, and particularly

his forthcoming chapter, Berber Subclassification, in The
Cambridge Handbook of African Linguistics, ed. R. Vossen. For
a similar tree classification of Berber languages see V. Blaek,
On Classification of Berber, paper presented at the 40th
Colloquium of African Languages and Linguistics, Leiden,
2325 August, 2010.
46 This, rather than the Berber term Tamazigh, has been used
to prevent confusion with the language of that name spoken in

Morocco.
47 To Christopher Ehret we owe many illuminating com-
ments on and corrections of this section, as well as the figure.
51
proto-Berber
proto-Amazigh
proto-East-West Amazigh
2000 bce?
1000 bce?
600 bce?
400 ce?
proto-Central AmazighZenatic
proto-Oasis
proto-West-Central Amazigh
proto-Tuareg
400 ce?
600 ce?
1100 ce?
1100 ce?
Siwa Augila Hoggar Ghat Ghadames Nefusa Wargla Mzab Shawiya Shenwa Beni-Snous Rif Senhaja Tamazigh Tashelhit Kabyle Zenaga
Tuareg
Fig. 3.9.
The relative
chronology and
preliminary dating of
the Berber languages,
with the Zenatic
/ proto-Central
Amazigh languages
in grey (drawing
by Christopher
Ehret and Andrew
Kitchen, adapted by
Elizabeth Fentress)
Maghrib and Libya, the origins of which might

go back to early Capsian times, although there is
no proof of this. Over the course of the second
millennium bce, according to their preliminary
proposals, proto-Berber expanded across North
Africa, replacing any other related languages and
giving rise to at least three daughter languages: one
far to the west, ancestral to modern Zenaga, then,
perhaps around 1000 bce, a second language, here
called proto-Amazigh, ancestral to Kabyle and the
oasis of Siwa as well as all the later branches.
A third major expansion occurred near
the middle of the first millennium bce, when
daughter languages of the third population,
who spoke the ancestral forms of such languages
as Ghadames, Nafusa, Tuareg, and Tashelhit,
spread in the eastern and central desert areas
and westward as far as western Mauretania.
Howeverand this is what is of interest for us
the modern languages of the area of Numidia and
the Mauretanias appear only to have divided from
each other around the end of the Roman period,
52
around 400 ce.48 This group includes the languages of the Mzab, Wargla, and the Western
Oases, along with that of the Aurs (Shawiya),
western Algeria, and the Moroccan Rif.49 It is
called here proto-Central Amazigh, although the
group was identified as Zenatic as early as 1920.50
This suggests that all of the Berber languages
now spoken in the western Maghrib, with the
exception of Kabyle and in the far southwest
Tashelhit, derive from a single parent language,
which was able to introduce a new, unified version of the language. This effectively eliminated
48 Idem, personal communication, based on preliminary
data.
49 The language of Ghadames and the Jebel Nefusa separated
from the desert group slightly earlier, which is consistent with the
antiquity of these sites as trading centers. The effect of these centers continues, as can be seen, for example, in the apparently more
recent exchanges between the languages of Ghat and Wargla.
50 E. Destaing, Note sur la conjugaison des verbes de formes
C1 et C2, Mmoires de la Socit de linguistique de Paris 22

(1920): 13948.
any remaining traces of the languages spoken

in the time of Massinissa (203148 bce) everywhere but in the Kabylie, although there is some
evidence for a substrate of the Kabylie parent
language in the more northern languages, such
as Shawiya.51 To be so effective, the Zenatic language would have had to be the language of government and commerce. This seems to suggest
that the elusive Berber successor kingdoms in
the west, creators of the Djedars, were far more
powerful and wide-ranging than either Courtois
or Modran believed. If their origin was, indeed,
in the Sahara, it was this new version of the language that prevailed. Tuareg is a close relative of
this group: it appears to have separated out in the
preceding period of expansion as a sister language
to the desert language that moved northward. It
is immediately obvious that the diffusion of this
language group compares very precisely with that
of the Saharan tomb-types in the Tell. It is significant that both the new language and the
tombs are absent in the Kabylie, where the language spoken today appears to descend from that
spoken in a much earlier period. It is impossible
to ignore, here, the comment of Ibn Khaldoun
that the language of the Zenata is very different
from that of the other Berbers.52
Inscriptions in the Libyan alphabet, Tifi
nagh, may also have been re-introduced farther
north in the fifth century. A significant ancient
Tifinagh inscription is found scratched in the
plaster in the Ngrine tumulus, while there is
another beside one of the Christian images of
the tombs of Djorf Torba.53 Farther east, as we
shall see, there are indications that some of the
51 C. Ehret, personal communication.
52 Ibn Khaldoun, Muqaddima, trans. M. G. de Slane (Paris,
1863), vol. 3, 179, cited in Modran, Maures (n. 2 above), 205.
inscriptions from Ghirza, and from other late

antique sites in the Tripolitanian pre-desert, were
more closely related to the Saharan than to the
Libyan scripts.54
A Saharan Invasion?
Modran rightly points out that Procopius is in
no doubt that the Moors of the sixth-century
chieftain Iaudas were the same Moors dwelling
in the Aurs in 484.55 If we are really going to
postulate that they were immigrants from the
Sahara they would have to have arrived in the
Aurs at an earlier date, either from the Saharan
Atlas to the southwest, or up the line of oases that
stretches from Tamenrasset through Ouargla
and Touggurt. But the large numbers that they
seem to represent, if we are to believe that they
spoke essentially the same language as the groups
that moved into Mauretania and constructed
the Djedars, are unlikely to have shown up along
the limes much before the Vandal conquestor
indeed much after it, as they are specifically mentioned as having had an alliance with the Vandals,
and Gelimer took refuge with Iaudas. There is
one clear indication, however, of a pre-Vandal
buildup of pressure on the Numidian limes.
This is the well-known letter of St Augustine to
Boniface, comes of Africa. In it he remembers
how, a few years earlier, he had visited Boniface
at Tobna (Thubunae or Tubunae) in the Hodna,
where he was a tribune, presumably praepositus
of the limes Thubunensis. Here Augustine persuaded him not to give up public life in mourning
for his wife because of the importance of protecting the church from the incursions of barbarians.56 But in 427, Augustine felt that Bonifaces
inaction, despite his sizable army, made him
responsible for the devastation of Africa at this
53 For the Ngrine inscription, see E. Battistini, Note sur
deux tumuli de la rgion de Ngrine, Recueil de la socit de

prhistoire et darchologie de Tbessa (193637): 18395. Note
that these tombs have been recently characterized as preRoman, on the rather flimsy basis of the absence of Roman
finds (J.-P. Laporte and X. Dupuis, De Nigrenses Maiores
Ngrine, AntAfr 45 [2009]: 51102, 55). For Djorf Torba, see
Lihoreau, Djorf Torba; Camps, Djorf Torba, 2485 (both n. 37
above). New Christian images, similar to those of Djorf Torba,
are signaled by Malika Hachid at Brzina, in the Saharan Atlas,
while in the same area is found an important engraving of a
camel caravan, with waterskins slung under the camels, accompanied by another Libyque inscription: M. Hachid, Strabon,
El-Idrissi, la Guerba et un Libyque plus tardif que les VeVIe
sicles? in Actes du premier Colloque de prhistoire Maghrbine,

2 vols. (Algiers, 2011), 2:191225.
54 On the four major inscriptions from the temple both
forms of the b are present: a circle with a dot inside it, found
on the Dougga inscription, and one with a straight line, like a
theta, which is characteristic of Tifinagh (both ancient and
modern).
55 Modran, Maures, 389 and passim. For what it is worth,
we could note that Procopius refers to the Mauri of the Aurs

as (B.Vand. 4.13.29); clearly he perceives them as
darker than the Libyan Africans.
56 Ep. 220.3.
53
Fig. 3.10.
Southern Numidia:
the fourth-century
limes (map by
E.Fentress)
hour by hordes of African barbarians, to whom

no resistance is offered, while you are engrossed
with such embarrassments in your own circumstances, and are taking no measures for averting
this calamity. Who would ever have believed,
who would have feared...[that Boniface] should
now have suffered the barbarians to be so bold,
to encroach so far, to destroy and plunder so
much, and to turn into deserts such vast regions
once densely peopled?57 Even allowing for rhetorical exaggeration, it is clear that the limes had
given way, either in the Hodna, where the great
concentration of forts shows a heavily protected
gateway into Numidia and the Mauretanias, or
in the Aurs themselves (fig. 3.10).58 The Vandal
conquest a few years later will in any case have
completed the disintegration of the limes, leaving the passes into the Aurs open. Indeed, this
is exactly what Procopius said happened: the
Libyans took over much of the territory.59 We

would argue that Saharan tribes came in via both
routes, some settling in the Aurs, some continuing into the Mauretanias. The imperator Masties
and subsequently Iaudas would have been the
kings of the tribes of the Aurs.
Modrans chief objection to such a scenario
is simple.60 What have mobile desert tribes got to
do with the Aurs? How could they have known
the irrigation channels of Baghai so well as to
flood the Byzantine army? What is the relationship between the camel-using hordes of Cusinas
to the Moors of the mountains? In the second
half of this paper we will attempt to resolve the
apparent contradiction: there is no reason to
think that these tribes were fully nomadic at any
point. The Garamantian kingdom, if not necessarily the source of the inflow, gives an excellent example of the sort of society we are talking
about, one skillfully integrating both agriculture
and mobility.
57 Ep. 220.7, trans. J. G. Cunningham in A Select Library of
the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, first

series, ed. P. Schaff, 14 vols. (New York, 188690), 1:574.
58 For the fourth-century limes, see E. Fentress, Numidia
and the Roman Army (Oxford, 1979), 119. A fort measuring

150 60m on the Oued Ittel, west of the Chott Melrhir, was
recorded by M. Leroy in 1896 (E. T. Hamy, Note sur de nouvelles observations archologiques recueillies entre El-Alia et
Biskra, CRAI 40 [1896]: 1015), but it does not seem to have
been located since. See also R. Rebuffat, Les Romains et les
routes caravanires africaines, in Le Sahara: Lien entre les peuples et les cultures; Actes du colloque (Tunis, 1922 dcembre 2002),
ed. M. Fantar (Tunis, 2003), 22160, at 238.
54
The Garamantes
Ancient authors, from Herodotus onward,
tell us that the Garamantes inhabited the area
now known as Fazzan, in southern Libya; they
engaged in agriculture, raided their southern
neighbors for slaves, and participated at various
59 B.Vand. 4.10.28.
periods in trade with the Mediterranean region.

Cornelius Balbus celebrated a triumph over them
in 19 bce; they caused trouble for Rome in the
revolt of Tacfarinas in 1724,61 and then intervened in an armed dispute between Oea and
Lepcis Magna in 6869,62 following which they
seem to have been reduced to order by a punitive
expedition, and relations were quiet again until
some hints of further trouble under Septimius
Severus around 202;63 the establishment of the
Severan limes forts was a either a cause of or a
response to this.
In the late 1960s and 1970s Charles Daniels
began to investigate the archaeology of the
Garamantes,64 and over the last fifteen years,
new fieldwork, and in particular the Fazzan
Project and Desert Migrations Project directed
by David Mattingly in the Wadi al-Ajal, and the
work of the Italian Mission under Mario Liverani
around Ghat, has put considerable flesh on the
bare bones of the ancient literary evidence.65 The
Wadi al-Ajal in the first five centuries ce appears
to have been more densely populated than at any
other time before the introduction of motorized
61 Tac. Ann. 3.74.3.
62 Tac. Historiae 4.50.
63 C. M. Daniels, The Garamantes of Southern Libya
(Madison and North Harrow, 1970), 23.
64 Idem, The Garamantes of Fezzan, in Libya in History:
Historical Conference, 1623 March 1968, ed. F. F. Gadallah

(n. p., 1968), 26187; idem, The Garamantes, in Geology,
Archaeology and Prehistory of the Southwestern Fezzan, Libya:
Petroleum Exploration Society of Libya, Eleventh Annual Field
Conference 1969, ed. W. H. Kanes (Castelfranco Veneto, 1969),
3152; Daniels, Garamantes of Southern Libya; idem, An
Ancient People of the Libyan Sahara, in Hamito-Semitica, ed.
J. Bynon and T. Bynon (The Hague and Paris, 1975), 24965;
idem, Excavation and Fieldwork amongst the Garamantes,
in Libya: Research in Archaeology, Environment, History and
Society 19691989, ed. D. J. Mattingly and J. A. Lloyd = Libyan
Studies 20 (1989): 4561; and The Archaeology of Fazzn, ed. D.J.
Mattingly, 4 vols. (London, 200313), esp. vol. 3, Excavations of
C. M. Daniels and Other Finds.
65 E.g., The Archaeology of Fazzn, vol. 1, Synthesis; vol. 2, Site
Gazetteer, Pottery and Other Survey Finds; and vol. 3; Mattingly,

The Garamantes of Fazzan (n. 29 above), 4960, and annual
reports in Libyan Studies between 1997 and 2001, and 2007
and 2011; M. Liverani, The Garamantes: A Fresh Approach,
Libyan Studies 31 (2000): 1728; idem, The Libyan Caravan
Road in Herodotus IV.181185, JESHO 43 (2000): 496520;
idem, Aghram Nadharif: The Barkat Oasis (Shaabiya of Ghat,
Libyan Sahara) in Garamantian Times (Florence, 2005); R.
Castelli et al., A Preliminary Report of Excavations in Fewet,
Libyan Sahara, Journal of African Archaeology 3 (2005): 69102.
pumped wells in the 1950s; the Garamantes practiced sophisticated forms of oasis agriculture,
growing durum wheat, barley, sorghum, cotton,
grapes, figs, and so forth.66 In the northern of
the three principal oasis belts that constitute the
Fazzan, the Wadi asc-Sciatti, agriculture was fed
by irrigation channels from artificially developed
artesian springs; in the central wadi, the Wadi alAjal, and outlying oases, it was fed by foggaras,
subterranean tunnels that tapped groundwater,
dug between closely spaced shafts for access, maintenance, and the removal of spoil. This is the same
technology as the Persian qanat or karez. Over 550
foggaras, ranging from 100 meters to 4.5 kilometers in length, are known from the Wadi al-Ajal,
and probably another fifty to a hundred in other
parts of the Fazzan; they are all long-abandoned,
but are spatially associated with Garamantian
settlements, and in some cases with Tifinagh
inscriptions too. In some areas of the Wadi al-Ajal
foggara irrigation was supplemented by shaduf
wells; further south, around Murzuq, shaduf wells
were the main technology sustaining an extensive landscape of fortified villages, based around
a central gasr in the middle of the settlement,
with a surrounding field system, and outlying
cemeteries.67 In a few places, where the topography allowed, some sites or fields were supplied by
foggaras as well. The larger settlements were small
towns; the capital Garama (modern Jarma in
the Wadi al-Ajal) had monumental architecture
including ashlar-built temples and a Roman-style
bath (whose hypocaust and flue tiles have been
found), while other fortified settlements in the
Edeyen Murzuq exhibit rectilinear planning.68
66 A. I. Wilson and D. J. Mattingly, Irrigation Technologies:
Foggaras, Wells and Field Systems, in Archaeology of Fazzn,

1:23578; eidem, Farming the Sahara: The Garamantian
Contribution in Southern Libya, in Arid Lands in Roman
Times, ed. M. Liverani (Florence, 2003), 3750; N. Drake et al.,
Water Table Decline, Springline Desiccation and the Early
Development of Irrigated Agriculture in the Wadi al-Ajal,
Libyan Fazzan, Libyan Studies 35 (2004): 95112; A. I. Wilson,
The Spread of Foggara-Based Irrigation in the Ancient Sahara,
in The Libyan Desert: Natural Resources and Cultural Heritage,
ed. D. J. Mattingly et al. (London, 2006), 20516.
67 M. Sterry and D. Mattingly, DMP XIII: Reconnaissance
Survey of Archaeological Sites in the Murzuq Area, Libyan

Studies 42 (2011): 10316.
68 D. J. Mattingly and M. Sterry, The First Towns in the
Central Sahara, Antiquity 87, no. 336 (2013): 50318.
55
As Mario Liverani has argued for antiquity

and Judith Scheele for recent Saharan trade,
oases are not self-sufficient and oasis agriculture
is inextricably linked with long-distance desert
trade.69 The archaeology of the Garamantes in
the Wadi al-Ajal provides a vivid illustration of
this: not only do nearly all tombs dating between
the late first and the fourth century yield Roman
pottery and amphorae, and sometimes glassware as well, but Roman pottery is also found,
often in abundance, on the surface of nearly
every site dated to the Garamantian period. The
Garamantian Fazzan formed the hub of many
ancient Saharan and trans-Saharan trade routes
(fig. 3.11): the Garamantes seem to have traded
salt, carnelian, and amazonite gemstones, and
perhaps wheat, southward to Kanem and Chad
in return for slaves, and southwest via Ghat, the
Hoggar, and Timmissao to the Niger bend in
return for slaves and, probably, gold; they traded
slaves, carnelian gemstones, cotton, and probably gold northward via the oases of the Severan
limesGhadames, Gheriat el-Gharbia, and Bu
Ngemto the Roman Mediterranean world, in
return for Roman goods such as wine, olive oil,
salted fish, pottery, and glasswaregoods that
they used and consumed in Fazzan, rather than
trading onward.70 One of us has argued that the
quantity of Roman imports, together with the
Roman worlds demand for slaves, suggests that
the slave trade between the Garamantes and the
Roman world could easily at least have equaled,
and possibly even exceeded, the scale of the much
better-documented medieval and early modern
trans-Saharan slave trade (5,00010,000 slaves
per year, across all routes).71
To judge by the quantity of Roman imports in
the Garamantian Fazzan, this Saharan and transSaharan trade was at its most intense from the
69 Liverani, The Garamantes; idem, The Libyan Caravan
Road; J. Scheele, Traders, Saints and Irrigation: Reflections

on Saharan Connectivity, Journal of African History 51, no. 3
(2010): 281300.
70 D. J. Mattingly and A. I. Wilson, Concluding Thoughts:
late first century (following the rapprochement

between Rome and the Garamantes after 69)
through to the third century. Thereafter, until the
sixth century, Mediterranean trade goods continued to arrive, but in much smaller numbers: some
southern Tunisian Keay 62 amphorae that probably arrived along the routes via Ghadames, LR1
amphorae, and very high-quality eastern glassware that probably came via the oasis routes from
Egypt. ARS imports dropped off after the third
century, but Tripolitanian red slip and coarsewares continued to reach Fazzan.
Although imports declined from the third
century onward, there are signs that in the
Murzuq region of southern Fazzan there was perhaps a population increase; certainly new fortified villages (gsur) were created there in the third
century, with a spate of construction of new gsur
in the fifth and sixth centuries, fed chiefly from
wells.72 The foggara-fed landscape of the Wadi alAjal evidently declined in the second half of the
first millennium, although chronological precision is poor, heavily dependent as it is on dating
from imported Roman/Byzantine wares, which
had become fewer by this period and ceased
nearly completely by the seventh century. Very
few sites show Islamic imports, and while early
Arab writers from the tenth century onward
mention irrigation from shaduf wells, they do
not mention foggaras. The foggara-fed landscape
of settlement and irrigation was replaced by a system of gardens based around wells, which could
support a much smaller population and produce
far less in the way of surplus; there are indications
that this process began, and may have been completed, before the first Arab incursion into the
region in 643.73
We are less well informed about the archaeology of the oases of the northern Sahara. A project
starting to investigate the Ghadames oasis, under
the direction of David Mattingly and Muftah
Haddad, was abruptly suspended after a month
by the Libyan revolution in February 2011. It is
Made in Fazzan? in The Archaeology of Fazzn, 3:52330;

Mattingly, The Garamantes of Fazzan, 4960; Fentress,
Slavers on Chariots, in Dowler and Galvin, Money, Trade and
Trade-Routes (n. 29 above), 6571; A. I. Wilson, Saharan Trade
in the Roman Period: Short-, Medium- and Long-Distance
Trade Networks, Azania 47, no. 4 (2012): 40949.
72 M. Sterry, D. J. Mattingly, and T. Higham, Desert
71 Wilson, Saharan Trade.
73 Wilson and Mattingly, Irrigation Technologies.
56
Migrations Project XVI: Radiocarbon Dates from the Murzuq

Region, Southern Libya, Libyan Studies 43 (2012): 13747; M.
Sterry and D. J. Mattingly, Desert Migrations Project XVII:
Further AMS Dates for Historic Settlements from Fazzan,
South-West Libya, Libyan Studies 44 (2013): 12740.
worth saying, however, that abandoned foggaras

are known at Ghadames and Zillah, and reportedly also at Derj and in the Waddan and Sokna
oases, while active foggaras exist at El Guettar
near Gafsa, and in the Nefzaoua oases (fig. 3.11).74
An abandoned foggara, presumed to be ancient
or late antique, is known from Badias on the
southern flank of the Aurs, and foggaras and
foggara-type aqueducts are known from Roman
territory north of the Aurs and at Lamasba
(although the date of the latter is earlier).75 Local
legends of the Aurs region firmly associate
74 Zilla: H. Goblot, Les qanats: Une technique dacquisition
de leau (Paris and New York, 1979), 11516; El Guettar and the
Nefzaoua: A. I. Wilson, Foggaras in Ancient North Africa:
Or How to Marry a Berber Princess, in Contrle et distribution
de leau dans le Maghreb antique et mdival (Rome, 2009), 33.
Waddan and Sokna: Lamin Ali Lamin, personal communication 2005.
75 Baradez, Fossatum Africae (n. 19 above), 169 photos A, B,
and C; Wilson, Foggaras in Ancient North Africa, 33, 3536.
foggara technology with Berber/Saharan peoples, and oppose it to Roman water supply technology.76 The importance of this is that it pulls
the rug out from under Modrans argument that
invading Berbers from the south could not have
operated the irrigation systems of Ksar Baghai.
Both the foggaras and the shaduf wells tapped
groundwater, and their failure in the Fazzan was
due to a drop in the groundwater table.77 The
jury is still out on whether this was due principally to climatic aridification, or to human overexploitation of the water table; recent geological
research suggests that the regional system of aquifers known as the Continental Intercalaire is very
76 A. I. Wilson, Foggara Irrigation, Early State Formation and
Saharan Trade: The Garamantes of Fazzan, Schriftenreihe der

Frontinus-Gesellschaft 26 (2005): 23233; idem, The Spread of
Foggara-Based Irrigation, 21214; idem, Foggaras in Ancient
North Africa, 3239.
77 Wilson and Mattingly, Irrigation Technologies; cf.
Drake et al., Water Table Decline.
57
Fig. 3.11.
Trade networks in
the Sahara (map
by A. Wilson and
M.Anastasi)
leaky and the water table has indeed been dropping slowly and steadily for thousands of years.
This process may have been exacerbated at times
by climatic change and human overexploitation,
but it may be that the Garamantes were simply
able to exploit it during a window of a few centuries before the water table dropped beyond the
reach of the available technologies. We can trace
this process at work through the manifold efforts
to prolong the life of the foggaras by works to
deepen them and augment their flow, and several phases can be identified in some areas of the
Wadi al-Ajal. First is the extension back southward toward the escarpment at whose foot they
tapped water; second, the addition of tributaries to increase flow; third, the deepening of the
channels, necessitating a migration of their outlet
points to lower-lying ground further north; and,
finally, the capture of some foggaras to serve as
tributaries of others, resulting in a reduction of
the number of outlets, and thus a reduction of the
number of settlements and in the area of the irrigated fields they served.78 For the landscapes reliant on the shaduf well, the dropping of the water
table had more sudden and dramatic effects that
could not be staved off quite as long; once the
water had dropped beyond the reach of the shaduf
arm, the settlements and their fields were simply
abandoned. The only ones that survived were in
lower-lying natural depressions where water still
comes to the surface, as at Murzuq itself.79
well. Did the population of the Murzuq region,

and those who could no longer be supported in
the Wadi al-Ajal, simply sit there and die of hunger and thirst, or did they move on? Presumably
the latter. And if so, the most attractive direction
to move in would have been northward. At the
very least, this would have increased the pressure
on the oases of the Sahara north of Garamantian
territoryGhadames, the Jofra oases, and Zillah.
This might help explain the rise of the Austuriani
as a populous new threat first to the Tripolitanian
frontier and then to Cyrenaica. Modran has
comprehensively demolished the myth that the
Austuriani and the Laguatan migrated westward
from the oases of the western desert of Egypt;80
their origins must therefore be sought somewhere
in the Saharan oases. It has long been recognized
that the Austuriani must have been located to
the south of the Gulf of Sirte, in order to pose a
threat to both Tripolitania in the fourth century
and Cyrenaica in the early fifth;81 Yves Modran
proposed to locate them at the oases of Zillah or
Augila.82 We would, with Olwen Brogan,83 prefer the Jofra oasis groupHun, Sokna, Waddan,
three large oases in close proximityas a primary
base. At both Hun and Waddan substantial abandoned settlements can now be detected on Google
Earth.84 Even if the Austuriani did (also?) control
Zillah or Augila, one could not approach Lepcis
from there without passing through and having
80 Y. Modran, Mythe et histoire aux derniers temps de
Systems Collapse and the Rise

of the Austuriani and the Laguatan
The wider regional effects of this process can
be easily imagined. If the settlement evidence
from the Murzuq region does reflect a population increase in the fourth to sixth centuries, any
decline in water availability and the effectiveness
of the foggara system will have further exacerbated pressures on the population that could
be supported in the Fazzan, and this at a period
when long-distance Saharan trade had declined as
78 Wilson and Mattingly, Irrigation Technologies, 256
59; D. Mattingly et al., DMP X: Survey and Landscape

Conservation Issues around the Taqallit headland, Libyan
Studies 41 (2010): 129.
79 Sterry and Mattingly, DMP XIII (n. 67 above).
58
lAfrique antique: propos dun texte dIbn Khaldn, RH

618 (20012): 31541; idem, Maures (n. 2 above), 153207; contra
D.J. Mattingly, The Laguatan: A Libyan Tribal Confederation
in the Late Roman Empire, Libyan Studies 14 (1983): 96108.
81 R. G. Goodchild, The Limes Tripolitanus II, JRS 40
(1950): 3038 (= Libyan Studies: Selected Papers of the Late
R.G. Goodchild, ed. J. Reynolds [London, 1976], chap. 3,
3545); O. Brogan, Inscriptions in the Libyan Alphabet from
Tripolitania, and Some Notes on the Tribes of the Region, in
Bynon and Bynon, Hamito-Semitica (n. 64 above), 282.
83 Brogan, Inscriptions in the Libyan Alphabet, 282.
84 E.g., what may be two different settlements (perhaps of
different dates) near Hun at 29.150630 N, 15.905385 E and

extending at least 700 m NNW of this, and also at 29.165369N,
15.915325 E; and a settlement at Waddan at 29.170336 N,
16.120168 E. The ERC-funded project, Trans-SAHARA:
State Formation, Migration and Trade in the Central Sahara
(1000 BCAD 1500), directed by David Mattingly and based
at the University of Leicester, is investigating satellite imagery in
this zone and others. The principal satellite interpretation work
is being done by Martin Sterry.
control over the Jofra group. As Garamantian

control over the Fazzan began to weaken and
Garamantian influence over the routes and tribes
of the northern Sahara waned, there was greater
room for the growth of new power centers in the
northern Sahara. With numbers possibly swollen
by emigrants from the Fazzan, and the trading
systems on which the oasis cultures relied under
strain, one can see how such oases could have
developed into a new threat to the late Roman
frontier.85 The Austuriani who sacked Lepcis in
the 360s appear also to have established themselves at Ghirza, on the route from the Jofra to
Lepcis. Mattingly has suggested that Ghirza was
the site of the shrine of Gurzil,86 the god, according to Corippus, of the Laguatan or Leuathai,
with whom the Austuriani are linked (they perhaps became a subgroup of the Laguatan).87
This is, of course, the site of the famous third- to
fourth-century monumental tombs studied by
Olwen Brogan and David Smith, but the same
expedition studied and excavated a number of
smaller cemeteries with tombs that were usually
a small rectangle or sometimes a circle.88 These
cemeteries at Ghirza are dated by their pottery
to the late fourth or fifth century. In one of the
cemeteries, structures consisting of horseshoes
or semi-enclosures of lines of stones, sometimes
associated with small cairns or offering tables,
were found close to the tombs and although not
themselves tombs, they seem to be associated with
funerary cult (fig. 3.12). They recall the cairns and
horseshoe enclosures at In Aghelachem near Ghat
(fig. 3.7; probably third or fourth century), and
some other sites in the Hoggar, and may reflect a
Saharan connection.89
Ghirza, too, has a long series of inscriptions,
of which the most important are those found on
85 Wilson, Saharan Trade in the Roman Period (n. 70
above).
86 Mattingly, Laguatan, 103, followed by Modran,
Maures, 291; cf. O. Brogan and D. J. Smith, Ghirza: A Libyan

Settlement in the Roman Period (Tripoli, 1984), 36, 232.
87 Brogan, Inscriptions in the Libyan Alphabet, 284;
Mattingly, Laguatan.
88 Brogan and Smith, Ghirza, 10014.

89 Ibid., 10810; Reygasse, Monuments funraires (n. 28
above), 5152, figs. 5557; Di Lernia et al., From Regions to

Sites (n. 30 above), 104 fig. 5.43; see n. 31 above for the dating
of In Aghelachem.
four altars found outside the temple destroyed

in the mid-sixth century, very possibly in a
Byzantine attack on the Laguatans cult center of
Ghirza in the campaigns of 54447.90 Some of
the inscriptions certainly, and others possibly, are
in Saharan versions of the Libyan scriptthe socalled ancient Tifinagh. Others at Ghirza and in
the Tripolitanian pre-desert are in the so-called
modern Tifinagh in which the b takes the form of
a circle with a line through it (like a theta), and the
k takes the form of three dots; other letters use dots
rather than lines.91 Although the Ghirza inscriptions may be the latest examples of Libyan script,
some three hundred years after its last appearance
in Numidia, it seems much more likely that the
script was a new import from the Sahara. This idea
is bolstered by the fact that in the Tripolitanian
pre-desert region (including Ghirza) before the
third century inscriptions are in either Latin or
Latino-Punic (e.g. Bir ed-Dreder and elsewhere).92
Besides Ghirza, Libyan or Tifinagh inscriptions
are found at a handful of other pre-desert sites
mostly in late antique or possibly medieval contexts.93 Both the archaeology and the epigraphy
of Ghirza thus lend some support to the idea
that around the late fourth century the RomanoLibyan occupants speaking Punic and Latin were
reinforced or replaced by immigrants from farther
south, who spoke a version of Berber and wrote in
Libyan or Tifinagh script.
Conclusions
The parallels between the Tripolitanian situations and the Moorish troubles in Numidia with
which we started may now be drawn together.
Morizots landscape of small Roman villages
and farms in the Aurs is strikingly similar in
90 Inscriptions: Brogan, Inscriptions in the Libyan
Alphabet; Brogan and Smith, Ghirza, 25057. Destruction of

temple: ibid., 85, 232.
91 Brogan, Inscriptions in the Libyan Alphabet, 26876.
Modern Tifinagh form of k: Brogan and Smith, Ghirza, 250

57, nos. 27, 35, 36. Dots rather than dashes: nos. 23, 38, 39. Theta
form of the b: nos. 3A, 16, 24, 25, 28, 35, 40. Wavy-line s: 3A, 37B.
92 Cf. Brogan, Inscriptions in the Libyan Alphabet, 276.
93 Daniels, An Ancient People (n. 64 above), 260; Bro
gan, Inscriptions in the Libyan Alphabet; Brogan and Smith,

Ghirza, 250, 252 nos. 2840. See also Hachid, Strabon,
El-Idrissi, la Guerba (n. 53 above), for a series of late inscriptions in the Sahara in the western Libyan alphabet.
59
Fig. 3.12
Tombs showing possible
Saharan influence at
Ghirza, cemetery 5
(drawings by Brogan
and Smith, from eidem,
Ghirza, fig. 35 p. 109).
60
basic conception, though not in detailed morphology, to the Romano-Libyan settlements

of the Tripolitanian valleys revealed by the
UNESCO Libyan Valleys Survey.94 Both were
areas in which under Roman rule difficult and
even marginal landscapes were intensively settled
and farmed, and were economically integrated
into the Roman empire and long-distance trade
routes heading south. By the early fifth century
they had broken free of Roman control, and the
evidence suggests that this was not simply a matter of indigenous revolt against a failing empire.
The weakness of the late Roman state and its
army in Africa certainly played a part in the success of this process, but it was hardly the cause;
rather, the reasons must be looked for in the
breakdown of an extensive system to the south,
based on trading connections among Saharan
oases, and between them and the Roman world
to the north. We can see this happening along
the Fazzan-Tripolitania axis, with the decline of
Garamantian settlement and power apparently
having knock-on effects in the oases of the northern Sahara. We propose that something similar
was happening south of the Numidian limes
at very much the same time, whether caused
directly by migrations out of Garamantian territory or, more probably, by a similar process
in oasis groups in the Algerian south, in the
Hoggar, Tassili, and the Tafilaltnote that
the Hoggar is even today part of the range of
theTuareg Ifoghas, a tribe whose name has been
connected by many scholars to that of Corippuss
Ifuraces.95 It is striking that the Saharan tomb
types over late Roman sites in Numidia (fig. 3.2)
cluster around the northern ends of three key
routes emerging from the deep Sahara: Ngrine,
to the north of the Nefzaoua oasis from which
one could go south to Ghadames; Gemellae and
the southern Aurs region near the northern end
of the route down to Touggourt, Ouargla, and
the Tidikelt/Touat oasis group; and Tobna in the
Hodna basin, at the head of the route through
94 Farming the Desert: The UNESCO Libyan Valleys
Archaeological Survey, ed. G. W. W. Barker and D. J. Mattingly,

2 vols. (Paris, Tripoli, and London, 1996).
95 E.g., S. Gsell, Histoire ancienne de lAfrique du Nord, 8 vols.
(Paris, 191328), 5:4. Modran, Maures, 29596 (n. 2 above),

notes that Ifogha were known in Ghadames in the fifteenth
century, but denies the equivalence.
the Saharan Atlas to Tafilalt.96 The Saharan Atlas

was a chain of mountains into which the Severan
limes extended for a considerable distance, a
military effort that suggests it was either a wellused route or a major center of population.97 The
people of this mountain chain may, indeed, have
been central to the northwestern spread of the
new group of Tamazigh speakers. The Djorf
Torba tombs with their Christian inscriptions lie
at the southwestern end of the chain, speaking to
a continuity of communications with the north
that has nothing to do with missionaries of the
established church.
The archaeology of these oases has hardly been
investigated. The Tidikelt and Touat oases constitute the largest cluster of Saharan foggaras outside the Fazzan and certainly the largest groups
active in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
While most of these are medieval or later, it is
interesting that there are four active foggaras at
Tamentit in the Touat that have Berber names
and distribute their water on a timeshare basis, as
opposed to the majority of foggaras there, which
have Arabic names and distribute their water
through a dividing grille or kesria. The Berber
foggaras here also run on a completely different
alignment from the Arab foggarasbut there
are also scores of long-abandoned foggaras on the
same Berber alignment.98 Do we have here the
relics of an ancient Berber foggara landscape, predating the Arab middle ages, perhaps introduced
by contact with the Garamantian Fazzan before
the foggaras there failed? At the moment this can
be no more than a hypothesis, but if one is to look
for a concentration of Berber population in the
late antique Algerian Sahara, Tamentit would be
a place to start.
96 On the routes through the desert, see Rebuffat, Les
Romains et les routes caravanires africaines (n. 58 above).
97 Fentress, Numidia and the Roman Army (n. 58 above), 114
16. Martin Sterry has since observed hundreds of premodern

sites in the High and Anti-Atlas in a minute investigation of
Google Earth for the Trans-Sahara Project (personal communication). For the camel caravan inscribed on a hill in the Monts
des Ksour, see n. 53 above. It is notable, too, that the name of the
chief town of the region, Laghouat, is derived from the tribal
name of Corippuss Laguatan.
98 Wilson, Foggara Irrigation, 23233; idem, The Spread
of Foggara-Based Irrigation (n. 66 above), 21314; idem,

Foggaras in Ancient North Africa (n. 74 above), 3032.
61
Be that as it may, we can be confident that

the Berbers who harried and gradually occupied late Roman North Africa were not simply
camel-riding desert nomads, but desert agriculturalists who had mastered complex irrigation
technologies such as foggaras and lived by a combination of oasis agriculture and both short- and
long-distance trade. Their trading networks go a
long way toward explaining the remarkable geographical range over which the Berber tribal confederations associated and operated and why the
Byzantine forces had to defend themselves along
the whole length of the southern frontier, from
the Aurs to the Gulf of Sirte. Victor of Vita provides some evidence in support of our argument:
he mentions on two occasions incidents in which
the Vandals handed over Catholics to the Moors,
who drove them into the desert. In the first
case, in the reign of Geiseric, the area to which
they were sent, called Caprapicta, is said to have
been previously untouched by Christianity, so it
lay outside the former Roman empire (Courtois
suggested it might be the region between Capsa
and Ngrine).99 In the second incident, under
Huneric, 4,966 Catholics were handed over to
the Moors at the towns of Sicca Veneria (modern
El Kef) and Lares (modern Henchir Lorbeus),
and taken to uninhabited places in the desert
where scorpions abounded, and where the exiles
were fed on barley, not wheat.100 Courtois notes
that Victor of Tunnuna seems to confirm Victor
of Vitas account, recording in the year 479 the
exile of some four thousand people to regions
around Thubunae (modern Tobna), Macri and
Nippis, in the Hodna.101 Not only does this seem
to support our argument about the desert nature
of these Moors, but it also has to be connected
with Saharan slave tradingthis time southward
rather than northward. But that makes sense if
one considers that there was always a considerable
market for slaves within the Sahara itself.
Fulgentius of Ruspe was forced to flee from
the monastery of Praesidium, probably Prae
sidium Diolele, between Thelepte and Capsa,
99 Vict. Vit. 1.3537; C. Courtois, Victor de Vita et son oeuvre
(Algiers, 1954), 3738.
100 Vict. Vit. 2.2637.

101 Victor of Tunnuna, Chronicon s.a. 479.1, ed. T.Mommsen,
MGH AA 11 (Berlin, 1894), 189; Courtois, Victor de Vita, 3839.
62
cum subito barbaricae multitudinis provincia

turberetur incursu.102 The year would be 497. The
language is clear: the Moors are coming into the
province from outside and there is a multitude
of them. Indeed, a striking feature of the late
Roman and Byzantine accounts, especially of
Corippus and Synesius (for Cyrenaica), is their
emphasis on the sheer numbers of Moors they are
having to fight; even if some of this is rhetorical,
the amount of trouble the Byzantines had dealing with the Austuriani, Laguatan, and other
Moors gives weight to the idea that considerable
numbers of people were on the move. Such populations would need to be based either in Saharan
oases of some size, or in a number of oases.
The idea that the Berber movements against
and into the southern margins of late Roman,
Vandal, and Byzantine North Africa were part of
a process with its roots in the deep Sahara would
also fit with the late antique northward spread or
resurgence of scripts closer to Saharan Tifinagh
than the Libyan of the Maghrib in the Numidian
and early Roman periods and with the results
of linguistic research suggesting that the western Berber, Zenatic languages divided from
their parent group only around sixteen hundred
years ago. Thbert and Biget have shown how
the advantages of a large nomadic force could
be joined to successful government institutions:
indeed, the mention of various kings of the
Garamantes certainly suggests that this was traditionally their mode of government.103 Similarly,
in Roman times, the cooption of tribal leaders
makes them and their tribesmen an essential part
of the state. What needs to change, perhaps, is
our perception of just how barbaric the barbarians were. Rushworths picture of the dual skills
needed to be king of both the Moors and the
Romans seems to fit our suggested Saharan invaders perfectly: they just came from farther away.
Their creation of tombs of a Saharan type points
102 Vita Fulgentii 5, in Vie de Saint Fulgence de Ruspe, ed. and
trans. G.-G. Lapeyre (Paris, 1929), 33; cf. ibid. 7, ed. Lapeyre, 45,
when they return to the country magis eligentes Mauros habere
vicinos quam pati molestissimos arianos. See Y. Modran, La
chronologie de la vie de saint Fulgence de Ruspe et ses incidences
sur lhistoire de lAfrique vandale, MlRome 105, no. 1 (1993):
13588.
103 Y. Thbert and J.-L. Biget, LAfrique aprs la disparition
de la cit classique, in LAfrique dans lOccident romain (n. 42

above), 59596.
to the very conscious nature of their occupation

of the Tell: the tomb at Siga, with its antennae,
or the much smaller antenna-like funerary cultic enclosures at Ghirza reflect not only possibly
contemporary Saharan cemeteries, like that at In
Aghelachem, but also those of the substantially
larger antenna tombs of the late pastoral period,
still today major features of the Saharan landscape.104 Like the Djedars, they seem to announce
104 For these tombs, also known as Monuments V or
MAV, see Reygasse, Monuments funraires (n. 28 above),

5662; M. Milburn, Multi-Arm Tombs of Central Sahara,
Antiquity 55, no. 215 (1981): 21014; Di Lernia et al., From
Regions to Sites (n. 30 above), 9599. Their distribution
appears to run from the Fazzan and Tanezrouft in the east
to Tamanrasset in the west, and south to the north edge
of the desert of Tner (A. Heddouche, Sur lapport des
in no uncertain terms we are here, and we come

from the desert; the invaders were creating monuments to their own past. The distances involved
are indeed vast, but so are those covered by the
Tuareg todaywho, in a similar enterprise to
that described here, invaded Northern Mali from
Libya in May of 2012 and founded the short-lived
state of Azawad, based in Timbuktu.
monuments funraires la connaissance du peuplement et de

lenvironnement holocne de lAhaggar, in Actes du premier
Colloque de prhistoire Maghrbine [n. 53 above], 2:25974). Cf.
Y. Gauthier and C. Gauthier, Monuments funraires sahariens et aires culturelles, Cahiers de lAssociation des amis de lart
rupestre saharien 11 (2007): 6578, where it is also suggested that
the antennae represent the horns of cattle.
63

The Saharan Berber Diaspora and The Sout PDF

Загружено:

Сведения о документе

Оригинальное название

Авторское право

Доступные форматы

Поделиться этим документом

Поделиться или встроить документ

Параметры публикации

Этот документ был вам полезен?

Это неприемлемый материал?

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

The Saharan Berber Diaspora and The Sout PDF

Загружено:

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

North Africa under

Byzantium and Early Islam

DU M BA RTON OA K S BY Z A N T I N E S Y M P OSI A A N D COL LO QU I A

North Africa under

Susan T. Stevens and Jonathan P. Conant

Copyright 2016 by Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection

Design and composition: Melissa Tandysh

1 Procopiuss Vandal War

3 The Saharan Berber Diaspora

The Islamic Conquest and the Defense of Byzantine Africa

The Transformation of Ancient Land- and Cityscapes

The Contribution of Medieval Arabic Sources

8 From Vandal Africa to Arab Ifrqiya

Sanctity and the Networks of Empire in Byzantine North Africa

Marriage, Law, and Christian Rhetoric in Vandal Africa

Exegesis and Dissent in Byzantine North Africa

14 Sounds from a Silent Land

Byzantine and Early Islamic Africa, ca. 500800

Sabratha Tripoli (Oea)

Towns and Cities

The Saharan Berber Diaspora

n 4 84 , or n e a r e nough, t h e Moor s of t h e Au r s dest roy e d Ti mg a d so

Modran called the no-berbristes: Charles

byzantine en Afrique, 533709 (Paris, 1896; repr. New York,

B. Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization

in his long bibliography found at http://tabbourt.perso.sfr.

11 E. Fentress, Diana Veteranorum and the Dynamics of

an Inland Economy, in Local Economies? Production and

Elizabeth Fentress and Andrew Wilson

pottery found. Further east, in the area of Kas

12 R. B. Hitchner, The Kasserine Archaeological Survey:

19821986, AntAfr 24 (1988): 741; idem, The Kasserine

14 Janon, LAurs au VIe sicle, n. 4, observes that these have

not been found, and are not necessarily plausiblealthough at

fortified enclosure.15 A landscape, then, of some

15 Procop. B.Vand. 3.16.911; trans. H. B. Dewing, Procopius,

7 vols. (London and Cambridge, MA, 191435), 2:145.

Saharan Tombs in the Tell

18 Morizot, Les recherches en matire de protohistoire,

19 J. Baradez, Fossatum Africae: Vue-Arienne de lorganisation

romaine dans le Sud-Algrien (Paris, 1949), pl. p.125; Morizot,

Elizabeth Fentress and Andrew Wilson

extended antennae, as at the Roman town of Sila

century and the Arab conquest, after the collapse

Besseriani (Ad Majores) (Algiers, 1879), 2122.

to reveal this tomb.

21 Fentress, Diana Veteranorum. Further tombs made of

Roman building materials are found in the Aurs mountains,

tium Maurorum et Romanorum: Recherches sur les royaumes

Results of Environmental and Archaeological Reconnaissance,

without a chapel but built in two concentric

radiocarbon dates it to the seventh or even

tion of the original uncalibrated date of 1310 90 bp. Camps,

Elizabeth Fentress and Andrew Wilson

built in an indigenous, prehistoric tradition

lAfrique du Nord (Paris, 1950), 50. A similar annex is found on

Libyan State with Trans-Saharan Connections, in Money,

tions, in Sand, Stones and Bones: The Archaeology of Death in

refined with Bayesian analysis of associated dates

Bayesian analysis in OxCal 4.2 with the IntCal13 calibration

Arzuges to Rustamids (n. 5 above); Laporte, Les djedars.

relation to contemporary tumuli such as the

The most complete study is F. Kadra, Les Djedars, monuments