Mauretania

• 1. Introduction

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  Mauretania's legendary first king, a figure named Atlas, was remembered for inventing the celestial globe. At its greatest extent, Mauretania covered a stretch of North Africa running from central Algeria to the Atlantic coast of Morocco. The Atlas Mountains formed its southern limit, and the Mediterranean lay to the north. Its people, of Imazighen and Phoenician ancestry, were known to Rome as the Mauri and the Masaesyli. Their harbors were trading with Carthage before the 4th century BC. How did a kingdom this old and this established end up divided into Roman provinces, overrun by Vandals, and finally absorbed into a new Islamic world? The first king the historical record can name, Baga, held the throne during the Second Punic War of 218-201 BC.

• 2. The Mauri Kingdom

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  In the early 1st century AD, Strabo recorded Maûroi as the native name of a people living opposite the Iberian Peninsula. In Greek, the same group was called Mauroúsii. Mauretania's interior was organized separately from its coast. Berber tribes had established themselves there since the Iron Age, governing lands well beyond the Mediterranean shoreline. Bocchus I, whose activity is recorded around 110 BC, drew Mauretania into the orbit of Numidian politics. He became the father-in-law of Jugurtha, the redoubted king of Numidia. The two kingdoms were closely bound through that royal tie. After Bocchus II died in 33 BC, the bond dissolved. Rome stepped in and ran the region directly for the next eight years.

• 3. Rome's Long Shadow

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  Juba II, a king from Numidia, was placed on the Mauretanian throne by Rome in 25 BC. The choice gave Rome an effective proxy without the burden of full provincial governance. Cleopatra Selene II co-ruled alongside Juba from 25 BC until around 5 BC. Around 25 BC, Juba also sent an expedition to the Canary Islands. On his death in AD 23, his Roman-educated son Ptolemy succeeded him. Ptolemy had already been sharing the throne with his father from 20 AD. His reign ended violently. Emperor Caligula had Ptolemy executed in 40 AD. Emperor Claudius then annexed Mauretania directly as a Roman province in 44 AD, placing it under an imperial governor, either a procurator Augusti or a legatus Augusti pro praetore.

• 4. Province and Power

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  The Mulucha River, now known as the Muluya, ran about 60 km west of modern Oran. It became the boundary between the two new Mauretanian provinces. West of it lay Mauretania Tingitana, named after its capital Tingis, now the city of Tangier. East of it was Mauretania Caesariensis, named after its capital Caesarea, now the Algerian town of Cherchell. Tingitana covered northern Morocco; Caesariensis covered western and central Algeria. From this territory came Rome's only emperor of Mauretanian origin: Macrinus, an equestrian who seized power in 217 AD after the assassination of Caracalla. He held power for barely a year before Elagabalus defeated and executed him. Diocletian's Tetrarchy reform of 293 split a small eastern region, Sitifensis, away from Caesariensis, creating three provinces where there had been two. The Notitia Dignitatum, compiled around 400 AD, still listed all three as active. In Caesariensis, a military commander held authority over eight border garrison posts along the frontier.

• 5. The Fracturing Interior

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  From the 3rd century onward, the reach of direct Roman rule in Mauretania's interior began to slip. By the late 3rd century, direct control had retreated to a few coastal cities, among them Septem in Tingitana and Cherchell in Caesariensis. Local Berber rulers stepped into the space Rome had vacated. They kept Roman forms of governance and at least nominally acknowledged the authority of distant emperors. One of them, Masuna, ruled from Altava in western Algeria. He left an inscription describing himself as rex gentium Maurorum et Romanorum, king of the Roman and Moorish peoples.

  The Vandals began advancing on the Roman provinces from the 420s. Hippo Regius fell to them in 431 after a prolonged siege; Carthage followed in 439. The Eastern Emperor Theodosius II dispatched an expedition against them in 441, but it failed to progress beyond Sicily. The Western Emperor Valentinian III secured peace with the Vandals in 442, confirming their control of the region. Vandal dominion lasted roughly 90 years before the general Belisarius defeated them in 533. In April 534, Emperor Justinian published a law reorganizing the recovered territories. Around the same period, the Byzantine historian Procopius documented Mastigas as an independent ruler controlling most of Mauretania Caesariensis. At Altava, a ruler named Garmul resisted the restored Byzantine authority before being defeated in 578. Emperor Maurice created the Exarchate of Africa sometime between 585 and 590 AD, with the patricius Gennadius as its first holder. Under that arrangement, Mauretania Tingitana was effectively reduced to the city of Septem. It was combined with Spanish coastal citadels and the Balearic Islands to form a district called Mauretania Secunda. In 624 AD, the Visigoths took the last Spanish strongholds, leaving Mauretania Secunda as nothing more than the fort of Septem opposite Gibraltar.

• 6. The Final Kingdoms

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  By the 7th century, Mauretania's interior was divided among eight Romano-Moorish kingdoms. Their names were Altava, Ouarsenis, Hodna, Aures, Nemenchas, Capsa, Dorsale, and Cabaon. Arab forces advanced through the region, and the kingdoms faced a threat their combined resistance could not turn aside. In the second half of the 7th century, they mounted a final defense alongside the last Byzantine troops still in North Africa. Caecilius, the Christian king of Altava, led that effort. In 703 AD, the warrior queen Kahina died in battle. That defeat ended the political tradition that rulers from Masuna to Caecilius had maintained for over four centuries.

• 7. Faith Across Centuries

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  In the urban centers of Mauretania Caesariensis, Christianity had taken root by the 3rd century. It spread with unusual speed for a faith that arrived relatively late in the region. Beyond the cities, the hinterlands retained the Romano-Berber religion. That divide between Christian towns and a non-Christian countryside persisted for several centuries. The 7th century conquest changed it permanently. Islam became the dominant faith where Christianity had been. The name Mauri did not disappear with the kingdoms. In the Vandal period, the word had already been extended as a generic term for all the Berber tribes of the interior. That usage is the source of the medieval word Moors, which Europeans would apply to Muslim North Africans across the centuries that followed.