Long regarded as the preserve of French scholars and Francophone audiences due to its significance to France's colonial empire, North Africa is increasingly recognized for its own singular importance as a crossover region. Situated where Islamic, Mediterranean, African, and European histories intersect, the Maghrib has long acted as a cultural conduit, mediator and broker. From the medieval era, when the oasis of Sijilmasa in the Moroccan wilderness funnelled caravan loads of gold into international networks, through the 16th century when two superpowers, the Ottomans and the Spanish Hapsburgs, battled for mastery of the Mediterranean along the North African frontier, and well into the 20th century which witnessed one of Africa's cruellest wars unfold in "French Algeria", the Maghrib has retained its uniqueness as a place where worlds meet.

This volume proposes a new approach to the Arab conquests and the spread of Islam in North Africa. In recent years, those studying the Islamic world have shown that the coming of Islam was not marked by devastation or decline, but rather by considerable cultural and economic continuity. In North Africa, with continuity came significant change. Corisande Fenwick argues that the establishment of Muslim rule also coincided with a phase of intense urbanization, the appearance of new architectural forms (mosques, housing, hammams), the spread of Muslim social and cultural practices, the introduction of new crops and manufacturing techniques and the establishment of new trading links with sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and the Middle East. This concise and accessible book offers the first assessment of the archaeology of early Islamic North Africa (7th–9th centuries), drawing on a wide range of new evidence from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. It lays out current debates about its interpretation and suggests new ways of thinking about this crucial period in world history. Essential reading for those interested in understanding the impact of the Arab conquests and the spread of Islam on daily life, it will also challenge students of archaeology and history to think in new ways about North Africa, the earliest Islamic empires and states and the transition from the Roman to the medieval Mediterranean.

'Mediterraneans' offers an account of migration from Southern Europe to North Africa during the 19th century, especially to what became Tunisia.

Long regarded as the preserve of French scholars and Francophone audiences due to its significance to France's colonial empire, North Africa is increasingly recognized for its own singular importance as a crossover region. Situated where Islamic, Mediterranean, African, and European histories intersect, the Maghrib has long acted as a cultural conduit, mediator and broker. From the medieval era, when the oasis of Sijilmasa in the Moroccan wilderness funnelled caravan loads of gold into international networks, through the 16th century when two superpowers, the Ottomans and the Spanish Hapsburgs, battled for mastery of the Mediterranean along the North African frontier, and well into the 20th century which witnessed one of Africa's cruellest wars unfold in "French Algeria", the Maghrib has retained its uniqueness as a place where worlds meet.

This book tells stories of interaction, conflict and common exchange between Berbers, Arabs, Latins, Muslims, Christians and Jews in North Africa and Latin Europe. Medieval Western European and North African history were part of a common Western Mediterranean culture. Examining shared commerce, slavery, mercenary activity, art and intellectual and religious debates, this book argues that North Africa was an integral part of western Medieval History. The book tells the history of North Africa and Europe through the eyes of Christian kings and Muslim merchants, Emirs and Popes, Sufis, Friars and Rabbis. It argues North Africa and Europe together experienced the Twelfth Century Renaissance and the Commercial Revolution. When Europe was highly divided during twelfth century, North Africa was enjoying the peak of its power, united under the Berber, Almohad Empire. In the midst of a common commercial growth throughout the medieval period, North Africa and Europe also shared in a burst of spirituality and mysticism. This growth of spirituality occurred even as representatives of Judaism, Christianity and Islam debated and defended their faiths, dreaming of conversion even as they shared the same rational methods. The growth of spirituality instigated a Second Axial Age in the history of religion. Challenging the idea of a Mediterranean split between between Islam and Christianity, the book shows how the Maghrib (North Africa) was not a Muslim, Arab monolith or as an extension of the exotic Orient. North Africa, not the Holy Land to the far East, was the first place where Latin Europeans encountered the Muslim other and vice versa. Medieval North Africa was as diverse and complex as Latin Europe. North Africa should not be dismissed as a side show of European history. North Africa was, in fact, an integral part of the story.

The Islamic world's artistic traditions experienced profound transformation in the 19th century as rapidly developing technologies and globalizing markets ushered in drastic changes in technique, style, and content. Despite the importance and ingenuity of these developments, the 19th century remains a gap in the history of Islamic art. To fill this opening in art historical scholarship, Making Modernity in the Islamic Mediterranean charts transformations in image-making, architecture, and craft production in the Islamic world from Fez to Istanbul. Contributors focus on the shifting methods of production, reproduction, circulation, and exchange artists faced as they worked in fields such as photography, weaving, design, metalwork, ceramics, and even transportation. Covering a range of media and a wide geographical spread, Making Modernity in the Islamic Mediterranean reveals how 19th-century artists in the Middle East and North Africa reckoned with new tools, materials, and tastes from local perspectives.