THE ARAB CONQUEST of North Africa began fifteen years after the Prophet Muhammad's death in 632 and lasted. century and. half. Berber opposition grew until by the 740s it stretched from Tripolitania to Tangier. Viewed from the orient, the Maghrib appeared intractable, and. tradition preserved by Abū I-’Arab credits the Caliph ‘Umar as calling Ifrfqiya the “gateway to hell.”. Other Arab writers interpreted the difficulty of the conquest as. religious challenge whose greater hardship reaped the greater blessing. Later North African chroniclers took. more positive view and cited ḥadīth in favour of the Berbers. According to one of these, the Prophet himself advised ‘Umar with the words: “God will open. gate to Islam in the direction of the Maghrib, and he will raise up. people to glorify him and humiliate the unbelievers.”

For. century and. half the Umayyad and then ‘Abbāsid caliphs sought to bring North Africa under their direct control. Their failure sheds light on the turmoil of the late seventh and eighth centuries. Although to the modern reader these events in the Maghrib may appear tangential to contemporary developments in Damascus or Baghdad, they illustrate just how difficult it was for the caliphate to maintain centralised control.