The history of the western part of ancient North Africa is to a great extent the history of foreign invaders who conquered the country and imposed their language and culture on the inhabitants. Apart from the Berbers, who were the indigenous inhabitants of North Africa west of the Nile Valley, the Phoenicians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs, Turks and French all made their presence felt in the centuries gone by. In modern times, independent states – Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania – have replaced the region known as North Africa in ancient times.

The period during which the Romans held sway over North Africa (146 BCE–439 CE) in particular interests us, since it presents a remarkable phenomenon: not only does this period encapsulate within some 500 years the rise and fall of a country, but equally amazing, in the aftermath it appears that not a trace of Rome's influence on the region remained, even after half a millennium of rule. Only ruins as a sad reminder of a remarkable period in world history.

A brief overview of the history of Roman North Africa

Approximately 3000 years ago the Phoenicians were the first to discern and exploit the strategic possibilities of a promontory in the Mediterranean Sea just across from Sicily. Ships crossing the sea from east to west and back all had to pass through the 320 km strait between the present-day Sharīk Peninsula and the western tip of Sicily, which made it a valuable strategic asset to the country controlling it. According to legend, the Phoenicians, Semitic colonists from Tyre (in modern Lebanon), founded a city on this promontory (near modern Tunis) in c. 800 BCE; they called it Quart-hadasht (‘Carthago’ in Latin), which means ‘New City’, implying that it was a ‘new Tyre’. By the sixth century BCE Carthage had grown to one of the most important Phoenician settlements on the North African coast, especially after the influx of immigrants from the mother city, Tyre, after it had been conquered by the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar. Carthage now became a serious rival to the Greek settlers in Sicily and Corsica. This led to a long and bitter war in Sicily itself and also in North Africa.