APPOINTMENT OF GOVERNORS Amr b. al-A’s Amr b. al-A’s the conqueror of Egypt, who had been deposed by Usman (Rad.A), was re-appointed by Mu’awiya (Rad.A). He conquered Egypt for him from Muhammad b. Abu Bakr, the supporter of Ali (Rad.A), in Safar 38 A.H. (July 658). ’Amr entrusted his nephew, Uqbah ibn Nafi, in 41 A.H/661-62 with the task of bringing the unruly Berbers of North Africa under control and he himself died later at the age of 73 years in 43 A.H/663.
The Berbers belonged to the Hamitic branch of the white family and perhaps originally hailed from the same stock of the Semites. They had been provoked by the Roman settlements in Ifriqiyah to give stiff resistance to the Muslims. The new Muslim general overran the littoral as far as Barqah and Waddan, fought against the Berbers and ravaged their lands for several years to bring them under control. Receiving a reinforcement of 10,000 Syrian Arabs in 50/670 he laid the foundation of a military cantonment at Qayrawan which gradually developed into the capital city of ifriqiyah to the south of Tunis. Uqbah used it as a base of operations against the unruly Berbers who, inspite of the long rule of the Romans, had retained their tribal organization and characteristics.
The Romans settled only in the coastal towns of Ifriqiyah whereas the Arabs mixed with the Berbers and settled both in towns
and villages. Consequently Islam spread rapidly. Uqbah. who had been recalled, for a short while, from North Africa but reinstalled by Yazid in 682 A.D., pushed his conquest to the middle Atlas region in Tangier where he suffered a martyr’s death in 683 near Biskra at Tahudah on the edge of the Saharah desert at the hands of the Berber chief Kusaytah. His tomb named after him Sidi Uqbah is still extant.
