The Last Byzantine Bulwark in Africa
By the seventh century, Carthage was more than a city; it was the administrative and military heart of the Byzantine Exarchate of Africa, one of Constantinople’s last strongholds in the western Mediterranean. It had withstood Vandal rule and Roman reconquest. The next challenger came from the east.
Three Blows Against an Empire
In 686, the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan sent Zuhayr ibn Qays against Roman and Berber forces under King Kusaila. Zuhayr won near Kairouan but couldn’t consolidate. The real turning point came in 695, when Hasan ibn al-Nuʿmān captured Carthage and pushed into the Atlas Mountains.
A Byzantine fleet briefly reversed the conquest, retaking the city. But in 698, Hasan returned. At the Battle of Carthage his forces defeated Emperor Tiberios III’s troops so decisively that Rome’s heirs withdrew from all of Africa except the tiny outpost of Ceuta.
A City Erased on Purpose
Fearing a future Byzantine counterattack, the Umayyads made a ruthless strategic decision: Carthage would no longer exist as a fortress that anyone could hold. Its walls were torn down, aqueducts cut, fields ravaged, and harbors rendered unusable. It was a scorched-earth policy on an urban scale.
Yet life did not simply vanish. Archaeology and later historians like al‑Bakri show that parts of the city, including the great Baths of Antoninus, continued in use into the Arab period, with production centers nearby. Churches such as Bir Ftouha may have lingered into later centuries; the scholar Constantine the African was born in Carthage.
What disappeared was Carthage as a strategic capital. Power shifted to new centers, especially the Medina of Tunis, while Carthage’s ruins began a long, silent wait for rediscovery.