Belisarius recaptured Leptis Magna in the name of Rome ten years later, and in 534 CE, he destroyed the kingdom of the Vandals. Leptis became a provincial capital of the Eastern Roman Empire (see Byzantine Empire) but never recovered from the destruction wreaked upon it by the Berbers. It was the site of a massacre of Berber chiefs of the Leuathae tribal confederation by the Roman authorities in 543 CE. Historian Theodore Mommsen wrote that under Byzantine rule the city was fully Christian. During the decade 565-578 CE Christian missionaries from Leptis Magna even began to move once more among the Amazigh tribes as far south as the Fezzan in the Libyan desert and converted the Garamantes. But the city's decline - linked even to the Sahara's desertification - continued, even though new churches were built, and by the time of the Arab conquest of Tripolitania in the 650s, the city was nearly abandoned except for a Byzantine garrison force.