page_title: Moors
section_title: Moors of the Maghreb
hierarchical_section_title: Moors / Moors of the Maghreb
caption_attribution_description: English: Stitched Panorama of the Great Mosque of Kairouan, in Tunisia. This mosque, also called the Mosque of Uqba, extends over a surface area of 9,000 square metres. Founded in 670 AD by the Arab general and conqueror Uqba ibn Nafi, it dates, in its present form, from the 9th century (definitively rebuilt in 836 AD under the Aghlabid dynasty). Besides the fact of being the oldest place of worship in the Muslim West, the Great Mosque of Kairouan represents a remarkable example of Islamic architecture. Français&#160;: Panorama de la Grande Mosquée de Kairouan, en Tunisie. Cette mosquée, également appelée mosquée Oqba Ibn Nafi, s'étend sur une superficie de 9000 mètres carrés. Fondée en 670 de notre ère par le général et conquérant arabe Oqba Ibn Nafi, elle date, dans sa forme actuelle, du IXe siècle (définitivement reconstruite en 836 sous la dynastie des Aghlabides). En plus d'être le plus ancien lieu de prière de l'Occident musulman, la Grande Mosquée de Kairouan représente un exemple remarquable d'architecture islamique. This is a photo of the protected monument identified by the ID 41-33 in Tunisia.
context_page_description: The Moors were the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily, and Malta during the Middle Ages. The Moors initially were the indigenous Maghrebine Berbers. The name was later also applied to Arabs.
  Moors are not a distinct or self-defined people, and the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica observed that "The term 'Moors' has no real ethnological value." Europeans of the Middle Ages and the early modern period variously applied the name to Arabs, North African Berbers, and Muslim Europeans.
  The term has also been used in Europe in a broader, somewhat derogatory sense to refer to Muslims in general, especially those of Arab or Berber descent, whether living in Spain or North Africa. During the colonial era, the Portuguese introduced the names "Ceylon Moors" and "Indian Moors" in South Asia and Sri Lanka, and the Bengali Muslims were also called Moors. In the Philippines, the longstanding Muslim community, which predates the arrival of the Spanish, now self-identifies as the "Moro people", an exonym introduced by Spanish colonizers due to their Muslim faith.
  In 711, troops mostly formed by Moors from northern Africa led the Umayyad conquest of Hispania.
context_section_description: In the late 7th and early 8th centuries CE, the Islamic Umayyad Caliphate, established after the death of Muhammad, underwent a period of rapid growth. In 647 CE, 40,000 Arabs forced the Byzantine governor of northern Africa to submit and pay tribute, but failed to permanently occupy the region. After an interlude, during which the Muslims fought a civil war, the invasions resumed in 665, seizing Byzantine North Africa up to Bugia over the course of a series of campaigns, lasting until 689. A Byzantine counterattack largely expelled the Arabs but left the region vulnerable. Intermittent war over the inland provinces of North Africa continued for the next two decades. Further civil war delayed the continuation of further conquest, but an Arab assault took Carthage and held it against a Byzantine counterattack.
  Although a Christian and pagan Berber rebellion pushed out the Arabs temporarily, the Romanized urban population preferred the Arabs to the Berbers and welcomed a renewed and final conquest that left northern Africa in Muslim hands by 698. Over the next decades, the Berber and urban populations of northern Africa gradually converted to Islam, although for separate reasons. The Arabic language was also adopted. Initially, the Arabs required only vassalage from the local inhabitants rather than assimilation, a process which took a considerable time.  The groups that inhabited the Maghreb following this process became known collectively as Moors. Although the Berbers would later expel the Arabs from the Maghreb and form temporarily independent states, that effort failed to dislodge the usage of the collective term.
caption: The Great Mosque of Kairouan was founded by the Arab general Uqba ibn Nafi in 670 during the Islamic conquest, to provide a place of worship for recently converted or immigrating Muslims.
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