Battle of Carthage ( 698 ) The Battle of Carthage was fought in 698 between a Byzantine expeditionary force and the armies of the fifth Umayyad Caliphate . Having lost Carthage to the Muslims , Emperor Leontius sent the navy under the command of John the Patrician and the " droungarios " Tiberius Apsimarus . They entered the harbor and successfully recaptured it , as well as the city , in a stunning surprise attack . The Arab forces fled to Kairouan . As Gibbon writes , " the Christians landed ; the citizens hailed the ensign of the cross , and the winter was idly wasted in the dream of victory or deliverance . " 40 , 000 Men . The emir Hasan ibn al - Nu ' man was in the midst of pacifying the lands of Tamazgh ( as it is called by the indigenous peoples ) or Maghreb ( Arabic for " the west " ) , but withdrew from campaigning in the field to confront the renewed Roman challenge to the emerging caliphate . At Kairouan , he began plans to retake Carthage the following spring . It is estimated that he headed a force of 40 , 000 men . The Romans sent out a call for help to their traditional allies , the native Amazigh , and even to their enemies the Visigoths and the Franks . Despite having retaken the city , the Romans were in disarray due to the bitter in - fighting that characterized medieval Romania and sapped much of its strength . The previous exarch Gennadius had been a traitor to the Christian cause , defecting to the Muslims and becoming their vassal . The king of the Visigoths , Wittiza , sent a reputed force of 500 warriors in order to help defend Carthage , perhaps to help check the rising Muslim threat which was lopping off large chunks of the Roman Empire , so close to Visigothic Hispania . Hasan ibn al - Nu ' man , enraged at having to retake a city that had not resisted the Roman take over , offered no terms except to surrender or die . The emperor Leontius , infamous for his harsh reaction to failure , had also given his forces instructions of victory or death . The Romans did sally forth and brought battle to the Arabs directly , but were defeated . They later preferred to continue to incite revolt through the Amazigh princes . The Roman commander , John , decided to wait out the siege behind the walls of Carthage and let the Arabs exhaust themselves , since he could continue to be resupplied from the sea . The defenders were faced with Hasan ' s overwhelming force deployed in ferocious attacks as his men continuously tried to scale the walls with ladders . The Arabs combined their land assault with an attack from the sea that caused John and Apsimarus to fear being trapped within the city . Yet , the determination of the defenders resulted in the second and final great destruction of Carthage . The Romans retreated to the islands of Corsica , Sicily and Crete to further resist Muslim expansion and await the emperor ' s wrath . Aftermath . John the Patrician was later murdered after a conspiracy at the hands of his co - commander , Tiberius Apsimarus . Tiberius Apsimarus then , instead of taking the step of returning to Africa to fight the Muslims , sailed instead to Constantinople . After a successful rebellion he rose to the throne as Tiberius III , and was later deposed by former emperor Justinian II , now known as the Rhinotmetus . The conquest of North Africa by the forces of Islam was now nearly complete . Hasan ibn al - Nu ' man was triumphant . Hasan met with trouble from the Zenata tribe of Berbers under al - Kahina . They inflicted a serious defeat on him and drove him back to Barqa . However , in 702 Caliph Abd al - Malik strongly reinforced him . Now with a large army and the support of the settled population of North Africa , Hasan pushed forward . He decisively defeated al - Kahina in the Battle of Tabarka , 85 miles ( 136 km ) west of Carthage . He then developed the village of Tunis , ten miles from the destroyed Carthage . Around 705 , Musa ibn Nusayr replaced Hasan . He pacified much of North Africa .