Most modern scholarship on medieval Ifr?qiya and the Maghrib in the pre-Aghlabid era deals with the fut???t, the Berbers, and the Kharijites. The various post-conquest era governors of Ifr?qiya also appear in the background. One group that scholars have overlooked, however, is the Ifr?qi baladiyy?n. The baladiyy?n were those Arab Sunni Muslims who were born in North Africa. There is a tendency to lump them together with caliphal agents and soldiers by referring to them collectively as "the Arabs." Doing so, however, obscures the rôle that Ifr?qi baladiyy?n played in shaping the history of the medieval Maghrib. The baladiyy?n did not always work hand-in-hand with governors and other agents dispatched from the calipahal center. In order to highlight the distinctiveness of the baladiyy?n, this paper looks at the short-lived Fihrid amirate (ca. 126/744-138/755), a period in Ifr?qi history in which center-periphery relations were most complicated. Medieval Maghribi historians such as Ibn ‘Idh?ri, al-Raq?q al-Qayraw?ni, and al-Nuwayri took for granted that their readers understood the connections between the many names sprinkled throughout their narratives. Although they gave the governors centers stage in their narratives, they carefully related the deeds of baladi men such as ‘Abd al-Ra?m?n b. ?ab?b. ‘Abd al-Ra?m?n was a scion of the Ifr?qi Qurayshi Fihri family, the descendants of the great conqueror and later saint ‘Uqba b N?fi‘ (d. 63/683). The Fihrid family remained prominent in the West long after ‘Uqba was killed. They Fihrids had a bloody rivalry with M?s? b. Nu?ayr and his descendants. That rivalry played itself out from al-Andalus to Damascus until the last of the Musa's sons and maw?l? had been killed, absorbed by other factions, or gone over to Kharijism. More often than not the Fihrids made common cause with the caliphs and the agents. The Berber Revolt of 740-743 CE, however, spoiled the relationship between the baladiyy?n and the centrally-appointed governors. Although cooperation between the two groups eventually brought the Berber Revolt to a standstill, tensions remained. One baladi family, the Fihrids, tried to exploit this tension to establish a greater degree of autonomy from the caliphs. From 126/744 until the restoration of caliphal authority (this time Abbasid authority) in 138/755, members of the Fihrid family governed Ifr?qiya with nearly as much autonomy as the Aghlabids enjoyed a half-century later.

Before the creation of the system of state-sponsored madrasas in the eleventh century, the process by which Muslim converts in non-urban areas learned about Islam after conversion remains fairly obscure. In the absence of official institutions for teaching about Islam, what informal measures arose? Focusing on the example of the pre-Fatimid Isma’ili da’wa in the Maghrib during the eighth and ninth centuries, this paper argues that ‘heterodox’ da’wa organizations played a significant role in the Islamization of remote areas of the Middle East. The questions of how and when the Middle East became predominately Muslim and how those new Muslims learned about their faith are without clear, good answers. Richard Bulliet and Nehemia Levtzion have done groundbreaking work, showing that conversions to Islam happened in different ways and people converted for a myriad of reasons. In tribal areas, such as the Maghrib, conversions tended to happen en masse, as a product of the Islamic conquests; Berber tribes were considered to have accepted Islam when they submitted politically to Islamic forces. But conversion cannot be equated with Islamization: the process by which Muslim converts learned about Islamic practice and about what it meant to be Muslim. New Muslims who moved into emerging Islamic cities learned about Islam from other Muslims, but almost nothing is known about Islamization outside of urban areas. While the activities of ‘heterodox’ movements in the eighth and ninth centuries cannot be limited to the pre-Fatimid Isma’ili da’wa in the Maghrib, the activities of this group demonstrates the significant role of ‘heterodox’ movements in the non-urban areas. Surviving sources on the pre-Fatimid da’wa, such as Kitab al-‘Alim wa al-Ghulam by Ja’far ibn Mansur al-Yaman (d. ca. 960), Sirat Ja’far al-Hajib by Ja’far al-Hajib (d. fl. tenth century), and the Iftitah al-Da’wa by Qadi al-Nu’man (d. 974), show how Isma’ili da’is in remote areas taught isolated Muslim communities about hadith, the Qur’an, and the basics of Islamic practice. While Fatimid sources on their own history cannot be divorced from their religio-political agenda, they are some of the few sources that address isolated tribal groups in the Maghrib searching for information and education about Islam. Focusing on non-urban Muslims of the Maghrib and their relationship with the Isma’ili da’wa shows how Muslim communities far from urban centers sought out knowledge about Islam and learned about their faith in an era before ‘orthodoxy’ was established and institutionalized.

The archaeological survey of the island of Jerba has studied the relationship of the island’s material culture and its history. The project, which considered all periods of habitation, revealed significant shifts in the patterns, location and density of settlement. The particular geographic position of Jerba, and its agricultural economy and the exploitation of marine resources existed in the context of the relationship between the ports and the agricultural hinterlands, between the island and the mainland, and of the interplay between local and inter-regional conditions. Our evidence for the island’s history derives from three principal techniques: field walking, excavation and the study of the sources and archives. The island’s continuous dense occupation and the rarity of local stone has meant that old buildings are generally cannibalized to construct new ones. Mosque sites tend to be better preserved, while farms survive as mounds, with clear evidence for water collection. The only possible method for recovering ancient and medieval sites was close fieldwalking, and the systematic collection and recording of pottery scatters. This paper will be focus on settlement patterns datable to the medieval periods, and on changes brought about by the incorporation of the island into Ottoman orbit. Among the topics to be considered will be the control of accesses to the island, the rise and change in zones of commercial exchange, and the functioning and longevity of mosque communities and shrines. The group most characteristically identified with Jerba is that of the Berber (and Arabic) speaking Ib???, a heterodox group. Their attempt, starting in the 8th c., to establish a state/imamate in Tahart (present-day Algeria) was short-lived, and ended with their political occlusion and displacement by more successful rival sectarian groups and dynasties such as the Fatimids. After their bid for power in the larger Islamic space failed, they retreated to their oases and areas of refuge. Jerban population had apparently not been part of the initial polity; its territory comes into Ib??? purview and becomes their long- standing haven only by the tenth century. Jerban space vouchsafed their survival as a sectarian and cultural group up to the 18th c.