Table of Contents

1. Challenges of the subject and the sources; 2. Historiographical hurdles; 3. Fragmented geographical and logistical realities; 4. Christian contexts in seventh-century North Africa; 5. The military heritage of Heraclius on the eve of Muslim military operations; 6. The shock of Sbeitla; 7. Options for offensives and resistance; 8. The riddle of Constans II; 9. Muslim interests, calculations, and leadership; 10. The shift to tribal resistance; 11. The fall of Carthage and its aftermath; 12. The failures of two cities of Constantine.

Promotional Information

This book investigates the failure of the Byzantine Empire to develop successful resistance to the Muslim conquest of North Africa.

About the Author

Walter E. Kaegi is Professor of History at the University of Chicago where he has been teaching Byzantine, late antique, early Islamic and military history since 1965. He is the co-founder of the Byzantine Studies Conference and the president of the US National Committee for Byzantine Studies. Previous books include Army, Society and Religion in Byzantium (1982), Some Thoughts on Byzantine Military Strategy (1983), Byzantium and the Early Islamic Conquests (Cambridge, 1992) and Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium (Cambridge, 2003).

Reviews

'… Kaegi has produced an interesting and learned book. He clearly knows the range of surviving literary, numismatic, epigraphic and archeological sources extremely well …' Bryn Mawr Classical Review