User:Antisyntagmatarchos/Byzantine North Africa
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Byzantine rule in the Maghreb was a period in Northwest Africa's history that spanned around 175 years. It began in the years 533/534 with the reconquest of territory formerly belonging to the Western Roman Empire by the Eastern Roman-Byzantine Empire under Justinian I and ended during the reign of Justinian II with the conquest of Carthage (698) and the last Byzantine outposts , especially Septem (708/711), in the course of Islamic expansion.[1]
The region's administrative structure was initially in line with the typical late Roman administrative structures that had been existing for the past 300 years. Civil powers were thus in the hands of a praetorian prefect, the head of the supreme civil administrative authority in the late Roman Empire. The military powers, however, were incumbent on a magister militum per Africam. These powers were bundled from 591 at the latest, and East Roman North Africa became the heartland of one of two exarchates, with the founding of which the East Roman Emperor Mauricio (582–602) was able to counteract the consequences of imperial overstretch through bundling and decentralization. No further change in these administrative structures took place until the end of Byzantine rule.
The reconquest of this region was of the greatest strategic and economic significance and the most enduring of all conquests in the West. While the Lombard kingdom was established in parts of East Roman Italy after 568 and East Roman rule in southern Spain came to an end at the beginning of the 7th century, the areas reconquered in the Maghreb remained entirely in East Roman hands until the Islamic expansion. This made the region the most important cornerstone of Eastern Roman/Byzantine power in the West.