Satfura, to the north-east of Tunis, but without being able to prevent them from again concentrating at Bizerta. In the autumn of the same year certainly the Arabs lost Carthage again to the Patricius Johannes, but his powerful fleet was dispersed in the summer of 698 by a still greater Arabian fleet, and thus the fate of the town was sealed. From this time onward the Arabs were supreme at sea, so that it is by no means the land troops only of Ḥassān which decided the final fate of Northern Africa. In his policy towards the Berbers he was at first not fortunate. A holy prophetess, the so-called Kāhina, had roused the Berber tribes to a united advance and had thus become the successor of Kusaila. On the banks of the little river Nini, not far distant from Bagai, on one of the spurs of Mons Aurasius, she defeated Ḥassān's army, which was driven back as far as Tripolis. But in the long run the Kāhina was not able to maintain her position, and the clever diplomacy of Ḥassān appears also to have won over several tribes and leaders from her circle. Thus Ḥassān's final victory over the Kāhina a few years later at Gafes becomes at the same time the commencement of a fraternisation with the Berbers. It is extremely difficult to fix the chronological sequence of the fights against the Kāhina in regard to the expeditions against Carthage. If they are placed between the two conquests of Carthage, as has been done, then the whole chronological structure falls to pieces; it is therefore the simplest to assume the date of Ḥassān's defeat as occurring only after the final fall of Carthage and to date his victory as about 703. For in the end it was not the land army but the fleet which rendered possible the occupation and retention of the Byzantine coast towns. The peace with the Berbers however led them into the camp of the Arabs and thus too the final fate of such Byzantine towns as might still be holding out was sealed. And now, with Islām as their watchword, heads of certain of the Berber tribes, appointed by the Arabs, advanced against the tribes of the west, who still remained independent. The prospect of booty and land united the former enemies, who were moreover so similar to each other in their whole style of living; the moment now approaches when Africa becomes too confined for this new wave of population, which the influx of Islām has brought to flood level. The latinised and hellenised population of the towns appears to a large extent to have migrated to Spain and Sicily, for in a remarkably short time Latin civilisation disappeared from Northern Africa.
The Arabs only conquered Northern Africa after they had relinquished their first policy of plunder for that of a permanent occupation. The commencement of the new policy was 'Uḳba's foundation of Ḳairawān. By that step however in the first place only the starting-place for the raids was changed. Dīnār was the first seriously to consider the question of not merely plundering the open country but of taking the fortified towns; and in this design his Berber policy was to support him. These
