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North Africa was christian? The amazigh were animists, and Islam was present before any large scale invasion, and was mostly spread by amazigh tribes themselves
by halflings 8y ago
North Africa was christian? The amazigh were animists, and Islam was present before any large scale invasion, and was mostly spread by amazigh tribes themselves. (at least in the case of Morocco)
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoWell, Egypt certainly was heavily Christian. I had assumed that most of North Africa was, because it had been Roman, and the Roman Empire was heavily Christian post-Constantine.
- Amezarak 8y agoYou are correct that most all of Roman North Africa was Christianized. Augustine, for example, was a Numidian, and writes a lot about religious perspectives in North Africa.
- halflings 8y agoIt's mostly because you said "all of north Africa" that I wrote this response; being from Morocco, this was surprising.
- ng12 8y agoEgypt was a major player in early Christianity -- one of the five patriarchs was in Alexandria. Carthage and Tunisia were also largely Latin Christian.
- ptrincr 8y agoThe North African Christian church even had it's own schism, Donatism, between the 4th and 6th centuries, centered in Carthage. Donatism had its roots in the long-established Christian community of the Roman Africa province https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donatism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donatism
- Bayart 8y agoMorocco was really peripheral to Roman Africa. But the coastal band of Eastern Algeria and more importantly the entire Tunisian plain was urban, Roman, had a large number of Latin-speaking urban center, was one of the richest area of the Roman empire because it was an agricultural powerhouse and was one of the epicenters of Early Christianity.