Fall of Kairouan to Hilalian Arabs

1057

The Banu Hilal Arab tribesmen sacked Kairouan, ending centuries of prosperity for the Maghreb's greatest center of Islamic learning. Refugee scholars fled west to Fez and north to Andalusia. The Zirid court withdrew to the coast. Berber rural North Africa had been transformed permanently into an Arabic-speaking hinterland, and the region's agricultural economy would not fully recover for generations after the devastation.