NORTH AFRICA AND SPAIN 25
the country beyond was unknown. He turned back to
Tripoli, and thus just missed entering the fertile belt. Fifteen years later, 681, the same Okbar attacked the south-western part of Morocco, a very fruitful district then occupied by Europeans and Christian Berbers, and made himself master of the whole. The principal town, Medina
Niffis, is spoken of by Arab historians as a town of great antiquity. It lies, however, on the other side of the mountains which separate Morocco from the desert, and he still did not enter the fertile belt of Negroland. But
Okbar was only a forerunner of the more celebrated Musa Nosseyr, who was appointed Governor of Africa under the Caliphs in 698, and made his administration for ever famous by that Arab conquest of Spain which so profoundly affected the civilisation of the West.
It is interesting, and important to the history of North
Africa, that Musa did not immediately undertake the inva-
sion of Spain. Upwards of ten years elapsed, during which he had time to make his presence felt in the province which was at that time known by the name of Afrikyah, or, as it was more generally spelt, Ifrikyah.
This province of the Arab domination corresponded not to Africa as we know it, but to the Carthaginian and
Roman Province of Africa Propria, which stretched from Barca to the borders of Morocco and extended south-
ward to the edge of the desert. It held the head of the eastern road into the desert through the Fezzan, while the head of the western road through Morocco
appears, notwithstanding Okbar's partial conquests, to have remained in the hands of the Europeans and Christian Berbers who held the country which corre-
sponds to the modern Morocco.
Musa's first act on arriving at Cairouan to take up the governorship, was to make a speech to his soldiers which, interpreted by the light of succeeding events, had
almost a prophetic note: *' I know well," he said, ''what sort of commander you want," and after describing to them an ideal soldier "doubly cautious after victories,