684 migration and population movements: The Islamic World (r 634–44), the second Rashidun caliph, wanted Egypt to have its capital on the east side of the Nile, making it more accessible from Arabia than was Alexandria Earlier Amr ibn al-As had camped on the eastern side of the Nile When a bird laid an egg in his tent, he interpreted the event as a sign that the tent was on holy ground He marked the spot, and after seizing control of most of Egypt, he returned and pitched his tent on the spot, and his lieutenants planted their tents around his, resulting in the place being called Misr al-Fustat, meaning “town of the tents.” A mosque eventually replaced the tent of Amr ibn al-Aas, and using local labor, the Arabs built a walled city, mostly out of stone taken from ancient Egyptian monuments The idea was to create a place where Arabs could live apart from the local people and maintain their Arabian bloodlines without intermarriage The people of Egypt were allowed to live as they wished as long as they acknowledged Muslim superiority and paid their taxes This situation resulted in severe problems for the immigrants from Arabia to al-Fustat because they had little experience in running such a complex economy and government as those of Egypt therefore, they allowed Christian and Jewish government officials who had served the Byzantine Empire into al-Fustat to run the government Not spreading out more into the lands of Egypt may have made the governing elite especially vulnerable, and in 969 the Fatimid Shia sect from the Maghreb, where Tunisia is today, invaded and seized control of Egypt, beginning a migration to Egypt from the rest of North Africa Al-Fustat became one of the great cities of the medieval world, attracting from throughout the Islamic world migrants who came to attend its schools, to become merchants, to serve in its government, or to take advantage of its commercial opportunities for craftsmen In 670 or 71 Kairouan was founded as a site for a garrison in the Maghreb, in a forest, and it was used as a defensive position against Berbers and for launching attacks against Berbers and others in North Africa Initially a settlement for Arabs, it became a way station for migrations of Arabs westward and for migrations of Western peoples eastward From Kairouan the faith of Islam spread among local peoples In 910, with the support of Berber soldiers, the Fatimids captured Kairouan and later spread their power to Egypt, drawing with them the Berbers, who spread their presence across North Africa At this time the people of the region were primarily settled agriculturalists Kairouan fell out of control of the Fatimid Dynasty in Egypt, and the political structure of the Maghreb fragmented into small, independent principalities In the 11th century the Banu Hilal and other nomadic Arabian tribes migrated into the Maghreb, overturning the agricultural order, replacing it with pastoralism Sahel The Sahel was a region stretching west to east along the southern edge of the Sahara During the medieval era it was the site of the empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai as well as of numerous small kingdoms and chiefdoms Exactly how much migration there was from North Africa across the desert to the Sahel is much debated among historians In the 12th century the Almoravid Berbers arose The word Almoravid was derived from al-Murabitun, meaning “people of the monastery,” and oral tradition holds that their leaders had spiritually prepared themselves in a monastic retreat Their exact movements are unclear, but they may have traveled first to Senegal and from there tried to conquer the lands of the Sahel, invading Ghana in 1156, fatally weakening the empire but not conquering it The Almoravid Berbers ended up scattered thinly across much of western Africa By the 13th century Mali was a seat of great Muslim scholarship, and its schools attracted students from throughout the Islamic world In general, migrants from North Africa and beyond had to live apart from the local population Visitors and migrants from the rest of the Islamic world were primarily Arabs and Berbers as well as Jews whose skills in such crafts as metalworking were welcome The advance of Islam in medieval western Africa and central Africa may have been more successful by peaceful means than by invasions As a matter of faith, Muslims were expected to be able to read the Koran; in western Africa and central Africa they were literate people among people who were mostly nonliterate Being able to write was considered an almost supernatural power among the cultures south of the Sahel Thus, in many communities Muslims were welcomed as spiritual guides and as healers For the Muslims who took up residence in villages, winning conversions was as simple as telling barren women who came to them for help that they would be able to become pregnant only if they became Muslim Those medieval African societies regarded family and especially children as vital to their sense of self-worth as well as their positions in society, so such advice carried much weight Al-Andalus The history of Muslim Spain, known in the Islamic world as al-Andalus, has been the source of much romantic fiction as well as romantic histories The conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, where Portugal and Spain are today, was not a simple matter of warfare Many Christians and Jews seem to have welcomed Muslims, who brought stability and order to a land in turmoil The initial advance of the Islamic world into the Iberian Peninsula seems to have been almost an accident In 711 Tariq ibn Ziyad (d ca 720) led a small force of Berbers