Page "History of Tunisia" Paragraph 17

| 4 | The Islamic era had opened with the arrival of the Arabs ( late seventh century ).

The Arabs brought their language and the religion of Islam, and its new calendar.

The Arabs also renewed the region's cultural ties with the Semitic east.

Later the Fatimids, a Shi ' a state, arose in Ifriqiya, circa 909 ; the Fatimds eventually conquered and ruled Egypt.

| 3 | During the last pre-Islamic centuries the Byzantines ruled, along with Berbrer vassals, and before them the Vandals ( 439-533 ).

Over two thousand years ago the Romans had arrived, initially allied with Berber kingdoms ; their cosmopolitan Empire long governed this Africa region as part of an integrated Mediterranean world.

| 2 | Before the Romans, came the Phoenicians, by sea from the eastern Mediterranean about three thousand years ago.

The Phoenicians founded here the celebrated city of Carthage.

Punic culture interacted continuously with the native Berbers, but the two did not then merge.

| 1 | Earlier came migrations from surrounding territories including the north, the east, and the Sahel region of Africa.

Perhaps eight millennia ago, already there were peoples established here, among whom the proto-Berbers ( coming overland generally from the east ) mingled and mixed, and from whom the Berbers would spring, during an era of their ethnogenesis.