The Maghrib and the Mediterranean in the Early Middle Ages

For some three thousand years the political, social, and economic relationships of the Maghrib have depended largely on the Mediterranean, on whether the sea was friendly or hostile, whether it might at any given moment bring friends or enemies, traders or raiders. Phoenicians sailing via Cyprus founded Carthage at the end of the ninth century B.C., and the earliest treaties between Carthage and Rome, conventionally dated to 509 and 348 B.C., envisage Carthaginian raids by sea on central Italy as a normal event. Raiding and trading reinforced each other. Archeological evidence shows Carthage importing pottery and luxury goods from Greece and exporting her own manufactures and agricultural surpluses, particularly to Spain and southern Italy. Punic vessels sailed out through the Straits of Gibraltar to travel north and south along the Atlantic coasts. The sea routes throughout Antiquity far outweighed in commercial importance the land routes along the coast or into and across the Sahara, and when Carthage fell to the Vandals in A.D. 439, it was the first but not the last time that it succumbed to an army unsupported by a fleet.