Nuevas e ignoradas noticias sobre la Kâhina y la conquista árabe del África bizantina: de reina de los bereberes a reina de los romanos

Abstract

The stories, full of legend and often contradictory, of the so-called «Kâhina’s War» have as a central focus the subjugation of Byzantine Africa by the Umayyad armies. This mysterious Kâhina, supposed queen of a Berber tribe of Mount Aures, has conditioned the attempts of contemporary historiography to establish a coherent chronological, military and cultural account of the definitive Arab conquest of Byzantine Africa. The objective of this work is to assess the oldest text about Kâhina, the Chronicle of the Arabs, collected in the work of Elias Bar Shinaya. This will allow us to adequately contextualize the mythical Kâhina and frame their resistance to Islamic expansion in a complete historical context, determined by the Byzantine resistance to the Arab expansion for the control of North Africa.