Muslim tradition speaks of the existence of soothsayers or sorcerers (kahins) in the pre-Islamic period. The period immediately preceding the Arab invasions had proved as disastrous for the Sasanian Empire as for Byzantium. The Qur'anic revelations were being used in early Muslim worship and memorised by the faithful. Like Moses before him, Muhammad, the 'seal of the Prophets', was involved in social action as well as preaching. The formation of the Islamic empire, which followed the death of the Prophet in 632, falls conveniently but not rigidly into two phases. The first was an explosive and surprisingly easy series of conquests of the territories closest to Arabia, which soon brought Byzantine Syria, Palestine and Egypt as well as Sasanian Iraq into the orbit of government from Medina. The second involved protracted and more difficult conquests that eventually added Sasanian Iran and parts of Central Asia in the east and the North African littoral in the west.

For more than three centuries, from the reign of Constantine to the Arab invasions of the 630s, Mediterranean Africa was the scene of a Christian civilization. The Christian leaders, Augustine of Hippo and Cyril of Alexandria moulded the teaching of the Latin and Greek Churches respectively in a way that has survived for centuries. This chapter outlines the history of Christian civilization from its beginnings to its collapse before the Arabs, partial in Egypt but complete in North Africa. Inevitably Christianity itself must take the centre of the stage. The Church in North Africa west of the Gulf of Syrtis was separated from that in Egypt and Cyrenaica by geography, language and theological tradition. The Church in Egypt and Cyrenaica was, Greek-speaking and outward-looking, responsible for missions to Nubia, Ethiopia and south India, and while not denying the importance of ecclesiastical discipline, directed its energies towards arriving at an understanding of the mystery of human salvation through the Incarnation.