Battle of Vescera: Kusaila defeats Uqba ibn Nafi

Reappointed governor of Ifriqiya by Caliph Yazid I, Uqba set out from Kairouan on a great raid to the west, taking with him in chains his predecessor Abu al-Muhajir and, according to later sources, Kusaila, chief of the Awraba Berbers of the Aurès. Arabic tradition tells how he fought his way past Byzantine strongholds in Numidia, reached Tangier, turned south into Morocco and rode his horse into the Atlantic, calling God to witness that only the sea stopped him; some modern historians doubt that he got so far west.

On the way back Uqba divided his army and went ahead with a small detachment — about 300 men, according to the sources. Kusaila, who had escaped, joined forces with the Byzantines and lay in wait at Tahuda, near Vescera; the Arabs were overwhelmed and Uqba was killed, in 683 according to most accounts (some give 682). Zuhayr ibn Qays, left in command at Kairouan, withdrew to Cyrenaica, and Kusaila entered the town and ruled much of Ifriqiya for some five years; according to the Liber Pontificalis he in effect restored imperial rule in the province. He was killed at Mamma in 688 or 689, when the Arabs returned under Zuhayr.

The accounts of Kusaila come from the 9th century onwards. The later ones, from the 11th century to Ibn Khaldun in the 14th, make him a convert to Islam humiliated by Uqba, while the earlier ones call him a Christian and know nothing of a quarrel. His name may render the Latin Caecilius — a hypothesis of the historian Gabriel Camps that Yves Modéran thought fragile. Uqba became a hero of Muslim North Africa: the mosque built around his tomb at Sidi Okba, near the battlefield, is regarded as the oldest Islamic monument in Algeria.