Kusaila

Kusaila (كسيلة بن ملزم, Latin: Caecilius) was a 7th-century Berber Christian ruler of the kingdom of Altava and leader of the Awraba tribe, a Christianised sedentary Berber tribe of the Aures and possibly Christian king of the Sanhaja. Under his rule his domain stretched from Volubilis in the west to the Aurès in the east and later Kairouan and the interior of Ifriqiya. Kusaila is mostly known for prosecuting an effective Berber military resistance against the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb in the 680s. He died in one of those battles in 688. Possibly from Caesilius (Cecilian), a Roman name widely used among Christianized Berbers, but more likely from Berber (Aksil) "Feline", still attested in the dialects of Aurès, region of which Kusila was native. Initially the Berber States were able to defeat the Umayyad invaders at the Battle of Vescera (modern Biskra in Algeria), that was fought in 682 AD between the Berbers of King Kusaila and their Byzantine allies from the Exarchate of Africa against an Umayyad army under Uqba ibn Nafi, the founder of Kairouan. Uqba ibn Nafi had led his men in an invasion across North Africa, eventually reaching the Atlantic Ocean and marching as far south as the Draa and Sous rivers. On his return, he was met by the Berber-Byzantine coalition at Tahuda south of Vescera, his army was crushed and he himself was killed. As a result of this crushing defeat Kusaila took control of Byzacena and a large part of Ifriqiya, the Arabs lost all of their land in Africa west of Cyrenaica and were expelled from the area of modern Tunisia and eastern Algeria for more than a decade. His homeland was Tlemcen, now in Algeria, according to Ibn Khaldun. However, this account dates from the 14th century, some 700 years later. Indeed, Kusaila, according to historian Noe Villaverde, was probably a king of Altava. Other sources closer to Kusaila's time (ninth century is the earliest available) associate him only with the Aurès Mountains in Algeria. Kusaila grew up in Berber tribal territory during the time of the Byzantine exarchate.