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Belisarius destroys the Vandal Kingdom of North Africa

533–534 CE·Military & conflict·North Africa (Tunisia)·
533–534 CEDate
Military & conflictCategory
12Empires active
Date
533–534 CE
Category
Military & conflict
Region
North Africa (Tunisia)
Era
Post-Classical / Medieval
Significance

In 533 the emperor Justinian I dispatched his general Belisarius with about 16,000 men to recover Roman Africa from the Vandals, who had held Carthage since 439.

Landing in Tunisia, Belisarius routed King Gelimer at the Battle of Ad Decimum in September 533 and again decisively at Tricamarum that December. By 534 the Vandal kingdom was extinguished, Gelimer was paraded in chains at a triumph in Constantinople, and Carthage, Sardinia, Corsica and the Balearics passed under Byzantine rule. The campaign was the first and most rapid of Justinian's wars of reconquest, restoring the grain-rich African provinces to the empire and re-establishing Roman control over the central Mediterranean for more than a century, until the Arab conquests of the late 7th century. It demonstrated that the resources of the eastern empire could still project power into the former western Roman world, encouraging the far costlier invasion of Ostrogothic Italy that followed.

See the world map in 533–534 CE →More military & conflictThe Post-Classical / Medieval era

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The Ethiopians: A History

Richard Pankhurst

General history of Ethiopia that opens with the Aksumite empire.

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