From the mid-seventh century, Muslim armies pushed westward from Egypt across the regions called Ifriqiya by the Romans and the Maghrib (the West) by the Arabs. By 711 they crossed into Spain. Conversion was rapid, but initial unity soon divided North Africa into competing Muslim states. The indigenous Berbers were an integral part of the process. In the eleventh century, reforming Muslim Berbers, the Almoravids of the western Sahara, controlled lands extending from the southern savanna and into Spain. In the twelfth century another group, the Almohadis, succeeded them. Islam, with its principle of the equality of believers, won African followers. The unity of the political and religious worlds appealed to many rulers. Social disparities continued, between ethnicities and men and women, the former stimulating later reform movements.
