The Vandal Kingdom in Africa: (435 - 534 AD)
The Vandal Kingdom is the only ancient Germanic kingdom on the continent of Africa. For a century, this kingdom ruled parts of the Arab Maghreb from the ancient Roman state called Africa Proconsularis and later from the city of Cherchell to Tripoli in the west and north to the islands of Sardinia and Corsica... where these Germanic barbarians ruled. Barbarian North Africa and the islands of the western Mediterranean basin for a century, and they were able to defeat the Romans and impose their Arian religious doctrine on the local population. The saga of this warrior people extends over five centuries, from the cold forests of Poland to the deserts of Africa and its warm beaches, so that they were the only Germans. Who founded the Kingdom of Africa.
Just as the Arabian Peninsula is the reservoir of the Arabs and their origin, the Scandinavia Peninsula is the reservoir of the Germanic peoples. The Vandals migrated from southern Sweden to Poland in the second century BC and settled there. The Vandals were considered East Germans, like the Goths and the Burgundians. The first person to mention the Vandals was Pliny the Elder in 77 AD in the forests of Poland... After that, the Vandals migrated south and settled in areas adjacent to the Roman Empire in Central Europe and the Carpathian Mountains in what is now known as Hungary (Hungary) and the former Republic of Yugoslavia... But in the year 376 AD, due to the arrival of the needy remnants of the Huns from the east, the Vandals, along with other barbarian peoples, were forced to enter the lands of the empire to escape the Huns, where they settled first in Switzerland and the Alps, then they headed to Gaul (France). This period was known as the era of barbarian invasions, in German, völkerwanderung. The Suebi, who were also Germanic tribes, and the Alans, who were Iranian nomadic tribes descending from the steppes of Ukraine and the Black Sea, also migrated with the Goths to merge with the Vandals to escape the Huns. In the year 409 AD, these barbaric peoples entered Iberia, where they faced the Romans and the Goths, and there their leader in Iberia became Geiseric in the year 428 AD (succeeding his brother Gunderic), who would lead them for the rest of the journey.
The Suebi people remained in northern Iberia, and the Alans and Vandals united under the leadership of Geiseric and marched south in May 429 AD to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, accompanied by some Goths and Hispano-Romans, according to Bishop Victor Vitensis, who was contemporary with the events. The Vandals crossed to Africa with more than 80,000 people!! Children, women, slaves, and warriors. According to Procopius, the Vandals divided their army into 80 military units, each unit led by an officer... and they headed to the African coast, where they crossed the Taza Pass, heading to Altava, which they destroyed, then they invaded the following cities: from Camp and Caesarea, Charchal, Setif, Bejaia, Saldae, Constantine, Cirta, and Guelma, all the way to Annaba (Hippo Regius) in the year 430 AD. They besieged it, where Saint Augustine died before the city fell into the hands of the Vandals, and continued their invasion until they reached Byzacena in present-day Tunisia... This rapid invasion of Africa within a year shows the destructive power of the Vandals, the military prowess of these Germans, and the weakness of the Romans in the African regions at that time. ... The Vandal leader Geiseric made his capital in Hibun (Annaba) in the year 435 AD, then he seized Carthage in the year 439 AD, and then finally Emperor Valentinian III was forced to recognize the status quo in the year 442 and married his daughter, the Roman princess Eudocia, to Geiseric’s son Huneric..
Genseric, king of the Vandals, plundered Rome in the year 455 AD for two weeks. In the year 468 AD, Emperor Leo sent a thousand ships from Constantinople to retrieve Africa, but Genseric was able to defeat them due to winds and a sudden attack. In the year 474 AD, Zeno, Leo’s successor, concluded a treaty. Peace with the Vandals to last for 60 years.... Genseric died in the year 477 AD after he had accompanied the Vandals on their journey for more than 70 years from the Rhine to Africa. He ruled Africa for fifty years, making him the longest-ruling barbarian king...
The Vandal kings called themselves rex Vandalorum et Alanorum, meaning owner of the Vandals and the Alans. This title was carried by the successors of Genseric from Huneric to Gelimer, and the Christians believed that the Vandals were a test from God to them...
The Vandal king Thrasamund married the sister of the Ostrogoths king Theoderic, whose name was Amalafrida, in the year 500 AD, to consolidate the relationship of the Vandal kingdom with the Ostrogoths until his death in the year 523 AD, but his successor, Hilderic, would kill the Gothic queen and her followers... and the Vandals would spread their religious doctrine, Arianism, by force. They will persecute Nicene Christianity, and Arianism is a Christian doctrine that denies the Trinity...
The Roman general Belisarius took 15,000 soldiers to Africa to fight the Vandals, where he fought the brother of King Gelimer, named Tzazo, in the Battle of Tricamarum in the year 533 AD (in present-day Tunisia), where 800 Vandals were killed compared to 50 Romans. This was the end of the Vandal kingdom in Africa, according to Procopius... A king was fortified. The Vandals Gelimer lived in one of the fortresses in the Atlas Mountains, but the Romans caught him and exiled him to Anatolia, and the great wealth of the Vandals in gold and silver was transferred from Hibun (Annaba) to Spain...
Since 477 AD, the Vandal king began engraving a special coin of bronze and silver with his name written on it in Latin, and the name of the royal family ruling the Vandals in Africa was Hasdingi Hasdingi. As for the languages in the Vandal kingdom, Latin was the official language of writing and blogging, and the Germanic Vandalic was The language of the army and the ruling elite, and African Latin (popular Latin), Punic and Greek, the languages spoken by the population in the cities, and Libyan, the language spoken in the mountains and rural areas. According to Procopius in his book De bello Vandalico, Gensric gave the best African lands to the Vandal people and Now they did not pay taxes like the rest of the Africans and Romans... The Vandal Kingdom was not different from the rest of the Roman African states in its customs and character, but it was different in religion (Arianism), the army, and the rulers who were Germans...
The term Vandal or Vandal is now known to describe subversive barbarism, and the word Vandalism was used for the first time by Henri Baptiste Grégoire to describe the barbarism of the revolutionaries of the French Revolution in 1794 AD. ...The Vandals were singled out for this barbarism for an important reason, which is that they were Arian heretics in the eyes of Roman writers, and also because of their persecution of Catholics and their imposition of the Arian doctrine, which generated the hatred of the Church against them... As for plunder and destruction, it happened during the Vandal era in the periods 429- 435 AD and 439 - 442 AD.... In any case, the Vandal Kingdom was a normal barbarian kingdom like the Franks, Goths, and Anglo-Saxons, where brutality and barbarism prevailed at its beginning and then organized itself. However, the Vandal Kingdom was more influenced by the Roman organizations than the other kingdoms. Other barbarians also had a different religion that hastened their demise. The Romans could not tolerate the presence of a heretical kingdom in the region, and if the Vandals had adopted Catholicism, they would have stayed for a longer time, as did their cousins, the Goths and the Franks.... However, the Germans succeeded, after a long journey that lasted four hundred years, in finding a new land in Africa in a place they did not long for. They reached it before and established a successful kingdom that had naval influence on the western coasts of the Mediterranean. But after the death of their king, Gensric, the state began to decline qualitatively and its end was known in the time of Gelimer after the Roman general Belisarius launched an overwhelming campaign against it, and thus the first and last of the Germanic kingdoms disappeared. In Africa and ancient Morocco...
Source :
Vandals, Romans and Berbers; New perspective on late antique North Africa _ Edit by: A.H. Merrills, 2004.