Not having any more forces at his disposal, the Umayyad Caliph Hisham quickly appointed Handhala ibn Safwan as governor of Ifriqiya, with supervisory authority over all the Maghreb (North Africa west of Egypt) and al-Andalus (Spain), and instructed him to take whatever forces he could gather to defend Ifriqiya and quash the Berber rebellion.
Hurrying back, Handhala is said to have put the entire population of Kairouan under arms to bolster his ranks, before setting out again.
In 743–44, Handhala was kept busy putting out sporadic revolts in the hinterlands of Ifriqiya, and had little or no time to concentrate on recovering the westerly provinces of Morocco and bringing the Berber back under Umayyad rule.
It is possible he may have succeeded in recovering some of the coastal cities, like Tangiers, for the Caliphate, but the bulk of Morocco and western Algeria remained under the sway of autonomous Berber tribal rulers.
In late 744 or early 745, Abd al-Rahman ibn Habib al-Fihri, scion of the illustrious Fihrid dynasty, raised a revolt in Tunis and proclaimed himself ruler of Ifriqiya.
Some chroniclers report that, at his departure, Handhala ibn Safwan laid a curse upon Ifriqiya, expressing his hope that the land which had treated him so ungratefully would be possessed by pestilence, famine and war.