Mauri
[1] The name Mauri as a tribal confederation or generic ethnic designator thus seems to roughly correspond to the people known as Numidians in earlier ethnography; both terms presumably group early Berber-speaking populations (the earliest Libyco-Berber epigraph dates to about the third century BC).
Mauri raids into the southern Iberian Peninsula are mentioned as early as the reign of Nero in the Eclogues of Calpurnius Siculus: "Geryon's meads, a wealthy prize to tempt the fierce Moor's avarice, where Baetis huge, so legends say, rolls downward on his western way to find the shore.
At that time they besieged the town of Singilia Barba, which was freed from the siege by the arrival of Roman troops from the province of Mauretania Tingitana, led by C. Vallius Maximianus.
[4] By the early Christian era, the byname Mauritius identified anyone originating in Africa (the Maghreb), roughly corresponding to Berber populations.
[6] Jones cites the record of a consular interrogation from Numidia in 320, in which a Latin grammarian named Victor stated that his father was a decurion in Cirta (modern Constantine), and his grandfather served in the comitatus, 'for our family is of Moorish origin'.
[7] By the time of Diocletian, Moorish cavalry were no longer part of the mobile field army, but rather were stationed along the Persian and Danube borders.
[8] The Mauri were part of a larger group called Equites Illyricani, indicating previous service in Illyricum.
"[9] Diocletian's co-emperor Maximian campaigned against the Mauri for two years, entering into their mountain fastness to terrify them of Rome's power.
As a reward, he was given the post of magister utriusque militiae per Africam, or master of foot soldiers and cavalry for Africa.
[14] In 397 he broke his allegiance to the Western Empire, then under the control of the child emperor Honorius and his master of soldiers Stilicho.
Gildo withheld the corn ships from Rome and declared allegiance to Stilicho's enemy Eutropius in Constantinople.
With Mascezel's help, a Roman force of 5000 men defeated Gildo and restored control over northwest Africa to the Western Empire.
[17] In the late 4th and early 5th centuries, large numbers of troops from the mobile imperial field army (the comitatus) were permanently stationed in Africa to maintain order against the Moors.
[19] In the year 412, the limitanei (permanently stationed border guards) of Cyrenaica needed help to resist attacks by the Austuriani group of Mauri.
The Eastern Empire (at that time under regents for the young Emperor Theodosius II) sent a squadron of Unigardi barbarians.
Exiling catholic clergy to the Mauri was thus Huneric's means of establishing Arian dominance in the Vandal kingdom of north Africa.
[24] The Vandals had lost a great deal of the original Roman territory to the Mauri, including everything west of Caesarea.
[27] The general Solomon fought a series of campaigns against them, putting a stop to the raids, until a Byzantine troop rebellion in 536.
Jones states that the grave difficulties experienced by the Byzantines in establishing control over the Mauri following the conquest of the Vandal kingdom, were in large part due to a failure to supply enough money and resources to the troops stationed in Africa, and this in turn due to the numerous wars being fought by Justinian elsewhere.
[33] A major Mauri revolt against Byzantine rule took place in 569, during the reign of Justin II, in which the praetorian prefect was killed.
