The Byzantine Exarchate of Africa was tearing itself apart before the Arabs arrived. A theological dispute over Monotheletism -- Emperor Heraclius's attempted compromise between Orthodox Chalcedonianism and Monophysitism -- had divided the population against Constantinople. When the Arabs seized Cyrenaica and eastern Tripolitania in 642-643, taking Tripoli after soldiers accidentally discovered a breach in its walls, only a direct order from Caliph Umar halted their westward advance. By 646, Exarch Gregory had launched an open rebellion against Emperor Constans II, rallying both Romanized Africans and Berber tribes of the hinterland to his banner. He was fighting Constantinople when the Caliphate decided to resume its expansion.

The confrontation at Sufetula produced one of the more remarkable episodes of seventh-century warfare. Gregory, seeking to motivate his troops, offered his own daughter in marriage to anyone who could kill the Arab commander Abdallah ibn Sa'ad. When Abdallah heard of this, he made a mirror offer: his daughter to whoever killed Gregory. According to the chronicle al-Bidayah wal Nihayah, Abdallah's forces found themselves completely surrounded by Gregory's army. But Abdallah ibn al-Zubayr spotted the governor in his chariot and led a small detachment to intercept him. The ambush succeeded. Gregory fell, and with him the morale of his army. The Byzantine forces crumbled and routed.

Arab accounts tell of Gregory's daughter, sometimes named Amina, who was carried back toward Egypt as a captive after the battle. According to one tradition, she threw herself from her camel during the march and died rather than accept her fate. Other accounts claim she was taken by Abdallah ibn al-Zubayr as a concubine, fulfilling the grim promise her own father had unwittingly set in motion. The Berber chief Wazmar ibn Saqlab, leader of the Maghrawa and Zenata tribes, was captured and taken to Medina, where he converted to Islam before Caliph Uthman and was appointed to govern his own people. That conversion would shape tribal allegiances for generations, inclining the Zenata and Maghrawa toward the Umayyads rather than the Abbasids in the conflicts to come.

The Arab raid was not immediately followed up. Ties between Africa and Constantinople were nominally restored. But Byzantine authority had been fatally undermined. The Berber tribes, who had joined Gregory's rebellion with enthusiasm, saw no reason to return to imperial obedience after his defeat. Southern Tunisia slipped beyond the control of Carthage entirely. The battle at Sufetula -- fought among Roman columns and forum temples that were already six centuries old -- inaugurated a slow but irreversible transformation. Within decades, the Umayyad armies would return to finish what the Seven Abdallahs had begun, and the ancient cities of Roman Africa would enter a new chapter under entirely different rulers.