The Moors are well-known for their presence on the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages and for the conflicts they fought in Europe, but the term Moor is a historical rather than an ethnic name. It is an invention of European Christians for the Islamic inhabitants of Maghreb (North Africa), Andalusia (Spain), Sicily, and Malta, and it was sometimes used to designate all Muslims. It is derived from Mauri, the Latin name for the Berbers who lived in the Roman province of Mauretania, which ranged across modern Algeria and Morocco. Saracen was another European term used to designate Muslims, though it usually referred to the Arabic peoples of the Middle East and derives from an ancient name for the Arabs, Sarakenoi. The Muslims of those regions no more refer to themselves by that term than those of North Africa call themselves Moors. Maghreb, or al-Maghreb, is a historical term used by Arabic Muslims for the territory of coastal North Africa from Alexandria to the Atlantic Coast. It means “The West” and is used in opposition to Mashrek, “The East,” used to refer to the lands of Islam in the Middle East and north-eastern Africa. The Berbers refer to the region in their own language as Tamazgha. In a limited, precise sense it can also refer to the Kingdom of Morocco, the proper name of which is al-Mamlakah al-Maghribiyyah, “Kingdom of the West.”

The Berbers established several powerful and prosperous states on the south Mediterranean coast. They ruled Numidia–now part of Algeria–until conquered by the Carthaginians. After the fall of Carthage, the Berber kingdom of Mauretania–not to be confused with the country created by the French–dominated northwestern Africa before it was conquered by Rome in the 1st century BCE. Under Roman rule they made great contributions to civilization and were certainly not the wild, untamed tribesmen of popular imagination. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo regius in Numidia, was a Berber and one of the greatest philosophers and theologians not only of his own time but of all time. The list of religious leaders drawn from the Berbers includes Tertullian, Popes Victor I, Miltiades and Gelasius I and the heresiarch Arius. The playwright Terence was a Berber, as were several noted Roman governors and three emperors.

As the Roman Empire in the West collapsed, the Berbers succumbed to the Vandals, a Germanic tribe from Europe, in the 5th century CE. However, the Eastern Roman Empire, centered in Constantinople rather than Rome, underwent something of a renewal, and the whole of the African coast from the Sinai Peninsula to the Straits of Gibraltar returned to Byzantine rule. With that, the Berbers were once again subject to a foreign power, but soon they would exchange their new masters for another, the Arabs, who would bring a new religion, Islam. Through Islam the Berbers would once again come into their own and influence the course of Mediterranean history as their ancient ancestors had done.