cities to settle in the mountains or on the confines of the desert and fight there with the support of the Berber tribes, many of whom would have been won by their proselytism. According to other historians, the Judaization of the Berbers would have taken place four centuries earlier, with the arrival of Jews fleeing the repression of the Cyrenaic revolt; The transition would have been made progressively through a Judeo-Pagan syncretism with the cult of Tanit, still anchored after the fall of Carthage. Whatever the hypothesis, the historian of the fourteenth century Ibn Khaldun confirms their existence on the eve of the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb on the basis of eleventh-century Arab chronicles. However, this version is fairly questioned: Haim Zeev Hirschberg recalls that the historian wrote his work several centuries after the facts, Mohamed Talbi that the French translation is not totally exact since it does not render the idea of the contingency expressed by the author, and Gabriel Camps that the Jarawa and Nefzaouas quoted were of Christian confession before the arrival of Islam. In any case, even if the hypothesis of the massive conversion of whole tribes appears fragile, individual conversions seem more probable. Middle Ages New status of Jews under Islam With the Arab conquest and the arrival of Islam in Tunisia in the eighth century, the "People of the Book" (including Jews and Christians) were given a choice between conversion to Islam (which some Jewish Berbers have done) and submission to the dhimma. The Dhimma is a pact of protection allowing the non-Muslims to practice their worship, to administer according to their laws and have their property and lives saved in return for the payment of the jizya, capitation tax levied on the free men, the wearing of distinctive clothing and the lack of construction of new places of worship. Moreover, dhimmis couldn't marry Muslim women – the reverse was possible if the Jewish wife converted and proselytized. They must also treat Muslims and Islam with respect and humility. Any violation of this pact resulted in expulsion or even death. Jews were economically, culturally and linguistically integrated into society, while retaining their cultural and religious peculiarities. If it is slow, arabization is faster in urban areas, following the arrival of Jews from the East in the wake of the Arabs, and in the wealthy classes. In 788, when Idris I of Morocco (Imam