Family research · Hub · Phase 8 of the world atlas

Flags of the Maghreb & Nile

Six countries across North Africa — Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Sudan — from the Islamic conquests of the 600s to today, plotted on one real map with a time slider across fourteen centuries.

Each country's own dedicated flag timeline is now published, linked below; this hub's own map anchors them regionally. Drag the slider below or press play to watch the whole region change hands.

The six countries

c. 788 – present Morocco Idrisid founders, Almoravid and Almohad empires, four centuries of Alaouite independence, never Ottoman. c. 900 – present Algeria Zayyanid Tlemcen, the Ottoman Regency of Algiers, 132 years as French territory, independence won by war in 1962. c. 800 – present Tunisia Aghlabid Kairouan, the Hafsid dynasty, three centuries as an Ottoman regency, and the 2011 revolution that began the Arab Spring. c. 900 – present Libya Ottoman Tripolitania, Italian colonization, the UN's first-ever created state in 1951, Gaddafi's Jamahiriya, and the 2011 revolution. Antiquity – present Egypt Pharaonic antiquity, Fatimid Cairo, Ayyubid and Mamluk sultans, four centuries Ottoman, British-occupied, a republic since 1953. c. 1070 BC – present Sudan The Kingdom of Kush, Christian Nubian kingdoms, the Funj Sultanate, the Mahdist State, Anglo-Egyptian rule.

Fourteen centuries, one map

A real, traced map — actual coastlines, not schematic shapes — covering Morocco's Atlantic coast to Sudan's Red Sea coast, with Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, and Saudi Arabia shown faintly for context. Drag the slider or press play; each snapshot simplifies a messier reality into the dominant power of the moment.

Borders here are data, not decoration. A line between two regions only draws solid when they were actually governed separately. When they weren't — Morocco and Algeria both under Almohad rule, say — the line dissolves and their names merge into whoever actually ruled them both. Colors blend between eras instead of jump-cutting.

700

The Umayyad conquest complete

Real traced coastlines (simplified): Morocco's Atlantic and Mediterranean shores, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya's Mediterranean coast, and Egypt and Sudan's Mediterranean and Red Sea coasts. Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, and Saudi Arabia are shown faintly for geographic context only — they aren't part of the tracked history here.

Try: drag slowly from 700 to 1250 and watch Morocco and Algeria's shared border dissolve twice — once under the Umayyad Caliphate, once under the Almohads — while Tunisia and Libya's own shared border dissolves separately under the Zirids and then the Hafsids, never quite the same grouping as Morocco and Algeria's. Then jump to 1517 and watch every one of the six borders snap solid at once except Algeria–Libya (Libya's under Spain, Algeria's newly Ottoman) and Libya–Egypt (also different rulers) — Morocco stays its own color the entire rest of the map's run, the one country here the Ottomans never took.

The same story, as a timeline

Maps are bad at showing when; timelines are bad at showing where. This uses real transition years instead of the nine arbitrary snapshots above — one horizontal band per country, colored the same way as the map, so you can trace exactly how long each era actually lasted (watch how long Morocco's medieval dynasties ran compared to how briefly Spain held Tripoli).

The same story, nine frames — only the change lights up

Every country keeps its true color, but anything unchanged from the previous frame fades to low opacity; only the country or countries that actually changed hands stay bold with a solid outline. A caption under each frame spells out exactly what flipped. No slider to operate — scan left to right, top to bottom, and watch the map redraw itself like a flipbook.

About this atlas

This started as a family history project: tracing the flags that flew over the lands our ancestors came from, close enough to paint accurately — correct colors, correct proportions, correct dates. The Maghreb and Nile hub is the eighth phase: six countries whose histories genuinely do connect — a shared conquest in the 600s and 700s, an Ottoman wave that reached five of the six but never Morocco, a colonial wave that took all six in different ways and different years, and independence spread out from 1951 to 1962.

Individual dedicated pages for Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Sudan — each with its own full flag timeline, linked from the cards above — are now published. Colors are close historical approximations; pre-19th-century swatches especially are informed reconstructions, not official specifications, and are labeled as such throughout. The regional map above simplifies fourteen centuries of messy, overlapping, contested control into nine snapshots — useful for orientation, not a substitute for the detail each country's own page carries.

More of the atlas

This hub is one region in a larger set. See the other phases here:

Flags Atlas indexSearch every country and hub Levant hubSyria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel Arabian Peninsula hubSeven countries, tribal to modern