The eastern Maghrib was not a geographically uniform region. Tunisia possessed a long, flat, and well-watered eastern coast with strong Mediterranean connections toward Sicily and Sardinia. Libya, by contrast, consisted chiefly of desert apart from narrow fertile strips in Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, separated by a broad desert opening toward the Mediterranean. These divisions made movement within Libya difficult and encouraged links from Cyrenaica toward Egypt and from Tripolitania toward Tunisia and the Sahara.

Tunisia repeatedly served as a meeting place for empires and external powers. It had been a central Mediterranean zone since the Roman destruction of Carthage, and during the period under discussion it became the springboard for the Banu Ghaniya's attempt to restore Almoravid power. Its relations also extended southward: in the thirteenth century, important links developed between the Hafsid rulers of Tunisia and the rulers of Kanem.

The eastern Maghrib entered the period amid the decline of Fatimid rule in Ifriqiya, a region roughly corresponding to Tunisia but extending east to Tripolitania and west to Bougie and Constantine. The eleventh century brought the incursions of the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym, while Christian powers pressed into Muslim North Africa from the west and across the Mediterranean. Ottoman expansion later marked the closing phase of the period, reaching Cyrenaica effectively only in the mid-seventeenth century.