In the last years of the eleventh/seventeenth and the first years of the twelfth/eighteenth century, the three countries of the Maghrib began almost simultaneously a new phase in their history. In 1076/1666, in Morocco, the ‘Alawī dynasty established itself on the ruins of the Sa'did state; in 1082/1671, in Algeria, the authority of the deys replaced that of the pashas; and in 1117/1705, in Tunisia, the Husaynid dynasty was born in the midst of the unrest provoked by the defeat and capture of the Bey Ibrāhīm al-Sharīf by the Algerians.

The three states, whose modern history was really beginning at this time, had to face the same problems until the middle of the nineteenth century, when they were confronted with the impact of European expansion: the problems of their development as coherent national entities, of the building up of efficient institutions, and of economic and social progress. These problems were only imperfectly solved. Morocco, comparatively protected by its geographical isolation, developed slowly, leaving open the Berber question and the question of the modernization of the Makhzan. In the meantime, each of the two neighbouring states, starting with the same status as Ottoman provinces, developed in a different way: whereas in Tunisia, for reasons both of geography and of early and recent history, there arose a national monarchy within clearly denned territorial frontiers, Algeria remained, both as a nation and in its institutions, immature.