Could the Berbers in the lowlands/better agricultural lands be assimilated into the system while the Berbers in the highlands of the Atlas/Aures/Kabylia and the desert be kept in a status like the Highland clans of Scotland?
Frankly, given the historical exemples of Latin States, I don't think you'd really have any incitative to having Arabo-Islamic "manorialism" being integrated into a feudal system, at the very least not without elite conversion (which wasn't really a thing in Crusader states to begin with). I'd rather expect Crusader largely borrowing on the Arabo-African fiscal administration as it did happened in Palestine, for instance.
Not to say that you wouldn't have some differences : I'd see, African plantation economy to work out with less servile taskforce (while not as importantly than it happened in Palestine, due to the presence of direct servile trade roads) and the (relatively) less predatory nature of Latin rulership* could lead to some prosperous agricultural setting.
Muslims here own their own houses and rule themselves in their own way. This is the way the farms and big villages are organised in Frankish territory. Many Muslims are sorely tempted to settle here when they see the far from comfortable conditions in which their brethren live in the districts under Muslim rule.
Unfortunately for the Muslims, they have always reason for complaint about the injustices of their chiefs in the lands governed by their co-religionists, whereas they can have nothing but praise for the conduct of the Franks, whose justice they can always rely on.
Even if Ibn Jubayr's famous statement must be taken with a grain of salt, as he forces a bit the infavourable comparison, fact that Latin nobility generally remained a castellan or an urban elite, made the motivation to really feudalize or manorialize Arabo-Islamic territories (or Byzantine territories) not that prioritary.
Eventually, you have more chances that, depsite the pretty much "idealized" feudality of Latin States, that Latin nobles would reasonably go a bit more native, than native going Latin, in sort of "rough tolerence" (as MacEvitt coined it) but it's true that in Palestine, the existence of a relatively favorable local Christianity served as "greasing" the whole society.
In Africa you won't, admittedly, have nearly the same religious situation but I think it might be compensated by the closeness of Norman Sicily, and the rough disregard of Italians for the religious issues.
Or would this entail a greater Roman integration of North Africa than happened OTL to lay the groundworks for such a system?
Roman integration of Mauri communauties was made along a system where these communauties were still largely peripherical and autonomous up to a degree on the borders (including on the imperial side of the borders) of Roman Africa.
It's really not before Byzzies came back in Africa, largely ignoring the geopolitical realities, that it changed for decades, before they surrendered to reality.
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This is probably easier to do east of Mauretania, since the Berbers were always fewer in number and more isolated thanks to the rule of Carthage and later Rome.
No, no, no, no.
Berbers were largely integrated into Carthagian (which was often labelled Libyo-Punic) and Roman political system, more like the usual foederati, laeti and such than sort of anachronic nation-state.
And what do you mean by "Italian influence"?
One one hand, Maritime republic economical and political influence, that was quite a thing in the classical and Late Middle Ages over the region. It could probably goes as big as it was in Latin States in Romania or Palestine.
It had its downfalls.
On the other hand, whoever rules in Naples would be a major factor in the region as well, in the case of a Latin State Africa, at least something akin Angevine suzerainty over Latin Romania.
It had its downfalls.
Could North Africa end up looking a bit like the Italian peninsula in the Middle Ages, with a bunch of autonomous cities, petty lordships, etc.? The geography seems conducive to that.
Geographical determinism on this board is, I'm afraid, largely overestimated. You had no strong "natural" borders in the Po Valley, and yet it's where you had the most mportant concentration of medieval
communi (among a shitload of various exemple).
Now, you're in the truth that it would certainly have consequences on the geographical extent of a Latin Africa, but rather along the lines of virtually all "imperial" powers since Late Antiquity, meaning rather along bands (coastal bands, hinterland bands, etc.). While you had fairly important coastal cities (as, of course, Madhia) it never evolved into urban autonomies. Not that it wouldn't get develloped ITTL, would it be only trough Italian influence, but rather than communi-like entities, I'd rather see franchised urban communauties under italian influence.