The significantly divergent later form of the language that was spoken in the Tyrian Phoenician colony of Carthage is known as Punic and remained in use there for considerably longer than Phoenician did in Phoenicia itself by arguably surviving into Augustine of Hippo's time. The Punic throughout its existence co-existed with the Berber language which is native to Tunisia (Including Carthage) and North Africa. Punic disappeared some time after the destruction of Carthage by the Romans and the Berbers. It is possible that Punic may have survived the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb in some small isolated area: the geographer al-Bakri describes a people speaking a language that was not Berber, Latin or Coptic in the city of Sirte in rural Ifriqiya, a region in which spoken Punic survived well past its written use. However, it is likely that arabization of the Punics was facilitated by their language belonging to the same group (both being Semitic languages) as that of the conquerors and thus having many grammatical and lexical similarities. Most Punic speakers may have been linguistically Berberized and/or Latinized after the fall of Carthage.