Berbers

• 1. Introduction

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  The Berbers, who are also called the Amazigh or Imazighen, live in places as far apart as Egypt's Siwa Oasis and the villages of Burkina Faso. Their largest communities lie across Morocco, Algeria and Libya. Smaller ones are found in Tunisia, Mauritania, northern Mali and northern Niger. What ties them together is language rather than a single homeland or government. Their many Berber languages all belong to the Afroasiatic family. Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs and Spaniards each had to reckon with them. Why does one people carry so many names, and why do some of those names cause pain? Who were they before outsiders began writing about them? And how did Berber rulers come to govern North Africa and much of the Iberian Peninsula for centuries?

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• 2. A Contested Name

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  In Arabic, the word for barbarian is identical to the label Berber. Many people in the community hear it as an insult and prefer the name Amazigh. Defenders of Amazigh point to its age. A group called the Mazices shows the word was in use in antiquity, and Mazigh served as a tribal surname in Roman Mauretania Caesariensis. Berbers historically did not use one shared label for themselves. The Kabyle called their own people Leqbayel, while the Chaoui called themselves Ishawiyen. Egyptian inscriptions from 1700 and 1300 BC record tribal titles such as Barabara and Beraberata. One suggestion is that the true ethnic name blurred together with Barbari, the term classical conquerors used. Scholars still argue over the collective label. The historian Ramzi Rouighi holds that Berbers were named as a single group only after the Arab conquests of the 7th century. Critics reply that he oversimplified the spread of Amazigh and brushed it aside as a colonial invention, ignoring regions where it was an endonym long before modern nationalism. The meaning of Amazigh is also disputed. Stéphane Gsell proposed noble or free, building on a translation by Leo Africanus of the phrase awal amazigh as noble language. Some see that as too large a leap. Related words do exist, though. In central Morocco, mmuzeɣ means to be noble or generous. Among the Kabyles of Ouadhia, tmuzeɣ means to free oneself or to revolt. The Tuareg word Amajegh means noble. Medieval writers preferred genealogies. Ibn Khaldun recorded a line running from Barbar, son of Tamalla, back through Mazigh, Canaan and Ham to Noah. A scholar named Abraham Isaac Laredo proposed a different root, the name Mezeg, borne by Dedan of Sheba in the Targum. The Al-Fihrist took yet another approach, counting the Berbers as one of seven principal races in Africa.

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• 3. Deep Roots

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  Cave paintings in the Tassili n'Ajjer region of southeastern Algeria have been dated to about twelve thousand years ago. Berbers are believed to have lived in the Maghreb since at least 10,000 BC. More rock art survives at Tadrart Acacus in the Libyan desert. Between 6000 and 2000 BC, a Neolithic society based on domesticated animals and farming spread across the Sahara and the Mediterranean fringe of North Africa. The Tassili paintings depict it richly. Tifinagh inscriptions from prehistoric times have turned up in the Oran region. According to linguistic accounts, Berber languages travelled west from the Nile Valley across the northern Sahara into the Maghreb from about 2000 BC. The Roman historian Gaius Sallustius Crispus preserved a very different origin tale. In his telling, the Gaetulians and Libyans crossed to Africa from Iberia, and much later Hercules arrived with an army from the same direction. The Medes in that army married Libyans and became the Maur people. The rest of the army became the Nomadas, today called Numidians. Modern science offers its own record. By about 5000 BC, North Africans descended mainly from the Iberomaurusian and Capsian cultures, with a newer influence tied to the arrival of farming. Berber speakers show some of the highest frequencies of the E1b1b paternal lineage. In 2013, researchers analysed Iberomaurusian skeletons from Taforalt and Afalou. Every specimen carried maternal lineages linked to North Africa or the Mediterranean shores, which points to gene flow across the sea since the Epipaleolithic. At Ifri n'Amr ou Moussa in Morocco, remains dated to about 5000 BC carried lineages still common in the Maghreb today. Fossils from Kelif el Boroud near Rabat tell a mixed story. Those late Neolithic people were modelled as roughly half local North African and half Early European Farmer ancestry. That European share may have come with Cardial Ware colonists from Iberia between 5000 and 3000 BC. The same people were found to be closely related to the Guanches of the Canary Islands.

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• 4. Under Carthage

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  In 396 BC, thousands of rebels poured down from the mountains and invaded Carthaginian territory, carrying the serfs of the countryside with them. The Carthaginians pulled back behind their walls and endured a siege. The rebels numbered 200,000 at one point, yet they lacked unity. Hunger set in, their leaders were offered bribes, and the host gradually dispersed. Such revolts recurred from the fourth century onward. The relationship had begun differently. The Phoenicians, who kept close ties with their mother city of Tyre, first built coastal outposts to service ships heading for the metals trade with the Iberians. They may have thought trading with Berbers unprofitable. Later they founded cities in Berber lands, including Oea, Leptis Magna and Sabratha in Libya. In Morocco they built Volubilis, Chellah and Mogador. Volubilis processed olive oil, and Mogador produced Tyrian purple dye. For a time, Berber kingdoms were strong enough to demand tribute from Carthage, a situation that lasted into the 5th century BC. Early Carthage also sought favourable treaties with Berber chieftains, including intermarriage with the Punic aristocracy. A legend told by Trogus about Dido, who founded Carthage, hints at that politics. She refused to marry Hiarbus, a chieftain of the Mauritani. Power shifted as Carthage grew. In the 5th century BC it took Cape Bon and the fertile Wadi Majardah, then controlled farmland for several hundred kilometres. Many Berbers ended up working that land as sharecroppers. Their cavalry became vital to the state. By the fourth century BC, Berbers formed the largest single element in the Carthaginian army. Their loyalty was fragile. When Agathocles of Sicily landed at Cape Bon in 310 BC, a Berber leader named Ailymas took the Greek side. The burden of rule explains why. During the First Punic War, Libyan Berber sharecroppers owed half their crops to the city, and the normal rate was probably a quarter. Carthage's attempt to cut its Libyan and foreign soldiers helped trigger the Mercenary War of 240-237 BC. Ancient rivals accused the city of greed and cruelty, and any invader could count on the hatred its subjects felt.

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• 5. Numidia and Mauretania

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  In 206 BC, a new Massylii king named Masinissa switched sides in the Second Punic War and allied himself with Rome. Until then the eastern Massylii, under King Gala, had stood with Carthage, while the western Masaesyli, under King Syphax, had backed Rome. Syphax now turned to Carthage in reply. Masinissa joined the Roman general Scipio, and together they brought about the defeat of Carthage at Zama, despite the presence of Hannibal. Syphax died in 202 BC. Rome rewarded the winner with all of Numidia, a kingdom that lasted from 202 to 46 BC. By the time Masinissa died in 148 BC, his lands reached from Mauretania to the edge of Carthaginian territory and southeast to Cyrenaica. Numidia surrounded Carthage everywhere except the sea. His son Micipsa ruled next. When Micipsa died in 118 BC, the throne went jointly to his sons Hiempsal I and Adherbal and to Masinissa's illegitimate grandson Jugurtha, who was very popular. Jugurtha quarrelled with Hiempsal at once and had him killed. Adherbal lost a battle to Jugurtha and fled to Rome. Roman officials, perhaps swayed by bribes or perhaps just wanting peace in a profitable client kingdom, divided Numidia in two. Fighting soon resumed, and it grew into the Jugurthine War between Rome and Numidia. Farther west lay Mauretania, home of the Mauri, which existed from the 3rd century BC to 44 AD. It became a Roman client state in 33 BC after King Bocchus II died. It became a full province in AD 40 after the death of its last king, Ptolemy of Mauretania. Far to the south, the Berber kingdom of Garamantia flourished in the Fezzan between 400 BC and 600 AD. Under Rome, some Berbers became Christians, and a strong link appeared between Berbers and the Donatist doctrine. Others were Jewish or kept their traditional polytheist faith. Numidia was the birthplace of the authors Apuleius and St. Augustine, and of three popes. One of them, Pope Victor I, served under the emperor Septimius Severus, a North African of Roman and Punic ancestry who perhaps had some Berber blood.

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• 6. Islam Arrives

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  In 670, an Arab army under Uqba ibn Nafi founded the town of Qayrawan, about 160 kilometres south of modern Tunis. The Umayyads, who ruled from 661 to 750, decided that mastering the Mediterranean required a serious push into North Africa. Earlier raids from Egypt, between 642 and 669, had been local initiatives. Uqba's successor, Abu al-Muhajir Dinar, reached an understanding with Kusaila, who ruled a wide confederation of Christian Berbers. Kusaila became a Muslim and moved to Takirwan near Qayrawan, but the peace was brief. Arab and Berber forces traded control until 697. Umayyad forces took Carthage in 698 and expelled the Byzantines. In 703 they defeated the coalition of Dihya at the Battle of Tabarka. By 711, with the help of Berber converts, all of North Africa was in Umayyad hands. Conversion did not buy loyalty. The ruling Arabs taxed Berbers heavily, treated converts as lesser Muslims and, worst of all, enslaved them. Open revolt came in 739-740 under the banner of Ibadi Islam, whose egalitarian ideas attracted many Berbers. Most of the Ibadi kingdoms that followed were short-lived, but Sijilmasa and Tlemcen sat on major trade routes and prospered. At Tahert, the Rustamid imamate lasted from 761 to 909. Its imams were elected by leading citizens and won a name for honesty, piety and justice, and the court supported mathematics, astronomy and law. The imamate kept no reliable standing army, and the Fatimids brought it down. Those Fatimids rose on the strength of the Kutama Berbers. In 909 they took Kairouan, overthrew the Aghlabids and installed Ubayd Allah as imam and caliph. Mahdia became the capital in 921. After the Fatimids moved to Egypt in 969, they left Zirid Sanhaja Berbers in charge. The Banu Hilal, sent to punish the Zirids, reduced them to a few coastal towns and spread nomadism into farmland. By the eleventh century most of Northwest Africa was Berber-speaking and Muslim. Christian communities all but vanished, though some villages in Nefzaoua kept an indigenous Christian population until the 14th century.

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• 7. Berbers in Iberia

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  The army that crossed into the Iberian Peninsula in 711 was commanded by a Berber named Tariq ibn Ziyad. The biographical dictionary of Ibn Khallikan preserves this in its entry on him, though later Arab-centred histories played the role down. The English medievalist Roger Collins offers a practical explanation. Arab forces in Africa were too thin to hold it and attack Iberia together, so they enlisted recently defeated Berbers, whose tribal structure let whole units join up. Governor As-Samh settled many Berbers in mountain country such as Granada, the Pyrenees, Cantabria and Galicia. When Pelagius revolted in Asturias, his target was a Berber governor. A great Berber revolt in 740-741 pulled Umayyad attention south, and after the 740s sources no longer mention Berbers in the northwest. Their garrisons were sometimes brutal. In 794, the garrison of Tarragona massacred the city's inhabitants, and the city stayed empty for seven years. At Pamplona, a cemetery of 190 burials in Islamic style marks a Berber garrison. Berbers also gave shelter. After the Umayyad family fell in 750, a grandson of Caliph Hisham named Abd ar-Rahman hid among North African Berbers for five years. He crossed to Spain in 756 and declared himself ruler of al-Andalus. Berber power peaked in bloody fashion at Cordoba. Resentment grew against Berbers brought from Africa by al-Mansur and his sons. Anti-Berber propaganda claimed that Sanchuelo ordered his courtiers to wear Berber turbans. In 1009 his own Berber mercenaries abandoned him, and he was captured and killed. The Berbers then besieged Cordoba, destroyed its suburbs and razed the Madinat al-Zahra. A massacre followed the surrender. Ibn Idhari dated the start of Berber rule in Cordoba and the end of Umayyad rule to the installation of Sulayman in 1013. Bernard Reilly notes that Berbers arriving late as mercenaries numbered only about 20 thousand among six million Andalusis. Their visibility came from founding taifa dynasties, such as the Zirid kingdom of Granada. The Almoravids, whose core was the Lamtuna branch of the Sanhaja, later crossed over. Yusuf ibn Tashfin took Algeciras in 1086. Berber dynasties including the Almohads, Marinids, Zayyanids and Hafsids then ruled much of North Africa until the 16th century.

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• 8. Colonial Era and Language

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  In 1871, a revolt that began in Kabylie spread across much of Algeria. By April, 250 tribes had risen, nearly a third of Algeria's population. It was the most serious native challenge to French rule since the time of Abd al-Qadir. The Kabyles had a long record of independence. They stayed free through successive rule by Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines, Vandals and Ottoman Turks, and they kept their mountains after the Arab conquest. Under the Ottomans, they lived mainly in the Kingdom of Ait Abbas, the Kingdom of Kuku and the principality of Aït Jubar. Ait Abbas, ruled by the Mokrani family, lasted from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Its capital was the Kalâa of Ait Abbas, an impregnable citadel in the Biban mountains. After the 1871 revolt, French thinking about Kabyles built a stereotyped Kabyle myth that set them against Arabs. It peaked until 1892. In 1902, the French entered the Hoggar Mountains and defeated the Ahaggar Tuareg at the battle of Tit. In 1912, Morocco was divided into French and Spanish zones, and the Rif Berbers rose under Abd el-Krim, a former officer of the Spanish administration. In July 1921, his forces routed the Spanish army under Manuel Silvestre at what Spain calls the Disaster of Annual. Spanish losses there and in later fighting may have reached 22,000 soldiers. During the Algerian War of 1954-1962, the FLN and ALN created a Kabyle administrative territory, wilaya III, for the first time. Tensions with the central government began at independence. The new North African states made Arabic their official language in place of French, Spanish and Italian. Most Berbers therefore had to learn Arabic, and until the twenty-first century they had no chance to use their mother tongue at school or university. Since the late twentieth century, a transnational movement called Berberism, or the Berber Culture Movement, has pressed for a shared Amazigh identity, greater linguistic rights and wider cultural recognition.

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