Berbers, also known as Amazighs or Imazighen, are an ethnic group indigenous to North Africa. They are primarily connected by their use of Berber languages, which are part of the Afroasiatic language family.
The Berbers are indigenous to the Maghreb region of North Africa, where they live in communities across parts of Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and to a lesser extent Tunisia, Mauritania, northern Mali and northern Niger (Azawagh). Smaller Berber communities are also found in Burkina Faso and Egypt's Siwa Oasis. Many in the community view the exonym "Berber", equivalent and related to the Arabic word for "barbarian" (), as pejorative, and prefer the endonym "Amazigh".
Descended from Stone Age cultures indigenous to North Africa, accounts of the Imazighen were first mentioned in Ancient Egyptian writings. From about 2000 BC, Berber languages spread westward from the Nile Valley across the northern Sahara into the Maghreb. A series of Berber peoples such as the Mauri, Masaesyli, Massyli, Musulamii, Gaetuli, and Garamantes gave rise to Berber kingdoms, such as Numidia and Mauretania. Other kingdoms appeared in late antiquity, such as Altava, Aurès, Ouarsenis, and Hodna. Berber kingdoms were eventually suppressed by the Arab conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries AD, which initiated a long process of cultural and linguistic Arabization. This involved the spread of Arabic language and Arab culture among the Berbers, as well as their conversion to Islam. Notably, the Arab migrations to the Maghreb from the 7th century to the 17th century accelerated this process. However, Berber tribes remained powerful political forces and created dynasties that ruled much of North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula from the eleventh to sixteenth centuries such as the Zirids, Hammadids, various Zenata principalities in the western Maghreb, and several Taifa kingdoms in al-Andalus, and empires of the Almoravids and Almohads. Their Berber successors—the Marinids, the Zayyanids, and the Hafsids—continued to rule until the 16th century. From the 16th century onward, the process continued in the absence of Berber dynasties; in Morocco, they were replaced by Arabs claiming descent from the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
Berbers are divided into several ethnic groups, such as Kabyles, Chaouis and Rifians. The use of the endonym Amazigh dates back to antiquity, as attested by groups such as the Mazices, and it remains in use today. Various Berber nations (such as Rifians, Nafusi, Ghomaras, Shilhas, etc,) used the root MZƔ for the name of their language and their people up to the latter half of the 20th century, when more regionally specific terms such as Tarifit or Tanfusit were coined.
Names and etymology
The indigenous populations of the Maghreb region of North Africa are collectively known as Berbers or Amazigh in English.
Tribal titles such as Barabara and Beraberata appear in Egyptian inscriptions of 1700 and 1300 BC, and the Berbers were probably intimately related with the Egyptians in very early times. Thus the true ethnic name may have become confused with Barbari, the designation used by classical conquerors.
The plural form Imazighen is sometimes also used in English.
The term "Berber" as a collective label has been the subject of scholarly debate. The historian Ramzi Rouighi argues that Berbers began to be referred to collectively only after the Arab conquests of the 7th century, and that the term's modern usage carries problematic historical baggage. However, Rouighi's treatment of the term "Amazigh" has been criticized for oversimplifying its historical distribution and dismissing it as a colonial invention without adequately engaging with its use as an endonym in many regions long before modern nationalism. Today, many consider the term "Berber" pejorative and prefer "Amazigh" instead, due to its problematic history as an exonym and its equivalence with the Arabic word for "barbarian". Since the late 20th century, a trans-national movement – known as Berberism or the Berber Culture Movement – has emerged among various parts of the Berber populations of North Africa to promote a collective Amazigh ethnic identity and to advocate for greater linguistic rights and cultural recognition.
Stéphane Gsell proposed the translation "noble/free" for the term Amazigh based on Leo Africanus's translation of "awal amazigh" as "noble language" referring to the Berber languages. This definition remains disputed and is seen by some as an undue extrapolation. Related words such as ('to be noble', 'generous') exist among the Imazighen of Central Morocco, while ('to free oneself', 'revolt') is found among the Kabyles of Ouadhia. The term also has a cognate in the Tuareg "Amajegh", meaning noble. "Mazigh" was used as a tribal surname in Roman Mauretania Caesariensis.
Abraham Isaac Laredo proposes that the term Amazigh could be derived from "Mezeg", which is the name of Dedan of Sheba in the Targum.
The medieval Arab historian Ibn Khaldun says the Berbers were descendants of Barbar, the son of Tamalla, son of Mazigh, son of Canaan, son of Ham, son of Noah.
The Numidian, Mauri and Libu populations of antiquity are typically understood by contemporary writers to have referred to the same population as modern Berbers.
History The areas of North Africa that have retained the Berber language and traditions best have been, in general, Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia. Much of Berber culture is still celebrated among the cultural elite in Morocco and Algeria, especially in Kabylia, the Aurès and the Atlas Mountains. The Kabyles were one of the few peoples in North Africa who remained independent during successive rule by the Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines, Vandals, and the Ottoman Turks. Even after the Arab conquest of North Africa, the Kabyle people still maintained possession of their mountains.
Prehistory
The Maghreb region in northwestern Africa is believed to have been inhabited by Berbers from at least 10,000 BC. Cave paintings, which have been dated to twelve millennia before present, have been found in the Tassili n'Ajjer region of southeastern Algeria. Other rock art has been discovered at Tadrart Acacus in the Libyan desert. A Neolithic society, marked by domestication and subsistence agriculture and richly depicted in the Tassili n'Ajjer paintings, developed and predominated in the Saharan and Mediterranean region (the Maghreb) of northern Africa between 6000 and 2000 BC (until the classical period).
Prehistoric Tifinagh inscriptions were found in the Oran region. During the pre-Roman era, several successive independent states (Massylii) existed before King Masinissa unified the people of Numidia.Histoire de l'émigration kabyle en France au XXe siècle: réalités culturelles ... De Karina Slimani-DirecheLes cultures du Maghreb. Maria Àngels Roque, Paul Balta, Mohammed ArkounDialogues d'histoire ancienne à l'Université de Besançon, Centre de recherches d'histoire ancienne
Mythology According to the Roman historian Gaius Sallustius Crispus, the original people of North Africa are the Gaetulians and the Libyans, they were the prehistoric peoples that crossed to Africa from the Iberian Peninsula, then much later, Hercules and his army crossed from Iberia to North Africa where his army intermarried with the local populace and settled the region permanently, the Medes of his army that married the Libyans formed the Maur people, while the other part of his Army formed the Nomadas or as they are today known as the Numidians which later on united all of Berber tribes of North Africa under the rule of Massinissa.
Other sources According to the Al-Fiḥrist, the Barber (i.e. Berbers) comprised one of seven principal races in Africa.Ibn al-Nadim. Al-Fiḥrist, Book I, pp. 35–36
The medieval Tunisian scholar Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406), recounting the oral traditions prevalent in his day, sets down two popular opinions as to the origin of the Berbers: according to one opinion, they are descended from Canaan, son of Ham, and have for ancestors Berber, son of Temla, son of Mazîgh, son of Canaan, son of Ham, a son of Noah; alternatively, Abou-Bekr Mohammed es-Souli (947 AD) held that they are descended from Berber, the son of Keloudjm (Casluhim), the son of Mesraim, the son of Ham.
Ancestry and DNA As of about 5000 BC, the populations of North Africa were descended primarily from the Iberomaurusian and Capsian cultures, with a more recent intrusion being associated with the Neolithic Revolution.J. Desanges, "The proto-Berbers", pp. 236–245, especially p. 237, in General History of Africa, vol. II: Ancient Civilizations of Africa (UNESCO 1990). The proto-Berber tribes evolved from these prehistoric communities during the late Bronze- and early Iron ages.Mário Curtis Giordani, História da África. Anterior aos descobrimentos. Editora Vozes, Petrópolis (Brasil) 1985, pp. 42f., 77f. Giordani references Bousquet, Les Berbères (Paris 1961).
Uniparental DNA analysis has established ties between Berbers and other Afroasiatic speakers in Africa. Most of these populations belong to the E1b1b paternal haplogroup, with Berber speakers having among the highest frequencies of this lineage.
Additionally, genomic analysis found that Berber and other Maghreb communities have a high frequency of an ancestral component that originated in the Near East. This Maghrebi element peaks among Tunisian Berbers. This ancestry is related to the Coptic/Ethio-Somali component, which diverged from these and other West Eurasian-affiliated components before the Holocene.;
In 2013, Iberomaurusian skeletons from the prehistoric sites of Taforalt and Afalou in the Maghreb were also analyzed for ancient DNA. All of the specimens belonged to maternal clades associated with either North Africa or the northern and southern Mediterranean littoral, indicating gene flow between these areas since the Epipaleolithic. The ancient Taforalt individuals carried the mtDNA haplogroups U6, H, JT, and V, which points to population continuity in the region dating from the Iberomaurusian period.
Human fossils excavated at the Ifri n'Amr ou Moussa site in Morocco have been radiocarbon dated to the Early Neolithic period, BC. Ancient DNA analysis of these specimens indicates that they carried paternal haplotypes related to the E1b1b1b1a (E-M81) subclade and the maternal haplogroups U6a and M1, all of which are frequent among present-day communities in the Maghreb. These ancient individuals also bore an autochthonous Maghrebi genomic component that peaks among modern Berbers, indicating that they were ancestral to populations in the area. Additionally, fossils excavated at the Kelif el Boroud site near Rabat were found to carry the broadly distributed paternal haplogroup T-M184 as well as the maternal haplogroups K1, T2 and X2, the latter of which were common mtDNA lineages in Neolithic Europe and Anatolia. These ancient individuals likewise bore the Berber-associated Maghrebi genomic component. This altogether indicates that the late-Neolithic Kehf el Baroud inhabitants were ancestral to contemporary populations in the area, but also likely experienced gene flow from Europe.
The late-Neolithic Kehf el Baroud inhabitants were modelled as being of about 50% local North African ancestry and 50% Early European Farmer (EEF) ancestry. It was suggested that EEF ancestry had entered North Africa through Cardial Ware colonists from Iberia sometime between 5000 and 3000 BC. They were found to be closely related to the Guanches of the Canary Islands. The authors of the study suggested that the Berbers of Morocco carried a substantial amount of EEF ancestry before the establishment of Roman colonies in Berber Africa.
Antiquity