AFRIKA BEHOLD THE BERBERS, THE ORIGINAL OWNERS OF NORTH AFRIKA! WHOEVER "arabized" THE BERBERS DID GREAT INJUSTICE TO PROSPECTS OF HAVING AFRIKANS RECLAIM NORTH AFRIKA FROM ARAB OCCUPATION! The Berbers (Berber : ⵉⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⴻⵏ: Imazighen / Imaziɣen in plural, and Amazigh in singular) are the ethnic group indigenous to North Africa west of the Nile Valley . They are distributed from the Atlantic Ocean to the Siwa Oasis in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean Sea to the Niger River . Historically they spoke Berber languages, which together form the "Berber branch" of the Afro- Asiatic language family. Since the Muslim conquest of North Africa in the 7th century , a large portion of Berbers have spoken varieties of Maghrebi Arabic , either by choice or obligation. Foreign languages like French and Spanish , inherited from former European colonial powers , are used by most educated Berbers in Algeria , Morocco , and Tunisia in some formal contexts such as higher education or business. Today, most Berber-speaking people live in Algeria and Morocco. Smaller Berber- speaking populations are scattered throughout Tunisia , [4] Libya , Mauritania , Mali and Niger , as well as large migrant communities living in Europe, [5][6] especially Turkey. [7] The Berber identity is usually wider than language and ethnicity, [clarification needed ] and encompasses the entire history and geography of North Africa. Berbers are not a homogeneous ethnic group and they encompass a range of phenotypes , cultures and ancestries. The unifying forces for the Berber people could be their Berber language, belonging to the Berber homeland, or a collective identification with the Berber heritage and history. Linguistically speaking, there are some 25 to 35 million Berber-language speakers in North Africa. [8] The number of ethnic Berbers (including Berber- speakers and non-Berber speakers) is presumed to be far greater, as it is generally known that a large part of the Berbers have acquired other languages, over the course of many decades or centuries, and no longer speak Berber today. Berbers call themselves some variant of the word i-Mazigh-en (singular: a- Mazigh ), possibly meaning "free people" or "free and noble men". [5] The word has probably an ancient parallel in the Roman and Greek names for some of the Berbers, "Mazices". Some of the best known of the ancient Berbers are the Roman emperor Septimius Severus , the Mauretanian king Bagas , king Ptolemy, the Numidian king Masinissa, king Jugurtha , the Berber author Apuleius , the founder of the Donatism church Donatus Magnus , the Berber Christian theologian Saint Augustine of Hippo , and the Berber general Lusius Quietus, who was instrumental in defeating the major wave of Jewish revolts of 115–117 . Dihya was a female Berber religious and military leader who led a fierce Berber resistance against the Arab-Muslim expansion in Northwest Africa. Aksel was a 7th-century king of north Algeria . Famous Berbers of the Middle Ages include Yusuf ibn Tashfin , king of the Berber Almoravid empire; Tariq ibn Ziyad the general who conquered Hispania ; Abbas Ibn Firnas, a prolific inventor and early pioneer in aviation ; Ibn Battuta, a medieval explorer who traveled the longest known distances in pre-modern times; and Estevanico, an early explorer of the Americas. Well- known modern Berbers in Europe include Zinedine Zidane , a French-born international football star of Algerian Kabyle descent, Loreen the Swedish-born winner of Eurovision 2012 and Ibrahim Afellay, a Dutch-born footballer of Moroccan Riffian descent. Name Further information: Berber (etymology) and Murabtin The name Berber appeared for the first time after the end of the Roman Empire . [9] The use of the term Berber spread in the period following the arrival of the Vandals during their major invasions. A history by a Roman consul in Africa made the first reference of the term "barbarian" to describe Numidia. Muslim historians, some time after, also mentioned the Berbers. [10] The English term was introduced in the 19th century, replacing the earlier Barbary, a loan from Arabic. Its ultimate etymological identity with barbarian is uncertain, but the Arabic word has clearly been treated as identical with Latin barbaria , Byzantine Greek βαρβαρία "land of barbarians" since the Middle Ages. For the historian Abraham Isaac Laredo [11] the name Amazigh could be derived from the name of the ancestor Mezeg which is the translation of biblical ancestor Dedan son of Sheba in the Targoum . According to Leo Africanus , Amazigh meant "free men", though this has been disputed, because there is no root of M-Z-Gh meaning "free" in modern Berber languages. It also has a cognate in the Tuareg word "amajegh", meaning "noble". [12][13] This term is common in Morocco, especially among Central Atlas, Rifian and Shilah speakers in 1980, [14] but elsewhere within the Berber homeland sometimes a local, more particular term, such as Kabyle (Kabyle comes from Arabic: tribal confederation) or Chaoui, is more often used instead in Algeria. [15] The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Byzantines mentioned various tribes with similar names living in Greater "Libya" (North Africa) in the areas where Berbers were later found. Later tribal names differ from the classical sources, but are probably still related to the modern Amazigh . The Meshwesh tribe among them represents the first thus identified from the field. Scholars believe it would be the same tribe called a few centuries after in Greek Mazyes by Hektaios and Maxyes by Herodotus, while it was called after that the "Mazaces" and "Mazax" in Latin sources, and related to the later Massylii and Masaesyli. All those names are similar and perhaps foreign renditions to the name used by the Berbers in general for themselves, Imazighen .
Posted on: Thu, 19 Sep 2013 09:52:37 +0000
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