Berber people

Berbers are the indigenous peoples of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are discontinuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River. Historically they spoke various Berber languages, which together form a branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Today many of them speak Arabic. Between 30 and 40 million Berber-speakers live within this region, most densely in Algeria and Morocco, becoming generally scarcer eastward through the rest of the Maghreb and beyond.

Many Berbers call themselves some variant of the word Imazighen (singular: Amazigh), possibly meaning "free people" (the word has probably an ancient parallel in the Roman name for some of the Berbers, "Mazices"). 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. It also has a cognate in the Tuareg word amajegh, meaning "noble"). This is common in Morocco, but elsewhere within the Berber homeland a local, more particular term, such as Kabyle or Chaoui, is more often used instead. Historically Berbers have been variously known, for instance as Libyans by the ancient Greeks, as Numidians and Mauri by the Romans, and as Moors by medieval and early modern Europeans. The modern English term is probably borrowed from Italian or Arabic, but the deeper etymology of "Berber" is not certain. (See also: Berber (Etymology).)

The best known of them were the Roman author Apuleius, the Roman emperor Septimius Severus, and Saint Augustine of Hippo. A famous Berber living today is the international football star Zinedine Zidane.

Etymology

The name "Berber" appearing for the first time after the end of the Roman Empire, the relevance of its use for the previous period is not accepted by all historians of antiquity , and is still considered wrong.

The use of the term spread in the period following the arrival of the Vandals at the major invasions. Described as "barbarians" by the Romans in Roman Africa, and from the Iberian peninsula where their camps were subjected to repeated attacks of the Romans. On the hills to the east of Numidia was assembled coalition numido-vandal, who will remove Carthage and Rome's influence throughout Africa. The story of the Roman consul in Africa fit reference for the 1st time the term "barbarian" to describe Numidia. Arab historians, some time after, will appoint the Berbers.

Prehistory

Early inhabitants of the central Maghreb left behind significant remains including remnants of hominid occupation from ca. 200,000 B.C. found near Saïda. Neolithic civilization (marked by animal domestication and subsistence agriculture) developed in the Saharan and Mediterranean Maghrib between 6000 and 2000 B.C. This type of economy, so richly depicted in the Tassili-n-Ajjer cave paintings in southeastern Algeria, predominated in the Maghreb until the classical period. The amalgam of peoples of North Africa coalesced eventually into a distinct native population. The Berbers lacked a written language and hence tended to be overlooked or marginalized in historical accounts.

The Berbers have lived in North Africa between western Egypt and the Atlantic Ocean for as far back as records of the area go. The earliest inhabitants of the region are found on the rock art across the Sahara. References to them also occur often in ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman sources. Berber groups are first mentioned in writing by the ancient Egyptians during the Predynastic Period, and during the New Kingdom the Egyptians later fought against the Meshwesh and Libu tribes on their western borders. From about 945 BCE the Egyptians were ruled by Meshwesh immigrants who founded the Twenty-second Dynasty under Shoshenq I, beginning a long period of Berber rule in Egypt. They long remained the main population of the Western Desert—the Byzantine chroniclers often complained of the Mazikes (Amazigh) raiding outlying monasteries there.

For many centuries the Berbers inhabited the coast of North Africa from Egypt to the Atlantic Ocean. Over time, the coastal regions of North Africa saw a long parade of invaders and colonists including Phoenicians (who founded Carthage), Greeks (mainly in Cyrene, Libya), Romans, Vandals and Alans, Byzantines, Arabs, Ottomans, and the French and Spanish. Most if not all of these invaders have left some imprint upon the modern Berbers as have slaves brought from throughout Europe (some estimates place the number of European slaves brought to North Africa during the Ottoman period as high as 1.25 million). Interactions with neighboring Sudanic empires, sub-Saharan Africans, and nomads from East Africa also left impressions upon the Berber peoples.

In historical times, the Berbers expanded south into the Sahara (displacing earlier populations such as the Azer and Bafour), and have in turn been mainly culturally assimilated in much of North Africa by Arabs, particularly following the incursion of the Banu Hilal in the 11th century.

The areas of North Africa which retained the Berber language and traditions have, in general, been the highlands of Kabylie and Morocco, most of which in Roman and Ottoman times remained largely independent, and where the Phoenicians never penetrated far beyond the coast. But, these areas have been affected by some of the many invasions of North Africa, most recently including the French.

Some pre-Islamic Berbers were Christians (but evolved their own Donatist doctrine), some were Jewish, and some adhered to their traditional polytheist religion. There were three African popes of probable Berber ancestry who came from the Roman province of Africa. Pope Victor I served during the reign of Roman emperor Septimus Severus, of Roman/Berber ancestry, who had led Roman legions in Roman Britain and against the Arsacid Empire.

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