The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

Berbers

The Berbers are the indigenous inhabitants of North Africa from the oasis of Siwa in Egypt to the Atlantic Ocean. Their distant origins are much contested, and their conceptualization as a single people rests primarily on the understanding that their languages belong to a single linguistic family, variously classified as Afro-Asian or Hamitic. At the time of the Arabo-Islamic conquest, the Arabs understood them to be one of the major non-Arab (‘Ajam) peoples who accepted Islam. Over time, however, ‘Ajam increasingly denoted the Persians, while barābira, a term probably derived from the perjorative Greek barbaroi or Latin barbari, came to be used for the “barbarian” tribes of the Islamic “wild west.” There is little evidence that the Berbers considered themselves a united people prior to the 20th century, and they certainly did not believe that they had a single political destiny. However, their political history has largely been written by outsiders: first, the Arabs and subsequently the French, who did view them in this light and thus measured their political achievements by an external yardstick predicated on the desirability of national unity.

In particular, French colonial historiography, which has been highly influential in determining both indigenous and postcolonial understandings of the Berbers, posits a North African religiopolitical trajectory, according to which the Berbers repeatedly attempted to create a “national” state by means of the Fatimids, Almoravids, and Almohads, only to succumb to their inherent factional tendencies. These tendencies divided the Maghrib into three political units, roughly coterminous with modern Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia in the 13th century. At the same time, the Berbers lost control of significant portions of the countryside to Arab tribes migrating west who initiated rural linguistic Arabization. In the 15th century, “outsiders”—Arabs of sharifi descent (descent from the Prophet) in Morocco and Ottomans of various ethnic origins in Algeria and Tunisia—seized control of these political entities but failed to incorporate their restive Berber populations, many of whom had retreated to the mountain ranges and deserts as Arabic-speaking tribes came to dominate the lowlands. Berbers were finally integrated into the state only under the aegis of French colonialism.

From the imperial French perspective, this success reflected not only France’s military and cultural superiority but also their ability to appeal to the true Berber spirit, liberate it from the bonds of Arab Islam, and return it to its supposed Christian European essence (a reference to the importance of Christianity in North Africa in the days of St. Augustine). The significance of this view may be seen in the factually accurate but implicitly negative historical sections of the article on the Berbers in the second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam. Conversely, the chimera of unity has inspired Berbers in the modern states of the Maghrib to reimagine their history as that of the Imazighen (sing. Amazigh), a term meaning free men comparable to the Arabic aḥrār, both of which originally encapsulated the pride of tribal peoples who were beholden to no political master due to their ability to evade taxation or co-optation except on their own terms.

Contemporary Maghribi political discourse incorporates the colonial concept of the Berbers as one people, albeit with the more positive aim of forcing the contemporary governments of Algeria and Morocco to accept the indigenous Berber component of national identity rather than continuing to impose a hegemonic Arabo-Islamic identity. Many Berbers were happy to subscribe to an Arabo-Islamic identity during the height of Pan-Arab nationalism and the struggle for independence in North Africa. But now many Berbers wish to see their own languages and cultures recognized within the national framework in the Maghrib and beyond it to diaspora Amazigh communities in France and the United States, who consider themselves Imazighen as much as Moroccans or Algerians.

Much of this would have made little sense to the premodern inhabitants of the Maghrib, whose main political objective seems to have been to negotiate a religiopolitical identity within Islam as distinct tribes or ethnolinguistic communities. It is apparent that from an early stage, the tribes of North Africa found the Islamic paradigm of a prophet and a book compelling but sought to disconnect it from Arab overlordship while also using it as a mode of differentiation within the supposed Berber world. Most famously, the Barghawata tribes of the Atlantic plains of Morocco identified Salih, one of their own ancestors, as their prophet and produced their own book apparently in the Barghawata dialect. Other groups showed sympathy for the oppositional discourses of mainstream Islam such as Kharijism and various ‘Alid and Shi‘i belief systems, which served to assert not a Berber identity writ large but rather more local ethnolinguistic identities. For example, Kharijism, an early Islamic sect, in its Ibadi form underpinned the development of the state of Tahart, which united sections of the Lawata, Nafusa, Nafzawa, and Hawwara, among others, while rival Sufri Kharijism was adopted by the Maknasa, who founded the city state of Sijilmasa. Farther north, the Awraba settled for ‘Alid leadership in the form of the Idrisids, who established Fez.

The most famous Berber political endeavors are, however, the empire-building experiments of the 10th to 13th centuries, described in great detail in Ibn Khaldun’s seminal Kitab al-‘Ibar (The book on important events). Although this historical work is best known for its introduction, the Muqaddima, it is also one of the most complete compilations of information on the rise and fall of various Maghribi states led by an assortment of different Berber peoples. Ibn Khaldun superficially gives the Berbers a unitary identity but then deconstructs it by dividing them into two main groups descended from the eponymous ancestors Butr and Baranis, respectively. He then subdivides them further into large ethnolinguistic communities such as the Awraba and Masmuda, reckoned to be Baranis, and the Lawata, Nafusa, Nafzawa, and Zanata of the Butr, to name but a few. Additionally, Ibn Khaldun removes some groups from this genealogical schema completely, such as the Sanhaja, who claimed to be descendants of the Arabs of Himyar in Yemen and therefore not Berber at all.

Given the huge geographical expanse of the Maghrib, this diversity is not surprising. Ibn Khaldun’s accounts of the Fatimid, Almoravid, and Almohad movements testify to Islam’s powerful role in enabling larger political formations to coalesce. In the case of the Fatimid mission among the Kutama tribe of Ifriqiya (roughly, modern Tunisia) and the Almoravid appeal to the Lamtuna, Lamta, and Guddala peoples of the Sanhaja tribe in Saharan Africa, the initial supremacy of one Berber group was quickly elided by the Arabo-Islamic character of the message itself. Almohadism was, however, slightly different. Although the movement’s founder, Muhammad b. Tumart, was inspired by various eastern Islamic religious trends, he reportedly taught his Masmuda followers in their own tongue and perhaps even prepared didactic materials in their language.

That said, Arabic quickly came to dominate at the level of government due to its already well-entrenched predominance in religious, governmental, and urban settings. This may have had something to do with the assumption of leadership by the lineage of ‘Abd al-Mu’min, a member of the Kumiyya tribe, which was part of the Zanata who shared the Sanhaja’s pretensions to Arab rather than indigenous lineage. While the Almohad successor states in the Maghrib—Marinid Fes, Zayyanid Tlemsen, and Hafsid Tunis—were ruled by lineages of Zanata or Masmuda Berber origin, their political self-conceptualization was similarly Arabo-Islamic. This tendency reached its apogee in Morocco with the rise of two successive sharifi dynasties, the Sa‘dis (1525–1603) and the ‘Alawis (1669–present), who claimed descent from the Prophet via the Hasani-Idrisi line but undoubtedly possessed Berber as well as Arab ancestors.

In the political discourse of the early modern Moroccan sultanate created by these dynasties, Arab and Berber identities were understood in linguistic and political terms and accordingly had considerable fluidity. The 19th-century Moroccan historian Ahmad b. Khalid al-Nasiri speaks of tribes as being variously “Arab,” “Arabized,” “Berber,” or “Berberized” in terms of their language and sometimes appears to use “Arab” as shorthand for progovernment and “Berber” for rebel, which meant that tribes could be “Arab” and then “Berber” depending on their changing political affiliations. This more complex, multilayered discourse seems to best reflect the political experience of the Berber peoples in the Islamic era rather than the notion of either a Berber or Imazighen nation.

See also ethnicity; North Africa