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Berbers are the indigenous People s 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 Niger river. They speak various Berber languages, which together form a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Between fourteen and twenty-five million Berber-speakers live within this region, most densely in Morocco and becoming generally scarcer eastward through the rest of the Maghreb and beyond. HISTORY ]] 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 Saharan Rock Art . References to them also occur frequently in Ancient Egyptian , Greek, and Roman sources.3 Berber groups are first mentioned in writing by the Ancient Egypt ians during the Predynastic Period , and during the New Kingdom the Egyptians later fought against the Meshwesh and Libu Tribe s on their western borders. From about 945 BC 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, settlers, The Phoenicians and the Ancient Greeks didn't settle in Northwest Africa as colonists. However, there were wars between them in late periods. 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 Southern Europe to the Barbary Coast by Barbary Pirates (one estimate places the number of Europeans brought to North Africa during the Ottoman period as high as 1.25 million) {Link without Title} . Interactions with neighboring Sudanic empires, sub-Saharan Africans, and nomads from East Africa also left vast impressions upon the Berber peoples. The areas of North Africa which retained the Berber language and traditions have, in general, been those least exposed to foreign rule—in particular, the highlands of Kabylie in Algeria and the Chleuh and Riffian peoples in Morocco, most of which even in Roman and Ottoman times remained largely separate and independent. The Phoenicians never even penetrated beyond the port cities along the coast. While many peoples have made contact and exchanged goods and services with native North Africans, full contact had been only with the Romans whereby the Numidian and Mauritanian provinces had been fully integrated as Provinces of the Roman Republic , and their peoples Roman Citizen s. Amongst the people who had entered and settled with the autochthonous people of North Africa, are the 80,000 families of Germanic Vandals also referred to as "The Barbarians" by the Romans and the Mediterraneans in general who neither perished nor returned to Germania, but mixed with the natives and ultimately resulted in the eviction of the Roman forces from North Africa. The Islamic Invasion See Also: Berbers and Islam Until the 7th century, the region of North Africa practiced many religions including various forms of indigenous rituals. The Arabization of the Berbers See Also: Arabized Berber Before the ninth century, most of Northwest Africa was a Berber-speaking area, mostly . Tamazight/Berber was mostly spoken and Greek and Latin were the chief written media. The process of word borrowing started only around the 9th century with the Fatimid s of Egypt. The Banu Hilal reduced the Zirid s to a few coastal towns, and took over much of the plains. The governments of Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco, like the French colonial regime which preceded them, encouraged the Arabization of the region. Modern-day Berbers The Berbers live mainly in of northern Algeria, who number approximately 4 million and have kept, to a large degree, their original language and culture; and the Chleuh (Francophone plural of Arabic "Shalh" and Tashelhiyt "ašəlḥi") of south Morocco, numbering about 8 million. Other groups include the Riffians of north Morocco, the Chaouia of Algeria, and the Tuareg of the Sahara . There are approximately 2.2 million Berber immigrants in Europe, especially the Riffians in the Netherlands and Kabyles in France . Some proportion of the inhabitants of the Canary Islands are descended from the aboriginal Guanches --usually considered to have common origins with Berbers--among whom a few Canary Islander customs, such as the eating of Gofio , originated. Although stereotyped in the West as nomads, most Berbers were in fact traditionally farmers, living in the mountains relatively close to the Mediterranean coast, or oasis dwellers; the Tuareg and Zenaga of the southern Sahara , however, were nomadic. Some groups, such as the Chaoui s, practiced Transhumance . Political tensions have arisen between some Berber groups (especially the Kabyle ) and North African governments over the past few decades, partly over linguistic and cultural issues; for instance, in Morocco , giving children Berber names was banned. ORIGIN Various disciplines shed light on the origin of the Berbers. Genetic evidence In general, genetic evidence appears to indicate that most North Africans (whether they consider themselves Berber or Arab ) are predominantly of Berber Afro-Asiatic origin, and that populations ancestral to the Berbers have been in the area since the Upper Paleolithic era. Significant proportions of both the Berber and Arabized Berber gene pools derive from more recent Migration of various groups who have left their genetic footprints in the region. Mozabites See Also: Mozabite Arredi et al. 2004 argue that the H71 haplogroup and North African Y-chromosomal diversity indicate a Neolithic-era "demic diffusion of tribes in the first millennium of the Common Era(700-800 A.D)." Bosch et al. also find little genetic distinction between Arabic-speaking and Berber-speaking populations in North Africa, which they take to support the interpretation of the Arabization and Islamization of northwestern Africa, starting with word-borrowing during the 7th century A.D. and through State Arabic Language Officialisation post independence in 1962, as cultural phenomena without extensive genetic replacement. Cruciani et al. 2004 note that the E-M81 haplogroup on the Y-chromosome correlates closely with Berber populations. The interpretation of the second most frequent "Neolithic" (H35, H36, and H38), 13% Neolithic (H58 and H71), 4% historic European gene flow (group IX, H50, H52), and 8% recent Sub-Saharan African (H22 and H28)". They identify the "75% NW African Upper Paleolithic" component as "an Upper Paleolithic colonization that probably had its origin in Eastern Africa ." The North-west African population's 75% Y chromosome genetic contribution from East Africa contrasted with a 78% contribution to the Iberian population from western Asia, suggests that the northern rim of the Mediterranean with the Strait Of Gibraltar acted as a strong, albeit incomplete, barrier (Bosch et al, 2001). Berber mtDNAs have a Near Eastern ancestry, probably having arrived in North Africa ∼50,000 years ago, and one-eighth have an origin in sub-Saharan Africa. Europe appears to be the source of many of the remaining sequences, with the rest having arisen either in Europe or in the Near East." et al. 2003 analyze the "autochthonous North African lineage U6" in mtDNA, concluding that: ''The most probable origin of the proto-U6 lineage was the Near East. Around 30,000 years ago it spread to North Africa where it represents a signature of regional continuity. Subgroup U6a reflects the first African expansion from the Maghrib returning to the east in Paleolithic times. Derivative clade U6a1 signals a posterior movement from East Africa back to the Maghrib and the Near East. This migration coincides with the probable Afroasiatic linguistic expansion.'' Touareg See Also: Touareg A genetic study by Fadhlaoui-Zid et al. 2004 argues concerning certain exclusively North African haplotypes that "expansion of this group of lineages took place around 10,500 years ago in North Africa, and spread to neighbouring population", and apparently that a specific Northwestern African haplotype, U6, probably originated in the Near East 30,000 years ago but has not been highly preserved and accounts for 6-8% in contribution with no U6 haplotypes while the Kesra of Tunisia, for example, display a much higher proportion of typical sub-Saharan mtDNA haplotypes (49%, including 4.2% of M1 haplogroup) [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=16114817&query_hl=3&itool=pubmed_docsum Cherni L, et al. , as compared to the Zriba (8%). According to the article, "The North African patchy mtDNA landscape has no parallel in other regions of the world and increasing the number of sampled populations has not been accompanied by any substantial increase in our understanding of its phylogeography. Available data up to now rely on sampling small, scattered populations, although they are carefully characterized in terms of their ethnic, linguistic, and historical backgrounds. It is therefore doubtful that this picture truly represents the complex historical demography of the region rather than being just the result of the type of samplings performed so far." [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=16114817&query_hl=3&itool=pubmed_docsum] Archaeological The Neolithic Capsian Culture appeared in North Africa around 9,500 BCE and lasted until possibly 2700 BCE. Linguists and population geneticists alike have identified this culture as a probable period for the spread of an Afro-Asiatic Language (ancestral to the modern Berber languages) to the area. The origins of the Capsian culture, however, are archeologically unclear. Some have regarded this culture's population as simply a continuation of the earlier Mesolithic Ibero-Maurusian culture, which appeared around ~22,000 BC, while others argue for a population change; the former view seems to be supported by dental evidence. {Link without Title} Linguistic See Also: Berber languages The Berber languages form a branch of Afro-Asiatic , and thus descended from the proto-Afro-Asiatic language; on the basis of Linguistic Migration Theory , this is most commonly believed by historical linguists (notably Igor Diakonoff and Christopher Ehret ) to have originated in east Africa no earlier than 12,000 years ago, although Alexander Militarev argues instead for an origin in the Middle East. Ehret specifically suggests identifying the Capsian culture with speakers of languages ancestral to Berber and/or Chadic , and sees the Capsian culture as having been brought there from the African coast of the Red Sea . It is still disputed which branches of Afro-Asiatic are most closely related to Berber, but most linguists accept at least one of Semitic and Chadic as among its closest relatives within the family (see Afro-Asiatic Languages .) The Nobiin variety of Nubian contains several Berber loanwords, according to Bechhaus-Gerst, suggesting a former geographical distribution extending further southeast than the present. There are between 14 and 25 million speakers of Berber languages in North Africa (see Population Estimation ), principally concentrated in Morocco and Algeria but with smaller communities as far east as Egypt and as far south as Burkina Faso . Their languages, the Berber Languages , form a branch of the Afroasiatic Linguistic Family comprising many closely related varieties, including Tarifit, Kabyle and Tashelhiyt , with a total of roughly 14-25 million speakers. A frequently used generic name for all Berber languages is Tamazight , not to be confused with the language found in the High and Middle Atlas or Rif. RELIGIONS AND BELIEFS See Also: Berber beliefs Berbers are mostly Sunni Muslim belonging to the Maliki sect, while the Mozabite s of the northern Sahara are mostly Djerba ns, Nafusi s, or Sufi . Important Berbers in Islamic history Yusuf ibn Tashfin (c. 1061 - 1106 ) was the Berber Almoravid ruler in North Africa and Al-Andalus ( Morrish Iberia ). He took the title of ''amir al-muslimin'' (''commander of the Muslims'') after visiting the Caliph of Baghdad 'amir al-moumineen" ("commander of the faithful")and officially receiving his support. He was either a cousin or nephew of Abu-Bakr Ibn-Umar , the founder of the Almoravid dynasty. He united all of the Muslim dominions in the Iberian Peninsula (modern Portugal and Spain ) to the Kingdom Of Morocco (circa 1090 ), after being called to the Al-Andalus by the Emir of Seville . Yusuf bin Tashfin is the founder of the famous Moroccan city Marrakech (in Arabic ''Murakush'', corrupted to ''Morocco'' in English). He himself chose the place where it was built in 1070 and later made it the capital of his Empire. Until then the Almoravids had been desert nomads, but the new capital marked their settling into a more urban way of life. Abu Abd Allah Muhammad Ibn Tumart (c. 1080 - c. 1130 ), was a Berber Religious teacher and leader from the Masmuda tribe who spiritually founded the Almohad Dynasty . He is also known as El- Mahdi (المهدي) in reference to his prophesied redeeming. In 1125 he began open revolt against Almoravid rule. The name "Ibn Tumart" comes from the Berber Language and means "son of the earth." ''Encyclopaedia of the Orient'' - Ibn Tumart Tariq Ibn Ziyad d. 720 ), known in Spanish history and legend as ''Taric el Tuerto'' (Taric the one-eyed), was a Berber Muslim and Umayyad general who led the conquest of Visigothic Hispania in 711 . He is considered to be one of the most important military commanders in Spanish history. He was initially the deputy of Musa Ibn Nusair in North Africa, and was sent by his superior to launch the first thrust of an invasion of the Iberian Peninsula . Some claim that he was invited to intervene by the heirs of the Visigothic King, Wittiza , in the Visigothic civil war. On April 29 , 711 , the armies of Tariq landed at Gibraltar (the name ''Gibraltar'' is derived from the Arabic name '' Jabal Al-Tariq '', which means ''mountain of Tariq'', or the more obvious ''Gibr Al-Tariq'', meaning ''rock of Tariq''). Upon landing, Tariq is said to have burned his ships then made the following speech, well-known in the Muslim world, to his soldiers: : أيّها الناس، أين المفر؟ البحر من ورائكم، والعدوّ أمامكم، وليس لكم والله إلا الصدق والصبر... O People ! There is nowhere to run away! The sea is behind you, and the enemy in front of you: There is nothing for you, by God, except only sincerity and patience. Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta (born February 24 , 1304 ; year of death uncertain, possibly 1368 or 1377 ) was a Berber Ross E. Dunn, ''The Adventures of Ibn Battuta - A Muslim Traveler of the 14th Century'', University of California, 2004 ISBN 0520243854. Sunni Islam ic scholar and Jurisprudent from the Maliki Madhhab (a school of Fiqh , or Sunni Islamic law), and at times a Qadi or judge. However, he is best known as a traveler and Explorer , whose account documents his travels and excursions over a period of almost thirty years, covering some 73,000 miles (117,000 km). These journeys covered almost the entirety of the known Islamic world, extending from present-day West Africa to Pakistan , India , the Maldives , Sri Lanka , Southeast Asia and China , a distance readily surpassing that of his predecessor, near-contemporary Marco Polo . Abu Ya'qub Yusuf (died on July 29 , 1184 ) was the second Almohad '' Caliph ''. He reigned from 1163 until 1184 . He had the Giralda in Seville built. Abu Yaqub al-Mustansir Yusuf Caliph Of Morocco from 1213 until his death. Son of the previous caliph, Muhammad An-Nasir , Yusuf assumed the throne following his father's death, at the age of only 16 years. Ziri ibn Manad (d. 971 ), founder of the Zirid dynasty in the Maghreb . Ziri ibn Manad was a clan leader of the Berber Sanhaja tribe who, as an ally of the Fatimids , defeated the rebellion of Abu Yazid ( 943 - 947 ). His reward was the governorship of the western provinces, an area that roughly corresponds with modern Algeria north of the Sahara . Muḥammad Awzal Muhammad ibn Ali Awzal or ''al-Awzali'' was a Religious Berber Poet . He is considered the most important author of the Tashelhiyt (southern Morocco Berber Language ) literary tradition. He was born around 1670 in the village of al-Qasaba in the region of Sous , Morocco and died in 1748 / 9 (1162 of the Egira ). Muhammad ibn Sulayman al-Jazuli al-Simlali From the tribe of Jazulah which was settled in the Sus area of Morocco between the Atlantic Ocean and the Atlas Mountains. He is most famous for compiling the Dala'il Al-Khayrat , an extremely popular Muslim prayer book. Important Berbers in Christian history Before adhering to Islam, most Berber groups were , another early Christian theologian who was deemed a heretic by the catholic Church, was of Libyan and Berber descent. Berber Jews BERBER CULTURE See Also: Berber music Berber cuisine FAMOUS BERBERS See Also: List of Berbers SEE ALSO
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