In June 2019, an Algeria banned protestors from waving this flag.
Stating it was an assault on Algeria’s Arab identity.
Why?
Because this is the flag of the Amazigh.
The indigenous people that have occupied North Africa since...well pretty much forever.
Fuelled by couscous these famous merchant nomads once linked the Mediterranean World
with Sub-Saharan Africa.
Fought against Roman, Arab, and French empires and now battle for recognition in their own
countries.
They call themselves Amazigh; we know them as the Berbers of North Africa.
Berbers have a unique culture and language separate from their Arab neighbours.
Their history reaches back thousands of years before Islam arrived in North Africa.
The Berbers inhabit a region now known as the Maghreb; the Berbers call it Tamazgha.
Tamazgha stretches from the Siwa Oasis in Egypt to the Canary Islands and from the Mediterranean
to the Niger and Senegal rivers.
This covers a territory that’s over 7 million km2, meaning if Tamazgha were a unified country
it would be the 7th largest on Earth.
In the Berber language, Tamazight, Berbers use the name Amazigh to describe themselves.
Which mean Free or Noble Men.
The word “Berber” comes from the Greek word barabaroi, which means barber in ancient
Greek.
The Berbers were famous throughout the ancient world for their amazing hairstyles.
OW!
FINE.
That isn’t true.
Barabaroi was actually used for people that didn’t speak Greek.
The Berbers had many alternative names in the past such as “Libyans” “Numidians”
or “Moors”.
With the arrival of the Arab Muslims in the seventh century, the word barabaroi took an
Arabised form, al barabir or barabira.
Europeans learned this from the Arabs and would refer to them as Barbary.
Which soon became Berber.
In recent years, Berbers have been trying to get people to stop referring to them as
Berbers, because of the implication.
So I’ll attempt to say Amazigh for the rest of the video and I apologise to them for what
I’m about to do to their language.
The Amazigh have lived in North Africa since the dawn of recorded history.
A precise date is difficult to grasp.
The Amazigh passed down their history orally and most written records come to us from foreigners.
The ancestors of the Amazigh have been in the neighbourhood for about 12,000 years.
Genetic evidence shows that most northwest Africans, whether they see themselves as Amazigh
or Arab, are of Amazigh descent.
Early Amazigh likely entered into North Africa in waves from the Middle-East, East Africa,
and across the straits from Iberia.
The first written records of the Amazigh living in the Maghreb come from the Egyptians around
the 13th century BC, 3310 years ago.
The most notable Amazigh group from this period are the Meshwesh.
Which is a fantastically fun name.
Meshwesh….Meshwesh.
The Meshwesh would conquer and rule Egypt as 22nd and 23rd Dynasties.
Throughout their history, the Amazigh have endured the many many conquerors of North
Africa.
The Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, and Byzantines all invaded, and each one found themselves
hounded by Amazigh.
These states could control cities on the coasts but outside, the Amazigh held power.
Because of their ability to withstand the harsh deserts and mountains, the Amazigh could
always retreat, regroup, and later launch fresh raids on their invaders.
The Amazigh strategy seemed to be to simply wait them out, until their invaders’ empires
eventually collapsed.
Even creating their own states in between invasions, like Mauritania and Numidia.
The ruins of the Mauretanian capital at Walili, near modern Fez, are an extraordinary site
even today.
Christianity appeared in Roman North Africa during the second and third centuries AD.
By the mid-third century, it had grown into a major religion in the area.
The Amazigh became vital members of the new Church.
An Amazigh man now known to us as Saint Augustine, back then it was just Augustine..it would
be weird if they called him Saint.
He is now regarded as one of the Four Doctors of the Church along with these 3 other guys
with lovely hats and Augustine is considered a key figure in developing Medieval and Western
philosophy.
The Arabs marched into North African history in the 7th century.
Unlike the earlier empires that stayed near their cities, the Arabs sought to unify everyone
in the country under Islam.
The Amazigh relationship with the Arabs was and is complicated.
The Amazigh both resisted and assisted the Arab conquests.
Amazigh warriors fought on the side of the Arabs on their march through North Africa
against the Byzantine forces.
Once they had conquered North Africa, the Muslim forces turned to Iberia with Amazigh
making up most of the army.
The Amazigh warrior, Tariq Ibn Ziyad and his force of 12,000 mostly Amazigh warriors would
take the Visigoth capital of Toledo.
This conquest ushered in 700 years of Muslim rule of Iberia and Tariq would have his name
forever etched into the landscape.
As the area where he landed was called Jabal Ṭāriq, the mountain of Tariq, which eventually
morph into Gibraltar.
On the other hand, Amazigh violently pushed back against Muslim conquest.
Queen Kahina, an Amazigh warrior queen, wiped out an invading Arab army delaying their conquest
for years.
Her eventual fight to the death, and her burning of Amazigh lands in order to starve the Arabs
is a symbol of Amazigh resistance to this day.
Despite this and a number of other rebellions, the Amazigh would ultimately convert to Islam.
The Medieval and now Muslim Amazigh helped to link the Muslim Middle-East with the now
Muslim Spain and opened up trade with Sub-Saharan Africa.
Caravans spilled out of the Amazigh city of Sijilmasa across the Sahara and returned with
gold and slaves intended for Europe and the Middle-East.
These Amazigh caravans would carry Islam to West Africa.
Even under Arabic rule, the Amazigh kept their own identity and revolts were constant.
The Barghwata kingdom was born in one of these revolts.
In 744AD the Amazigh Ibn Tarif declared himself a Prophet.
With a new Amazigh language Quran in hand, he gathered the Amazigh tribes and annihilated
an Arab army, establishing his own kingdom in modern-day Morocco.
This was an unbelievable development.
Reciting the Quran in anything other than Arabic was heretical but Tarif and the Amazigh
weren’t going to let a little heresy get in their way.
This Amazigh version of Islam was a fusion between different sects of Islam, Judaism,
and traditional Amazigh beliefs.
This incident shows us just how strong the Amazigh culture was.
But as time went on the Arabs and Amazigh of North Africa settled into their fancy cities,
enjoying their culture, and literature, and philosophy.
LIKE A BUNCH OF NERDS!
So the Amazigh tribes of the Sahara banded together and burst onto the scene, conquering
everything from Mauritania to the French border and formed to Almoravid Empire in the 11th
century.
Then the Almoravids settled into their new fancy cities, enjoying their culture, and
literature, and philosophy.
LIKE A BUNCH OF NERDS!
So the Amazigh Almohads poured out of the Atlas Mountains in the 12th century setting
up their own empire and conquering even more than the Almoravids.
The blend of Amazigh and Iberian culture led to such great works as the Giralda in Seville,
the Koutoubia Mosque in Marrakech, and the Hassan Mosque in Rabat.
By the fifteenth century, the age of Amazigh Islamic empires was ending.
The unification achieved under the Almoravids and Almohads faded away and more localised
kingdoms replaced them.
In 1517 the Ottoman Empire captured Cairo and then most of North Africa beginning four-hundred-years
of Turkish control of the region.
In both the Ottoman Empire and still independent Morrocan Sultanate, Amazigh populations were
pushed to the margins of society.
They fell from positions of power and their culture vanished from public view.
On June 14, 1830, a 34,000 strong French force landed on the seashores of Ottoman Algeria,
27 kilometres away from the capital Algiers.
As retribution for the Algerian Lord swatting a French merchant with a flyswatter.
By July 5, they had seized Algiers and brought an end to over 1000 years of Islamic rule
in the region.
While most of Algeria fell to the French within months after their 1830 invasion it would
take 30 tough years for them to take Kabylia.
The mountainous homeland of the Kabyle Amazigh people.
The French brought in a divide and rule policy for the Amazigh and Arabs.
The French saw the Kabyle Amazigh as more “European” than the Arabs and tried to
turn them into some sort of native colonial partner.
They taught them French and funded their schools more than the rest of the non-French Algerian
population.
The Kabyle rejected the idea and ironically went on to hold key positions in the Algerian
independence movement.
But after winning independence from France, Algeria and Morocco established Arabic and
only Arabic as their official language.
A process known as Arabisation was started as the new states tried to unify under a new
Arab only identity.
The Amazigh had to study and learn Arabic in schools while their own languages and cultures
were shoved out of public view.
Obviously this made things quite awkward, and tensions between Amazigh groups and the
governments in North Africa grew over linguistic and cultural issues.
In 1980 after the Algerian authorities banned Mouloud Mammeri’s lecture on Amazigh poetry,
demonstrations and strikes shook the Kabyle region.
Kicking off the Amazigh Spring.
Algerian government forces cracked down on the Spring but from it, Amazighism was born.
With the Kabyle being its fiercest advocates.
Amazighism stands in direct opposition to the attempts of Arabisation in North African
countries.
It led to the Amazigh World Congress which created the Amazigh flag and promotes Amazigh
culture and interests.
The Amazigh flag is made up of blue, green, and yellow horizontal stripes.
Symbolising the Mediterranian Sea, the green mountains of the region, and the Sahara desert.
The symbol in the middle is the letter YAZ, which is unrelated to the new English letter
Yasssssss.
It means Free Man.
In 2001 tensions escalated further when an Amazigh student died in police custody.
Riots and protests swept the country especially Kabylia.
The state again cracked down, killing 126 people and injuring thousands.
This became known as the Black Spring.
In the aftermath of the chaos, Algeria made some concessions to their Amazigh population.
Just one year later Algeria made Tamazight a national language alongside Arabic.
It gained official language status in 2016.
Since then the language rights of the Amazigh have improved slightly.
In Morocco, for instance, they prohibited parents from giving their children Amazigh
names until 2014.
Tamazight is now an official subject in Moroccan primary schools.
Although it still isn’t taught in all schools as was promised.
So progress is being made but the Amazigh have to keep pressure on their governments
to win these concessions.
Now let’s have a look at the culture of the Amazigh.
Popular culture depicts the Amazigh as nomads yet the bulk of them have been established
farmers for thousands of years.
The Tuareg, the “veiled blue men of the Sahara” are some of the only nomadic Amazigh
left.
Women in Amazigh society have considerably more freedom than their Arab neighbours and
serve as the main artists.
For most of history it has been the women that weaved the magnificent coloured carpets,
the women that wore the intricate tattoos on their faces, and henna tattoos on their
hands and feet or the stylised headgear on their heads.
Women are the public symbol of Amazigh identity.
In the lands of the Tuareg nomads of the Sahara, the camps are controlled by women.
The women choose their own husbands and can own property, divorce, lead raids, take part
in the tribe’s administration, and do not wear the veil common in other Muslim societies.
In fact in Tuareg culture it is men that wear the veil.
The Amazigh are tribal with each tribe going under the name of a shared ancestor, whose
Ait, or people, they claimed to be.
Amazigh society is quite democratic with all families and tribes being apparently equal
and governing themselves.
Controlled by codes of honour and a council of elders, called the jamāʿah.
These councils supervise the political, social and economic issues of the tribe while also
dealing with crime and punishment.
The Tuareg, however, were historically more hierarchical, ruling over subjects.
They have a monarch known as an Amenokal.
The Amazigh languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family.
Which include the likes of Arabic, Hebrew, Ancient Egyptian, and Somali.
They use the ancient Tifinagh Amazigh script, which can be found on rock inscriptions throughout
North Africa.
The Moroccan and Algerian governments suppressed Tifinagh until recently.
In Libya Gaddafi outright banned it.
But in the last few decades, it has seen a tremendous revival.
With more books each year being published in this ancient writing system.
The tifinagh script is now used to teach Tamazight in Moroccan schools.
If you pass through cities like Marrakech, Taroudant, or Agadir today you will be able
to spot shop signs in Tifinagh.
The Amazigh language sounds incredible too.
Almost like a recording being played backwards, here’s a brief sample.
While the Amazigh language and literature may look baffling to outsiders we can understand
their beautiful arts and crafts that can be observed in any North African suq or market.
The famous Amazigh carpets are made up of deceivingly simple lines and shapes but they
hold complex ideas within them, like my videos….he said while patting himself on the back.
Almost every tribe has its own carpet pattern that can reveal the history of a tribe or
family.
The Amazigh have their own calendar which is fairly intriguing.
It’s based on the earliest mention of Amazigh people in historical records.
The founding by Amazigh Pharaoh Sheshonq I of the 22nd Egyptian dynasty in 958 BC.
So the present Amazigh year is 2969.
Today there are between 15-50 million Amazigh in the world, yeah it’s hard to get an official
number because the census data just isn’t really there.
About 3 million Amazigh immigrants also live in Europe, mostly in France and Belgium.
The Amazigh are largely Muslim.
However, until the 1960s, there was a considerable Jewish Amazigh minority in Morocco.
But emigration to Israel and France have shrunk the number down to a few hundred.
The Amazigh are a living, breathing, dynamic culture, that has transformed and will continue
to transform based on external and internal pressures.
They have constantly lived in multiple worlds.
Multi-lingual, multicultural, and crucial to the culture of North Africa.
They have been in a state of resistance or compromise with one power or another for thousands
of years now.
Living with the Egyptian Pharaohs, Roman Emperors, and Arab Caliphs, the Amazigh have outlived
them all.
Their will to survive and co-exist is inexhaustible.
They are an enduring people and their language and culture seem set to thrive in the years
to come.
I hope you enjoyed this video.
It is my first attempt at a new series about the peoples of our world.
What people would you like me to cover next and what did you think of the video?
Let me know in the comments below.
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