The Berbers

The Berbers and the Bushmen are among the oldest people on earth.

Berber Versus Mazigh

Definition of Berber & Etymology of Imazighen:

The perplexed term 'Berber' is shrouded with mystery, just as the Berbers themselves. Regardless of whether some people like or dislike the use of the term 'Berber', the name had entered the international vocabulary, and therefore it will be used here when writing in English. The matriarchal name 'Tamazight', albeit more popular in its recent masculine and patriarchal form Amazigh, is gradually becoming known to the outside world. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with using the term Berber, just because it was mistakenly associated with Greek barbarous and the negative connotation it conveys; as it existed long before the Greeks and the Romans, and was also used by the Ancient Egyptians and the Berbers long before them. The etymology of the name 'Berber' was altogether misunderstood, and it never meant 'barbaric' or 'savage', simply because the Romans used it to describe the Ancient Egyptians whom we all know were far more advanced and civilised than both the Romans and the Greeks.

The etymology of 'Imazighen', namely 'The Free People', also has no etymological basis nor historical foundation, and it was merely a superstitious conjuncture that somehow gained widespread popularity amongst both Berberists and European scholars, probably after it was introduced to them by Berber Leo Africanus without questioning its authority or explaining how it came to have this bizarre etymology. Which part in the term 'Imazighen'  that says 'free' and which part that means 'people' remain to be explained. The only etymology that can be concluded, so far, is "nobel", as in Tuareg Tamaheqt majegh ('nobel'). Nobel, they are, no doubt; but free is far from true! Freedom starts in the mind, then manifests in the real world.

Imazighen is the plural form of the masculine singular Amazigh or Mazigh, while 'Timazighin' is the plural form of the feminine singular Tamazight. This means that the recent use of the term "Amazigh" to describe a group of people, as in "the Amazigh of Libya" or "the Amazigh of Algeria", is inaccurate because the term is singular; and therefore the correct form to use is the plural "Imazighen", as in "the Imazighen of Libya" -- in the same way one cannot say: "the Berber of Libya" because the correct form to use is "the Berbers of Libya". However, there are instances where one can use the singular form to describe a group, like "the Berber people"; but "the Berber of North Africa" (or "the Amazigh of North Africa") is also incorrect.

And so the term Berber was used by foreigners, or aliens some would say, while the Berbers call themselves Imazighen or Imushagh; as they came to call Berber language by the name of "Tamazight", (also 'Tamaheqt' or 'Tamasheght', depending on language and dialect).  The popular and masculine form used almost world-wide, namely "Amazigh Language", does not exist, violates the sacred "Tamazight", and is heading towards threatening the very base on which it was founded -- the matriarchal nature of the whole Berber culture & society. Tamazight by itself means exactly that: 'Berber language'; full stop.

'Tamazgha', meaning the 'land of the Imazighen', namely North Africa, was also invented by activists to describe what the Berbers have always prescribed as 'Tamort', or 'Thamorth', ('land, village, town, country, earth'). Terms like 'Amazighity', which mixes the English suffix -ty with the Berber noun Amazigh- in a rare percussion, and 'Imazighenautes' ('the Berber geeks of the Internet') give the amusing impression that "things are getting complicated". For some unknown reason, there seems to be an attempt, not quite sure by whom, to abandon the original matriarchal form of the appellation "Tamazight" and ultimately all its associated forms.

Some might say this is not bad and should not pose a threat, but one can only agree that modernisation, in the context that was applied to justify elimination of identities rather than illuminate, is part of biological evolution overall and is not man's invention. TEK ('Traditional Environmental Knowledge') is already taking care of modernising all aspects of human existence in one complete system we know as evolution. This extensive TEK system of indigenous People's heritage and accumulative wisdom, which modern scientists now seek for new insights, insures culture's continuation and inspires new inventions of material types, smart tools and even new human societies altogether; encompassing all aspects of human's existence. Yet despotic systems, in contrast, emphasise only one single aspect on the expense of all other aspects including the desecration of nature, polluting the environment, and feeding the earth with toxic waste. This reckless and temporary expression will not succeed in evolutionary terms because it violates long range perspective with which nature sees its future offspring thriving as ever!

Given the fact that Berber mentality, their cheerful attitude to life, their customary egalitarian justice and tribal council of the elders (both female and male transparent members of the society who could lead by example), and all the good and unique elements that distinguish Tamazight society from most of the warring ideals of the neighbouring and far distant countries may well become affected, and may even become infected with the new cultureless direction towards which the Berber society may one day find itself led to -- something the Imazighen of today should be concerned with right now rather than shortsightedly endure later. If the Berbers loose their own cultural unique identity, as a Berber, one may no longer wish to remain a Berber, since there will be no one in essence.

To take away from indigenous people the values at the heart of their existence, rather than preserve their priceless world heritage, goes against all human ideals reverberating across the moral world. The Tuareg of the Sahara have also come under the patriarchal hammer in the last decade or so, where they were forced to perform some patriarchal con-sessions, and even were pressurised to abandon a number of Tamazight matriarchal institutions including the "sacred matrilineal naming system".

"If the only tool we have is a hammer, I guess all problems must look like a nail."

Berber Language:

Berber, Arabic, Italian, French and English are all widely used in North Africa, where most, if not all, educated Berbers are either bilingual or trilingual speakers. Berber languages of North Africa are classified as close relatives of Chadic and Ancient Egyptian in the Afroasiatic Phylum (Afro-Asiatic), as well as they strongly relate to Euskara, Asian Dravidian, Polynesian Maori, Japanese Ainu, American Zuni, European Greek, Latin, Celtic, Welsh and Germanic languages, and even more relatives at the Nostratic group of families. The term Afro-Asiatic designates nothing to us other than translating the old Hamito-Semitic label, where Hamitic was somehow removed and replaced by "Afro" and where Semitic became "Asiatic", even though both terms give the wrong impression that this family encompasses all African and Asian languages in one single family, which is not true.

The old and outdated practice of slicing and segmenting languages by geographical and "mythical" boundaries, as politicians did divide so many countries in total disregard to their ethnic unities, is like judging "people" by the colour of their skin. Instead, linguists have come full circle and began reversing the trend, just as geneticists began tracing all humans to one African Mother, and embarked on uniting the chaotic classification of languages into one Mother Language. Pessimists say this will never be possible, while optimists state the classification of languages is flawed from the start and was mostly formalised at a time when hardly any of the world's languages were documented, let alone studied. One is inclined to accept only time will reveal the ultimate truth my dear brothers are fighting for.

And so it follows that studying Berber in isolation of Egyptian, Chadian, Omotic and Cushitic languages is not necessary since one needs to approach the whole Family of Afroasiatic as one entity, not to prove whatever was meant to be proven, but to attempt to venture deeper in time to understand its source. That source will tell us what we do not know, or at least guide us in the right direction. And even then, regardless of any amusing skin-colour-theories or genetic interpretations, which ultimately regress us to our primal state, inescapably, it is the culture question that requires correct interpretation and unperplexed understanding. Simply speaking, attributing divinity or superiority to the sweat of our ancestors is hardly a scientific approach to conquer the mystery of darkness, which only the wisdom of light can expose.

No doubt, being the bridge between Africa, Europe and Asia implies long and continuous contact with various migrations and invaders, of all sorts and colours, but then these often take place both ways and not only one way. According to Diakonoff, “It is reasonable to suppose that the speakers of Proto-Semitic had separated from Proto-Berbero-Libyan some time during the Neolithicum (6th - 5th millennium B.C.) .  . . The tribes speaking the Proto-Semitic language went north-eastward crossing the Nile valley (still unfit for settlement), and, passing onward over the Suez isthmus, spread throughout the Middle East . . . The Libyan-Guanche tribes went in the opposite direction up to the Atlantic coast and the Canaries; and possibly, over into the Pyrenaean Peninsula [24] . . . The Iberians, the ancient population of the Pyrenaean  Peninsula . . . are sometimes believed to be linguistically related to the Berbero-Libyans, but the surviving Iberian texts make this hypothesis very plausible" (Afrasian Languages, Moscow 1988,  pp. 32, 33).

Linguists increasingly believe that the ancient Mediterranean peoples were more closely related than has been documented. Isolate Basque's Euskara is more related to Berber language than any other language, yet it was abruptly placed with the Na-Dene group. Celtic languages and earlier "Britanic" languages were also connected with Berber by some German linguists and Celticists, some of whom suggested placing Celtic and other Western European languages with Afroasiatic rather than with IE. The geographic route from the Atlas Mountain, via the straits of Gibraltar, to Iberia and on to Britain and Ireland, speaks volumes by itself -- without any words.

Long before the Romans appeared across the pages of history, Cretan, Sumerian and other extinct  Mediterranean languages and cultures were also linked with Berber. All these were further connected with other language families from around the world by Nostratic and other global groupings in super-families encompassing yet much bigger boundaries; and therefore again the direction of influence in which some recent supremacists narrowly entertained the foreign origin of the Berbers can be dislodged and replaced by a dual highway through which traffic still flows to nurture culture. At times it looks more like a roundabout. As humanity genetically belongs to one single race, part of a bigger "food chain", the old argument of segmented ethnicity versus language is no longer valid. Regardless of race, colour or genes, language evolves across time to find speakers from all walks of life, where English, for example, has achieved a nearly-global status.

To make premature conclusions about a civilisation that is hardly documented let alone studied, where the hundreds of thousands of prehistoric art sites in the Sahara still are awaiting discovery and analysis, and where hundred of ancient cities still buried beneath the sand (seen recently only by satellites), and where terms like "Berber civilisation" and "Berber art" are envisaged as "blank slates" can only fuel further confusion and debate; at times justifiably leading to unjust wars.

The number of serious studies about Berber language(s) and civilisation(s) is hardly any, compared to Greek's or Ancient Egyptian's, and therefore until then one can only wait for the facts to emerge from the desert before one is empowered by its claimed secrets. To this day Berber language remains persecuted, unofficial and extensively neglected, as much as recorded history itself refuses to update its pages with the most recent results.

Berber Origins & Fake Genealogies:

The Berbers’ supposed Iberian, Cretan, Canaanite or Yemenite origins are wholly unfounded and, in many respects, colonially impostored as anthropologists and historical linguists are increasingly pointing to the native nature of the Berber nations. As for Ibn Khaldoun's widely-quoted imaginary Berber ancestors, Olwen Brogan points out that his genealogies are “as artificial as are most similar genealogies.” The histories of Al-Bakari and Ibn Qotaybah, who identified the Berbers with the vanquished Philistines and the slaying of Goliath by David, are obviously a "big joke"; so are those genealogies tracing the Berbers to Yemen, H'imir or Ber-Bin-Qis Ghilan, which according to the anonymous author of Mafakher Al-Barbar (‘The Boasts of the Berbers', 1312 AD) are false and exist only in the minds of "jahilite" (p. 78).

Oric Bates (1919) points out that,  ”The literary opinion generally current among the Arab writers acknowledged several lines of descent for the various groups of Berbers, each group being referred to an imaginary, and usually eponymous, ancestor.”  In relation to the Berbers of Canaanite origin, who adopted the language of the conquered Hamites, myth has it both Phoenix and Cadmus were the sons of Agenor the son of Libya by Poseidon, who left Egypt to settle in the land of Canaan, and thus one reads in Genesis (10: 22) that:  “Ham [is] the father of Canaan” (not vice versa). Both sources are discredited historically and therefore their authority deemed by science unfit to recorded history. It is probably because of these and similar influences that, like Oric Bates had pointed out, “The Byzantine historian Procopius has, like  Sallust,  preserved a story of African origins which reflect this tendency on the part of the Libyans  to relate their remote ancestry to Asia  Minor.”

The authors of The Berbers (1996) came under sharp criticism by a number of scholars and activists (cf. H. Hagan) for the poor picture they claim to be the first comprehensive guide to the Berbers in the English language. In the Introduction, M. Brett and E. Fentress, state that, “No general book on the Berbers is available in English. One of the most unfortunate consequences of this is the total ignorance in both Great Britain and the United States of the existence of the Berbers . . . This book is intended as a step towards answering the question, and perhaps toward a modification of the idea that Mediterranean history can be divided between black Africans and white Europeans.”  

This, of course, sounds a very good book, especially when its back cover carries the approval of the Journal of North African Studies (JNAS): “Here at long last is a decent and thoroughly worthwhile general book on Berbers.” But it may be of relevance to some to know that JNAS was founded in 1996 and that Michael Brett was a member of its International Advisory Board. In this black-and-white history, in which Berber culture was made to start as recent as 7000 BC (Capsian culture), one comes face to face with the European or Semitic origin of the white Berber who had “subjugated the existing black population” – not to say that the black cover of the book and the white title (The Berbers) coincidently and graphically illustrate the point. Of course, ignorance could have played an important role in this, as they say, but the massive material available in libraries allows any serious scholar to write a comprehensive Berber history going back to the beginning of Afroasiatic language, if not to the beginning of civilisation itself. For some reason, this is yet to emerge and there is no sign that it will ever emerge. It is about time the Imazighen themselves start writing their own history and break away from this long period of darkness in which supremacists wrote like tyrants.

History & Archaeological Evidence:

Despite the fact that numerous studies began Berber history from the recent Capsian culture (9000-6000 BC.), there are several studies and fossils (from Casablanca, Cyrenaica, Rabat and Ternifine) documenting the existence of the Berbers in North Africa for at least one million years, when the first wave of early modern humans began to leave Africa, presumably arriving from East Africa to explore the world (cf. Gabriel Camps 1974). Moreover, the Lower Pleistocene sites of Ain Hanech (Algeria) and Casablanca (Morocco) have provided some of the earliest evidence for human behaviour, which, arriving at a time when most archaeologists believed no human artifacts older than the Pleistocene can be found, can only confirm that tool-making humans had lived in North Africa in the Pliocene. Rüdiger and Gabriele Lutz (1955) recall the cultures of Fezzan to have evolved over the past hundreds of thousands of years and vanished under adverse conditions. “Stone tools of bygone eras are lying about in millions, from the relics of early and late Acheulian (up to 500.000 years), Levalloisian (100.000 years) and Mousterian (50.000 years) to Aterian (40.000-20.000 years).”  

More recently, there sprung, flourished, and vanished several other cultures across North Africa, many of which are still awaiting study: Libyan Pre-Aurignacian culture (85,000 BC); the Libyan Dabba culture (40,000 BC); the Iberomaurusian culture (22,000 BC; common to both Iberians and Berbers); the Eastern Oranian culture (15,000-9,000 BC); and the Mesolithic (Epipaleolithic) culture of Murzuk in southern Libya (10.000-6.000 BC). The Garamantian civilisation was also one of the later cultures involved in the Sahara's cultural proliferation of  civilisations. Libya's prehistoric art heritage and other obscured venues provide a rich research environment for future Berber students and Berberists to explore, once freedom sinks in.

The Haua Fteah Cave in Cyrenaica, Libya, was documented by McBurney and others to preserve a continuous history in Libya from 100,000 BC to the present - one continuous line of living entities in one single cave - the largest cave in the Mediterranean basin and one of the largest in the (visible) world. Does anyone, at all, realise what this means? Did any one, at all, take any notice of this?  Libya's previous rulers showed no serious interest in its deepest history, but let us hope the new ones can see the light that made them who they are -- that made them see in bitch-black darkness. Like the martyr Sifaw had said: it will be "papered" one day.

Geographic Distributions of The Berbers:

The conglomerate tribes known under the generic term of Berbers or Imazighen are the indigenous inhabitants of North Africa since time immemorial; currently distributed across a wide extent of country including Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Chad and Burkina Faso. Recent genetic studies show that more than 90% of the current Arabs in North Africa had Berber matrilineal genes and that they are mostly Arabised Berbers. In spite of the fact that extant linguistic evidence proves the Berber’s racial unity, from the Mediterranean to the Sudan and from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, many Arab regimes still perceive Berber speech as a threat to their (presumed) national unity. Where is the unity of the above-named eleven conquered countries?

The number of Berbers still in Tunisia is very small, estimated at 1%, mainly found  in the island of Djerba, Metmata, Tataouine and east of Gafsa. In Mauritania only a small group of Berbers still speak the Zenaga dialect (or language) and Tamasheq (Tuareg). There is also a small population of Tuareg in Nigeria, speaking Tawallamat Tamajaq. The natives of the Canary Islands were also Berbers, right down to the 16th century before they were massacred to extinction by savage Spanish conquerors. The Tuareg tribes of the Sahara Desert are also Berbers, whose language Tamasheght or Tamaheqt is considered the least corrupted out of all the Berber languages of North Africa, due to their geographical isolation from the turbulent north, coveted by various invaders long before the Phoenicians re-turned to Carthage for shelter from the onslaught that destroyed Lebanon before it became Lebanon.

The Berbers of Egypt:

In ancient times, all Egypt west of the Nile was inhabited by Berbers, including the Delta itself and all the oases in the Libyan Desert. Today, the Berbers in Egypt are found only in Siwa, numbered at 30,000 people, and in the region of Beni Suef. They are severely neglected by the Egyptian government, where the Siwans feel they were forced to adopt the Arab identity, and where one Egyptian official recently referred to them as being "dogs". Their ancient religion centred around the worship of the Libyan (Berber) God Amon, adopted by the Ancient Egyptians as Amen-Ra, by the Greeks as Zeus-Amon, and by the Phoenicians as Baal-Amon.

The Berbers of The Canary Islands:

Probably the most disastrous event in the Berbers' history in relation to European conquests is the terrible plight of the Berber Guanche tribes of the Canary Islands. Unimaginable catastrophe. They were completely isolated from the outside world, where they failed to appear in the history of the Berber and Arab writers of the time, and reportedly had no contact at all with the outside world until the Spanish conquerors arrived to embark on their systematic genocide - an act that took nearly 90 years of  savage slaughter to complete.

Those Berbers who hid in the sacred caves were slowly hunted to extinction like poor animals; the captured survivors however were sadly sold as “first-class” slaves in Europe's aristocratic markets. Apparently, these strong and powerfully-built slaves had also ended up in North Africa as fellahs ('land workers'). Without anyone learning anything about them, they have gone extinct. They were forced not only to give up their beloved pride and hide in the prehistoric caves of the Canary Islands and see their own children and wives slaughtered before their own tearful eyes, but also were forced to vanish off the surface of the earth.

Imagine, imagine, what it would be like today if the Berber Guanche civilisation remained so onto the present day - a true treasure from our prehistoric past where anthropologists (are) telling us they did not even know about the "wheel" -- the wheel that goes round on empty circle, the ouroboros wheel that eats itself to infinity!

In “Pre-Historic Civilization In The Philippines”, in the Far East, of course, Elsdon Best says:

“Unfortunately, in the case of the Spanish conquests of the sixteenth century, that nation appears never to have considered it a duty to hand down to posterity any detailed description of the singularly interesting races they had vanquished. As it was with the Guanches of the Canaries, the Aztecs of Mexico, and the Quichuas of Peru, so was it with the Chamorro of the Ladrones, and the Tagalo-Bisaya tribes of the Philippines.” (Journal of The Polynesian Society, vol. 1,1892, p. 118).

Berber Personalities & North African Explorers:

As Phys Carpenter had pointed out, “To say that enormous areas of the Sahara remained unexplored until the nineteenth century merely means that these regions had not until then been visited and examined by any European traveller.”

The five Berber Libyan Nasamonians of ancient Eastern Libya were perhaps the first ever to venture into the Sahara desert – at least the first to leave a record of their heroic efforts. During the conversation between some Libyans (from Cyrene) and the Ammonian king Etearchus regarding the (then) riddle of the source of the river Nile, the latter, according to Herodotus, said that, “he had once had a visit from certain Nasamonians, a people who live in Syrtis and the country a little to the eastward. Being asked if there was anything more they could tell him about the uninhabited parts of Libya, these men declared that a group of wild young fellows, sons of chieftains in their country, had on coming to manhood planned amongst themselves all sorts of extravagant adventures, one of which was to draw lots for five of their number to explore the Libyan desert and try to penetrate further than had ever been done before.” (ii, [29-32], trans. A. de Sélincourt )

The North African navigator Hanno (ca 500 – 450 BC) was also among the first to explore the west African coast; and, about 2000 years ago,  Berber Mauritania’s king Juba’s expedition went as far west as the Canary Islands. [It might be of interest to note here that Pausanias (Description of Greece, v. 1, xvii, 2) informs us that there were statues of the Libyan Juba in the gymnasium of Ptolemy, near the market-place of Athena.] Whether Hanno was a Berber or a Phoenician  it is difficult to say, given the fact that the Berber libraries were burnt, but we know that he was North African – as some people still consider the Berber  Apuleius (the author of The Golden Ass) a Roman, just because he wrote in Latin better than any other Roman writer. According to Phys Carpenter, “In Arrian’s account of India, the so-called Indica, often printed as a supplement to his Anabasis of Alexander, the concluding chapter makes the following reference to Hanno: But Hanno the Libyan, starting out from Carthage, travelled beyond the Columns of Heracles out into the ocean, keeping Africa on his left”.

The North African al-Idrisi (12th century) had discovered that the river Nile flowed from the equatorial lakes of Africa long before the European rediscovered it and named its source Lake Victoria. Between 1325 and 1354 the Berber Moroccan Ibn Batuta explored the western portions of the Sahara, then along the northern coast of the continent he reached east Africa, before he continued his quest into Arabia. His claim of reaching the Far East was disputed, just as those of other ancient and medieval travellers, as he could had had the tendency to exaggerate, for one reason or another. Not to mention that the proper geography of Africa became known to Europeans only after the Berber Leo Africanus published his Description de l’Afrique in 1550 – on which Marmol  based his book Afrique (1573).

More interesting, but as yet undocumented academically, Berber and Berber-related-Iberian inscriptions were found in Iowa, Texas, Nevada, New Mexico, California, and St. John’s, as well as in Polynesia. A collection of these inscriptions were published by Barry Fell in his Saga America and  America BC, and in The Epigraphic Society Occasional Publications (volumes 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 14, 18, 19, 20; 1975 – 1991). He also published papers comparing North African languages to American Zuni. But although Fell’s research shows that the Africans and Iberians were in America long before Columbus, scholars made no attempt to follow his results, which they said are ‘debatable’.

Another Berber explorer rarely mentioned in history books is the Moroccan Estevan (Estevanico) De Dorantes. He was from the Berber village of Azemmour (‘olive’), who was a member of the Narvaez expedition that sailed from Spain in 1527. They were stranded on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico at Texas and consequently captured by the native American. He was reported to have died when he was attacked by the Berber-like Zuni tribes between 1539 and 1540. Apparently he continued practicing his native Berber religious rituals and he became highly respected by the Zuni people and even worshipped as a god, meaning demi-god.

The Moorish (Berber) astrolabe (1067) was used for geographical orientation before the Chinese invented the magnetic needle in 1119, and long  before the invention of the octant and then the sextant in the 18th century. A’ebdla’ziz Ben A'ebdella’s book ‘Alu’loum Alkawniyyah Wattajribiyyah Fi Almaghrib (p. 125)  lists a number of astrolabes invented by North African scientists including Abu Ar-Rabia’ al-Laji al-Fasi (from Fas, in Morocco) and  Ya’qoub Ben Mousa al-Fasi. The same author, in citing the French historian Ronan, informs us (p. 34) that Columbus himself confessed that he did not feel that there was a dry continent beyond the Atlantic until he read the Kulliyyat book (written by the North African scientist Ibn Rushd).

In fact America may have been discovered several times, and nor once, before Columbus by Berber and Celtic navigators. According to Anthony Burgess: "Any boy named Maurice . . . ought to be proud at apparently having named a continent. Dr Basil Cottle, the onomastic expert, considers that 'America' derives from the Welsh 'Ap Meuric', son of Maurice. A certain Richard Amerik, senior collector of customs for Bristol, was probably the 'heaviest investor' in John Cabot's second westward voyage in 1498. The nominative claim of Amerigo Vespucci as regards America Dr Cottle considers 'frivolous'" (A Mouthful of Air, p. 328, 329). 

But according to a recent discovery by Kirsten Seaver (Maps, Myths and Men) (endorsed by Peter Barber of the British Library, London, UK) the Vinland map, which rewrote the history of America and was thought to have been drawn in 1440 (or fifty years before C. Columbus’s trip to America), is a 1930 forgery by the Austrian Father Joseph Fischer as a protest about Nazi Norse mythology. The map appears to confirm the arrival of Norsemen in America five centuries before Columbus paved the way for the destruction of Aztec and other Native cultures and sacred temples, which Father Fischer hoped  to cure the Nazi’s disease with.  “Bjarni Herjolfsson is believed,” reports Nicholas Hellen, “to have sailed there in 985 and Leif Eriksson in 1002. Historians now accept that the Norse explorers were indeed first – but the map which appeared to prove it was an  inspired fraud.” (Sunday Times, London, 04/08/2002).

The Berber Andalusian, inventor-engineer Abbas Bin Firnas (عباس بن فرناس, 810–887 AD) was born in Izn-Rand Onda (Ronda, Spain) in 810 AD. At the age 70 he had entered the pages of history as the first man to fly. Inspired by birds, he invented artificial wings, covered them and himself with feathers, took to a hill in Cordoba, Spain, and launched himself into the air. He was said to have flown for a considerable time, before he crash-landed, badly hurting his back; apparently because he had failed to include a tail in his device. His story was told by the Moroccan historian Ahmed Mohammed  Maqqari (d.1632), based on a 9th century account of the poet Mu'min Ibn Said, who said that Ibn Firnas flew faster than the phoenix and that he dressed his body in the feathers of a vulture. [Lynn Townsend White, Jr., Eilmer of Malmesbury, an Eleventh Century Aviator: A Case Study of Technological Innovation, Its Context and Tradition, Technology and Culture 2 (2), 1961, p. 97–111.] 

List of Berber Personalities In History

Ancient Berber Kings, Queens & Personalities:

• Shoshenq I: (Shishenq I): Berber Pharaoh, founder of the Egyptian 22nd dynasty (945-924 BC); (946-925); (943-922)?
• Wayheset: Libyan king.
• Osorkon I: Berber King, probably son of Shoshenq from Karima (Egyptian 22nd dynasty: 924-889 BC).
• Queen Makere: wife of King Osorkon I.
• Shoshenq II: Berber King (Egyptian 22nd dynasty: 890-889 BC).
• Takeloth I: Berber King (Egyptian 22nd dynasty: 889-874 BC).
• Osorkon II: Berber King (Egyptian 22nd dynasty: 874-850 BC).
• Horseise: Hight Preist of Amon: son of Sheshonk II.
• Takeloth II: Berber King (Egyptian 22nd dynasty: 850-825 BC).
• Amazigh chief Larbas: negotiated a deal to marry Princess Dido in 814 BC (Tarshish: Carthage)?
• Pediese: Great Chief of the Meshwesh.
• Hetihenker: Great Chief of the Meshwesh.
• Shoshenq Ill: Berber King (Egyptian 22nd dynasty 825-773 BC).
• Pimay ('The Cat'): son of Shoshenq III: (Egyptian 22nd dynasty 773-767 BC).
• Bakennefi: brother of Pimay: Prince of Heliopolis.
• Shoshenq IV: Berber King (Egyptian 22nd dynasty 767-730 BC).
• Osorkon IV: Berber King (Egyptian 22nd dynasty: 730-715).
• Pedubast: Berber King (Egyptian 23rd dynasty).
• Input II: Berber King (Egyptian 23rd dynasty).
• Sheshong VI: Berber King (Egyptian 23rd dynasty).
• Osorkon III: Berber King (Egyptian 23rd dynasty).
• Takeloth III: Berber King (Egyptian 23rd dynasty).
• Rudamon: Berber King: (Egyptian 23rd dynasty).
• Tefnakht: Berber King, founder of the  Egyptian 24th  dynasty (unified the Delta).
• Bocchoris: Berber King (Egyptian 23rd dynasty).
• Masinissa:  King of Numidia.
• Jugurtha:  King of Numidia.
• Juba II: King of Numidia.
• Macrinus:  Roman emperor.
• Clodius Albinus: ruler of Britannia.
• Lusius Quietus: ruler of Judaea.
• Quintus Lollius Urbicus: ruler of Britannia (138 – 144 AD).
• Septimius Severus:  Libyan Roman emperor (193 – 211 AD).
• Tacfarinas: (Leader of the wars against  the Romans in the Aures Mountains).
• Firmus: (fought the Romans: 372 – 375).
• Gildo: (fought the Romans in 398).
• Publius Terentius Afer (Terence: writer, Latin).
• Lucius  Apuleius: author of The Golden Ass (The Transformations of  Lucius Apuleius of Madaura).
• Priscian: (Latin grammarian).
• Marcus Cornelius Fronto: (Roman grammarian).
• Saint Augustine of Hippo: Christian philosopher).
• Saint Monica of Hippo: (Saint Augustine's mother).
• Arius: (proposed the doctrine of Arianism).
• Donatus Magnus: (head of Donatist school).
• Gelasius I: (Pope: 492-496).
• Victor I: (Pope: 186-201).
• Miltiades: (Pope: 311-314).
• Abd ar-Rahman I: (731-788).
• Al-Mansur:  (712-775).
• Tariq ibn Ziyad (Zeyyad): (leader of the army that invaded Spain in  711).
• Adrian of Canterbury: Abbot of St Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury.
• Dihya: Kahina: Dinamigan: Berber Queen, Priestess and General. According to the Arab generals themselves, whenever a Berber tribe is defeated another emerges from the mirage like the jinn of the desert. Among the fiercest Berber leaders who resisted the new arrivals was the Berber queen and prophetess Kahina, who, according to the Arab generals whom she was at war with, defeated them like no other general had done before her.
• Aksil:  Kusayla: King or Tribal leader.
• Salih ibn Tarif of the Berghouata: translated the Koran to Berber.
• Abbas Ibn Firnas: inventor and aviator;  first attempt at controlled flight?
• Ibn Tumart: founder of the Almohad dynasty.
• Yusuf ibn Tashfin: Almoravid dynasty.
• Al Idrisi: scientist and geographer.
• Ibn Battuta: traveller.
• Ibn Khaldoun: histography.
• Leo Africanus: geographer and historian.
• Abu Yaqub Yusuf I.
• Abu Yaqub Yusuf II.
• Ziri ibn Manad: founder of Zirid dynasty.
• Muhammad Awzal.
• Muhammad al-Jazuli: Sufi.
• Imam al-Busiri: poet.
• Abu Ali al-Hassan al-Yusi.

Modern Berber Personalities:

• Solaiman al-Barouni: Berber from Yefren, Nafousa Mountain, Libya: creator of the first republic in the Arab World: the Tripoli Republic.
• Jean Amrouche, (1906–1962) writer and Taos Amrouche's brother.
• Taos Amrouche: powerful Algerian writer and singer (1913-1976).
• Said Sifaw al-Mah'rouq: Libyan Berber scholar, poet, writer, activist, and linguist, from Jado, Nafousa Mountain.
• Mohammed Bessaoud: Algerian spiritual father of Berberism.
• Hocine Aït Ahmed: Algerian revolutionary fighter and secularist politician.
• Saïd Sadi: Algerian politician.
• Ali Yahya Mua'amar: Libyan Abadi Scholar.
• Mouloud Feraoun: Algerian writer assassinated by the OAS.
• Mouloud Mammeri: Algerian writer, anthropologist and linguist.
• Salem Chaker: Algerian Berberist, writer, linguist, cultural and political activist.
• Sidi Said: leader of the Algerian syndicat of workers: UGTA.
• Khalida Toumi: Algerian feminist and secularist.
• Ahmed Ouyahia: Prime Minister of Algeria.
• Belaïd Abrika: one of the spokesmen of the Arouch.
• Nordine Ait Hamouda: secularist politician and son of Colonel Amirouche.
• Driss Jettou: Prime Minister of Morocco.
• Lalla Fatma n Soumer: female worrior (Amazon) who led western Kabylie in battle against French troops.
• Kateb Yacine: writer founder of the berberiste mouvement.
• Mohamed Chafik: Moroccan writer; IRCAM.
• Tahar Djaout: writer and journalist assassinated by the GIA in 1993.
• Si Mohand: Kabyle poet.
• Fidel Castro (Cuba: his mother was a Berber from the Canary Islands).
• Morocco's King Mohammed VI  (the monarchy's mother was a Berber).
• Zinedine Zidane: Kabyle footballer.

The Berber Flag:

The problem with the Berber flag, in practice and not in theory, is that the Berbers are the native inhabitants of nearly ten countries in North Africa and therefore an attempt to generalise one unified flag for the whole Berber communities of North Africa is not possible until these countries are liberated, united or whatever politicians tell us what it is. The other problem with the flag is that it looks rather unattractive, the colours show poor design and do not express the strength of the Berber's struggle for freedom, nor reflect the  complex culture and the diverse landscape North Africa has. A quick look through the atlas reveals a very small number of flags that clearly stand out and impose a sense of identity; while the majority are almost invisible. But like they say, it is the thought that counts.

The above flag was adopted by Berber activists and was used most commonly by the Kabyles in Algeria, when the flag appeared in political demonstrations and in banners, before it spread to websites. It was said that the flag was designed by Mohammed Bessaoud, the spiritual father of Berberism in Algeria, who fought during the independence wars between 1954 and 1962.

The above flag is one of the other variants
that was proposed by Canarian Berberists during the 1997 World Amazigh Congress.

Berber Calendar:

Some Berber activists even made a Berber calendar dating back to 950 BC, when Libyan Shoshenq I became the King-Pharaoh of the Egyptian XXII dynasty, without actually telling us what had happened between 750 BC (when the Libyan kings lost control of Egypt) and now (the present time) as to constitute a continuous calendar (presumably of events); and without conducting professional research into this astronomical subject. Pursuing the same line of thinking one finds it hard to understand why one cannot start from before 3100 BC and see what the "Palermo Stone", the oldest document in the world, has to say about the line of Libyan Berber kings and queens whom history had practically forgotten?  Ladies and gentlemen it is now +5112 AD!  The 12th of January has now been presumed the day in which the Berbers should celebrate the festival of Yennayer, the New Year.

The original Berber Calendar, for the sake of clarity, is an agricultural calendar, in which the course of stars and constellations was pinned in the heavens to reflect and regulate seasonal changes and activities on earth, such as plowing, sowing and harvest, to ensure maximum benefit and prosperity. Hence the Berbers still celebrate the festival with feasting on traditional foods. The calendar requires proper research to bring to light, but one is certain that it has nothing to do with political propaganda of kings and warmongering dictators of the later periods. In other words, It is not a political calendar and Berberists have no right to make it so. Gaddafi too fiddled with so many things including the Libyan calendar, in which he named one of the months after Hannibal, and which the new government of Libya recently put back the way it was.

Cultural Euphoria:

During the early 1970s, a kind of cultural euphoria proliferated amongst Berberists and cultural activists to revive their undocumented culture, and in doing so they mistook and stumbled along the way, littering literature with errors and mistakes. Naturally, due to the long-range negligence and persecution of their culture and identity itself, such results are expected and can be accommodated. But the point forward is to look back, reflect, and focus on the long road ahead. Most people seem to excel in being negatively critical, but what the Berbers need right now is a positive helping hand.

They invented new words to replace what they thought were foreign words in Berber, and added new ones altogether, based on other Berber roots; and these were published in a small dictionary called Amawal (Amawal "lexique", Berber-French, French Berber Dictionary,  Imedyazen, Paris, 1980). These invented words have now entered literary works and song, where they are widely used by Berber writers, activists, poets and singers, through whom they further spread among the recent generations of the Berber populations of North Africa. Initially this material was barred by the Arab governments, but with the recent advent of internet technologies despots had finally gave up the job. This is not bad news (if you knew), but scientific analysis and proper study of language may become affected at some point, and even infected, where one cannot distinguish between original and new hypothetical inventions. The custom amongst the linguistic communities is to place an asterisk ( * ) before invented words, but some excited Berberists declared themselves stars of their own.

These pioneers were alone, exploring the mysterious Sahara in darkness, guided only by its night stars, while having to evade prison and certain death at home; and for that we must remember them for all their brilliant mistakes. Clarifying the issue will hopefully aid future Berberists to correct the path, build the momentum required, and gather the funds and support needed to establish a unified Berber curriculum, all inclusive and democratically built by the Imazighen themselves, and not by others who claim to be their friends only to obfuscate their true identity and effect conflict(s).

It is good news to see language grow with new words to enrich its prehistoric vocabulary; that is healthy. But we must pay attention to details and make sure we preserve the language handed down to us as it is, and then supplement the new material on top. My brothers and sisters you have been reminded that there is always the exciting and attractive possibility that those discarded Berber words thought of as being Arabic or Latin may well turn out to be original Tamazight words. Patience and pursuit of knowledge are the keys others won't let you have.

Worse still, the activists had even tampered with the ancient and most sacred Tifinagh letters (the ancient Libyan Alphabet), like when they joined the two vertical strokes of letter L, and the two braces of letter F. Adding new ones to cover those sounds that are not covered by the original script is okay as long as they are professionally inspected and documented. The improvised Tifinagh system contains 55 letters, 22 of which were new additions. But to alter existing ones, for whatever reason including convenience, is a flagrant disrespect for the sacred nature of Tifinagh script, Berberists ought to respect. For a particular, local, foreign-funded group to impose their invented system(s) on the native Berbers as a whole, without any scientific enquiry or consultation with the people, is something some Libyans and the Kabyles refused to buy.

This kind of confusion is very symptomatic and characteristic of the early Berber cultural and political movements; ultimately leading to quality and accuracy being the first casualties of freedom. On the other hand there were martyrs who fell to assassination as victims of their own daring "truth". Let us hope that Berber academic institutions and scholars can lead the way forward on firm and common grounds, and eradicate irrationals inherited from persistent persecution and paranormal apparitions. Without a firm political and administrative body overseeing the transition to freedom, based on scientific principles, the Berber revolution could well descend into (perceived) cultural anarchy and political chaos.

Berber Nesmenser; Zuwarah, Libya.
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Updated: 12 February 2012.
Updated: 06 May 2012.