Mauretania amazigh

Mauretania[edit]

Main article: Mauretania

Mauritanian cavalry underLusius Quietus fighting in theDacian wars, from theColumn of Trajan

In antiquity, Mauretania was an independent Berber kingdom under King Bocchus I (110-80 B.C.). It was situated on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa, in modern western Algeria and northern Morocco.

Middle Ages[edit]

Fernández de Lugo presenting the captured Guanche kings ofTenerife to Ferdinand and Isabella, 1497

Before the eleventh century, most of North-West Africa was a Berber-speaking Muslim area. The process of Arabization only became a major factor with the arrival of the Banu Hilal, a tribe sent by the Fatimids of Egypt to punish the Berber Zirid dynasty for having abandoned Shiism. The Banu Hilal reduced the Zirids to a few coastal towns and took over much of the plains; their influx was a major factor in the Arabization of the region and in the spread of nomadism in areas where agriculture had previously been dominant.

After the Muslim conquest, the Berber tribes of coastal North Africa became almost fully Islamized. Besides the Arabian influence, North African population also saw an influx via the Barbary Slave Trade of European peoples, with some estimates placing the number of European slaves brought to North Africa during the Ottoman period as high as 1.25 million.^[57] Interactions with neighboring Sudanic empires, traders, and nomads from other parts of Africa also left impressions upon the Berber people.

According to historians of the Middle Ages, the Berbers were divided into two branches, Botr and Barnès, descended from Mazigh ancestors, who were themselves divided into tribes and subtribes. Each region of the Maghreb contained several tribes (e.g.Sanhadja, Houaras, Zenata, Masmouda, Kutama, Awarba, Berghwata, et cetera). All these tribes had independence and territorial hegemony.^[58][59]

Several Berber dynasties emerged during the Middle Ages in the Maghreb and Al-Andalus. The most notable are the Zirids(Ifriqiya, 973-1148), the Hammadids (Western Ifriqiya, 1014–1152), the Almoravids (Morocco and Al-Andalus, 1050–1147), theAlmohads (Morocco and Al-Andalus, 1147–1248), the Hafsids (Ifriqiya, 1229–1574), the Zianids (Tlemcen, 1235–1556), theMarinids (Morocco, 1248–1465) and the Wattasids (Morocco, 1471–1554).

They belong to a powerful, formidable, brave and numerous people; a true people like so many others the world has seen - like the Arabs, the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans. The men who belong to this family of peoples have inhabited the Maghreb since the beginning.

— Ibn Khaldun, 14th century Tunisian historian^[