The Kabyle People

INDEX

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

ONE of the very first statements heard in a discussion of the Kabyle people who like in the mountains of Algeria, North Africa, is that they are a people whose cultural patterns have remained static for centuries. Writers who have described them say that they have not changed since the beginning of historic time.

Bodley says of them: Berbers they were two thousand years ago, Berbers they are still, and, like men of the Hoggar, of the Aures and of the Riff, they remain unaltered, and there seems little prospect of anything changing them.¹

French writers who knew the Kabyles well were of the opinion that they have remained what they were the day they first appeared in history,² and that those who inhabit the mountains (Djurdjura), have preserved their autonomy longer than any other race or group, and have maintained more intact their ancient usages.³ They also point out that one of the most remarkable phenomenon of North African history is the ability of the Berber race, of which the Kabyles are a part, to conserve its language, its individuality, and even its political independence at times, in spite of all the revolutions within and conquests from without their land.⁴

Keane notes that: Nothing is more astonishing than the strange persistence not merely of the Berber type, but of the Berber temperament and nationality, since the stone age, despite the successive invasions of foreign peoples during the historic period.⁵ It is by no means uncommon to see a Kabyle shrug his shoulders and then to hear him say: We have always been thus, we cannot change.

Even here, however, authorities disagree and we find those who hold that studies of the dynamics of primitive life disclose no foundation in fact for an assumption of long-continued stability. Primitive conditions studied in detail reveal a state of flux, periods of stability being followed by periods of rapid expansion or adaptation.⁶

At other times, the change is very slow, almost imperceptible, and without ostentation. Society cannot remain stable for even very slight changes in their piled effects will often produce marked results.⁷

No group seems to remain entirely static, and as Ellwood says, even the most static groups undergo some change.⁸ Even a Moslem chief recognized the possibility of change when he said, Our children are born Moslem but what they will become depends upon their training. If this is true changes must have occurred in the Kabyle culture. If not, what factors by their presence have kept the cultural patterns static?

By change is meant to become different, undergo alteration, alter, vary.⁹ Change must not be confused with progress, for they are not synonymous terms. Progress may be defined as going on to a further or higher stage, or to further or higher stages successively; advance, growth.¹⁰ Progress involves movement in a forward direction while change may be movement either forward or backward. Since progress is defined as change in a desirable direction,¹¹ this would immediately involve the whole question of what is desirable and who is to set the standard of desirability. These questions are not within the province of this study.

It is not a question of whether or not any change has been progressive, but whether or not change has taken place. If there has been movement, the factors producing it are important. If there has been no change, then the factors involved in resisting it are of equal importance.¹²

When a custom, an art, or an opinion is fairly started in the world, disturbing influences may long affect it so slightly that it may keep its course from generation to generation, as a stream once settled in its bed will flow on for ages.¹³

In a study of change and resistance to change it is well to look for survivals from earlier times. If such survivals are found, then a search must be made for the factors which have made possible their survival. The conditions of life under which a people live may tend to encourage or discourage change. Naturally, less variation is to be expected of a people living in isolation than of a people having close contacts with other cultures.

A change in environment or in the geographical location of a people may bring cultural change. Geographical factors may prove an obstacle to change, again they may be an asset. Also the physical environment which is favorable at one stage of development may be unfavorable at another time.¹⁴

In considering whether or not the Kabyles have undergone change, the historical background of the people claims attention. The different cultures which through invasion or migration have been brought into contact with these people must have left their mark on customs, or else the people must have developed the power of resistance to alteration.

Psychological changes may take place if a people passes from being a free to a subject group, or vice versa. Such new thought currents would naturally give rise to different modes of action within the group. Ignorance, which is always a deterrent to change, may be overcome through the introduction of educational facilities. Prejudice and hatred might arouse in a people resistance to change if the factors instigating it had aroused these sentiments. Again, the persistence of the aged may retard change. Fear of trying anything new may hinder change, while reverence for the way things have been done in the past is often an emotional obstacle.¹⁵

The social and economic aspects of the life of a people play an important role in their capacity for change. Obviously the condition of a nation’s social organization has a good deal to do with its possibilities for growth in all lines of culture.¹⁶

It has been said that what has gone before in cultural accumulation conditions what is to come after. The dependence of a new cultural trait depends always on the previously existing cultural base.¹⁷

It seems hardly possible that the Kabyles have entirely resisted change, but while some changes have come very slowly, almost imperceptibly, in other instances the resistance to change has been important.

Information concerning the Kabyle people is very limited. The most valuable books so far written about this little known race are: Ibn Khaldoun, Histoire des Berbers (translated by DeSlane) in four volumes; Gsell, Stéphane, Histoire Ancienne de l’Afrique du Nord in three volumes; and the valuable work of Hanoteau, A., et Letourneux, A., La Kabylie et Les Coutumes Kabyles in three volumes.

¹ Bodley, R. V. C., Algeria from Within, Copyright 1927. Used by special permission of the publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, p. 242.

² Hanoteau, A., and Letourneux, A., La Kabylie et Les Coutumes Kabyles, Vol. III, p. 56.

³ Ibid. Vol. I, p. 3.

⁴ Hanoteau, A., Essai de Grammaire Kabyle, p. viii.

⁵ Keane, A. H., Man, Past and Present, University Press, Cambridge, by permission of The Macmillan Company, publishers, p. 470.

⁶ Boas, F., Race, Language and Culture, p. 286.

⁷ Ross, E. A., New-Age Sociology, p. 370.

⁸ Ellwood, C. A., The Psychology of Human Society, p. 214.

⁹ The Oxford Dictionary, Vol. II, Part I, p. 268.

¹⁰ Ibid. Vol. VII, Part II, p. 1439.

¹¹ Goldenweiser, A., Anthropology, p. 520.

¹² Hail, W. J., Social Change, Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 3, pp. 330–334.

¹³ Tylor, E. B., Primitive Culture, Vol. I, p. 70.

¹⁴ Semple, E. C., Influences of Geographic Environment, p. 12.

¹⁵ Ogburn, W. F., and Nimkoff, M. F., Sociology, by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company, publishers, p. 836.

¹⁶ Ogburn, and Nimkoff, op. cit., p. 800.

¹⁷ Sutherland, R. L., and Woodward, J. L., Introductory Sociology, p. 718.

CHAPTER II

GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE KABYLES

IN order to have a clear understanding of the people and country under discussion, the explanation of a few terms at the very beginning may prove helpful.

Libya was the Greek name for the northern part of Africa, with which alone Greek and Roman history are concerned. It did not originally include Egypt, which was considered part of Asia, and first assigned to Africa by Ptolemy, who made the isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea the boundary between the two continents.¹

It was the Romans who brought the name Africa into general use. They gave the name Africa to that part of the world which the Greeks called Libya. It comprised the whole of the portion of the African continent known to the ancients, except Egypt and Ethiopia. The term was certainly borrowed by the Romans from the language of the indigenous population.

In Latin literature it was employed for the first time by the poet Ennieus who wrote in the interval between the First and Second Punic wars. By him the term was confined to the territory of Carthage and the region composing the eastern group of the Atlas. The Romans used Africa as the official name of the province around Carthage, which was administered apart from Numidia and Mauretania.²

Among the numerous conjectures which have been made as to the etymology of the term may be quoted that which derives from the Semitic radical meaning separate, Africa being considered in this connection as a Phoenician settlement separated from the mother country, Asiatic Phoenicia.

It has been held that the word Africa comes from friqi, farikia (the country of fruit). The best hypothesis would seem to be that maintained by Charles Tissot, who sees in the word Africa the name of the great Berber tribe, the Aourigha (whose name would have been pronounced Afarika), the modern Aouraghen now driven back into the Sahara, but in ancient times the principal indigenous element of the African empire of Carthage. (Tissot, Géogr. Comp. i. 389.)

Thus Africa was originally in the eyes of the Romans and Carthaginians alike, the country inhabited by the great tribe of Berbers or Numidians called Afarik. Cyrenaica, on the east, attached to Egypt, was then excluded from it, and similarly, Mauretania, on the west.³

DeSlane says that Ifrîcos is the Latin adjective Africus, one of the names given to Carthage; later the term included more territory until finally all of the continent of Africa. He says that the Phoenician word Africa signifies a part detached, a fraction, and that it was chosen to designate a body of colonies which abandoned the mother country.⁴

Ifrikiya (or Ifrîkīa) is the name given by the Arabs to the eastern part of Barbary. Yver believes that it is simply a corruption of the Latin Africa.⁵ But Ibn Khaldoun says that the name was given because "Ifrîcos, son of Caïs-Ibn-Saīfi, one of the kings of Yemen called Tobba, invaded Maghreb and built there villages and cities after having killed the king, El-Djerdjis. It was after him, it is claimed, that the country was named Ifrîkīa.⁶

DeSlane points out that this legend recurs under various forms which contradict each other. Although Ibn-Hazm, a genealogist and historian of great authority, knew the story he gave no consideration to it. He says that the Himyerites never came to Maghreb except in the false accounts of the Yemenites.⁷

There are other tales just as fantastic as the one of Ibn Khaldoun in explanation of the etymology of the name Ifrikiya. Some, writes Al-Bakri, say that the name means the ‘queen of heaven,’ others derive it from Ifrikos b. Abraka-al-Ra’ish, who led an army into the Berber country and built the town of Ifrikiya. According to others, the country took the name from Afrik, son of Ibrahim and Katura, the second wife of the patriarch, or from Farik b. Misraim. Ibn al-Shabbat (quoted by Ibn Abi Dinar) connects Ifrikiya with barik, meaning clear, because in Africa there are no clouds in the sky. Leo Africanus and Ibn Abi Dinar derive Ifrikiya from faraka to divide because it is separated from Europe by the Mediterranean and from Asia by the Nile, or also because it lies between east and west.⁸

Gsell says that the etymology of the word Afrii is unknown although it was used by Latin historians to mean the natives who had become subjects of Carthage.⁹ Gautier observed that Corippus who needed synonyms in writing his doggerel seemed to interchange, whenever the measure demanded it, the names of the Africans (Afri) and the Carthaginians (Poeni, Tyrii). The rebel peoples were called by the names of their tribes, never the Africans. Gautier sees in this name a survival across the ages of a Phoenician word and thinks it suggests that a good many other things may have persisted under Roman veneering.¹⁰

Different writers have at different times given conflicting opinions as to the limits of Ifrikiya. According to Al-Bakri the boundaries of Ifrikiya were Barka on the east and Tangier on the west. From north to south it extended from the shores of the Mediterranean to the sands which mark the beginning of the country of the negroes.¹¹ Ibn Khaldoun uses the term Ifrikiya in speaking of Tunis and Tripoli.¹² Today the part of the country that we know as Tunisia is called by the Arabs Ifrikiya.

Maghreb is the name given by Arab writers to that part of Africa which modern writers on geography call Barbary or Africa minor. Included in this are Tripolitania, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. The word Maghreb means the West, the setting sun.

The territory included under the term Maghreb varies according to different authors. They agree on the northern, southern and western boundaries, but disagree on the eastern one. The northern boundary is the Roman Sea (Mediterranean), the southern boundary is the Sahara Desert, the western, the Surrounding Sea, also called the Green Sea, or the Sea of Darkness and by foreigners, according to Ibn Khaldoun, Okeanos Atlant (Atlantic Ocean). As to the eastern boundary, some included Egypt, others just to the borders of Egypt.¹³ Ibn Khaldoun included Morocco and Algeria in the Maghreb.¹⁴

The name Maghreb is little known by the public and little used by other than Arab writers but seems to apply to the mountainous country which is enclosed within the limits of the Atlas.

Mauretania is the ancient name of the northwestern angle of the African continent, and under the Roman empire also of a large territory eastward of that angle. The word Mauretania or Maurusia as it was called by the Greek writers, signifies the land of the Mauri which is still retained in the modern name Moors.¹⁵ The limits of the country were differently defined at different times. Before the Roman occupation it comprised a considerable portion of modern Morocco. Since 1904 the French have used the term to apply to the territory north of the lower Senegal under French protection.

Numidia was the name given in ancient times to a tract of country in the north of Africa extending along the Mediterranean from the confines of Mauretania to those of the Roman province of Africa. Numidia comes from the word nomad and was given by the Greeks.¹⁶ The limits of Numidia varied at different epochs of North African history. Finally under the new organization of the empire by Diocletian, Numidia became one of the seven provinces of Africa, being known as Numidia Cirtensis, closely corresponding in extent to the modern French province of Constantine.¹⁷

The Latins, with their occidental minds, divided Africa into provinces and territories. The so-called province of Africa which is the ancient territory of Carthage; Numidia which includes the Aures and the high valleys to the north of the Aures; Mauritania which is Kabylia, and Oran. After the downfall of the Latins the name of the province of Africa was distorted into Ifrikia and served in a measure. But the names of the Numidians and the Maures disappeared. Geographic categories did not interest the Arab, he was interested in tribes.¹⁸

Barbary is the designation for that part of northern Africa bounded by Egypt on the east, by the Atlantic on the west, on the south by the Sahara and on the north by the Mediterranean, comprising the states of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Tripoli. The name is derived from the Berbers, the chief inhabitants of the region.¹⁹

Berber is the name under which is included the various branches of the indigenous Libyan race of North Africa.²⁰

Gsell points out that in Maghreb the term Berber is not racial dating from an earlier period, that it is simply the Latin word barbarus, or as was said in Roman Africa, barbar. Before the invasion of the Arabs it designated the indigenous population which remained refractory to the Latin civilization.²¹

Ibn Khaldoun says that when Ifricas invaded Maghreb and saw the people and heard them speaking a language in which the varieties and the dialects struck his attention, he gave way to his astonishment by crying, "What berbera is yours!" Thus they were called Berbers. The word berbera signifying in Arabic, a mixture of unintelligible cries.²²

Who the Berbers are is a question that as yet has not been satisfactorily solved. Hanoteau says that if the Berbers are not the aborigines of the country they inhabit, they have at least been there since a period which has eluded historic tradition.²³

Ancient historians and geographers mention the Berbers under various names: the Nasamones and Psylli in Cyrenaica and Tripolitania; the Garamantes leading a nomadic life in the Sahara, the Makyles and Maxices in the Tunisian Sahel, the Musulani and the Numidians in the eastern Maghreb, the Gaetuli on the borders of the desert and the high tablelands, and lastly the Mauri occupying central and western Maghreb.²⁴

Hodgson translated Notes of a Journey into the Interior of Northern Africa by Hadji Ebn-ed-Din-El-Eghwaati, in order to see how far the Berber language prevailed there. He found it to be the idiom of the aborigines everywhere in North Africa.²⁵ In his descriptions of places visited this Arab writer constantly refers to Berber being spoken by the people.²⁶

Ibn Khaldoun says that from the most ancient time this race of men has lived in Maghreb where they have peopled the plains, the mountains, the plateaux, and the seacoast, the country and the cities.²⁷

Ibn Khaldoun, from a historical and not anthropological point of view, was concerned with the origin of the Berbers. He gives some interesting accounts as to their ancestry. He says these people belong to two great roots: that of Bernes and that of Madghis. As this latter was surnamed El-Abter his descendants were called El-Botr while the descendants of Bernes were known as Beranes. Madghis and Bernes were sons of Berr, but the genealogists do not agree that they had the same father. Ibn Hazm and others say that the Beranes are children of a Berr who descended from Mazigh, son of Canaan, while the Botr were descendants of another Berr, son of Cais, grandson of Ghailan.

According to most genealogists the Beranes form seven large tribes as follows:

1. The Azdadja

2. The Masmouda

3. The Auréba

4. The Adjîca

5. The Ketâma

6. The Sanhadja

7. The Aurîgha

Some authorities add the following three:

8. The Lamta

9. The Heskoura

10. The Guezoula

Ibn-el-Kelbi does not believe that the Ketama and Sanhadja tribes belong to the Berber race, but considers them branches of the Yemenite population which Ifricas-Ibn-Saīfi established in Ifrikīa with troops which he left to guard the country.

Some of the genealogists say that the Berbers are descendants of Yacsan, son of Abraham.²⁸ Some consider them as Yemenites and others of a mixed population, coming from the Yemen. According to El-Masoudi they are the remains of the Ghassanides and other tribes which scattered following the Torrent d’Arim. Others say they are a people left in Maghreb by Abraham-Dou-’l-Minar. Still others say they belonged to the Lakhim and Djodam tribes. They lived in Palestine but were expelled by a Persian King; arriving in Egypt they were unable to obtain from the sovereigns of the country authorization to remain there, so they crossed the Nile and scattered in Africa.

One elaborate story gives the origin of the tribes as follows: En-Noman, son of Humyer-Ibn-Seba, who was the greatest king in the epoch which separates the mission of Jesus from that of Mohammed, called his sons and said to them, I wish to send some of you to Maghreb to people it. In spite of their protests he sent Lemt, ancestor of the Lemtouna; Mesfou, ancestor of the Messoufa; Merta, ancestor of the Heskoura; Asnag, ancestor of the Sanhadja; Lamt, ancestor of the Lamta; and Ailan, ancestor of the Heilana.

According to others, the Berbers are a part of the people descended from Goliath (Djalout). El-Taberi and others say the Berbers are a mixture of the Canaanites and Amalekites who were scattered in various countries after Goliath was killed. Ifricas having invaded Maghreb, took them from the coasts of Syria and established them in Ifrikīa. He named them Berbers.

Still another legend says the Berbers are descendants of Shem, son of Noah. Another says they are descendants of various tribes, Himyerites, Moderites, Copts, Amalekites, Canaanites, and Coreithites, who were united in Syria and who spoke a barbarous jargon. Ifricas named them Berbers because of their loquacity.

Others say that Ifricas formed an army with these people in order to conquer Africa and this was the cause of their emigration. He called them Berbers because they murmured (berberat) when he compelled them to leave a miserable country to dwell in a land of plenty.

Some say that David chased the Berbers out of Syria after having this order by divine revelation: O David! make the Berbers leave Syria because they are the leprosy of the country.

Abou-Omer-Ibn-Abd-El-Berr in Kitab et Temhid (classification of genealogies) thinks the most probable opinion of the origin of the Berbers is that they were children of Cobt (Put), son of Ham. When Cobt was established in Egypt his sons went towards the occident (Maghreb) and took for a place to live the territory extending from the frontier of Egypt to the Atlantic, and as far south as the Desert. Near there, they found themselves in the neighborhood of the Negroes.

Some say that Satan sowed discord between the children of Ham and Shem, and after many conflicts, Shem won, and Ham went toward the west (Maghreb), and his descendants were the Berbers.

After recounting all the above stories as to the origin of the Berbers, Ibn Khaldoun asserts that they are all far from the truth. He believes that the only opinion which is true and from which one cannot turn aside is this: The Berbers are children of Canaan, sons of Ham, sons of Noah. Their ancestor was named Mezigh.²⁹ But Ibn Khaldoun gives us no proof to show that his opinion is any nearer the truth than any of the others.

Edrisi gives the following account of the origin of the Berbers. In ancient times they lived in Palestine, at the time when Goliath, son of Dharis, son of Djana ruled. Dharis is the father of the Zenata of Maghreb who is himself the son of Loway-ibn-Ber-ibn-Caīs-ibn Elyas-ibn Modhar. After David killed Goliath the Berber, the Berbers passed into Maghreb, going to the farthest extremities of the country and scattering themselves there.³⁰

Tribal titles, Barabara and Beraberata appear in Egyptian inscriptions of 1700 and 1300 B. C., and the Berbers were probably intimately related to the Egyptians in very early times. Thus the true ethnical name may have become confused with Barbari, the designation naturally used by classical conquerors. But Gautier holds that the name Berber appeared with the Arab invasion.³¹

Berber does not represent a unified group and various Berber tribes have had different names. It has no consciousness of unity, no generic name and today is even more than before divided into separate groups.³²

Although the actual origin of the Berbers is unknown there are various theories about the people. In the divisions of peoples into Hamites and Semites, the pre-Arabian Libyans and Berbers of North Africa belong to the Hamites.³³ The division of peoples into Hamites and Semites goes back to the time of the sons of Noah, when we find the divisions of the nations, those belonging to Shem and those belonging to Ham.

The Berbers, according to some anthropologists, are Hamites belonging to the white race. They first appear in history in ancient Egypt, but in somatic type the Egyptians did not differ from other peoples of North Africa. This same type still persists all along the Mediterranean coast and the anthropologists call this the Mediterranean race.³⁴

In late geologic time Europe and Africa were connected; the flora and fauna as well as the human type were the same both north and south of the Mediterranean Sea. This is also true of Palaeolithic time. De Morgan and other anthropologists hold that the palaeolithic civilization originated in North Africa and spread northward to Spain, France, and Southern England.

At the break-up of the glacial epoch, there was a great de-peopling