Arabized Berber

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Arabized Berber is a term to denote the inhabitant of the North African Maghreb whose native language is a local Maghrebian dialect of Arabic with a vocabulary mostly Arabic, and significant Berber substrates^[1].

The Maghreb, including Morocco, Algeria, Western Sahara, Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania, Historically, despite the widespread language shift from Berber to Arabic and the accompanying shift from a Berber ethnic identity to an Arab ethnic identity after conservation to Islam^[2]. This shift happened, at least partially, due to the privileged status that the Arabic language has generally been given in the states of North Africa, from the Arab conquest in 652, up until the European conquest in the twentieth century. Post independence, states have also consistently favoured the Arabic language over the Berber language.^[3][4][5][6]

Historical perspective

Medieval Arabic sources frequently refer to North Africa (excluding Egypt) as Bilad Al Barbar or 'Land of the Berbers' (Arabic: بلاد البربر) prior to the Umayyad-Arab conquests of the Maghreb. This designation may have given rise to the term Barbary Coast which was used by Europeans until the 19th century to refer to coastal Northwest Africa. The duration of Arab rule in North Africa was very short. Also the numbers of Arab tribes that migrated toward North Africa was very small. But the cultural impact of Islam was big as it was the only boost for the spread of the Arabic language.

Since the populations were partially affiliated with the Arab-Muslim culture, North Africa was starting to be referred to by the Arabic-speakers as Al-Maġrib (meaning "The West") since it was considered as the western part of the known world. For historical references, medieval Arab and Muslim historians and geographers used to refer to Morocco as Al-Maghrib al Aqşá ("The Farthest West"), disambiguating it from neighboring historical regions called al-Maghrib al Awsat ("The Middle West", Algeria) and al-Maghrib al Adna ("The Nearest West", Tunisia).^[7]

The notion that Arabs were slow to colonize non-Arab lands is attested by the very low number of cities they founded. Unlike most of the great conquering nations, the Arabs did not have an urban tradition and did not feel at home in an urban environment. None of the major Moroccan cities have been built by the Arab rulers, with most of them having been built and settled by Berbers, either before or after the arrival of Islam. Even though many of these cities have often been linguistically Arabized (like Fes or Marrakesh), from a historic point of view it is accepted that the core population of North Africa is Berber. More than rural areas, the cities were a melting pot of different ethnicities, so the city dwellers are more likeliy to have non-pure Berber ancestry (Black African, Punic, European, Arab, Jewish...etc).

By tracing the history of certain Maghrebian areas, historians are able to make assertions about its inhabitants. For instance, even though Casablanca (Berber name: Anfa) and Rabat were both built and originally settled by Berbers, we know that the area's original inhabitants were ousted by the Almohads and subsequently resettled with nomadic Banu Hilal Arabs. Other, traditionally Berber, cities like Tangiers, Tetouan (Tittawin), Meknes and Marrakesh have never had such a drastic repopulation, so that we can assume that its inhabitants today are of Berber stock. It should be noted that although these cities have for centuries now been linguistically Arabized, their culture and identity often have not been through that process. The cities of Tangiers, Tetouan, Meknes and Marrakesh still have a strong regional Berber aspect to them and their inhabitants do not necessarily consider themselves to be ethnically Arab, even though their language might be today's Moroccan-Arabic.

Berberists and linguistic Arabization

According to many Berber nationalists, even though a North African may only speak Maghrebi Arabic as opposed to the Berber language, this person remains essentially a Berber, because he or she belongs historically and geographically (and not necessarily, racially) to the "land of the Berbers".

It is a response from Berber activists to those Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians and Libyans who self-identify as "Arab" just because of their Arabic tongue. North Africa was gradually Arabized by Islam with its liturgical language: Arabic, which was the remnant of the Arab conquerors from the 7th century AD, but the identity of western North Africa remained Berber for a long time thereafter. Additionally, even though the process of Arabization began with these early invasions, many large parts of North Africa were only recently Arabized like the Aurès (Awras) mountains in the 19th and 20th centuries. Although, the fertile plains of North Africa seem to have been (at least partly) Arabized in the 11th century with the emigration of the Banu Hilal tribes from Arabia. The mass education and promotion of Arabic language and culture through schools and mass media, during the 20th century, by the Arabist governments of North Africa, is regarded as the strongest Arabization process in North Africa ever.

Population genetics

Various population genetics studies along with historians such as Gabriel Camps and Charles-André Julien lend support to the idea that the bulk of the gene pool of modern Northwest Africans, irrespective of linguistic group, is derived from the Berber populations of the pre-Islamic period.^[8] A 2006 study showed that even though North African Arabic-speakers are genetically much closer to Berber-speakers than they are to Middle-Eastern Arabs, there can still be found a genetic difference between the Berber speaking population and the Arabic speaking population in North Africa, where the latter "probably correspond to a heterogeneous group representing various ethnicities".^[9]

See also

• Berbers
• Arabs
• North Africa
• Maghreb
• Tamazgha

Notes