The BERBERS ( Amazigh )
Ancient African people with woman-focused culture
The Berbers are not a closed ethnic group, but consist of numerous, partly very different groups. Moreover, they are distributed across a huge region which reaches from western Egypt to the Atlantic coast of Morocco. Even on the Canaries there had existed Berbers - the so-called Guanches, but there had been exterminated in the course of time.
Their roots can be traced to antiquity, bearing the names «Numidians», «Gaetuli» and «Garamantes», which can been equaled with the Berbers.
The most famous Berber people are the Tuareg who by living on the fringes of the Sahara desert are rather secure from foreign occupation and external influences and so have been able to preserve their nativeness.
Linguistically 3 main groups of Berber dialects can be discerned.
Zeneta. This group roughly comprises the Berbers from Libya, Tunisia and Algeria with the exception of the Kabylie.
Sanhadja. This dialect is spoken in the Kabylie, in the Tuareg region, in the area of the Middle Atlas and in the central area of the High Atlas.
Maçmoûda. This group comprises Morocco, the western High Atlas, the Anti-Atlas and the region west of it (Rif).
It is characteristic for the Berbers that they live very dispersed and have no want for political unity. Then they are well-known for their anarchistic attitude. A supraregional national consciousness does only seem to exist on a very small scale, efforts to found an own Berber state were rare, the effort in the present time to found a Tuareg state in the north of Mali, under the name «Azawad», didn't last for long.
Although the Berbers had been Islamized more than 1000 years ago they succeeded in preserving their unique way of life and their special civilization. Actually, it is very amazing that the Berber women could keep their high social status in Berber society withstanding the strong influences of patriarchal Muslim culture. This is already obvious by the fact that - in contrast to other patriarchal people - the education of the girls is of great importance. In fact, there are the Berber women who can read and write, do poetry. Also in case of matchmaking the women are the active part, they choose their husbands. Therefor it is not very astonishing that there existed famous Berber queens who were also military leaders. The most famous of them, Dehya and Tin Hahina,
Location. Libyan desert