History of Medieval Tunisia - Berber Tribal Affiliations

Berber Tribal Affiliations

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The grand tribal identities of Berber antiquity were said to be the Mauri, the Numidians, and the Gaetulians. The Mauri inhabited the far west (ancient Mauritania, now Morocco and central Algeria). The Numidians were located between the Mauri and the city-state of Carthage. Both had large sedentary populations. The Gaetulians were less settled, with large pastoral elements, and lived in the near south on the margins of the Sahara. The medieval historian of the Maghrib, Ibn Khaldun, is credited or blamed for theorizing a causative dynamic to the different tribal confederacies over time. Issues concerning tribal social-economies and their influence have generated a large literature, which critics say is overblown. Abdallah Laroui discounts the impact of tribes, declaring the subject a form of obfuscation which cloaks suspect colonial ideologies. While Berber tribal society has made an impact on culture and government, their continuance was chiefly due to strong foreign interference which usurped the primary domain of the government institutions, and derailed their natural political development. Rather than there being a predisposition for tribal structures, the Berber's survival strategy in the face of foreign occupation was to figuratively retreat into their own way of life through their enduring tribal networks. On the other hand, as it is accepted and understood, tribal societies in the Middle East have continued over millennia and from time to time flourish.

Berber tribal identities survived undiminished during the long period of dominance by the city-state of Carthage. Under centuries of Roman rule also tribal ways were maintained. The sustaining social customs would include: communal self-defense and group liability, marriage alliances, collective religious practices, reciprocal gift-giving, family working relationships and wealth. Abdallah Laroui summarizes the abiding results under foreign rule (here, by Carthage and by Rome) as: Social (assimilated, nonassimilated, free); Geographical (city, country, desert); Economic (commerce, agriculture, nomadism); and, Linguistic (e.g., Latin, Punico-Berber, Berber).

During the initial centuries of the Islamic era, it was said that the Berbers tribes were divided into two blocs, the Butr (Zanata and allies) and the Baranis (Sanhaja, Masmuda, and others). The etymology is unclear, perhaps deriving from tribal customs for clothing ("abtar" and "burnous"), or perhaps words coined to distinguish the nomad (Butr) from the farmer (Baranis). The Arabs drew most of their early recruits from the Butr. Later, legends arose which spoke of an obscure, ancient invasion of North Africa by the Himyarite Arabs of Yemen, from which a prehistoric ancestry was evidently fabricated: Berber descent from two brothers, Burnus and Abtar, who were sons of Barr, the grandson of Canaan (Canaan being the grandson of Noah through his son Ham). Both Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) and Ibn Hazm (994-1064) as well as Berber genealogists held that the Himyarite Arab ancestry was totally unacceptable. This legendary ancestry, however, played a rôle in the long Arabization process that continued for centuries among the Berber peoples.

In their medieval Islamic history the Berbers may be divided into three major tribal groups: the Zanata, the Sanhaja, and the Masmuda. These tribal divisions are mentioned by Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406). The Zanata early on allied more closely with the Arabs and consequently became more Arabized, although Znatiya Berber is still spoken in small islands across Algeria and in northern Morocco (the Rif and north Middle Atlas). The Sanhaja are also widely dispersed throughout the Maghrib, among which are: the sedentary Kabyle on the coast west of modern Algiers, the nomadic Zanaga of southern Morocco (the south Anti-Atlas) and the western Sahara to Senegal, and the Tuareg (al-Tawarik), the well-known camel breeding nomads of the central Sahara. The descendants of the Masmuda are sedentary Berbers of Morocco, in the High Atlas, and from Rabat inland to Azru and Khanifra, the most populous of the modern Berber regions.

Medieval events in Ifriqiya and al-Maghrib often have tribal assoiciations. Linked to the Kabyle Sanhaja were the Kutama tribes, whose support worked to establish the Fatimid Caliphate (909-1171, only until 1049 in Ifriqiya); their vassals and later successors in Ifriqiya the Zirids (973-1160) were also Sanhaja. The Almoravids (1056–1147) first began far south of Morocco, among the Lamtuna Sanhaja. From the Masmuda came Ibn Tumart and the Almohad movement (1130–1269), later supported by the Sanhaja. Accordingly, it was from among the Masmuda that the Hafsid dynasty (1227-1574) of Tunis originated.