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Berbers are not an entirely homogeneous ethnicity, and they include a range of societies, ancestries, and lifestyles. The unifying forces for the Berber people may be their shared language or a collective identification with Berber heritage and history. As a legacy of the spread of Islam, the Berbers are now mostly Sunni Muslim.
The English term "Berber" is derived from the Arabic word barbar, which means both "Berber" and "barbarian." [7] [21] [22] Due to this shared meaning, as well as its historical background as an exonym, the term "Berber" is commonly viewed as a pejorative by indigenous North Africans today. [8] [9] [10]
Thereafter Berbers lived as an independent people in North Africa, including the Tunisian region. On the most distant prehistoric epochs, the scattered evidence sheds a rather dim light. Also obscure is the subsequent "pre-Berber" situation, which later evolved into the incidents of Berber origins and early development.
Most Riffian tribes are of Zenata origin. [14] Although the Masmuda formed the core of the Almohad army and hierarchy, Abd al-Mumin, who founded the dynasty, belonged to an Arabized section of the Zenata known as the Kumiya. He claimed an illustrious Arab and Berber ancestry linking him to the Berber Queen Kahina. [15]
Later in the medieval Maghrib, elaborate but fictitious genealogies would be created on the assumed foundation of an ancient Yemeni origin of the Berber people. Those fake Yemeni origins and genealogies of the Berbers were mocked by Ibn Hazm (994-1064) and discounted by Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406). [47] Berber castle, at Aït Benhaddou.
The Kabyle people (/ k ə ˈ b aɪ l /, Kabyle: Izwawen or Leqbayel or Iqbayliyen, pronounced [iqβæjlijən], Arabic: القبائل, romanized: al-qabā'il) [12] [13] are a Berber ethnic group indigenous to Kabylia in the north of Algeria, spread across the Atlas Mountains, 160 kilometres (100 mi) east of Algiers.
Berber tribes such as the Sanhadja or Kutama are often attributed Himyarite origins by Arab historians (which the Sanhadja likely adopted themselves for political legitimacy), but other genealogical sources and modern genetic testing reveal this supposed origin to likely be a myth, given the predominant Berber Y haplogroup is E, and the predominant Arab Y haplogroup is J.
According to Michel Tribalat, a researcher at INED, there were more than 4.6 million people of Maghrebi origin (with at least one Maghrebi grandparent from Algeria, Morocco or Tunisia) living in France in 2011 (3 million in 1999). [24] [25] Below is a table of population of Maghrebi origin in France in 2011, numbers are in thousands: