Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
Distribution of Berber-speaking groups today. The pink areas depict Western Berber languages: Zenaga to the West, Mauritania and Senegal; Tetserret to the East, Niger.. The Sanhaja (Arabic: صنهاجة, Ṣanhaja or زناگة Znaga; Berber languages: Aẓnag, pl. Iẓnagen, and also Aẓnaj, pl. Iẓnajen) were once one of the largest Berber tribal confederations, along with the Zanata and ...
By perhaps seven kya (thousand years ago) a Neolithic culture was evolving among a coalescence of people, the Berbers, in northwest Africa. Earlier, at the long-occupied cave of Haua Fteah in Cyrenaica , "food gatherers with a Caspian flint industry were succeeded by stock breeders with pottery."
The traditional Berber religion is the sum of ancient and native set of beliefs and deities adhered to by the Berbers.Originally, the Berbers seem to have believed in worship of the sun and moon, animism and in the afterlife, but interactions with the Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans influenced religious practice and merged traditional faiths with new ones.
Also inducing the Berbers to convert was the early lack of rigor in religious obligations, as well as the prospect of inclusion as warriors in the armies of conquest, with a corresponding share in booty and tribute. A few years later, in 711, the Berber Tariq ibn Ziyad would lead the Muslim invasion of the Visigothic Kingdom in Hispania. [51]
Berber tribes are tribes of Berber descent inhabiting the Maghreb region. They are traditionally divided into three large tribal confederations: Masmuda , Zenata and Sanhaja . [ 1 ] [ 2 ] They often form smaller confederations of tribes together (for example the Haha or the Ait Yafelman ).
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]
The Shilha people traditionally call themselves ishelhien.This endonym is rendered as les Chleuh in French. [7] The Ishelhien are also known as Shluh and Schlöh. [5] Among Arabic speakers, Chleuh serves as an appellation for Berbers generally, although Imazighen is the proper Berber self-name for Berbers as a whole.