berbers people

Moroccan Berbers

Berbers are the indigenous peoples of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are discontinuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River. Historically they spoke various Berber languages, which together form a branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Today many of them speak Arabic. Between 14 and 25 million Berber-speakers live within this region, most densely in Algeria and Morocco, becoming generally scarcer eastward through the rest of the Maghreb and beyond.

Many Berbers call themselves some variant of the word Imazighen (singular Amazigh), possibly meaning "free people" (the word is taken from Moroccan dialects but probably has an ancient parallel in the Roman name for some of the Berbers, "Mazices". According to Leo Africanus, this meant "free men", though this has been disputed because there is no root MZC meaning "free" in modern Berber. It also has a cognate in the Tuareg word amajegh, meaning "noble"). This is common in Morocco, but elsewhere within the Berber homeland a local, more particular term, such as Kabyle or Chaoui, is more often used instead.

 Historically Berbers have been variously known, for instance as Libyans by the ancient Greeks, as Numidians and Mauri by the Romans, and as Moors by medieval and early modern Europeans. The modern English term is borrowed from Arabic, but the deeper etymology of "Berber" is not certain.

 

They belong to a powerful, formidable, brave and numerous people; a true people like so many others the world has seen - like the Arabs, the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans. The men who belong to this family of peoples have inhabited the Maghreb since the beginning.

 [Ibn Khaldun, 14th century Arab historian.]
 

A famous Berber living today is the international football star Zinedine Zidane.