Tunisia Way

Berber role

The Berber people, also known as the Amazigh, "converted en mass as tribes and assmilated juridically to the Arabs," writes Prof. Hodgson; he then comments that the Berbers were to play a rôle in the west parallel to that played by the Arabs elsewhere in Islam. For centuries the Berbers lived as semi-pastoralists in or near arid lands at the fringe of civilization for centuries, sustaining their isolated identity somewhat like the Arabs. "The Maghrib, islanded between Mediterranean and Sahara, was to the Berbers what Arabia was to the Arabs." Although the Berbers enjoyed more rainfall than the Arabs, their higher mountains made their settlements likewise difficult to access; although the Imperial cities were more proximous, those cities never incorporated the countryside with a network of market towns, but instead remained aloof from the indigenous rural Berbers.

A counter argument would be that the Berbers merely imitated the success of the Arab Muslims; the better historical choice would have been more ethnically authentic, i.e., to articulate their own inner character and fate. Abdallah Laroui interprets the North African panorama as indicating that the Berbers did in fact carve out for themselves an independent rôle. "From the first century B.C. to the eighth century A.D. the will of the Berbers to be themselves is revealed by the continuity of their efforts to reconstitute the kingdoms of the Carthaginian period, and in this sense the movement was crowned with success." By choosing to ally not with nearby Europe but with distant Arabia, the Berbers knowingly decided their future and historical path. "Their hearts opened to the call of Islam because in it they saw a means of national liberation and territorial independence."

Parallels between Berber and Arab are notable, as Hodgeson adumbrates. In addition, both the languages spoken by the semitic Arabs and by the Berbers are members of the same Afro-Asiatic language family, although from different branches.Perhaps this linguistic kinship shares a further resonance, e.g., in mythic explantions, popular symbols, and religious proclivity, in some features of psychology, and in the media of culture and the context of tradition.

The somewhat-Arabized Muslim Berbers, from Cyrenaica to al-Andalus, continuously remained in communication with each other throughout the following centuries. As a group their distinguishing features are easy to discern within Islam; e.g., while the ulama in the rest of Islam adopted for the most part either the Hanafi or the Shafi'i school of law, the Berbers in the west chose the Maliki madhhab, developing it in their own fashion.

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. Additionally, many of the Arabs who came to settle in al-Maghrib were religious and political dissidents, often Kharijites who opposed the Umayyad rulers in Damascus and embraced egalitarian doctrines, both popular positions among the Berbers of North Africa.

Ifriqiya was considered a natural center for an Arab-Islamic regime in North Africa, the focus of culture and society. It was the region with the best urban, commercial and agricultural infrastructure, essential for such a comprehensive project as Islam.