A man walks toward the last standing ears of wheat. Since morning he has worn the title of King — but in the wheat fields of central Morocco, to be King is already to be marked for death. Around him, his harvesters hold their breath: in a moment, they will seize him.

It is the early twentieth century, in the countryside of central Morocco and the Sous valley. The ethnographer Émile Laoust travels from tribe to tribe, watching the end of the wheat harvest — and records a gesture that Islam, its surface covering, cannot fully explain. Among the Mtougga of Bouâboud, the Aït Yousi, and in the Rif, the same principle recurs. Farmers do not cut the wheat. They kill the field.

Laoust records these practices before they fade. Some have since vanished; others may have survived in weakened or altered form. What follows is, first, a dated testimony — the record of a researcher who took care to write down, tribe by tribe, formula by formula, what his informants told him.

The King and his son

Among the Mtougga, the harvest opens like a small court ceremony. Before any work begins, the farmer and his workers share a meal of bread and butter in the field. Then, tying on leather aprons, they line up at the edge of the wheat, sickles in hand.

The first in line carries, for the day, the title of agellid — the King. Behind him stands his son, his khalifa, literally his deputy, “successor to the dignity of king.” Then come the ait tozzoml, the “people of the middle,” the bulk of the team.

Last comes tikrut, “the ewe lamb” — the least skilled harvester, the one who struggles to keep pace. This hierarchy is no mere pageant. For one day, it recreates an agrarian kingship, one already marked for a very particular fate.

This team is not always the farmer’s household alone. Many fields are harvested through tiwizi — the collective aid by which a village or clan lends a hand to whoever cannot finish the work alone. At Tanant, the harvest tiwizi closes with a scene still remembered: the farmer’s wife and daughters, dressed for celebration, greet the workers by waving a banner — a scarf tied to a reed — to “dry their sweat.” Laoust reads it differently: originally, he suggests, the gesture served to witness the field’s death and hasten the rain that would bring it back to life. The word tiwizi deserves more than a mention — we give it its own piece.

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The braid of the field

The King has the honor of cutting the first sheaf, carried straight to the farmhouse. He then enters the wheat and marks out the nira, the strip his men will harvest behind him.

One rule holds firm: at the center of the field, a large tuft of ears must stay standing. Different tribes give it different names — tagottit n-iger or takiwt n-iger, the “braid of the field.” The Aït Yousi call it the tail, tabzzâl n-iger; the Zemmour, the curl, launza n-iger; the Tlit, the mane, izig n-iger.

The name shifts from valley to valley; the function never does. This tuft is no oversight by a hurried harvester. It is a deliberate reserve — a place where the community chooses not to cut, not yet.

The capture of the King

The work presses on. As the end nears, a competitive energy grips the harvesters, who suddenly race each other. Soon only one sheaf remains, at the field’s edge.

The King steps toward it to cut it. But the moment he raises his sickle, his own men seize him, bind him with a turban, and drag him to the mosque, where the village waits. A striking silence greets his arrival.

Laoust reads the scene in three stages. By cutting the last sheaf, the field’s master comes to embody the spirit of the grain it holds. Once, it is believed, this ritual killing had to happen in earnest, for the crop to grow again. The hushed negotiation between the King and the taleb, inside a sacred place, may be its distant echo.

The King wins back his freedom only through ransom — honey, butter, slaughtered sheep, served as a feast for the whole village. The harvest closes with a banquet Laoust describes, plainly, as sacred in character.

Mut, mut, ia-feddan! — The funeral formula

Across much of Berber Morocco, mourning language accompanies the cutting of the last ears. At Tanant, one harvester cries out:

Among the Imeghran, harvesters say as they cut the last sheaf:

The Aït Tatla repeat almost the same words. In the Rif, the formula shifts slightly:

Among the Izenaguen, harvesters cross their arms behind their backs and call out together:

Every tribe has its own words. At heart, they all say the same thing. The field’s death is only ever a stage.

The soul of the field

Earlier in his book, in the chapter on plowing, Laoust had already dropped a key line:

— a soul he describes as

He added, almost as a warning to the reader, that he would return to the idea in the very chapter on the harvest we have just walked through. The thread, then, is Laoust’s own; we have only followed it.

This link is already at work during sowing. Among the same Mtougga, a goat is slaughtered in the field; its blood, Laoust writes, can “embody the baraka of the field or the spirit of the grain,” given back to the earth so the field’s life continues.

Laoust goes further still, raising a more unsettling question: what if the field’s master, before he was merely bound in jest, was once the real victim of such a sacrifice? The question stays open. But it places the Harvest King within a family well known to mythologists — kings whose ritual death is now staged, and may once have been carried out in earnest.

The Bride of the field

In some regions, the central tuft changes sex. It is no longer the braid but laslit n-iger, the Bride of the field — or ‘arost n-iferddan among the Hiaina.

There, the farmer’s wife herself, dressed for celebration, cuts this final tuft. She throws its ears into the air, over the workers, calling out: “For the love of God!” The women around her answer with ululations and a song in memory of Sidi Ali.

Elsewhere, it is the village’s poor women, the limldrin, who pull the Bride free by hand, ear by ear — never with the sickle. Iron must not touch this sacred body.

The spirit of the grain thus wears two faces, depending on the place: an animal’s — mane, tail — or a young bride’s, promised, like the King, to a death followed by marriage to next year’s harvest.

The harvest sacrifice

Sometimes the spirit of the wheat takes an altogether different body: an animal, led to slaughter. Laoust calls this ceremony tigersi n-lmgra, the Harvest Sacrifice.

At Douzrou, among the Ida Oukensous, the farmer leads a young white heifer into his field, its back draped in pale cloth. He walks it three times around the braid, then cuts its throat in a cleared space among the last standing ears.

The blood flows into a hole, covered first with ashes from the Ashura fire, then with earth — so that no dog, it is said, can defile blood that has turned sacred. Each participant leaves with a fragment of the white cloth, kept afterward as a remedy against illness.

Elsewhere it is a sheep (Achtouken, Ida Ou Zekri), a cow (Imejjat), or a she-camel chased on horseback to exhaustion before being killed (Ida Ou Brahim). The principle stays the same throughout: give back to the earth, in blood and shared flesh, the strength just taken from it in grain.

The bridge to Anzar

Once the field has died, it must be reborn. Laoust concludes this chapter with the following observation:

The myth of the dying wheat thus meets the myth of the rain. Laoust’s two chapters answer each other: the harvest calls the rain, as winter calls the spring.

Emile Laoust’s own perspective

Laoust does not hide his interpretive sources. In a footnote, he credits “the ideas of Mannhardt and those of Frazer in his Golden Bough,” and also cites Westermarck, praising his “fine study” of Moroccan agrarian ceremonies.

He goes as far as linking these southern Moroccan rites to “a myth dear to the classical Orient: the death and resurrection of a deity presiding over growth.” He is thinking, quite plainly, of Demeter and Proserpine — the Mother and the Daughter, Greek goddesses of wheat.

He reaches back further still, to ancient Egypt. Diodorus Siculus had already recorded how Egyptian harvesters, on cutting their first sheaf, mourned around it while invoking Isis — convinced that, in doing so, they had killed the field.

On this parallel Laoust closes his own chapter, in a line worth more than any commentary:

He was a researcher of his era, with all the limits of that era. But his comparative instinct, sitting at the very heart of the text, opens a door we have only had to push.

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Read also : Rites and legends of Yennayer, the Berber New Year

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Somewhere between January 12 and 14, an old woman still haunts the memory of Amazigh villages. They call her bayuza, the Old Woman of the cold — and her night carries a different name in nearly every valley of southeastern Morocco.

Since January 14, 2024, Yennayer has been a paid national holiday in Morocco, a recognition the Amazigh movement had sought for decades. But the ritual itself never waited for the state. In 1920, ethnographer Émile Laoust was already recording it, straight from the mouths of Chleuh women and elders, in Mots et choses berbères — still one of the most precise sources we have on these threshold rites.

Yennayer or Januarius: the roots of the name

The word Yennayer comes from the Latin Januarius — the same root that gives us January. It points to long contact with the Julian calendar, brought to North Africa by Roman conquest and kept alive in Amazigh villages long after the Gregorian calendar replaced it elsewhere.

The Amazigh New Year opens the agricultural year, not the civil one. It falls on January 14 in Morocco — sometimes the 12th or 13th elsewhere in the Maghreb — and has counted year 2974 of the Berber calendar since January 2024. The next threshold, in January 2027, opens year 2977.

A tradition popularized in the 20th century ties this count to the coronation of the Amazigh king Chachnak — Sheshonq I to Egyptian pharaohs — around 950 BCE. No archaeological evidence confirms it. The story still carries weight: it gives Yennayer an origin of its own, apart from any calendar imposed from outside.

Laoust’s forgotten chapter

Émile Laoust spent part of his career crossing Chleuh-speaking Morocco, recording what modernity was about to erase, straight from the women and elders who still lived it. Mots et choses berbères, published in 1920, remains one of the most meticulous surveys of that world.

Chapter VI, on time, weather, and sky, gives six precise pages — 195 to 201 — to the first day of the year. It holds a legend translated nowhere else, night-names that shift from valley to valley, household omens that general-press coverage of Yennayer almost never mentions.

The legend of the borrowed days

Before Yennayer come the liali — some forty dreaded nights when the cold settles into the mountains and herders fear losing their flocks. It’s in that tense climate that Laoust records, in untranslated Chleuh, the legend of the borrowed days.

As his reign nears its end, Ennayer — January, personified — swears he has harmed no one all winter. An old woman scoffs: she and her flock survived him easily, she says. Stung, Ennayer turns to Brayer, February, and borrows a day.

With that stolen day, he unleashes hail and freezing wind on the old woman’s flock, driving it to the mountaintop. Brayer asks for his day back. Ennayer never returns it — which is why, the elders say, February counts one day short of every other month.

The same motif — a month that borrows to punish — turns up elsewhere across the Maghreb in different shapes; “days of the old woman” are documented from the Sahara to the Mediterranean coast. The version Laoust fixed on paper belongs to Chleuh country alone: one day, one debt, never settled.

One night, a hundred names

Reading Laoust valley by valley, what stands out most is how many names this one night carries. The Aït Yousi call it asuggwas ujdid, “the new year.” The Aït Seghrouchen, the Izayane, and the Ichqern call it id n-bayuza, “the night of the Old Woman” — a demon wearing an old woman’s face, they believe, who passes through every house and every tent that night. The Aït Ouarain call it biannou, a word that survives in place names too: Tabennaiut, the mountain overlooking present-day Khénifra, still carries its trace.

The bonfire lit for the occasion, called bennaiu or tabennaiut depending on the tribe, isn’t unique to Yennayer alone. The Muslim feast of Achoura, which also marks a new beginning, absorbed part of the same ritual — so thoroughly that in Ouargla, the same word names Achoura itself. The two celebrations blurred together over time, and even the Chleuh who still sing these words no longer always know what they once meant.

At nightfall, Aït Isaffen children go door to door singing: “Bennayo! Bennayo! Whoever won’t give me my dumpling and my bone, may their dog drag them and churn their butter in a packsaddle!” Further south, in the Dadès valley, children chant Bayanno, kerkano; in Demnat, among the Infedouaq, they ask for the “bones of Baino.” Three valleys, three refrains — the same threshold of the year, crossed each time in song.

The threshold table: tagulla, urkimen, and seven-vegetable couscous

The Yennayer ritual, Laoust notes, comes down in Chleuh country to a hearty meal followed by forecasts for the year ahead. Families eat tagulla, a thick porridge still known today as Tagoula and believed to fortify the body, or coarse-grain couscous, berkuks.

The seven green vegetables served alongside — among them artichoke, wild asparagus, and watercress — give the dish its name, sb’a lehodrat. Urkimen, a mix of grains cooked with the trotters of the animal slaughtered at Eid al-Adha, symbolically closes the ritual cycle of the year just past. Among the Aït Tamemt, custom calls for two whole chickens per person — “as many as one has ears,” the text notes, not without a smile.

Eating one’s fill that night is no small matter: “whoever isn’t full that day won’t be full all year,” runs a saying Laoust recorded among the Ida Oukensous. The second night belongs to eggs and poultry; everyone keeps the eggshells knotted in a fold of clothing overnight, a charm against running short of money before the year is out.

Reading the year ahead: omens and divination

After the meal, among the Ntifa, a woman of the house rolls a handful of couscous into a dumpling and offers it to each family member in turn. She then sets it above the doorframe; by morning she reads it for omens in whatever hair, wool, or feather the night wind has left there — the talkimt n-djiuneg, “the dumpling of I’m-not-hungry-anymore.”

Other omens hide in the food itself. Among the Aït Mzal, a small coin, a date pit, and a piece of argan bark go into the cooking pot: finding the coin means wealth, the bark means poverty, the pit means a growing herd. Laoust himself likens the custom to the French Twelfth Night cake — a hidden token, a fortune drawn by chance, two worlds that never met yet answer each other.

Yennayer is also the night the hearth gets renewed. The lady of the house tosses the worn stones onto the dungheap, saying: “I exchange you, O stones… for peace and prosperity.” Afterward, men and women go listening at neighbors’ doors, reading whatever conversation they overhear as an omen for the year — in Timgissin, a girl hoping to marry does the same while licking the spoon that stirred the porridge.

The last Wednesday and the rain forecasts

Among the Ida Gounidif, the month’s last Wednesday calls for a ritual urkimen in which every ingredient — lentils, turnips, carob bark — carries its own meaning, in a ceremony Laoust details over several pages. It deserves a fragment of its own one day.

Among the Ihahan, three tagulla dumplings stand in for January, February, and March, set out on the terrace and sprinkled with salt. Whichever one dissolves overnight marks, by morning, the wettest month to come — a home-grown forecast, kept every year without instrument or almanac.

Yennayer today

Since May 2023, by royal decision, the Amazigh New Year has been a paid national holiday — an institutional recognition long sought by the Amazigh movement, and hailed as acknowledgment of a pillar of Moroccan identity alongside the Hijri and Gregorian calendars. Algeria and Libya had already granted it that status.

Laoust already sensed it in 1920: Yennayer’s practices fade as the countryside empties out. Today the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture runs conferences and concerts to keep the memory alive — an institutional gesture that can’t quite replace a dumpling hung on a Chleuh doorway, read at dawn by a woman who has never heard of Laoust.

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Music and Song

• Ahwach (ⴰⵃⵡⴰⵊ) — Collective Amazigh dance and song, performed across the High Atlas and south-eastern Morocco during major celebrations. Ahwach is far more than entertainment: it is the rhythmic expression of a community’s cohesion, with men and women alternating chants and percussion in a circle. Certain villages in the Draa and Dadès valleys maintain their own variants, passed down from generation to generation.
• Amarg (ⴰⵎⴰⵔⴳ) — Amazigh lyric poetry sung aloud, a vehicle for intense emotion — grief, love, exile, longing for home. Amarg is also a literary genre in its own right: its words condense a wisdom and a memory that the written word did not always preserve.
• Izlan (ⵉⵣⵍⴰⵏ) — Sung poems, plural of azul in the poetic sense. Izlan form the living repertoire of Ahwach troupes and Rwayes: short, finely crafted, often improvised, they are the place where the Tamazight language reveals its full metaphorical power.
• Tamdawt (ⵜⴰⵎⴷⴰⵡⵜ) — A form of sung poetry in Tamazight, with epic or mythological overtones. Tamdawt tells of heroic figures, battles, and origins — it is the memory of a people put into voice, for centuries without written archives.
• Taktoka (ⵜⴰⴽⵜⵓⴽⴰ) — A percussive rhythm characteristic of certain dances in south-eastern Morocco, recognisable by its syncopated tempo and driving pulse. The word itself is onomatopoeic: it imitates the beat of the drum.
• Asays (ⴰⵙⴰⵢⵙ) — Asays is both a place and an event. It is the space — often a village square or rocky plateau — where the community gathers to sing, dance, deliberate, and celebrate. At once a stage, an agora, and an open-air temple.

Traditional Instruments

• Tabel (ⵜⴰⴱⴻⵍ) — A large drum with a skin stretched over a wooden frame, whose deep beats drive the Ahwach ensemble. The tabel marks collective time: when it sounds, the village knows something shared is beginning.
• Rbab (ⵔⴱⴰⴱ) — A single-stringed instrument played with a bow, the plaintive voice of itinerant poets. The rbab is the instrument of the Rwayes and Imdyazen — those who travelled from one souq to the next, carrying the sung memory of the tribes.
• Bendir (ⴱⵏⴷⵉⵔ) — A single-membrane frame drum, present in rituals and festivities alike. The bendir accompanies spiritual invocations as readily as wedding celebrations in the rural south-east.
• Nfar (ⵏⴼⴰⵔ) — A long copper or wooden trumpet whose deep, far-carrying sound announces important ceremonies. The nfar belongs to the world of thresholds: it marks entrances, processions, the moments when the sacred steps into the everyday.

Artists and Keepers of Memory

• Imdyazen (ⵉⵎⴷⵢⴰⵣⵏ) — Itinerant poet-musicians, genuine living archivists of Amazigh memory. The Imdyazen travelled roads and souqs, carrying news, satire, elegies, and epic tales from one village to the next. Their role was at once artistic, social, and political.
• Rwayes (ⵔⵡⴰⵢⴻⵙ) — Amazigh troubadours specialising in instrumental music and song, often accompanied by the rbab. The Rwayes of the Souss and the Draa have built a repertoire of exceptional richness, today recognised as intangible cultural heritage.
• Ahouachay (ⴰⵃⵡⴰⵛⴰⵢ) — The leader of an Ahwach troupe, a figure of artistic co-ordination and authority. The ahouachay arranges, corrects, and sets the impulse — it is he who holds together the rhythmic and vocal circle of the collective performance.
• Iggawen (ⵉⴳⴳⴰⵡⴻⵏ) — Amazigh griots, guardians and transmitters of genealogy, oral history, and collective knowledge. Comparable in function to the griots of the Sahel, the Iggawen embody the idea that a community’s memory is not kept in a chest — it lives in voices.

Architecture and Inhabited Space

• Tighremt (ⵜⵉⵖⵔⴻⵎⵜ) — An Amazigh fortress-house built in rammed earth, rising several storeys, serving as both family residence and symbol of clan power. The tighremt is the ancestor of the kasbah: it governs the relationship to domestic space and to the surrounding territory in equal measure.
• Aghrem (ⴰⵖⵔⴻⵎ) — A village or collective ksar, the grouped-settlement unit characteristic of the Draa, Dadès, and Todgha valleys. The aghrem is not merely a cluster of dwellings: it is a social, defensive, and symbolic unit, organised around the jemaa.
• Igherm (ⵉⵖⴻⵔⵎ) — A fortified collective granary, also known as agadir in certain regions. The igherm was the common good par excellence: grain, oil, jewellery, and precious documents were deposited there under the guardianship of an amin appointed by the community. Several remarkable igherman survive in south-eastern Morocco.

Social Life and Institutions

• Taqbilt (ⵜⴰⵇⴱⵉⵍⵜ) — A tribe or tribal fraction, the primary unit of Amazigh belonging and solidarity. The taqbilt defines alliances, land rights, and mutual obligations among its members — it is the basic cell of Amazigh customary law.
• Jemaa (ⵊⵎⴰⵄⴰ) — The assembly of free men of the village or tribe, a deliberative and judicial body. The jemaa settles disputes, organises collective work, manages water and pastureland — it is the open-air parliament of the Amazigh world.
• Leff (ⵍⴻⴼⴼ) — A political and military alliance between tribes or fractions, often formalised through oral agreements and oaths. The leff system organised the geopolitics of Amazigh territories long before the centralised state.
• Amin (ⴰⵎⵉⵏ) — A man of trust designated by the community to manage a collective asset or represent a group. The amin of the igherm, the amin of the souq, the amin of the irrigation channel: the function is always the same — delegated trust, shared responsibility.

Water, Land and Calendar

• Seguia (ⵙⴻⴳⴳⵉⴰ) — An open-air irrigation channel, the vital artery of the oases and palm groves of the south-east. The seguia is a collective asset governed by precise customary rules: each right-holder is allocated a measurable unit of water time, transmissible and sometimes negotiable.
• Agdal (ⴰⴳⴷⴰⵍ) — A pastoral territory placed under seasonal reserve, with access regulated by the community. The agdal is one of the most sophisticated forms of sustainable resource management in the Berber world — a collective fallow period for pastureland, designed to ensure its long-term survival.
• Yennayer (ⵢⴻⵏⵏⴰⵢⴻⵔ) — The first day of the Amazigh agricultural calendar, celebrated on 13 or 14 January depending on the region. Yennayer is not merely a new year: it is a feast of the earth and the seed, a thanksgiving to the ancestors, and a call for the fertility of the year to come.
• Tafaska (ⵜⴰⴼⴰⵙⴽⴰ) — A harvest and abundance festival, marked by the ritual slaughter of an animal, singing, and symbolic offerings. Tafaska punctuates the Amazigh farming calendar much as religious festivals punctuate the Islamic one.

Textiles and Adornment

• Handira (ⵀⴰⵏⴷⵉⵔⴰ) — A hand-woven blanket-cloak made by Berber women of the Atlas, recognisable by its wool threads and metallic sequins. The handira is at once protection against mountain nights and a mark of social prestige, often given as a dowry or wedding gift.
• Burnous (ⴱⵓⵔⵏⵓⵙ) — A large hooded woollen cloak, the emblematic garment of the Berber and Maghrebi world. In white wool for formal occasions, in brown for everyday pastoral life, the burnous is the garment of travel and dignity.
• Tizerzay (ⵜⵉⵣⴻⵔⵣⴰⵢ) — A pair of Amazigh fibulae, silver clasps that hold the female garment at the shoulders. Far more than an accessory, the tizerzay are works of silversmithing charged with symbolic and identity meaning.

Language and Memory

• Amazigh (ⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖ) — Free man — the most widely accepted etymology of the word. Amazigh designates at once an individual of this people, their language, and their cultural identity. The plural is Imazighen. The term has progressively replaced “Berber” in official usage, without entirely displacing it in everyday speech.
• Tamazight (ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ) — The Amazigh language in its generic sense, covering a dialectal continuum stretching from the Canary Islands to Egypt, and from the Sahel to the Mediterranean. In Morocco, the principal variants are Tachelhit (Souss, Anti-Atlas), Central Tamazight (Atlas), and Tarifit (Rif).
• Tifinagh (ⵜⵉⴼⵉⵏⴰⵖ) — The ancient alphabet of the Amazigh people, whose earliest traces go back more than two and a half thousand years, in rock carvings across the Sahara. Today official in Morocco in its modernised form (IRCAM), Tifinagh has become the visible symbol of the Amazigh cultural renaissance. → Read our feature: [Tifinagh: symbol of Amazigh culture through the ages]
• Awal (ⴰⵡⴰⵍ) — The word, the verb, the spoken discourse. In Amazigh tradition, awal is never neutral: it commits, it creates, it binds. A promise made before witnesses — an awal — carries the weight of a contract. Amazigh culture is, in its depths, a civilisation of the word given.

This glossary is a threshold, not an inventory. Behind each Amazigh word unfolds a world of practices, knowledge, and human relationships that a few lines cannot exhaust. It will grow alongside the features published in The Berber World section — and we warmly welcome corrections, additions, and insights from those who live these words every day.

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A single object, many names

The word “fibula” comes from the Latin, meaning simply a clasp. But in the Amazigh world, this jewel carries its own identity, expressed differently across languages and territories. It is called Tiseghnest (plural: tiseghnas) across much of Morocco, Tazerzit (plural: tizerzay) in other regions, and Afzim in Kabylia. These names share a common semantic root: to clasp, to pin, to fasten. The primary function written into the language itself.

Archaeological excavations place the use of fibulae as far back as prehistory. In the Maghreb, their presence is documented from the Bronze Age onwards. Similar pieces have been found in ancient Egypt and the Near East — and later among the Etruscans, Greeks and Romans, who used them to fasten their togas. Vikings wore disc-shaped versions to secure their cloaks. The fibula is therefore a near-universal object. What sets it apart in the Berber world is the density of meaning it came to concentrate.

Far more than a clasp

Its primary purpose is practical: the fibula holds fabric in place against the body. Berber women wear it in several ways — in the hair to secure a headscarf, on the chest as a decorative piece, or in pairs at the shoulders to hold the tasselmamt, that broad panel of cloth draped across the back. Simple, effective, indispensable — a safety pin elevated to the rank of jewellery.

But the fibula quickly transcends its utilitarian function. In certain communities of the western High Atlas, a recorded ritual linked this object to animal fertility: when a new heifer entered a home for the first time, the wife would place a silver fibula on the threshold. The animal had to step over it as it passed through. This gesture, charged with symbolic power, entrusted the fibula with the task of blessing the beast and ensuring the prosperity of the household. A simple jewel — and yet a mediator between the human world and invisible forces.

Tribal marker, piece of dowry

It is perhaps in its social dimension that the fibula most fully reveals its depth. As architect and researcher Salima Naji writes in Les Cahiers du Musée Berbère, the fibula visually embodies the feminine in its most fundamental attributes. It is first and foremost a marker of tribal belonging, a visible sign of the wealth and standing of the tribe to which its wearer belongs.

This social weight reaches its height in the wedding ritual. The pair of fibulae forms the centrepiece of the dowry — the lqimt — provided by the father to accompany his daughter. It is not chosen at random: its materials, its size, its ornaments speak of who one is, where one comes from, what alliance is being sealed. To wear one’s mother’s fibula is to wear the identity of one’s lineage.

In certain Berber families, ancient fibulae pass from generation to generation as a sacred inheritance. They carry within them the memory of the women who wore them before, and retain a protective power bound to the blessing of ancestors.

What the materials say

The Berber fibula comes in a wide variety of forms — diamond, circle, triangle, crescent — depending on the region and the era. But it is the materials that reveal its full symbolic complexity.

Silver dominates. It is the noble material of Berber jewellery, associated with purity and protection. The craftsmen who specialised in this work, the isemgan, mastered techniques of casting, repoussé and granulation passed down from father to son. Their social standing was particular: both indispensable and set apart, often belonging to distinct communities within Amazigh society.

Red coral holds a place of its own. Imported from the Mediterranean along caravan routes, it served far more than decoration: its colour and distant origins made it a powerful talisman against the evil eye. Combined with semi-precious stones and geometric motifs — spirals, lozenges, dots — it transformed the fibula into a genuine shield worn against the body.

These motifs are not decorative in the Western sense. They are apotropaic: they ward off evil, attract good fortune, protect the woman and her children. Each symbol answered to a code that the women of the tribe knew how to read.

A craft under threat

Today, the Berber fibula faces a paradox. It attracts growing interest in the worlds of fashion and design — Western designers draw inspiration from it, tourists seek it out in the souks, online platforms offer copies from India or China that reproduce the forms without grasping their meaning.

Meanwhile, the true isemgan — those who have mastered the ancestral techniques of silver jewellery — are disappearing. Ancient fibulae leave Berber families for the antique dealers of Marrakech or private European collections. Transmission is breaking down, silently.

This is precisely why the fibula deserves better than a place in a display case or an ethnic fashion photograph. It deserves to be understood for what it is: a world-object, where body, family, tribe, memory and the invisible all come together.

Also in The Berber World: : The art of feminine hairstyles among the Aït Atta — another perspective on adornment and identity in the Amazigh world.

The post The berber fibula: between tradition and symbol appeared first on Southeast-morocco.com.

For the peoples now commonly called Berbers did not always use this name for themselves. Many prefer the word Amazigh, plural Imazighen, to express a sense of belonging, a language, a memory and a way of being in the world.

Should we say Berber or Amazigh? Is the first term wrong? Is the second more accurate? The answer requires a journey through history. Understanding the origin of the word “Berber” is not only a matter of etymology. It means following the path of a name given from the outside, and then setting it beside a name carried from within.

A word born from an outside gaze

The origin of the word “Berber” is generally traced back to the ancient Greek barbaros, later taken up in Latin as barbarus. In the Greek world, the term first referred to those whose language was not understood. Their speech seemed foreign, confused, outside Greek culture. Later, among the Romans, the word barbarus was used to describe peoples considered to be outside the Greco-Roman world.

However, we should avoid an overly simple idea: the Greeks and Romans did not “invent” a precise name for the Berbers as a single people. The word “barbarian” was much broader. It could be applied to very different populations whenever they were perceived, from the centre of the Greek or Roman world, as foreign, peripheral or unassimilated.

From the beginning, then, the word “Berber” belongs to a history of perception. It did not first come from the peoples it designates. It is an exonym: a name given from the outside. That fact alone is not enough to condemn the word, but it does mean that it must be understood with care.

Naming a people is never neutral. The one who names also classifies, locates and interprets. He may also simplify. Behind an apparently stable word, there is often a great diversity of groups, languages, territories and local histories.

Before “the Berbers”: many ancient names

In Antiquity, the indigenous populations of North Africa appear under many names in Egyptian, Greek, Latin and Arab sources. We find, for example, the Libyans, the Lebu, the Mauri or Moors, the Numidians, the Gaetulians, the Garamantes and the Mazices.

These names are not simple synonyms. They do not always refer to the same groups, the same periods or the same regions. The Mauri are more closely associated with the far west of the ancient Maghreb. The Numidians refer to populations and kingdoms of central North Africa. The Garamantes are linked to Saharan spaces, especially the Fezzan. The Gaetulians often appear in the southern margins of the ancient world.

These names reveal something important: before being grouped under a general term such as “Berbers”, North African populations were perceived through many different names. These names depended on the viewpoint of those who wrote, traded, fought, governed or travelled.

There was, therefore, a mosaic of peoples and territories. This diversity remains essential for understanding the Amazigh world. We are not dealing with a uniform block, but with a group of societies rooted in very different geographies: mountains, plains, oases, steppes, towns, caravan routes and Saharan spaces.

The role of medieval Arab authors

The use of the word “Berber” was later consolidated in medieval Arab sources, in the form al-Barbar. After the Arab conquests in North Africa, Arab authors used this term to designate the indigenous populations of the Maghreb, in all their diversity.

From this period onwards, the word gradually became a more precise historical category. It made it possible to refer to the non-Arab populations of North Africa, with their languages, tribes, dynasties, alliances and forms of resistance.

One of the great names associated with this history is Ibn Khaldun. In his immense historical work, he gives an important place to the Berbers and their dynasties. His perspective remains that of a medieval author, with the categories and genealogical narratives of his time. Yet his work remains an essential source for understanding the place of Berber populations in the history of the Maghreb.

Here again, nuance is needed. Arab authors did not merely transmit a word. They also organised a way of thinking about North African history. By bringing different populations together under the term “Berbers”, they helped to construct a major historical category. This category then passed through the centuries into modern European languages.

From Barbary to the Barbary Coast

From the early modern period onwards, Europeans frequently used the word “Barbary” to designate the coastal regions of the Maghreb, between present-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. On old maps, in travel accounts and in diplomatic texts, the expression “Barbary Coast” also appears.

This term belongs to an old European geography. It does not refer only to Berber populations. More broadly, it designates a North African space perceived from Europe, often through commercial, diplomatic, military or maritime relations.

The “Barbary Coast” is also associated with corsair activity in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Ports in the Maghreb played an important role in these activities, especially during the early modern period. But it would be reductive to make this maritime history the heart of Berber or Amazigh identity. The word “Barbary” mainly tells us how Europe long named and imagined the Maghreb.

It is therefore better to see this part of the story as a later extension of the word, not as its deeper meaning. It shows how a name can travel, change scale, and take on new representations, sometimes far removed from the peoples it claims to describe.

Amazigh, Imazighen, Tamazight: the words from within

Set against the word “Berber”, which comes from a long external history, the word “Amazigh” holds a special place. In the singular, one speaks of an Amazigh. In the plural, of Imazighen. The term Tamazight may refer to the Amazigh language, or more broadly to the whole range of Amazigh languages and varieties, depending on the context.

The use of the word “Amazigh” points to an internal designation. It is not simply a modern replacement for the word “Berber”. It is a word through which an identity speaks, recognises itself and is transmitted.

Amazigh is often translated as “free man” or “noble man”. This interpretation is very widespread, but it should be used with caution. Specialists remind us that the exact etymology remains debated. It is therefore better to say that the word Amazigh is traditionally associated with ideas of freedom, nobility or dignity, rather than to treat these as a simple and definitive definition.

The essential point lies elsewhere: “Amazigh” has become a central word in movements of cultural, linguistic and identity recognition. It makes it possible to name the peoples concerned otherwise than through a term inherited from Greek, Latin, Arab or European viewpoints.

In contemporary Morocco, Tamazight has been recognised as an official language since the 2011 Constitution. This recognition does not sum up the entire Amazigh reality, which extends far beyond Morocco’s borders. But it marks an important change: Amazigh language and culture are no longer regarded merely as a local or rural heritage; they are recognised as an essential component of national identity.

Read also : Tifinagh: from stone to digital, the living alphabet of the Amazigh world

Should we say Berber or Amazigh?

The question often arises: should we still use the word “Berber”, or should we prefer “Amazigh”?

The answer cannot be purely linguistic. It also depends on the context, on the reader being addressed, and on the kind of gaze one wishes to adopt. Internationally, especially in English, the word “Berber” remains very widely used. It appears in encyclopaedias, historical works, linguistic classifications, museum catalogues, cultural tourism and online searches.

For many readers outside the Maghreb, this is still the word through which discovery begins.

The dominance of the word “Berber” can be explained by the long history of European languages, but also by habits of search and recognition. On the Internet, a term that is already established continues to guide usage. Readers often type the word they know, even if it is imperfect. Search engines, publishers, media outlets and tourist websites then prolong this usage because it remains the most immediately understood.

But visibility does not tell the whole story. “Berber” is a name that came from outside. It belongs to a long history of designations given by others: Greeks, Romans, Arab authors, European travellers, colonial administrators, scholars, cartographers. In European languages, the word eventually came to designate a vast ensemble of peoples, languages and cultures of North Africa. But it did not first come from those it names.

“Amazigh”, by contrast, belongs to another movement. It refers to a way of speaking from within. To use the word “Amazigh” is therefore not merely to change vocabulary. It is to recognise a voice, a memory and an identity that are not defined only by the outside gaze.

Should the word “Berber” therefore be banned? Not necessarily. The word remains useful, especially in history, bibliography, transmission and international referencing. It remains a point of entry. But it should be accompanied, explained and placed back within its history.

To say “Berber” without knowing where the word comes from can repeat an old gaze. To say “Berber” while explaining “Amazigh” can instead open a door: the door that leads from the name given by others towards the name carried by the peoples themselves.

A reality larger than Morocco

To speak of the Berber or Amazigh world is not to speak only of Morocco. Amazigh populations are present across a vast part of North Africa and the Sahara: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Egypt, as well as in diasporas, especially in Europe.

This wider geography is essential. It helps us avoid a frequent reduction: associating the Amazigh world with a few decorative signs, a few mountain villages, or a tourist image of Morocco. The Amazigh world is far broader. It runs through languages, forms of dwelling, music, crafts, political memories, caravan routes, Saharan spaces and Mediterranean histories.

The Amazigh languages themselves are multiple. Tachelhit in southern Morocco, Tarifit in the Rif, Tamazight of the Middle Atlas, Kabyle, Chaoui, Mozabite, Nafusi and the Tuareg varieties are not mere folkloric variants. They belong to a large linguistic family, with strong regional histories.

This diversity requires precision. There is not one uniform “Berber world”, but rather Amazigh worlds. They share heritages, linguistic structures, symbols and memories, but they are not identical. Their richness lies precisely in this plurality.

What a name reveals about history

The history of the word “Berber” reminds us that a name is never just a word. It carries with it centuries of perceptions, translations, misunderstandings and sometimes domination. It can simplify an immense reality. It can also make it visible.

Behind this term, familiar to French- and English-speaking readers, there is not one uniform people, but a constellation of societies, languages, territories and memories. From the Atlas Mountains to Saharan oases, from Kabylia to the Rif, from the Souss to the Tuareg world, the Amazigh worlds cannot be reduced to one single history or one single geography.

Understanding the origin of the word “Berber” is therefore not only about correcting an etymology. It is about learning to look more carefully. It means moving from an inherited name towards a wider history, in which the word “Amazigh” reminds us that peoples are never only what others have said about them. They are also, and first of all, what they say about themselves.

Read also : Tifinagh: from stone to digital, the living alphabet of the Amazigh world

The post Berber or Amazigh: the origin of a word and the history of a name appeared first on Southeast-morocco.com.

Version française

An alphabet between history and symbol

A few geometric lines carved into stone. Simple strokes, crosses, circles, dots, signs that might at first appear to be abstract marks. And yet these forms open one of the great questions of Amazigh history: that of an ancient alphabet rooted in the lands of North Africa and the Sahara.

Today, Tifinagh is immediately recognisable. It can be seen on road signs, institutional façades, schoolbooks, cultural posters, logos, jewellery and contemporary graphic design. In Morocco, it has entered public space with renewed force since the early 2000s. But this recent visibility should not be misleading. Tifinagh is not a modern invention. Its current standardised form belongs to our time, but its roots reach back into a much older graphic tradition.

This deeper history is illuminated by the interview granted to sudestmaroc.com by Ahmed Skounti. An anthropologist, professor at the National Institute of Archaeology and Heritage Sciences in Rabat, a specialist in cultural heritage and familiar with research on rock art, Ahmed Skounti approaches Tifinagh with a double requirement: to recognise its symbolic power, while refusing simplification.

Tifinagh fascinates because it seems to offer a direct thread between Amazigh origins and the present. But that thread is neither simple, nor continuous, nor fully deciphered. It runs through ruptures, variations, forgotten uses, Tuareg continuities, cultural reappropriations, institutional choices and contemporary challenges.

Tifinagh, Libyque, Libyco-Berber: several names for a complex history

In everyday language, Tifinagh is often described as “the Amazigh alphabet”. The phrase is useful because it says the essential thing: Tifinagh is used today to write Tamazight, or more broadly Amazigh languages. But when one enters the longer history of the script, the words become more delicate.

Scholars have long used the term “Libyque” to refer to ancient inscriptions found in the northern part of North Africa, particularly in antique contexts. The expression “Libyco-Berber” is also used for signs associated with rock engravings and paintings in Saharan and pre-Saharan areas. The word “Tifinagh”, meanwhile, has been more specifically linked to scripts preserved in the Tuareg world.

Ahmed Skounti insists on this point: we should not imagine a brutal transition between a Libyque alphabet that would have disappeared and a Tifinagh script that would then have appeared as something entirely different. Libyque and Tifinagh can rather be understood as variants of the same graphic foundation, differentiated according to periods, regions and uses.

This distinction is essential. It avoids two opposite mistakes.

The first would be to reduce modern Tifinagh to a recent political symbol with no historical depth. The second would be to project contemporary Tifinagh uncritically onto all ancient inscriptions, as if signs carved more than two thousand years ago could be read directly through the eyes of today.

Tifinagh is both continuity and transformation. It refers to an ancient memory, but it has also known losses, displacements, reinventions and modern codifications.

Read also : The Tifinagh, the Berber singularity engraved in time

A geography that extends far beyond Morocco

One of the major contributions of Ahmed Skounti’s interview is to remind us that Tifinagh cannot be confined to the Moroccan frame alone.

The history of this script concerns an immense space. Libyque or Libyco-Berber inscriptions have been identified across a vast territory stretching from the Mediterranean to Saharan and sub-Saharan fringes, from the Canary Islands to Libya, and as far as southern Niger. This breadth gives Tifinagh a pan-Amazigh dimension.

It therefore corresponds to the historical reality of the Amazigh world itself. Amazigh languages and cultures do not stop at modern borders. They cross Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Saharan Egypt, as well as Tuareg spaces in Mali, Niger and Mauritania.

To speak of Tifinagh from Morocco does not mean making it a Moroccan subject. Morocco has played an important role in its contemporary recognition, but Tifinagh reaches far beyond Morocco. It belongs to a broader North African and Saharan history, where ancient Numidian kingdoms, rock art sites, Tuareg traditions, modern cultural movements and recent language policies all meet.

For a section devoted to the Berber or Amazigh world, this point is decisive. Tifinagh is not a local identity ornament. It is one of the signs that allows us to think about the Amazigh world in its true historical reach.

An origin still debated

Where does Tifinagh come from? The question often returns, because it touches on one of the most sensitive points in Amazigh history: the ability of a people to produce its own cultural forms, its own signs, its own memory.

Ahmed Skounti recalls that the debate around its origins is not definitively closed. Early researchers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries often favoured external hypotheses. They looked for the origins of the script in Phoenician, Punic, Egyptian, Greek, South Arabian or Iberian influences. This way of thinking also belonged to an intellectual context in which North African cultural productions were often explained through influences from elsewhere.

Over recent decades, the hypothesis of an indigenous origin, or at least of a local creation deeply rooted in North Africa, has gained importance. Skounti does not present it as dogma. On the contrary, he insists on the relative nature of scientific knowledge, on the need to remain open to new evidence and on the importance of further archaeological research.

This caution is valuable. It prevents Tifinagh from being turned into a simplified ideological banner. What matters is not to produce a comfortable certainty, but to recognise the depth of a graphic tradition whose antiquity is undeniable, even if its exact origins remain debated.

Tifinagh is ancient. It is Amazigh. But its history is not fully resolved.

The stones speak, but they do not reveal everything

Ancient signs fascinate because they seem to reach us from a very distant time. And yet they do not easily deliver their message.

Ahmed Skounti recalls that some relatively recent inscriptions in Tuareg contexts can be deciphered. The further back we go, however, the more difficult interpretation becomes. Antique inscriptions have provided valuable information in some cases, particularly thanks to bilingual texts. But a large part of the corpus remains obscure.

Several reasons explain this difficulty. Ancient Amazigh languages evolved. Disappeared linguistic forms cannot always be understood from present-day speech varieties. Ancient alphabets also varied from one region to another: in the north, eastern and western Libyque forms are often distinguished; in the south, several Tuareg and Saharan alphabets have been identified. Finally, the largely consonantal character of some ancient forms complicates decipherment, because the absence of vowels leaves a significant degree of uncertainty.

It is in this context that Skounti uses a striking phrase:

The expression does not mean that nothing has been understood. It means rather that the full decipherment of the ancient corpus remains unfinished.

Tifinagh is therefore not only a heritage legacy. It is also a field of research that remains open.

The Tuareg, guardians of a living continuity

If Tifinagh is still alive today, it is largely thanks to the Tuareg world.

In many regions of North Africa, the ancient use of this script gradually declined and then disappeared from daily practice. Other scripts took over. Arabic was used to write Amazigh texts, particularly in learned or religious traditions. Latin later became dominant in many linguistic works, in the transcription of oral literature and in part of the militant or academic production.

The Tuareg, however, preserved a living practice of Tifinagh. This continuity is not merely technical. It is cultural, social and symbolic. Signs can be traced in the sand, carved, inscribed on objects, used in short messages, or associated with poetic, romantic or identity-based uses.

This does not mean that Tuareg Tifinagh is identical to all ancient forms, nor that it alone can explain everything. But without this Tuareg continuity, Tifinagh would probably be perceived first and foremost as an archaeological trace. Thanks to the Tuareg, it remained a practice.

This changes everything. Tifinagh has not returned only because institutions made it official. It has also returned because it had never entirely disappeared.

Why did Amazigh oral tradition remain so dominant?

One question runs through this whole history: if the Amazigh possessed an ancient script, why did Amazigh culture remain so strongly oral?

The answer is not simple.

Ahmed Skounti suggests an important hypothesis: the ancient uses of this script seem to have remained relatively marginal in societies that did not always develop, in a lasting way, a central political power able to make it an administrative, literary or scholarly tool on a large scale.

The Numidian kingdom is a notable exception. The Punic-Libyque bilingual inscription of Dougga, linked to King Massinissa, bears witness to an official or monumental use of this writing. But this situation does not seem to have continued uninterrupted in later periods. The Mauretanian kingdoms, post-Roman principalities and later Islamised medieval empires did not make Tifinagh the dominant script of their power or written production.

This does not mean that the Amazigh did not write. They wrote in Arabic and in Latin, in religious, legal, poetic, scientific and militant contexts. Amazigh culture was not without writing. But its main mode of transmission long remained oral: songs, stories, proverbs, poetry, family memory, agricultural knowledge, craft traditions, rituals, genealogies, the words of women and men woven into daily life.

Tifinagh therefore raises a deep question: what becomes of an alphabet when the culture that carries it transmits above all through the voice?

Signs, objects and graphic imagination

Even where Tifinagh declined as a script of use, a world of signs continued to circulate through craft forms.

Ahmed Skounti mentions weaving, pottery and jewellery in particular. This does not mean that every geometric motif on a carpet, pot or fibula is a hidden Tifinagh letter. Such an interpretation would be too quick. But there is indeed a visual continuity: a world of lines, incisions, marks and abstract forms in which writing, symbol and ornament are never entirely separate.

This is one of the reasons why Tifinagh speaks so strongly to the contemporary imagination. Its signs are both letters and forms. They can be read, but also looked at. They belong to language, but they also converse with textile, jewellery, wall, stone and image.

This double nature partly explains its current graphic success. In a world saturated with images, Tifinagh appears as an immediately identifiable alphabet. It makes Amazigh identity visible as much as it allows it to be written.

The Moroccan moment: IRCAM, school and public space

Morocco occupies a particular place in the contemporary history of Tifinagh.

In 2003, Tifinagh-IRCAM was adopted as the official script for Amazigh in Morocco. This choice did not consist simply in taking up an ancient alphabet as it stood. It involved a process of standardisation: selecting characters, adapting them to the needs of Morocco’s Amazigh varieties, enabling teaching, administrative use, typographic reproduction and digital integration.

IRCAM played a central role in this process. Its version of Tifinagh aims to offer a script that is simple, coherent and usable in a modern context. It rests on the historicity of Tifinagh, but also on practical criteria: legibility, economy of signs, phonetic coherence, school use and institutional application.

The constitutional recognition of Tamazight as an official language of Morocco in 2011 reinforced this dynamic. The 2019 organic law then specified the implementation of this official status in education and in priority areas of public life.

One must nevertheless avoid triumphalism. Skounti himself points out that the teaching of Amazigh transcribed in Tifinagh, launched in 2003, remains limited in its progress and territorial reach. The presence of Tifinagh in public space is real, visible and symbolically powerful. But the vitality of a language cannot be measured only by signs, façades or official documents. It depends on schools, books, teachers, family use, literary creation, cultural production and the real desire of speakers.

Tifinagh today: several lives beyond Morocco

The contemporary revival of Tifinagh should not be understood as a reality belonging only to Morocco.

Morocco is today the country where its institutionalisation is most visible. Tifinagh appears there in education, administration, public signage, official cultural media and signposting. But elsewhere in the Amazigh world, its situation is different.

In Algeria, Tamazight is also recognised as a national and official language. Yet the choice of script remains more open. Latin, Arabic and Tifinagh coexist according to uses, regions, institutions and cultural circles. In education and literature, especially in Kabylia, the Latin alphabet remains very present. Tifinagh also exists, but more often in symbolic, associative, militant, educational or heritage uses. It is therefore not absent, but it does not occupy the same institutional place as in Morocco.

In the Tuareg world, the situation is different again. In the Ahaggar, the Ajjer, the Aïr or the Adrar des Ifoghas, Tifinagh is not simply an alphabet reintroduced by a modern cultural policy. It is the trace of a living continuity. The Tuareg have preserved the use of this script through the centuries, for short inscriptions, marks, messages, poems or symbolic uses. It is largely thanks to this Tuareg continuity that Tifinagh never became a mere archaeological relic.

We should therefore speak of several contemporary lives of Tifinagh: an institutional life in Morocco, a plurigraphic life in Algeria, a more limited but real official life in Libya, an ancient and continuous Tuareg life, and finally a digital life now shared by Amazigh communities through fonts, keyboards, social networks and contemporary graphic uses.

This diversity is essential. It shows that Tifinagh does not belong to a single state. It belongs to the long history of the Amazigh world.

Read also : The Berber world

The digital world: a new inscription in time

Unicode standardisation opened another stage in the history of Tifinagh.

As long as a script is not properly integrated into computer systems, it remains difficult to use in word processors, websites, keyboards, databases, fonts, educational tools and digital applications. With its Unicode encoding, Tifinagh entered the global technical space of recognised scripts.

This shift is decisive. It makes it possible to write Tifinagh on computers, create fonts, publish online, develop input tools, circulate texts and imagine new educational or cultural uses.

Here again, the symbol is not enough. A script truly exists when it can be used in ordinary gestures: writing a name, composing a message, publishing a text, printing a textbook, displaying a sign, creating a work, archiving a memory.

Digital Tifinagh does not erase carved Tifinagh. It prolongs the same movement in another form: an inscription in time.

An alphabet between identity and use

Tifinagh has become one of the most powerful signs of contemporary Amazigh identity. This is easy to understand. Few graphic forms give such a strong sense of historical continuity. A language can be spoken without being immediately visible. An alphabet, however, appears at once. It marks a space. It transforms a façade, a sign, a poster, a book cover. It says: this language exists, this memory has a form, this culture has a right to be seen.

But this symbolic power also contains a difficulty. If Tifinagh remains only an identity marker, it risks being looked at more than used. The deeper issue is not only to see Amazigh letters in public space. It is to keep Amazigh languages themselves alive.

Skounti expresses this forcefully when he describes the survival of Amazigh as a kind of miracle. This language has crossed the centuries alongside powerful languages: Latin, Arabic, French, Spanish and English. It has resisted through oral transmission, through families, villages, songs, everyday gestures, stories, and through the women and men who passed it on without always having institutions to protect it.

Tifinagh will not save Amazigh on its own. But it can help restore visibility, dignity, tools and horizon.

A memory still open

Tifinagh occupies a singular place in the Amazigh world because it brings together several times.

There is the time of stones, ancient inscriptions, rock engravings and antique monuments.

There is the Tuareg time, that of a living continuity in the Sahara.

There is the time of Amazigh oral tradition, where speech carried memory more widely than writing.

There is the cultural and militant time of modern reappropriation.

There is the institutional time of IRCAM, schools, the Moroccan Constitution and public policy.

And there is the digital time, in which ancient signs become Unicode characters, fonts, keyboards and online content.

It is this superposition of times that gives Tifinagh its strength. It is neither only ancient nor only modern. Neither only scholarly nor only popular. Neither only Moroccan nor only Tuareg. Neither only heritage nor only tool. It stands at the junction of stone, voice, sign and screen.

And this is perhaps why it continues to fascinate.

In the interview granted to sudestmaroc.com, Ahmed Skounti reminds us that there is still much to understand, decipher, compare and transmit. Tifinagh is not a closed file. It is an open memory.

Its future will depend less on the beauty of its signs alone than on the ability of Amazigh societies to make it a living tool: to learn, create, name, write, read and transmit.

Read also : The Tifinagh, the Berber singularity engraved in time

Opening photograph: a rocky site in southern Morocco, in an area where traces of rock art remain. The stone, the sand and fragile life also bear witness to the enduring memory of these symbols. Credit: Abdellah Azizi www.azifoto.com

The post Tifinagh: from stone to digital, the living alphabet of the Amazigh world appeared first on Southeast-morocco.com.

There are lands, scattered across our earth—like here in Morocco—from which energy emanates, compelling one to pause awhile, to let oneself be traversed by these elusive yet potent emanations, with an inexhaustible capacity to restore and invigorate weary bodies and souls.

There are people who radiate an energy that leaves no one untouched. They possess a passion for welcoming, a deftness in offering well‑being, and an insatiable desire to share the riches of life gathered along their journey.

There are places where an invisible hearth glows, inviting us to gather—a little removed from the world and its noise, sanctuaries where, for the span of a pause, we are offered a setting to rest and rediscover ourselves.

And sometimes, land, place, and person converge—and in their union, the magic of renewal emerges.

Here, in the village of Tisselday, nestled in the Imini valley on the southern slopes of the Atlas, Ahmed Agouni and his guesthouse Irocha invite us to such an experience.

Tisselday, the root place

Tisselday is an Amazigh word for the tool once used by local women to stretch their weaving between a loom’s vertical posts. Born here, Ahmed grew up roaming the surrounding mountains, so enchanted by the multicolored stones that he later went on to study geology at university. In 1994, he discovered a passion for traditional crafts—creating musical instruments and goatskin furniture. While living in Essaouira, where he opened a small bazaar, he met his partner Catherine, and together they decided to embark on the nascent tourism venture in this remote corner of southeast Morocco.

It was only natural that in 2000 he returned to his native land to lay the first stones of a hospitality project. He built a house of stone and earth, perched atop a rock overlooking the valley. Today, the place has reached its maturity: the warm patina of time is felt from the moment you enter. Nature has unfolded around it, and the house now offers a dozen guest rooms, a pool, dining areas, and a terrace opening onto the sky and the imposing Atlas Mountains—giving every visitor the thrilling sense of being like an eagle poised to take flight toward vast horizons.

A lire : The shepherd, the forgotten pearl of Moroccan cultural heritage

A few months ago, Irocha added a space dedicated to body care, with the opening of a hammam and massage room. More recently, a large hall has been fitted out in warm, soothing woodwork and stained glass, to host cultural discovery, movement, and meditation activities.

Over the years, Ahmed has seen how much travelers enjoy staying in his guesthouse, delighting in following him on walks along the mountain slopes or across the dunes of the vast Sahara. They have come to appreciate hearing him recount the region’s rich history, as well as discovering, through him, its many natural treasures and the ancestral know-how of local artisans.

The desire to welcome differently

Yet, despite this satisfaction, Ahmed feels within himself the need to evolve his approach to hospitality, drawing on a double experience patiently built up over the years.

He now understands more deeply than before what the traveler seeks in coming here, and conversely, discerns more clearly what his village, his guesthouse Irocha, and the entire region of southeast Morocco, with all the facets of its cultures and the traditions of its communities, can offer these travelers.

Of course, these travelers are here on holiday; having left behind, for a time, the hectic world and the exhausting lives they lead, their first need is for rest, leisure, and a sense of well-being restored. All this, Ahmed knows how to offer them from the moment they arrive at Irocha. But he has come to understand that some travelers are searching for something more; something new that will send them home changed — enriched by discovery, learning, or understanding, or else soothed, relieved of a burden, a pressure, or a sorrow.

And it is to these travelers that Ahmed now wishes to devote himself.

The universal alphabet of life’s essential virtues

He wishes to offer them more than a simple stay, but truly a sensitive encounter at the very heart of his region’s natural and cultural identity.

Here in the southeast, as nowhere else in Morocco, the landscapes unfold in all their beauty and diversity. From the peaks and slopes of the Atlas Mountains to the enchanting sands of the Sahara, the landscapes here unfold in all their beauty and diversity. Along the way, lush valleys—the Drâa, the Dadès, and the Ziz—offer a succession of date-palm oases and gardens of olives, almonds, and figs. Across the serene expanse of stone and endless plateaus, everything here is, for the traveler, a source of peace and wonder.

Urban life barely makes itself felt here, as if humbled by the majesty of Nature. That is why people have settled so discreetly, gathering in small villages with their characteristic houses of earth and stone.

Here is rural Morocco — the historic cradle of the royal dynasty, one of the age-old faces of its Amazigh identity, and the fertile ground of many of its traditional crafts. It is a world where the oldest traditions are still carried on through simple, everyday gestures, or in communal gatherings where time itself seems to stand still — a world where families truly delight in coming together at the weekly souks.

Life here, however, is harsh—just like the climate. In the face of adversity, the people of southeast Morocco have developed a keen sense of resilience, born of sobriety and simplicity, with smiles on their lips and hands extended in welcome, their eyes turned to the sky from which, inevitably, mercy and providence will come. Time is never a rival; patience comes naturally, humility prevails before the unfathomable mystery of life, and whatever little one has is always shared with the guest who is welcomed in.

All this, Ahmed knows as intimately as he knows his own heart, and he has understood how, here in southeast Morocco, a singular alchemy between humanity, Nature, and time makes the universal alphabet of life’s essential virtues resound.

From Irocha, Ahmed now offers his guests far more than mere hospitality; he invites them to set out to encounter these life-giving virtues, to share in their savor and their benefits.

An invitation to take time to reconnect with what is essential, with others, and thus with oneself.

Photo credits : Abdellah Azizi / azifoto.com

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Moha Mallal – Idir is one of the great pillars of Amazigh culture. He was born into a family environment steeped in poetry, with his grandmother and mother both being poets. His famous song “Vava Inouva” opened doors for him worldwide. Originally written and composed by Idir for the Kabyle singer Noura, the first time the song was supposed to be performed live on Algerian radio, Noura was absent, and Idir ended up singing his own song. Since that initial recording, this beautiful song has continued to be broadcasted on radios.

Subsequently, a production company based in Paris invited Idir to re-record the song. A contract was signed shortly thereafter, and the artist left his job as an engineer in the Algerian desert to embark on a very important artistic journey from Paris, which was the dream of all North African artists in the 1970s.

Idir carried the torch alongside other Algerian artists such as Maatoub Lounes and Ferhat Mhenni in defending Amazigh culture, each with their own distinct style. Known for his respect, moral integrity, skill in writing and composition, and above all, his power in choosing words, he is an irreplaceable man.

Morocco should have collectively been proud of the richness of Amazigh culture

Moha Mallal – We use our Amazigh identity, language, and traditions because we feel that our culture is not sufficiently respected in our own country. If this were not the case, if we felt genuine recognition, we would not have this reflex of defense and preservation of what constitutes the core of our identity. If there were this respect, there would be no need for this struggle or the accompanying problems that continue to negatively impact Morocco’s progress. The officials responsible for official cultural policy have committed serious mistakes toward this rich human heritage. On the contrary, we should collectively be proud of these cultural riches instead of trying to erase them, as has been the case since independence.

The Amazigh man is the first human of the Mediterranean and what would become Morocco. Proof of this is given by rock drawings and engravings that testify to illustrations and the Tifinagh script. It seems that Amazigh culture is among the first cultures to have appeared on Earth. Contemporary archaeologists support this theory since the revolution of genetic analyses and DNA studies.

Thus begins the defeat of all distortions of history. The question that arises is why our leaders have long denied this great Amazigh civilization and have done everything to erase it, while at the same time vigorously embracing the East, which has continuously brought us hatred and extremism. This historical reality, unfortunately so contemporary, the Amazigh people, lovers of freedom and tolerance since ancient times, cannot understand or accept it. It’s a question that will linger for a long time because it remains unanswered.

This is why Amazigh people, aware of the depth of this observation, have clearly chosen to defend their human identity through their culture, against all ideologies that have tried to silence their ideals of freedom and universality.

Amazigh culture cannot feel at ease within a single folkloric approach

Moha Mallal – The main source of inspiration for music in Morocco, as in other artistic domains, is Amazigh culture, despite the dialect in which it appears. Amazigh regions still host extraordinary rhythms such as Ahidous, Ahwach, and Rwais, each with great diversity within their respective musical genres. For example, in Ahidous, one finds rhythms like Lmsaq, Tagouri, Amhray, and Izli, which vary from one village to another. There are also musical pieces that accompany field work, such as Tamgra, Arwa, or Tawiza, as well as wedding songs that span several days, each involving a variety of songs, some sung by women and others by men. A patient observer of the rural Amazigh world would discover an endless wealth, mirroring nature itself.

A lire : Ahwach, the Amazigh tradition of Morocco

Unfortunately, this cultural richness is dying year after year. We are losing all these songs, rhythms, and customs, just as we are losing our kasbahs and ultimately our language. Everything that constitutes Amazigh culture is neglected by the state, except when tourist interests are at stake. In such cases, our culture becomes a folkloric attraction, and our soul escapes because it cannot find its vital space or truth there.

The diversity of Moroccan song and music originates from this Amazigh culture, despite the abandonment and lack of recognition by authorities, and even despite the artists themselves. For instance, there are those who advocate for the concept of Arabo-Andalusian music, which originally is Moroccan Amazigh music from El Gharnati, found in Northern Morocco and Algeria, even before it was interpreted in Arabic. Algerian singers like Dahman Alharrach, Alaanqa, and Maatoub Lounes, among many others, illustrate this truth.

El Gharnati refers to the music originating from the city of Granada in Spain. In 1492, Muslims and Jews, expelled from Granada after the Reconquista, settled in various cities in Morocco: Fez, Oujda, Tetouan, Rabat. They brought with them their literature, cuisine, customs, and most importantly, their music: Gharnati music.

Traditional Amazigh music is known for its long poems accompanied by rhythmic instruments such as the bendir and drum. This genre of music is found in arts like Ahwach, Ahidous, Regda, Rekza, performed by groups like Imdyazen and Rways, and Chyukh, who add special musical instruments, such as the flute in the Rif, the Ribab in the Souss region, and the Luthar in the Middle Atlas.

Moha Mallal – The Amazigh music scene in Morocco is very rich, and to better understand it, one must distinguish between its two major currents: traditional music and modern music, as well as observe its vast and diverse geographical distribution.

The Amdyaz (plural imdyazen) refers among the Berbers to an itinerant poet, singer, or musician. Considered a central figure in Amazigh poetry, they are seen as a chronicler and historian of their society. During their travels from village to village, they convey various targeted messages aimed at highlighting current events. (Source: Wikipedia)

The music of the Middle Atlas holds a significant place in daily communication, resulting in a prolific production of songs. Ahidous has given us great singers such as Amlal Qddour, Bnnasr Oukhouya, and Hadda Ouakki, and more recently Med Rouicha and Med Mghni. They have created melodies accompanied by the luthar or violin. However, music from the Middle Atlas remains embedded in well-defined rhythms, and there is still anticipation for new ideas to modernize this style.

In the southeastern region of Morocco, known in Amazigh as Assamer, musical art has only known the rhythm instrument called the bendir. The geographic location of the region, situated between the Souss and the Middle Atlas, has allowed both musical influences to resonate with its inhabitants.

Assamer, in Amazigh, is a place or an area exposed to the sun, where villagers gather during winter days. It has become, by extension, a place for discussing matters concerning tribes and the daily lives of families and residents. Since the southeastern part of the High Atlas, from Ouarzazate to Errachidia, is always exposed to the sun, this region has been designated by the name Assamer. The Jews call it Achamr. (Source: Moha Mallal)

Modern music emerged with young singers from the Souss region like the group Ousman, Ammouri Mbark, and Izenzaren during the height of the Ghiwane movement. Later, in the Rif region, young artists influenced by Kabyle music emerged, such as Walid Mimoun, Itran, and others who appeared in the late 1980s, like Khaled Izri, Imtlaa, Numidya, and Allal Chelih.

In the southeastern Moroccan region of Assamer, modern music only began in the early 1990s when I myself created the first recording studio, Azawan Sound, and my own music group, Mallal. This launch was the seed of modern music in the southeast, featuring singers like Hemmu Kemus and others who would arrive later such as Nba Saghru, Tawargit, Amnay, Angmar, Luland, Khaled Badraoui, Tasuta n Imal, and Tarula.

Others today are taking over to continue the traditional tunes of Tamdyazt (Amazigh poetry) since the 1970s, such as Ouhachem, Chikh Yousf, Chikh Zaid, Med Ijoud, Elhoussaine Kheyi, and many others.

Modern Amazigh music appears in two ways: the first attempts to work with traditional Ahidous tunes by introducing modern instruments, and the second works with a more universal approach in terms of instruments and the composition of poetry and music.

The music, songs, and traditional rhythms specific to our region create a whole that imposes itself on everyone. The cultural awareness of artists from Assamer gives our Amazigh music a personal touch, a true uniqueness linked to our territories. This realization has led us to want to give a name to this musical particularity, and we have chosen to call it Amun Style.

Moha Mallal – Amun, or Tamunt, signifies “union” in our Amazigh language. Historically, Amun was the first god of the pharaohs, the deity symbolizing unity and unification. Some ruins of the Temple of Amun still appear today in Siwa, in southern Egypt, where Imazighens (Amazigh community) live in the Siwa Oasis. This reminds us that the pharaohs are originally Amazigh.

Amun or Amon is one of the principal deities in the Egyptian pantheon, the god of Thebes. His name means “the Hidden” or “the Inconceivable” and reflects the impossibility of knowing his “true” form. It was during the Greek archaic period that the Egyptian Amun was assimilated with the Greek deity Zeus. It was the Cyreneans who introduced him to the Greek world as Ammon-Zeus. (Source: Wikipedia)

When I thought about giving a name to the musical style we were developing in Southeastern Morocco, I shared with Nba from the Saghru group the idea of using the concept of Amun.

Our intention was for our music style to stand out from others, so it needed a name that both unified all modern music styles of Assamer and carried a strong meaning. The concept commonly used to explain our music style could have been fusion, but this word did not fully meet our expectations.

Amun Style is first and foremost about the beautiful Amazigh language. It is not necessarily protest music, but rather a constant exploration in musical composition and the utilization of our entire cultural heritage.

That being said, the idea has not yet been widely accepted by most singers, especially among the younger generation, but I hope that we can establish the concept of Amun Style through the quality of our work and its exemplary nature and ability to inspire.

Amazigh music is in search of beauty

Moha Mallal – As in all civilizations, we observe artistic diversity. Each person fights their battle according to their cultural level, country, culture, and field of creation. In general, we see that political songs prevail among peoples who are victims of ideological invasion and who cannot freely live their culture, identity, and traditions. This has been evident in the birth of major global music movements such as Reggae, Blues, and Jazz. In all these cases, there is an expression of cultural and therefore identity resistance.

Amazigh music is marginalized in festivals and media, and it does not receive the encouragement that is given to Arabic or foreign music. Take Moroccan radios for example, which broadcast a wide variety of songs in all languages ​​of the world, except the language of the country itself, namely Amazigh. Is it a coincidence that this situation of marginalization has persisted since independence?

The few songs aired on Amazigh television are folkloric songs, presenting a limited, even negative, view of Amazigh music. Then they try to portray the music sung by young Amazigh people as always politicized, when in truth this music touches on all themes of life, as is the case in all other countries. We sing about love, society, culture, and philosophy, and we do so with a great pursuit of beauty, both in terms of lyrics and music, which we aim to make universal.

Moha Mallal – Idir’s influence is strongly felt on the style of many artists from North Africa, and possibly elsewhere. The simplicity of his musical style quickly resonates with listeners, as does the joy of his words drawn from Kabyle culture and the ancient stories that grandmothers tell their grandchildren by the fireside. Personally, Idir has played a significant role in my artistic creation and in the love I put into making music and singing since 1983.

Moha Mallal – The Amazigh culture is inherently a space of harmony and tolerance. It is not Amazigh culture that could prevent the meeting and complementarity of cultures in Morocco, but rather those who refuse to recognize Amazigh culture as an original culture of the country, a culture that should be preserved at the same level as other cultures within Moroccan heritage. As long as the Imazighen are marginalized in every sense of the word, I do not see possible complementarity or cultural democracy. We, the Amazighs, speak other languages ​​than Amazigh, study languages ​​far from ours, sing in other languages, without any complex. But do others do it too

However, Amazigh music in all its diversity is fully part of the international repertoire of civilizations’ music. And this entire repertoire, even if it legitimately echoes human wounds, is also there above all to offer the pleasure of sharing these cultures and discovering the humanities that are expressed through them. The humanistic message of this repertoire cannot be neglected, especially with the technological modernity that accelerates exchanges and thus encounters.

Harmony will ultimately be achieved one day thanks to the common will of all young artists from Morocco and elsewhere, Amazigh or not, in the respectful sharing of their linguistic and cultural diversities.

Find out more …

Mohamed Mallal, born in 1965 in Tamlalte, a village located near the Grand Dades at the entrance of the Dades Gorges in Boumalne. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history of civilizations.

He is:

• Professor of visual arts in Ouarzazate.
• Poet, composer, and performer.
• Painter, watercolorist, caricaturist.
• Writer of two collections: “Anzwum” (Concern) and “Afafa” (Awakening); “History of Plastic Arts in Morocco” is in the process of being printed.
• Screenwriter.
• He has participated in various exhibitions, workshops, and music concerts in Morocco and abroad.

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Certainly, they had evidently decided to settle along the trail that camel caravans from the other side of the Sahara followed to reach Marrakech. It undoubtedly seemed prudent to them to welcome travelers here for a welcome respite. Oral tradition suggests that pottery trade must have been flourishing, as even today the elders of the ksar refer to the site as Ighrem n’Iqddarn, meaning the village of potters. As often, the choice of names preserves the thread of stories over time, and it is in the winding alleys of the ksar that a well with an eloquent name, Anou n’Tarmouyte, the well of the Christian woman, somewhat illuminates the origins of the place.

Then one must make a connection with a legend reported by the explorer Charles de Foucauld during his passage in the region in 1883, to begin to sketch in his mind a very distant epoch when the region was under the authority of a Berber king, Christian, named Ouâd. One of his four daughters, Aïssatou, is said to have settled at the foot of the rock while her other sisters, Skoukta, Zelfa, and Doulatou, had settled in villages nearby. It is said that during his reign, games around the fire were particularly popular, and to this day, this custom persists. Further on, another place refers to his presence since the north tower of the ksar is named LBorj n’Tarmouyte, which means the tower of the Christian woman. This would be to recall the place through which Princess Aïssatou is said to have escaped the assault of Muslim armies from Arabia in the 7th century to conquer the lands of Africa to their west.

The echo of her memory will be heard centuries later, as the music of her name will resonate in that of the tribe of Aït Aïssa, reputed to be the originators of the founding of the ksar in the 11th century under the Almoravid dynasty. Here again, a legend tells that a man named Aïssa, who came one day from the desert, stopped at the foot of the rock to found the first village there. For a long time, the ksar was known as Ighrem n’ Aït Aïssa until a new leader, Amghar Ben Haddou, in turn imposed the use of his surname on the entire tribe, which had become a member of the Aït Zineb tribe and the confederation of tribes of Aït Ouaouzguite.

Faced with so many hypotheses, official history holds the 18th century as the first milestone of existence, as the only available written documents date back to this period. But one certainty remains, and the brilliance of legends confirms it: the ksar of Aït Ben Haddou, around its rock, attracted the humble, the powerful, and the wise, leaving forever veiled the reasons for such a strong allure.

Version originale en français : Aït Ben Haddou, de la légende à l’histoire

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The Amazigh community of Morocco is renowned for producing talented experts in the art of weaving carpets, a result of ancestral knowledge and a symbol of the multicolored identity of this people as well as the entire country.

The Berber women, as this art is theirs, have managed to mobilize all the dexterity of their movements, the patience of their commitment, and the sincerity of their intention to achieve excellence in their work. Once finished, the carpet no longer belongs to its craftswoman. It is, facing the world, a reflection of Morocco’s face.

But there is another domain where all these qualities of an artist are at work, still in the heart of Berber soil, in the southeast of Morocco, where another weaving has begun to bring to light another reflection of Morocco’s face. Its threads are not of wool. They are of flesh and spirit. They have the color of joy as well as of pain. The framework that welcomes and blends them together is the long passage of time. Together, their weave tells the story of our humanity on Earth.

Kamal Hachkar, the child of Tinghir, is one of these weavers of history. In 2010, he returned to his native land, that of all his ancestors, holding in his hand a first strand, the memories of his grandfather about a time when Jewish communities still lived in Morocco, here in Tinghir as in many other territories.

Having left for France with his parents at a young age, Kamal had no idea what he would discover by pulling further on the thread of the past that his ancestor suddenly revealed to his gaze. He wanted to know more. Indeed, Kamal had undergone training as a history teacher in France, but he did not suspect the intensity that his initiative would provoke.

The awakening of the echo of a past we had forgotten

If Kamal Hachkar begins his work of collecting memories with the stance of filial curiosity, he continues it in Israel with the attitude of a researcher who connects the threads together, searching for Moshe, the old friend and accomplice of his grandfather, who once left his native land of Tinghir forever to join Israel; as others went to Canada, the United States, Europe… Kamal gives voice to the children of those who lived in Tinghir or elsewhere in Morocco, this land distant from their ancestors, and the land of their roots that they barely know.

With his camera and microphone, he awakens the memories of each individual and gives them both resonance and echo. The echo of a past we had forgotten, set aside in a remote corner of our memory, believing it to be extinguished forever, and the resonance of a timeless reality, of a true fraternity that was lived and that endures.

One Sunday evening, four million Moroccans confronting their history

At the end of its journey, the documentary takes the name “Tinghir – Jerusalem, Echoes of the Mellah” and is screened at numerous festivals in Europe, the United States, Canada, Jamaica, and Israel. Its first screening in Morocco takes place in April 2012 on the 2M television channel, on a Sunday evening at the beginning of the night. This broadcast of the documentary then meets immense success among the Moroccan population – the viewership reaches nearly four million people.

During the first screening in Tinghir, the crowd gathers. With these successful first steps, the documentary is screened in many places, and Kamal often accompanies its screening, both in Morocco and abroad, in big cities, universities, or small villages, to be in a position to hear the audience’s reactions and address the questions that such a subject inevitably raises.

The reception is always enthusiastic. For the older generations, the documentary reminds them of a cherished period in the secret of their hearts, a time when the presence of Jews in Morocco was as natural a reality as the seasons of nature that have always punctuated their lives. For young Moroccans, they observe with delight that Israeli women speak their language, sing the traditional songs they heard as children during festive moments in their communities, playing the same musical instrument. They discover that beyond distances, and of course beyond political conflicts, Jews and Muslims once lived together in Morocco in obvious harmony.

The photographs, yellowed by time, finally emerge from their hiding place

At the end of each screening of the documentary, the public’s reactions multiply and are ultimately always the same. Kamal understands that this honoring of Jews and Amazighs in prime time on Moroccan television had the effect of a fresh breeze that liberated speech. In many families, suddenly the elders begin to reveal to their grandchildren, for the first time, their connections with the Jewish community, and sometimes even blood ties. Old photographs, yellowed by time, suddenly emerge from their hiding places and find a caption under the astonished eyes of the younger generations. Many Moroccans recognize themselves in Kamal’s approach and his urgency to finally listen to the memory of the ancestors, to collect their words, to preserve their testimony.

Kamal understands that his documentary breaks the taboos surrounding this Jewish presence in the rural depths of Morocco, around this harmonious and joyful coexistence between Jews and Muslims, around this forgotten reality that there was a time in Morocco when one could be both Moroccan and of Jewish faith.

This breaking of the taboo is possible because it is done without any upheaval, but in the gentleness of the shared emotions among all the testimonies, in the texture of life stories that command respect.

The history of the Jews of Tinghir speaks to everyone

When asked what the main teaching of his documentary is, and after listening to the countless reactions from all these different audiences, Kamal realizes that the history of the Moroccan Jews of Tinghir speaks to everyone. Their lives bear witness to the experience of rupture, the forced departure from a beloved place, the exile to an unknown place.

There is ultimately nothing easier to share than these testimonies because the experience of exodus, the trauma it provokes, is an integral part of the adventure of our humanity.

For a moment, Tinghir becomes the heart of the world.

There was a time when the human community of Tinghir was strong in its diversity and the plurality of its traditions. At that time, harmony naturally connected the differentiations of each component of the whole. There was a time when this alloy broke down. Under the force of the grand history that surpasses each individual or due to the inherent fragilities of any human construction, the Moroccan of Jewish faith left Tinghir, while the Moroccan of Muslim faith remained, alone.

A lire : The lost destiny of Jews from South East Morocco

Reflecting on one’s identity beyond the walls

In 2012, the screening of the documentary “Tinghir – Jerusalem, Echoes from the Mellah” on Moroccan television sparked opposition from certain political groups. The Moroccan Parliament was prompted to debate the issue to determine who had authorized such a broadcast on the national channel. Among other criticisms, Kamal Hachkar was reproached for not addressing the Palestinian cause and for deviating too much from the collective religious or pan-Arabic narrative. In 2013, the Moroccan Ministry of Communication decided not to participate in the National Film Festival of Tangier, which had scheduled the documentary. Demonstrations took place both in opposition to and in support of the documentary. Moroccan and foreign media outlets published numerous articles on this controversy.

In the end, the Tangier festival awarded Kamal Hachkar the Prize for Best Debut Work. The controversy surrounding the documentary dwindled because it was based on a misunderstanding: the documentary is not a political tool. It has nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It does not promote any ideological agenda. It passes no judgment.

At the very least, one could have recognized the philosophical significance of the documentary:

Young Moroccans are not familiar with the real history of Morocco

Kamal was right. It is indeed the identity dimension that must have sparked both enthusiastic reactions and objections. And this is the second lesson that the documentary unveils: too few Moroccans, especially young people, truly know the breadth and depth of Morocco’s identity.

Clearly, they do not know the real history of Morocco.

This journey, however long it may be, has already begun. The reactions of the Moroccan public to the documentary illustrate a thirst for knowledge regarding history at the individual level, within families, in relation to their particular roots and respective genealogies. Slowly, the appetite to know more is sharpening.

A new chapter between the Jews and Morocco can now be written

Tinghir has certainly lost its Jewish communities; families have been separated, friendships have been broken, and traditions have been forgotten. The bitterness of the rupture remains unaltered, but today memories can be displayed openly and without taboo.

Kamal Hachkar carries within him the conviction that Morocco must rediscover the face of its deep-rooted identity anchored in the vastness of history. Indeed, and thanks to the late King Hassan II, many Israelis return to Morocco every year. Many Moroccan Jews from all over the world visit Morocco for their holidays, making pilgrimages to the places of their ancestors.

It is also true, and Kamal echoes this sentiment in his new documentary project “In Your Eyes, I See My Country” that many young Israelis of Moroccan origin want to experience life in Morocco, and conversely, many young Moroccans, Muslims therefore, wish to discover Israel.

To proudly display the virtues of Morocco’s universality

A new chapter may truly be unfolding in Morocco, as elsewhere. Confrontations rooted in nationalist inspirations seem to be giving way to the recognition that a common destiny could once again be asserted among communities that were once in symbiosis, despite the ruptures, tears, and distances. The magic of connection could once again be at work. The richness of diversity could once again be a source of blessings for all.

Morocco could proudly display, both to its own people and to the world, the plurality of its identity and the virtues of its universality.

What a beautiful adventure it is to attempt the writing of this new chapter in Morocco’s history!

This adventure sketches the future in light of the past for the illumination of the present.

Kamal Hachkar believes in it, as do many others with him. His work as a filmmaker intersects with his former profession as a teacher. He knows how knowledge is the key to all inner wealth. He knows that it is the children and the youth who are the future architects of this new face of Morocco.

The challenge is to awaken them to this challenge, to reignite in them the desire for this conquest, and above all, to awaken their appetite for the long term, the time before, so rich in all its legacies, and the time after, so vast with “all these impossibilities to make possible.”

Tinghir-Jérusalem – Les échos du Mellah : documentary film directed by Kamal Hachkar – Une co-production Les Films d’un Jour – 2M – Berbère TVVoir sur Youtube.

Dans tes yeux, je vois mon pays : the new documentary film by Kamal Hachkar Watch the trailer on Vimeo.

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