It is one of humanity’s earliest writings, but its origin is subject to various explanations that draw on Egyptian, South Arabian, Greek, Iberian, or Phoenician roots. To date, and just like the exact origin of the Berber people, no thesis has conclusively settled these debates, which in themselves illustrate the dimension of mystery carried by the Berber world.

What is certain is that the existence of Tifinagh, formerly known as the Libyan script, has been attested by scientists since antiquity, and later during the Punic and Roman periods. This is notably visible on funerary monuments and concerns a vast territory stretching from the Mediterranean to the south of Niger, and from the Canary Islands to Libya.

Although the use of this alphabet disappeared early on, the Tuaregs, tribes of the Sahara Desert, are the only contemporary Berber-speaking people to have retained a living practice of writing in Tifinagh.

To better understand this topic, southeast-morocco.com has enlisted the knowledge and experience of Ahmed Skounti, a specialist in these matters in Morocco.

Southeast-morocco.com – Is the debate regarding the origin of Tifinagh closed today? Do we know precisely if this alphabet originates from Phoenician, as an external source, or is it from an endogenous source within its territories of use?

Ahmed Skounti – The debate on origins is rarely ‘definitively’ closed. Science is relative; its conclusions are accepted until proven otherwise, unlike belief, which is absolute and final. The allochthonous origin of Tifinagh was proposed by early researchers in the 19th and 20th centuries. For over two decades now, the idea of an indigenous origin has begun to gain ground.

Southeast-morocco.com – Are the Libyan and Tifinagh alphabets one and the same? If not, what establishes their difference? When and why is the transition between these two alphabets observed?

AS – The Libyco and Tifinagh scripts are two variants of the same alphabet. Each of them includes geographical sub-variants. The term “Libyco” was used by early researchers to refer to inscriptions discovered in the northern part of North Africa, particularly in ancient archaeological sites like Volubilis in Morocco, Tipasa in Algeria, and Dougga in Tunisia. This term is also used in the formula “Libyco-Berber inscription” to describe writings associated with engravings and paintings found in rock art sites across the Saharan and sub-Saharan regions of North Africa.

The term “Tifinagh” was originally used more specifically in connection with inscriptions of the Tuaregs, an Amazigh people whose territory spans Algeria, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Libya.

These two terms, “Libyco” and “Tifinagh,” are merely designations given by researchers, and there is no need to speak of a transition from one to the other. However, the word “Tifinagh,” which has remained in use among the Tuaregs, deserves attention. Some believe it originates from a root “FNGH/FNQ” that is linked to Phoenician.

Southeast-morocco.com – At what time does the earliest written expression attributed to Tifinagh date back to, and what were the territories where it was used?

AS – At present, we do not have precise datings to determine the earliest expression of this Amazigh script. Gabriel Camps suggested that the inscription from the Azib-n-Ikkis site in Yagour, Western High Atlas, could date back to the 5th-7th centuries BCE. In 2012, together with Moroccan and Italian colleagues, we published the dating of the paintings in Ifran-n-Taska, in the eastern Bani. Three samples provided the following approximate dates: 7th, 5th, and 3rd millennia BCE. The lowest, dating to the 3rd millennium BCE, corresponds to the first millennium BCE. The dated paintings are associated with a few painted inscriptions. However, as we did not collect a sample from the painted script itself, we do not know if the painted inscriptions date back, like the dated paintings, to the 1st millennium BCE. We are left to assume so, but it is clear, in any case, that this script is very ancient.

One of the few texts dated precisely is the bilingual Punic/Libyco dedication to King Massinissa dating back to 139-138 BCE. It is likely that future research will shed more light on this subject, provided that archaeological research is further encouraged.

Massinissa : (238 BC – 148 BC) was an ancient Numidian king best known for leading a federation of Massylii Berber tribes during the Second Punic War (218–201 BC), ultimately uniting them into a kingdom that became a major regional power in North Africa
Numidia : Numidia was the ancient kingdom of the Numidians in northwest Africa, initially comprising the territory that now makes up Algeria, but later expanding across what is today known as Tunisia and Libya.

The Tifinagh is still waiting for its Champollion.

Southeast-morocco.com – What would be the oldest word transcribed in Tifinagh and which people would be its authors? What would have been the earliest semantic intentions of those who used Tifinagh? What were the messages conveyed during the time of its origins?

AS – It is difficult to answer these questions. While relatively recent Tifinaghs in Tuareg environments can be deciphered, the same cannot be said as we move further back in time. Inscriptions from ancient archaeological sites have revealed a few rare secrets, such as the inscription from Dougga, which informs us about the political organization of ancient cities.

It appears that, much like the language, which has several dialects in the Maghreb and Sahara, the writing system differentiated from one region to another. In the north, at least two alphabets have been identified: Eastern Libyan and Western Libyan. In the south, in addition to the four Tuareg alphabets, there are other Saharan or sub-Saharan alphabets, such as the alphabet of Foum Chenna, of which we identified the 33 characters in the book “Tirra, aux origines de l’écriture au Maroc” that my late colleagues Mustapha Nami, who has recently passed away, Abdelkhalek Lemjidi, and I wrote at the beginning of the millennium. This book was the first publication of the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture (IRCAM) in 2003.

Dougga : Dougga is an archaeological site located in the north-west of Tunisia. It was placed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1997 and is renowned for its well-preserved monuments and the rich history of its Libyan, Punic, Numidian, Romano-African and Byzantine past.

On a diachronic level, it is highly probable that the successive transformations of Amazigh dialects make it difficult to decipher an earlier, now disappeared state. Additionally, the consonantal nature of the script does not facilitate decryption attempts. Finally, North African cooperation is necessary. With the technological means available today and by pooling efforts, it is possible to advance knowledge in this field. Recognition of Amazigh in Morocco and Algeria should contribute to this endeavor.

In short, this script still awaits its Champollion!

Southeast-morocco.com – Despite the antiquity of its written transcriptions, why has the Amazigh language remained largely limited to an oral status for so long? Why have Berber culture and literature not been transcribed in Tifinagh, despite the presence of numerous signs of this alphabet in Amazigh craftsmanship?

AS – It appears that the predominant uses of ancient Amazigh writing remained marginal in a society that did not experience the emergence of central political power endogenously. The Numidian kingdom stands as an exception, as it elevated Amazigh writing to an official script alongside Punic (Phoenician) writing. The previously mentioned Dougga inscription attests to this. Other ancient Moorish kingdoms, principalities established after the Romans, and medieval empires that arose within the framework of Islam do not seem to have employed this script. Even its usage outside central power circles narrowed and disappeared before the Muslim conquest.

Tifinagh continued to be used in the Tuareg region. In the Sahara and the Maghreb, it appears that the symbolic foundation from which Tifinagh originated continues to be utilized in various crafts (weaving, pottery, jewelry, etc.).

Furthermore, while orality indeed dominates the modalities of Amazigh culture transmission, Tifinagh writing was not entirely absent in ancient times. However, more recently, authors have often used other scripts, particularly Arabic and Latin. Since the 11th century and especially in the 18th century, writings in Amazigh have employed the Arabic script, such as “L’Océan des pleurs,” a treatise on Maliki jurisprudence by Mohammed Al-Awzali (died in 1749).

Activists of the Amazigh Cultural Movement have also utilized the Arabic script to write poetry, short stories, or novels. Academician Mohamed Chafik used it for his three-volume Arabic-Amazigh dictionary. The Latin script has also been used to transcribe Amazigh since the 19th century. It has also been adopted by activists of the Amazigh Cultural Movement to write literary creations or transcribe oral texts. These two scripts, Arabic and Latin, continue to be used today despite the adoption of Tifinagh-IRCAM since 2003 as the official script of the Amazigh language in Morocco.

A lire : A dinosaur slumbering in South East Morocco

Southeast-morocco.com – In your opinion, what is the role of Tifinagh and, more broadly, the future of the Amazigh language in a Morocco undergoing significant linguistic changes, particularly with its openness to foreign languages?

AS – It is difficult to predict the future of social and cultural phenomena. Since 2003, Tifinagh has been established as the official script of the Amazigh language. In 2011, the Constitution recognized Amazigh as an official language alongside Arabic. In 2019, the organic law concerning this official status was finally adopted. It defines the areas of mandatory use of Amazigh according to a staggered implementation schedule. Amazigh transcribed in Tifinagh has been taught in public schools since 2003. Although its progression and territorial extent remain modest, it enables the dissemination of the language and, more profoundly, a reconciliation of Moroccans with their identity, whether Amazigh-speaking or Arabic-speaking.

However, schools, from primary to university, need textbooks to teach Tifinagh. It is therefore important to transcribe oral literature and encourage literary and artistic creation in Amazigh expression or inspiration to instill in learners a taste for a language undergoing gradual rehabilitation.

The survival of Amazigh as a language is nothing short of a miracle

Southeast-morocco.com – Can we say that Tifinagh would be the first expression of Amazigh singularity?

AS – Tifinagh is undeniably a specific trait of Amazigh culture. Emerging from the depths of ages and recently undergoing Unicode standardization, which allows its integration into various computer platforms, the future of this simple and original script is still long ahead.

Southeast-morocco.com – What would be the second expression of this Amazigh singularity?

AS – The oral language itself is an Amazigh singularity. Contemporary with powerful languages such as Greek and Latin, having coexisted with Arabic, a powerful liturgical language, and living today alongside international languages such as French, Spanish, and English, its survival can be likened to a miracle.

When the 2014 population census announced that 28% of the 34 million Moroccans spoke one of the three dialects of Amazigh, alarm bells rang. But it seems that they were not heard loudly enough. While it is true that Moroccan Arabic speakers are also, anthropologically speaking, Amazigh, the loss of this millennia-old language would be highly detrimental to Morocco and to cultural diversity on a global scale.

Southeast-morocco.com – Would you have anything to add to our readers?

AS – I would like to pay tribute to my friend Mustapha Nami, who passed away on February 4, 2020. Coming from Aït Ihya Ou Atmane (Goulmima) in our Drâa Tafilalet region, with his passing, Morocco loses a researcher and a highly valued professional.

In addition to his research in prehistory, rock art, and the history of Amazigh writing, he coordinated the preparation of several submissions of Moroccan elements to be inscribed on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list. The last submission he was working on in this field concerns the knowledge and know-how related to khettaras. I hope that it will be completed by the partners with whom he was preparing it so that it can be submitted to UNESCO.

Mustapha contributed greatly to his region, and it would be desirable for it to honor his memory by preserving it.

Ahmed Skouti was born in Timatdite (Assoul) in the High Atlas Mountains, now in the province of Tinghir. He is currently a Professor of Higher Education at the National Institute of Archaeological Sciences and Heritage (INSAP, Rabat) where he teaches anthropology and cultural heritage. He holds a doctorate in anthropology from the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris and is also an expert in cultural heritage at UNESCO. He has written several texts in the fields of anthropology, heritage, history, culture, literature, and rock art.

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The traveler thus admires, scattered along the valleys fracturing the mineral vastness of the Atlas, all these villages and their homes, huddled together with a clear intent of protection, made of earth and embedded in the earth, as if veiled, almost invisible beneath the uniformity of the ochre adorning them.

At the ksar of Aït Ben Haddou, as everywhere else in the southeastern Moroccan region and beyond the vast Sahara Desert, the structure of dwellings is built block by block using the compaction technique within a wooden frame of slightly moist earth interspersed with stones. This is the age-old technique of rammed earth construction.

One must envision the repeated action of the artisan mason. He compacts, using a long and heavy wooden pestle, the natural mortar to the rhythm of the workers’ song, who pour, one after the other, their bucket of earth into the mold, thus rendering, under the force of his blows, and after drying, the earth mixture as solid as rock.

To live in the embrace of the earth is above all to shield oneself from the vagaries of climate, and the region welcomes them here in their starkness, both winter and summer. It is also to indulge in the encompassing silence. It is to provide one’s community with an organized, comforting home, as so many peoples have done under different skies, around a central room pierced in its midst by an opening to the sky and its lights, with a series of rooms surrounding it.

This earthen structure is covered on its facades with another layer of earth mixed with straw or sand. Here lies the opportunity to inscribe the signs of its mixed traditions, perpetuating the sacred or simply delighting in presenting to the eye the elegance of the designs.

Often, walls surrounded the villages in their entirety to fortify them against all threats and thus preserve their agricultural harvests from the voracious appetite of enemies ever on the lookout. The village then became a ksar, an Ighrem in the Amazigh language. In its center, a large space allowed the inhabitants to gather to discuss collective affairs or to celebrate around traditional Ahwach dances. Here in Aït Ben Haddou, the agora is organized in a square called Agoulid n’Youssef.

The Jewish community of the ksar used to gather around a round stone, Tifirte n’raha, also called Abraham’s stone. The caravanserai near the north entrance, called Imi n’Taqmout, welcomed visitors and their mounts. A main street irrigated a maze of narrow alleys, often covered with a roof. Stone benches here and there offered rest for the elders. The mosque awaited prayers, as did the synagogue.

Thus went life in the ksar of Aït Ben Haddou, at the heart of the earth and on the thread of time.

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Their presence, long perceived as something self-evident, gradually faded away, leaving behind abandoned synagogues, deserted mellahs and scattered stories suspended between memory and oblivion.

The reasons for their departure were many. Political changes, economic upheavals and new aspirations led to a mass exile towards Israel, Europe and North America. Yet despite the distance, this diaspora has kept an unbreakable bond with its native land, where the echoes of its passage can still be heard.

To rediscover this history is to lift the veil on a little-known facet of Moroccan heritage, and to understand how this legacy continues to shape the identity of the south-east of the country.

Version française

Three centuries later, the founding of Carthage, in present-day Tunisia, intensified these migratory movements. The Greek myths surrounding the giant Atlas, together with the irresistible attraction of the ocean, would forever magnetise both sides of Africa.

Then came the Romans, the Byzantines, the Ottomans, the Arabs. Over the centuries, the lands of north-western Africa became a crossroads of passions and ambitions, an eldorado for every kind of project, a crucible of constant cultural mixing and the workshop of the slow, laborious construction of a country: Morocco.

Very early on, scattered within these human tides, Jewish communities settled here and there, following their wanderings with no other aim than to find a place where they could stop and build a life, often after fleeing another land.

They then took part in the life of their host territories, joining their hands, hearts and intelligence to the labour of the other communities already present, and of those that would join them later. Together, generation after generation, they helped weave the plural identity of what would become Morocco.

The making of a mosaic people

The first waves of Jewish immigration are believed to have arrived aboard Phoenician ships, on the coasts near the mouth of the Oued Noun, in the region of Guelmim in southern Morocco. From there, different groups gradually moved inland, especially towards the valleys of the Drâa, the Tafilalet and the Dadès, and towards the High Atlas.

One legend tells that King Solomon sent Jewish explorers to the Drâa region in the 10th century BC in search of gold. It is also said that some groups may have reached the area directly by crossing the continent at the time of the first destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 586 BC, following the mass deportation of the surviving Hebrews to Babylon.

Historically, the only concrete proof of the ancient Jewish presence in Morocco dates back to the 2nd century BC. It consists of funerary objects found in the ruins of the Roman site of Volubilis, bearing inscriptions in Hebrew and Greek.

Until the arrival of Arab tribes from the 7th century onwards, more than a thousand years passed during which Jewish, Berber and sub-Saharan communities shaped a coherent social and cultural space together. Judaism, Christianity and paganism all found expression there, depending on the period, the various local powers and the foreign occupying forces, such as the Romans, the Vandals and the Byzantines.

The growing influence of Islam naturally changed the situation. It protected Jewish communities from the major Roman or Byzantine persecutions by placing them under the status of dhimmi. This social position, discriminatory in practice, nevertheless guaranteed them a real and more bearable form of protection, one that could even become more flexible depending on the mindset of successive sultans, and above all of local chiefs.

While the Almohad period plunged Jews back into persecution, the other sultanates allowed a communal symbiosis to develop between Jewish, Arab and Berber components. This was even stronger in rural areas, where these human groups, brought together, came to form one and the same community. Each retained its cultural singularity, but over time many of these cultures mixed and were transformed.

The German historian, Shlomo D. Goitein, was able to state:

In Morocco, a common destiny was being forged between these communities, without intention, and even without awareness. It rested both on the unprecedented accumulation of a shared past and on the tragic upheavals of history and of individual lives.

Thus, in the 17th century, Morocco became a land of exile for the three communities together — Berber, Arab and Jewish — then driven out of Andalusia. This forged a certain closeness between them around the nostalgic memory of the Iberian eldorado, and helped enrich their common culture.

The Drâa Valley, a cradle of settlement and influence

Because of its geographical position, south-eastern Morocco was one of the privileged territories for the settlement of Jewish communities. Their presence was so significant that the only documentary sources shedding light on the history of this region before the arrival of Arab tribes are said to be Hebrew manuscripts dating from the 12th century.

These accounts mention the arrival, around the 5th century BC, of nomadic Jews travelling in camel caravans, and their settlement at the site of Taourirt N’Tidri — the hill of Tidri — near present-day Zagora. Even today, stone and rammed-earth remains can still be seen there, bearing witness to the ancient Jewish presence.

From Tidri, Jews spread to other neighbouring localities such as Beni Sbih and Beni Hayyoun, Amzrou south of Zagora, Asselim N’Ougdz, Tamnougalte, Tazroute, Tagmadarte and Mhamid El-Ghizlane.

Within the flow of these same mythical accounts, mention is also made of the founding of the town of Tamegroute by Jews, as the capital of a Jewish kingdom of the Drâa. This kingdom is said to have dominated the region from the 7th century until the end of the 11th century, when the arrival of the Muslim Berber tribes, the Sanhajas of the Almoravid sultanates, plunged Jewish communities back into a cycle of persecution and definitively deprived them of any possibility of exercising authority over the territories.

Tamegroute stood out for its urban character and, above all, for its cultural influence. Hebrew learning enjoyed great renown there throughout southern Morocco. The Talmudic scholar Moïse Abraham Halevy Ed-Draoui remains the emblematic figure of this period in the 10th century.

The Dadès Valley, the Ziz and the whole Tafilalet

Important Jewish settlements were also established in the Dadès Valley, notably at Tiylite, a few kilometres from present-day Kelaa M’Gouna.

A 12th-century work entitled Kitâb Al Istibṣar, written by an anonymous Arab geographer, refers to Tiylite as a madina, meaning a town. It describes it as a place through which caravans passed, equipped with a fortress, garrisons and the presence of a wali, or governor.

Tiylite was indeed a point of convergence for populations from neighbouring regions, as shown by the list of families buried in its Jewish cemetery: Ait Ouzzine, Ait Tazarine, Ait Ofilal, Imeghrane, Ait Hnana, Ait Icho, Ait Messoud, Ait David.

The Todgha and Dadès valleys also welcomed large Jewish communities from Andalusia after its reconquest by the Spanish Catholic monarchy. The ksar of Asfalou thus became a major place of residence for the Jews of Todgha, followed by the ksar of Tinghir, Taourirte and Ait Ourjdal.

The importance of the Jews in Todgha is explicitly carried in a local Amazigh popular song:

In the Tafilalet, around the Ziz basin, many Jewish settlements prospered. They experienced major economic and social growth with the founding of the city of Sijilmassa by the Zenata Berbers. After the decline of this radiant city in the 14th century, Jews continued their destiny in other ksour, such as the ksar of Tabouâssamte, Almamoun, Alfouqani, as well as the ksour of Beni Moussa and Moucheqlal.

Read also : Sijilmassa, the mythical city that shone the true heart of the Maghreb

The Tafilalet is also the native region of great Jewish rabbis such as Rabbi Ya’akov Abehssera, born in Rissani in 1889, Rabbi Moul Tria and Rabbi Moul Sedra.

The names of Jewish families still echo in local collective memory: Benchetrit, Benitah, Bensemhoun, Dahan, Illouz, Mamane, Nezri, Teboul Hazout, Bensaid, Zenou, Amoyal, as well as the Benhamou and Azeroual families in Boudnib.

Once the establishment of mellahs became the norm in Morocco’s major cities from the 19th century onwards, the towns and villages of south-eastern Morocco also created these areas reserved for Jewish communities. Some of them gained considerable renown, such as those of Rissani, Erfoud and Demnate.

Ouarzazate, too, was home to significant Jewish populations, notably in the villages of Telmasla, in the Kasbah of Taourirte, in Tamassinte, Imini and Tikirt. Rabbi Yihia Ben Baroukh Cohen Azogh rests in Tifoultoute. Agouim also hosts the tomb of Rabbi David Ou Moshé, born in Jerusalem. The village of Tazenakhte was especially renowned for the presence, in its synagogue, of an important theological document known as the Sefer Tislit, or the Scroll of Tislit.

A symbiosis between Jewish and Muslim communities

Jews and Muslims therefore shared a common existence within an equally common destiny. This fusion gave rise to a mixed culture, Judeo-Berber-Arab in character, in which many elements of identity were shared, such as the veneration of saints and ritual ceremonies around their tombs. On the Muslim side, this was the Moussem; on the Jewish side, the Hiloula. Often, the two communities venerated the same saints under different names.

Thus, in the Drâa region, Jews and Muslims celebrated a pilgrimage to the tomb of the same saint in Tidri, known as Isaac Akkouim by Jews and Sidi Moussa by Muslims. In Demnate, another saint named Haroun Ben Cohen was also venerated by local Muslims under the name Bou Lbarakat, meaning “the one who grants blessings.”

This cultural harmony between Jews and Muslims is also illustrated by family names, since only a small minority of Moroccan Jewish surnames have Hebrew or Aramaic roots. Most Jewish names reveal a local Berber, Arab or sub-Saharan connotation, or refer to a profession, a tribal affiliation or a geographical origin.

Jewish know-how in the service of the common good

While Jews in the great imperial cities often played important political and economic roles with the sultans, as influential advisers, financial managers or diplomatic agents, their role in the territories of the south-east was crucial to the development of localities and the organisation of their economies.

The prosperity of trans-Saharan trade rested largely on their involvement, thanks to their ancestral knowledge of the desert and of nomadic life. This know-how, together with their command of local languages, allowed them to open routes between remote regions, enabling their artisans to take part in weekly souks: blacksmiths, goldsmiths, gunsmiths, locksmiths, tailors, shoemakers, makers of saddles and babouches, carpets and blankets.

A perfect example is given by Rabbi Mardochée Aby Serour of Akka, who accompanied the French explorer Charles de Foucauld during his reconnaissance journey through Morocco in 1883.

Around the year 1070, the Andalusian geographer Al-Bakri described the Jews present in Sijilmassa as specialists in masonry and architecture. Throughout south-eastern Morocco, they were indeed the builders of many kasbahs and ksour, and the engineers of many agricultural facilities, especially those related to irrigation.

But it was in trade that Jews naturally acquired lasting skill and reputation. A popular saying illustrates this beautifully:

An uprooting marked by heartbreak

The 20th century would bring profound upheavals to the communal fabric that had been woven over the centuries between the Jewish and Muslim communities of Morocco.

On the one hand, the French Protectorate encouraged the rural exodus of Jewish families towards the major cities, drawn by access to Western modernity and no doubt by a hope of emancipation. On the other hand, France supported the development of modernised education based on the secular model of the French system.

The Alliance Israélite Universelle, a French organisation, thus offered mass schooling to young Jewish girls and boys, including those from the poorest families, and therefore also in rural Morocco.

The second half of the 20th century, from Morocco’s independence onwards and in the context of the various conflicts between Israel and the surrounding Arab countries, saw the departure from Morocco of the immense majority of Jews, even though they had become Moroccan citizens.

Mrs Fadma, originally from Ouarzazate, who died during the Covid-19 lockdown at the age of around 120, recalled those moments of separation with regret:

The eclipse of Jewish communities from Morocco’s national narrative

More than two thousand years later, the traces of the Jewish communities in south-eastern Morocco are gradually disappearing. They can still be found in the names of certain villages, in family names, in popular legends and in local customs.

Although oral tradition still manages to preserve some memories of all these shared communities of life between Berber, Arab and Jewish populations, time may erase them forever if nothing is done to highlight and preserve them, further eclipsing the Jewish share in Morocco’s national story.

The history of this participation of Jewish communities in the construction of Morocco remains little known, especially among younger Moroccan generations. Some initiatives have emerged in certain major Moroccan cities to counter this historical amnesia and restore all its colours to the collective story. Here in south-eastern Morocco, however, as with so many other facets of this region’s rich mosaic of memory, nothing has yet been done.

The testimony of a Moroccan Jewish woman who left for Israel expresses a clear wish:

The mystery of this Jew, Moroccan forever, remains intact

In the end, once the pilgrimages have passed and all memories have faded, there will remain the indelible scar of the heartbreak caused by the mass exodus of the Jewish community.

The heartbreak of entire families torn away from a land that had become native to them — and even more than that, a land of origin.

The heartbreak of being removed from a country that had become theirs.

And finally, the heartbreak felt by all those who watched leave the men and women with whom, despite everything, despite periods of persecution, constraints and humiliations, they had shared, over the centuries, the experience of having become Moroccan.

The history of Jews in Morocco thus unfolds across a very long path where light and shadow intertwine, faithfully reflecting the journey of our shared humanity. Yet one singular fact can be observed, and every testimony confirms it: the Moroccan Jew, whether from the south-east, from other rural regions or from the great cities, has left. But wherever he may be in the world — in Israel, in Europe, in Canada or anywhere else — he keeps his Moroccan component present and alive within him.

Between the suffering and the beauty of his existence in Morocco, the mystery of the Jew, forever Moroccan, remains intact.

This mystery undoubtedly sheds light on the past of all Moroccans and of all Moroccan territories. It could also illuminate their future, if the awakening of memory could be understood as the illumination, in all its colours, of the great and beautiful history of Morocco — a kingdom then fully proud of its plural identity.

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This article begins with that simple question. It invites us to look again at North African history from a different angle, and to understand how the Berber — or Amazigh — identity, long neglected or underestimated, could have become a powerful source of cultural unity across the region.

From the ancient origins of the Berbers to their living legacy in languages, traditions and ways of life, this is a return to the source: a way to see how shared memory can help shape the future of the Maghreb.

Version française

Had this simple phrase echoed in the minds of Moroccan schoolchildren throughout their years at school — as “our ancestors, the Gauls” once did for French children — the face of Morocco might have been changed.

And if, alongside them, young Algerians, Tunisians, Libyans and so many others across North Africa had learned the same refrain — our ancestors, the Berbers — the face of the world itself might have been different.

Imagine this small tune passing through the minds of children, generation after generation. The peoples of the Maghreb might today have understood themselves, naturally and historically, as belonging to one shared national and cultural space.

Better still, the North African origin of anyone living or travelling in Europe might have been immediately understood as part of a Berber identity. More than any visa, it could have become a true passport — a way of moving freely through the world.

Of course, this is fiction. Today, it belongs only to the realm of impossible utopia.

The populations of the southern Mediterranean were, from a very early stage, exposed to inevitable mixtures with peoples coming from every horizon. Some territories, because of their position, became crossroads more than others. Morocco, at the junction of two continents, is one of them.

Here, the cultural traces left by successive waves of human movement were engraved more deeply than elsewhere.

The identity of peoples, between alchemy and narrative

In reality, the process through which countries build their identity has little to do with the genealogy of peoples. It is often more a matter of dialectic than of history.

The aim is not only to tell the history of a people, but to construct its narrative. The strict historicity of such identity narratives is often secondary.

In the end, it is almost always a kind of alchemy. Human diversities are melted together, fused and recomposed until they emerge as a third, synthetic unity — the unity that allows a nation, at a given moment in its history, to become a body and to exist.

This is the very process through which Morocco, in the preamble to its 2011 Constitution, stated that its unity, forged by the convergence of its Arab-Islamic, Amazigh and Saharan-Hassani components, had been nourished and enriched by its African, Andalusian, Hebrew and Mediterranean tributaries.

Everywhere, in a once-shared past, there is the Berber

Whatever narrative is being built, whatever human diversities are being brought into alliance, the makers of national identity always work with elementary materials, with primal components.

And everywhere in northern Africa, in a past once shared by all, there is the Berber.

Wherever one stands between the eastern and western edges of Africa, there has always been this same human substratum, born of a deep past common to all the territories concerned.

This is a factual reality. It is indelible, despite the many attempts to erase it over the centuries. It remains undeniable, despite the ambiguity carried by this enigmatic name: Berber / Amazigh.

The Berber human presence is now widely recognised as the oldest common denominator linking so many peoples and nations. Yet one fact stands out: these peoples and nations were unable to claim this common ancestor, and therefore unable to share him.

The Berber paradox through time

The mystery attached to the word “Berber” partly explains the difficulties that emerged, century after century, in building a Berber identity capable of gaining broad recognition.

Gabriel Camps, one of the major specialists on the subject, expressed what could be called the Berber paradox with striking clarity:

The historian does not try to resolve the paradox. Faithful to the rigour of his discipline, he notes that the ancient Berbers may not have shared one truly common language, but they did possess …

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This writing system, Libyco-Berber, survives today in the Tifinagh alphabet of the Tuareg, the Amazigh community that has preserved some of the deepest foundations of Berber origin.

But very early on, Punic writing, then Latin, and finally Arabic, took over among these peoples. Linguistic Arabisation eventually became socio-cultural Arabisation, to the point that, in some countries, almost entire populations came to say they were Arab, to believe they were Arab, and therefore, in social and cultural terms, to become Arab.

And yet, Gabriel Camps expressed this paradox in particularly striking terms:

The paradox is clear.

Across North Africa, without interruption over time, a powerful mixture took place through successive Punic, Jewish, Roman, Vandal, Byzantine, Arab, Turkish and finally European impulses.

Yet everywhere, a local identity remained alive. It endured despite the accumulation of external contributions. Very early on, this raised a question: what was this Berber presence that could absorb the foreign newcomer while still preserving its own continuity?

This mystery troubled the minds of successive arrivals. It led them, again and again, to make the Berber foreign to the very lands they had just discovered — to imagine him, like themselves, as someone who had come from elsewhere, from some distant place, rather than simply from here.

The Berber, the “other” who had to come from elsewhere

In the 5th century BC, the Greek historian and geographer Herodotus was among the first to describe the peoples living west of Egypt. He called them Libyans, distinguishing between those who lived as nomads by the sea and those who were farmers, settled in houses among mountainous and wooded landscapes — clearly the regions of the Atlas — whom he called the Maxyes.

Several centuries later, his Roman counterpart Sallust refined this portrait of the indigenous populations. The nomadic group would later be associated with the name Gaetulians, while the sedentary group retained the name Libyans. According to Sallust, together they represented the humans present in these territories since prehistoric times: primitive hunter-gatherers whom he described as…

Unsurprisingly, the Roman historian imagined them as having been civilised by peoples from the East — more precisely the Medes and Persians — who were said to have settled there.

Gabriel Camps explains that the term Maxyes is the Greek rendering of Imazighen, the plural of Amazigh, used by indigenous groups to identify themselves as a community.

In this way, all the foreigners who came to the territories between Egypt and the Atlantic Ocean named the local populations according to their own phonetic understanding of this ancient name of identity: Meshwesh for the Egyptians, Mazices or Madices for the Romans, Mazigh for the Arabs.

Camps developed the theory that the appearance, in ancient accounts, of Mede tribes supposedly coming from the East may in fact have resulted from a distortion of the Roman name Madices — that is, the Imazighen encountered locally.

This linguistic distortion would have been driven by a difficulty: the difficulty of imagining that non-Romanised indigenous populations could possess their own cultural and civilisational qualities.

In search of an impossible origin

Imazighen, Maxyes, Madices, Medes… This litany of names designating the Berber would later be synthesised under the generic term Moors, used to describe non-Latinised North Africans.

Yet throughout the centuries, observers continued to give the Berber an ancestry external to the land in which he lived. There remained a persistent tendency to connect this mysterious Berber, although clearly present there, to some distant root.

The Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea argued for a Phoenician origin. Saint Augustine, from his city of Hippo near Carthage, saw Canaanite roots in his compatriots. Another Greek historian, Strabo, saw nothing less than Indians behind the Moors.

Herodotus claimed that the Imazighen were descended from the Trojans, while Plutarch described the great Greek hero Heracles leading Mycenaean communities towards Mauretania Tingitana — northern Morocco — around 1500 BC.

In the 14th century, the famous geographer Ibn Khaldun was even more categorical:

European historians of the 19th century continued this frantic search for Berber origins. Here and there, they gave credit to Oriental or Indian theories, even going so far as to attribute the dolmens and other megalithic monuments discovered in Algeria to Celtic, Gallic — and therefore French — or more broadly Nordic origins.

This “stranger”, indigenous for 9,000 years

Anthropological research paints a very different picture, one detached from free from ideological bias.

Of course, human presence in North Africa, and in the Maghreb in particular, goes back to very ancient times.

It is now accepted that the different human representatives identified in the Maghreb — from the early Homo sapiens of Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, through the Aterian humans of Dar es-Soltane, to the Mechta-Afalou type represented at Afalou Bou Rhummel in Algeria — evolved locally, each in their own period, without needing to be explained by an external origin, and in parallel with other human developments elsewhere in the world.

One must then wait until around 9000 BC for a new human type, coming from the Near East, to settle in large numbers as far as the ocean. This type would be called Proto-Mediterranean and became known through the rise of the Capsian culture.

This newcomer developed along different branches, each carrying specific morphological characteristics. Two major tendencies can be distinguished: on one side, more robust types; on the other, more gracile types, with the whole range, as always, expressed through infinite nuances.

Over the millennia, these Proto-Mediterraneans spread across a large part of the Mediterranean world, from Libya to Italy.

And so Gabriel Camps was able to confirm:

The unfolding of the Berber tree

The Berber thus anchored his genealogical root firmly in the very lands of his development: the Maghreb.

And in the same broad movement as other human groups across the planet, he entered the radical transformations of the Neolithic period, with settled life, agriculture and animal husbandry.

He would continuously receive and assimilate human and cultural contributions from the East, from the Sahara and from the European continent through Spain. Some of these contributions would prove more influential than others, especially the Bedouin migrations of the 11th century, which sealed the Arabisation of the populations.

But in every era, these Maghreb territories and their human communities acted as powerful civilisational crucibles. From them emerged peoples, cultures, kingdoms and, much later, nations.

Across the millennia, this original Berber would thus become an actor in the wider course of human evolution.

He would be the bovidian herder whose presence is found in rock art. He would be the chariot driver of the equidian period, crossing the vast expanses of the Sahara armed with his javelin.

Having become a horseman, he would be the Gaetulian observed by the Roman conquerors, and then the Garamantian nomad, true ancestor of the Tuareg, a proud warrior carrying his long sword.

Before that, he would have been the Libyan described by Herodotus, or the Maxyes.

He would become the Numidian of the great Masaesylian and Massylian kingdoms, with King Massinissa.

Finally, the Berber would cross the centuries under the name of Moor, from the westernmost lands of the continent to Andalusia.

Under the gaze of Ibn Khaldun, the Berber would unfold not as a set of localised peoples, but as a tribal lineage.

He would be the Sanhaja, son of Znag, the camel-driving nomad. He would also be the Zenata, among the first to undergo deep Arabisation.

Both would found major dynasties: the Almoravids, from whom a vast empire would emerge, and the Marinids.

He would also be the Berber of the Masmuda tribe, from which the great Almohad dynasty would flourish — a power whose reach would reunite all the original territories of its Proto-Mediterranean ancestor.

The mosaic of a borderless story

The Berber — the Amazigh of ancient times — would not only unfold through tribes, peoples, cities and kingdoms. He would also give rise to many powerful and radiant figures, whose names would be engraved on the pages of a borderless story, truly shared by all of North Africa.

He would be Sheshonq I, Pharaoh of Egypt in 950 BC and founder of the 22nd Dynasty; the famous King Massinissa, who contributed to Rome’s victory over Carthage in 202 BC; and also Jugurtha, king of Numidia, Juba II, Ptolemy of Mauretania and Masuna, king of the Kingdom of the Moors and Romans at the beginning of the 6th century.

Over the centuries, the Berber would carry countless destinies: that of Dihya, the Zenata Berber queen; that of Tin Hinan, born in Tafilalet and queen of the Tuareg of Hoggar; that of Augustin, bishop of Hippo; Arius, priest of Alexandria; Donatus Magnus, bishop of Africa; Tertullian, Father of the Church of Rome; and Macrinus, Diadumenian, Caracalla and Aemilian, all Roman emperors.

He becomes Tariq ibn Ziyad, the Umayyad general who set out to conquer the Iberian Peninsula in 711. He travels through unknown lands under the name of Ibn Battuta, one of the greatest explorers of the Middle Ages.

He expresses his thirst for freedom under the names of Lalla Fadhma N’Soumer, Abdelkrim el-Khattabi and Assou Oubasslam, military leader of the Moroccan resistance to French colonialism.

He develops all his talents in the figures of Mohand Ou Lhocine, Kabyle poet and mystic; Si Mohand Ou Mhand; Muhammad Awzal; the Algerian writer Kateb Yacine; Mohamed Choukri; Mouloud Mammeri; Jean Amrouche; the singer Idir — and so many others, men and women of every time and every land, crossed and brought together by this unfathomable, unalterable thread of Amazigh origin.

The conclusion is unequivocal: on these lands of North Africa, from Egypt to the Atlantic Ocean, the Berber stands at the heart of the history unfolding there. He has been both the ink and the paper of a story without author and without title. And yet his spirit remains present and alive, proud and free, where he settled, took root, and then became a tree of existences, 9,000 years ago.

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