The history of the Berber people in northern Africa is extensive and diverse. The Berbers are a large group of non-Arabic tribes, related by language and culture, inhabiting areas stretching from Egypt to the Canary Islands as well as regions south of the Sahara such as Niger and Mali. Archaeologists have traced their origins to the Caspian culture, a North African civilization that dates back more than 10,000 years. Berber-speaking people have lived in North Africa since the earliest times and are first referenced by the Egyptians in 3,000 BC under the name Temehu. Phoenician, Greeks and Roman texts also make reference to them. Since prehistoric times, Berber lands have been a crossroad of peoples from Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. The Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs, Turks, Spaniards, French, and Italians have invaded and ruled portions of the Berber homeland. The Berbers have never experienced a unified political identity. There have been many Berber kingdoms and cultures existing alongside one another in various regions of North Africa and Spain, but never a unified “Berber empire”. Throughout the centuries, Berbers have mixed with many ethnic groups, including Arabs, and because of this, they have come to be identified more by linguistics instead race. Their language is one of the oldest in the world and belongs to the African branch of the Afro-Asian language family, along with ancient Egyptian.

Although never formalized beyond local cults, the Berbers had a rich mythology and belief system structured around a pantheon of gods. Many of their beliefs were developed locally while some were imported or later influenced by contact with other African mythologies, such as the Egyptian religion along with Phoenician mythology, Judaism, Iberian mythology, and the Hellenistic religion during antiquity. The most recent influence came from Arab mythology, when the Berbers were converted to Islam during the ninth century. Today, some of the traditional, ancient, pagan Berber beliefs still exist within the culture and tradition, especially in Algeria, where older cults survive to varying extents.

Many prehistoric peoples considered rocks to be holy, including the Berbers. Second century Latin writer Apuleius, along with Saint Augustine, bishop of the Hippo Regius (ancient name of the modern city of Annaba, in Algeria), both remarked on rock-worship among North Africans. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote of their sacrifices:

They begin with the ear of the victim, which they cut off and throw over their house: this done, they kill the animal by twisting the neck. They sacrifice to the Sun and Moon, but not to any other god.

The megalithic culture may have been part of a cult of the dead or of star-worship. The best known rock monument in Northwest Africa is Mzora (or Msoura). It is composed of a circle of megaliths surrounding a tumulus. The highest megalith is longer than 5 meters (16 feet). According to legend, it is the resting place of the mythic Berber king Antaeus. Another megalithic monument was discovered in 1926, south of Casablanca and was engraved with funerary inscriptions in the Libyco-Berber script known as Tifinagh.

The tombs of the early Berbers and their ancestors (the Caspian’s and Ibero-Mauresians) indicate that they believed in the afterlife. The prehistoric men of the region of northwest Africa buried their bodies in the ground. Later, they buried the dead in caves, tumuli (burial mounds), and tombs cut into rock. These tombs evolved from primitive structures to more elaborate ones, such as the pyramidal tombs that spread throughout North Africa. The best known Berber pyramids are the 19 meter (62 ft) pre-Roman Numidian pyramid of Medracen and the 30-meter (98 ft) ancient Mauritanian pyramid located in modern-day Algeria.

Among ancient Berber and Egyptian mythology there are similar, overlapping deities. The Berbers were neighbors of the Egyptians, originally inhabiting the lands of Libya for thousands of years, before the beginning of human records in Ancient Egypt. It is thought that some Ancient Egyptians deities, such as Isis and Set, were originally worshipped by the Berbers. Osiris was one of the Egyptian deities’ paid homage to in Libya. Some scholars believe Osiris was originally a Libyan god. Berbers supposedly did not eat the swine’s flesh, because it was associated with Set, and they did not eat the cow’s flesh, because it was associated with Isis. This was reported by Herodotus: Cow’s flesh, however, none of these [Libyan] tribes ever taste, but abstain from it for the same reason as the Egyptians, neither do they any of them breed swine. Even at Cyrene, the women think it wrong to eat the flesh of the cow, honoring in this Isis, the Egyptian goddess, whom they worship both with fasts and festivals. The Barcaean women abstain, not from cow’s flesh only, but also from the flesh of swine Another one of their deities the Egyptians considered to have a Libyan origin, was Neith who is said to have emigrated from Libya to establish her temple at Sais in the Nile Delta. Some legends tell that Neith was born around Lake Tritons or modern Tunisia. It is notable that some Egyptian deities were depicted with Berber (ancient Libyan) characters, such as “Ament” who was depicted with two feathers, which were the normal ornaments of the Ancient Libyans as shown by the Ancient Egyptians.

The most remarkable common god between Egyptian and Berber culture was Amon. King of the gods and god of the wind, he was adopted by the Ancient Egyptians as Amen-Ra, by the Greeks as Zeus-Amon, and by the Phoenicians as Baal-Amon. Represented in human form, sometimes with a ram’s head, early depictions of rams have been found across North Africa dating to 9600 BC and 7500 BC. The most famous temple of Ammon in Ancient Libya was the augural temple at Siwa in Egypt, an oasis still inhabited by the Berbers. Although most modern sources ignore the existence of Ammon in Berber mythology, he was honored by the Ancient Greeks in Cyrenaica, and was united with the Phoenician god Baal due to Libyan influence.

Source: www.ancient-origins.net

This video offers a great  collection of Amazigh baby names for girls as well as their meaning in five different languages . This includes a variety of traditional, popular, unique and modern Amazigh names.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahina

This account comes from Hsain Ilahiane’s Historical Dictionary of the Berbers (Amazigh People) and is one of many that tells the story of the Dihya. Since the ninth century, accounts of the Dihya have been adopted, transformed, and rewritten by various social and political groups in order to advance such diverse causes as Arab nationalism, Amazigh-Berber ethnic rights, Zionism, and feminism.

Throughout history, Arabs, Berbers, Muslims, Jews, and French colonial writers, from the medieval historian Ibn Khaldūn to the modern Algerian writer Kateb Yacine, rewrote the legend of the Dihya, and, in the process, voiced their own vision of North Africa’s history. Arabs apparently referred to her as the “Kahina” because of her supernatural powers or to discredit her as a sorcerer, and some Arab historians advanced the story that Dihya at first opposed Islam but eventually asked her sons to adopt this new religion in order to demonstrate the inherent unity between Arabs and Berbers.

During the colonial period, the French historian and politician Ernest Mercier recounted a version of the Dihya’s battle to legitimize French colonization, framing it as the liberation of Berbers from their Arab oppressors. Some recount that the Dihya was from a Jewish tribe, while others state that she was Christian, or even pagan. The ever-changing story of the Dihya, therefore, allows different groups to express their political aspirations.

The account of the Dihya given in Hsain Ilahiane’s Berber dictionary can be framed in terms of the post-colonial Berber struggle against Arab-Islamic hegemony. The Historical Dictionary of the Berbers attempts to bring recognition to Berbers, who feel that their distinct culture and language have been marginalized and their history left out of official accounts given by their national governments. Ilahiane wrote that the Dihya was from a Jewish tribe, giving voice to the history of friendship and mutual respect that Berber activists believe existed between Berbers and Jews who have lived in North Africa since at least 70 CE, possibly even earlier.

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Dihya has become such a popular figure among Berber-Amazigh activists across northern Africa that a statue memorializing her was erected in Algeria; people also post images of her on Berber activist websites and paint them as graffiti. Although little is known about her as an actual historical personage, Berber political and cultural activists have adopted certain visual tropes that, when deconstructed, reveal the political and social agenda of a liberal-oriented transnational Berber movement that emphasizes gender equality as well as religious and ethnic tolerance. Dihya symbolizes Berbers as a people who refuse to be subjugated, free and willing to fight to retain their freedom against outside invasion.

Over the last several decades a transnational activist movement has developed to fight for the political rights of the Berber population. As the indigenous people of North Africa, Berber activists have been struggling for ethnic and linguistic recognition from their national governments, who declared themselves Arab-Islamic states with Arabic as the official language after colonial independence, even though Amazigh speakers account for approximately 40 percent of the population in Morocco and 25 percent in Algeria. They seek to make their native language, Tamazight, an official language equal to Arabic and to restructure national economic and social policies that tend to ignore Amazigh-Berber areas.

Many reject the term Berber as a pejorative label given to them by outsiders, from the Greek and Roman words for “barbarians,” preferring the term “Imazighen,” which means “the free people,” or “Amazigh,” which is the singular adjectival form. Among the various Amazigh communities in North Africa, the Kabyle region of Algeria has been among the most political, often engaging in violent confrontations with the national government. Here in this region, people name their daughters Kahina, and images of what people imagine her to have looked like serve as a visible symbols of resistance, self-determination, and freedom.

During a visit to the Kabyle region in 2006, I photographed graffiti painted on a town’s whitewashed walls that featured various historical figures adopted by the Amazigh movement. Busts of three figures done by an unidentified graffiti artist included a woman on the left of a geometric design and two men on its right. Underneath each bust was a name written in Tifinagh, an ancient Berber script dating back to the fourth century BCE that was used to write administrative texts and funerary inscriptions across northern Africa prior to use of Arabic. Amazigh activists use individual Tifinagh letters as identity markers, writing slogans on public spaces, and, in this case, a graffiti artist wrote the word “Dihya” underneath this female figure referring to the Kahina’s actual name.

Upon closer look, the sketch of the Kahina on the wall of the Kabyle village probably derives from an 1870 painting by the French orientalist artist Charles-Émile-Hippolyte Lecomte-Vernet. Although the current location and original title of the painting by Lecomte-Vernet is unknown, his painting of a female figure, known by the current title Berber Woman, has been reproduced on dozens of Amazigh websites and blogs to represent the mythological figure of Dihya. The artist painted Dihya on the wall near two male figures, including a bearded King Massinissa and his illegitimate grandson Jugurtha. Massinissa ruled an ancient North African kingdom called Numidia as an ally of Rome from 206 BCE until his death in 148. Under Massinissa, Numidia extended from the contemporary nation of Morocco in the west to eastern Libya. Jugurtha boldly usurped the throne from Massinissa’s legitimate heirs, taking power around 117 BCE and waging war against the Roman Empire for eight years. Eventually Jugurtha was captured, brought to Rome in chains, and executed in 104 BCE.

Painted in the hyperrealist style typical of nineteenth-century orientalist art, Lecomte-Vernet painted the bare arm of this female figure to exude a sense of strength, while her sidelong glancesuggests that she is assessing a threat–a glance also captured by the graffiti artist. Her red garment suggests courage and sacrifice, while she wears Berber-style jewelry, including a silver headpiece, brooches (fibulae), and silver bracelets. The desert background suggests the geographic setting of northern Africa, yet it is removed enough from any particular historical or social context that Amazigh activists can use this painting to illustrate the story of this powerful female warrior, to whom activists commonly refer as the “Berber Queen.”

Amazigh activists view Dihya, Massinissa, and Jugurtha as seminal historical figures in order to demonstrate that Berbers have a deep history in the region prior to the arrival of the Arabs. Many embrace the Jewish origins of the Kahina to emphasize the pre-colonial rapport that existed between Muslim and Jewish Berber-speakers. Furthermore, these figures give Berbers a sense of agency and reinforce the idea of rebellion and opposition against external oppression. Jugurtha and the Kahina, especially, represent fearlessness and resistance against oppression, glorifying them to further the Amazigh movement’s contemporary political goals. The representation of a female warrior serves to further the assertion made by Amazigh activists that prior to the arrival of Arabs, North African women enjoyed greater freedom and status than they do today.

Numerous scholars have written about how nineteenth-century European paintings, such as the one by Emile Lecomte-Vernet, reveal orientalist stereotypes and reflect colonial ideologies. However, further layers of meaning enable the Imazighen to reclaim these images as a new, empowering discourse, granting them a postcolonial afterlife. Such imagery influences the performance of identity, especially gender roles, and contributes to a prevailing idea held by Amazigh activists that boldness, bravery, and the ability to serve as political leaders characterized Berber women in the pre-Islamic past.

The question remains, however, whether the Dihya was an actual historical figure who attempted to resist Arab incursion. In the Algerian town of Baghaï, in the Aurès region of Algeria, activists have encouraged the government to preserve the ruins of a fortress they attribute to the Dihya, claiming that she erected it to oppose the advancing Muslim army. In 2003, L’Association Aurès El-Kahina erected an approximately nine-foot tall statue of  Dihya in the center the town of Baghaï to further their connection to this legendary heroine.

Designed by a graduate of the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Algiers, the column-like statue features a woman wearing a sleeveless, draped garment with a single bracelet-clad arm raised in the air, a gesture associated with defiance. Her garment clings to her chest and revealing a sturdy female form and her arching eyebrows give her a stern, defiant expression. The president of Algeria, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, attended the statue’s public commemoration to appease local Amazigh activists, but, at the same time, the national press ignored the ceremony, apparently at the instructions of the government.

The national government had granted permission for the erecting of the monument, but this did not prevent its public condemnation by some. For example, the President of the Defense of the Arab Language, Othmane Saadi, asserted that the statue’s construction was an act of blasphemy, since according to the contemporary Amazigh version of the Dihya’s story, she fought to prevent the spread of Islam into northern Africa.

Like all vibrant, living ethnic movements, the Amazigh movement creates and uses images of a pre-Islamic female warrior to suggest an alternative history that exists outside of the Arab-Islamic hegemony promoted by their national governments. Imazighen across Tamazgha-northern Africa feature such images on Amazigh-centric websites dedicated to their cause and artists paint images of the Dihya complete with a fierce expression of defiance. Dihya has crossed the Atlantic into the United States where an American company selling argan oil calls itself “Dihya Giving Beauty,” stressing the fact that beauty rituals both delight and empower women. The company frames itself as working with and helping Moroccan Berber women since it buys argan oil from them at a fair price.

Whether the Dihya actually existed, or whether she was Jewish, Christian, or pagan, remains unknown, but she symbolizes resistance and self-determination. Dihya reinforces contemporary Berber political aspirations and gives us a glimpse into the complex cultural and historical heterogeneity of North Africa.

Note: This article was originally published on Mizanproject.org in Oct 26, 2015