posted
Since labelling a person black in western terminology isn't even true to one set of physical characteristics I decline on deciding which Imazighen are black or white though both here and on TheNileValley forum I've supplied written notices from Greco-Latin and Arabic writers on the white/coloured/black assignment of Imazighen as a group and certain individual Imazighen. Please seek and reread them for review. An Amazigh is an African person and their language and ethnicity is an African reality, that's the bottom line
I'm going to post something I wrote up on the Kahena and ask everyone's forebearance toward its enthusiasts elements. The Kahena is historic personage of legendary proportions and not even the most critical of recent analytical works on her can conclude anything about her or her sobriquet's true meaning or actual etymology.
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: So who was Dahia al-Kahina then? All I know is that she was a Jewish North African leader of a Berber resistance group against the Arabs. Was she black? All the depictions of her from Western sources show her as a "caucasian" or white Berber.
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She was said to have been born to a poor Jewish family of cave- dwellers. A chieftain of a Judeo-Berber tribe terrorized her Aures mountain settlement and demanded Kahena as a wife. She slew him with a nail to the skull on the wedding night.
Mysterious Queen of Algerian Israelite and Amazigh peoples. When the Islamized Arabs invaded the Maghreb, al-Kahina first raised the cry "Africa for Africans". (At that time, the late 7th century, only the Mediterranean littoral was known as Africa (Ifriqiya), a fact that those who speak of Africa and North Africa blithely ignore. Centuries would pass before the inner parts of the continent came to be identified as Africa but the Tamazight heartland was the first Africa.)
In short, when her relative Kuseila (a Christian) failed to repel the invading Arab armies Dahya stepped forth. She was queen of the Jarawa who were part of the Zenata. The famous figure of Maghreb history, Arab general `Uqba bin Nafi, fell to Dahya. His successor general Hassan bin Numan was forced to retreat before Dahya's defensive onslaught.
quote: "Lions of Ifriqiya and Yehudah, show these Arabs that we will never be enslaved by Islam. Our beloved Africa will remain free. Freedom or death!"
Al-Kahina's combined forces of Jews, Imazighen, Byzantines, and Copts expelled the Arab armies from African soil west of the Mashreq.
Five years later after Dahya instituted a scorched earth policy that lowered her peoples morale, she fell in battle at the age of 127 to treacherous Amazigh Christian forces sided with the Arabs. Al-Kahina's two sons converted to Islam and retained control of the Amazigh army. Supposedly they were leaders six years later in the Muslim armies which conquered Al-Andalus. But their mother's head was spiced and boxed and sent to the caliph Abd el-Malik who wanted to see this Jewess that had halted his forces and almost disuaded the caliphate from African and Iberian conquest.
Many heroic epics and poems recount the glory of Kahina Dihya bat Tabet haKohen bar Na`an bar Baru bar Masrasi bar Afrad bar Wasila ibn Jarau, chieftess of the Jerawa Zenata of the Aures Mountains.
M. Tabli in Revue Tunisienne V.19 gives this description:
quote: "[She] was, without a doubt, a fearsome woman, half queen, half sorceress, with dark skin, a mass of hair and huge eyes; according to the Arab chroniclers, when she was angry or possessed by her [maggidim] her eyes would turn red and her hair would stand on end."
____________Dahia la Kahena______________ a fearsome woman, half queen, half sorceress, with dark skin. She had a mass of hair that stood uprght, and huge reddened eyes when she was angry or possessed by her maggidiym.
The illustrations are only fanciful renditions of Dahya by artists of our times namely S. Gaston Dobson from 'A Salute to Historic African Kings and Queens' and Keith Gunderson from 'Wars of the Jews'.
Of course I don't doubt the Africaness of Dahia or any of her Amazigh peoples regardless of their complexions. And although I am not as 'race'-obsessed like a few of our newcomers to the forum here, I am just curious as to how she looked like in life. The description of her being dark-skinned may be a clue.
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posted
I didn't know you are also a myth propagator--that is worse than being a troll!
quote: COLONIAL HISTORIES, POST-COLONIAL MEMORIES: THE LEGEND OF THE KAHINA, A NORTH AFRICAN HEROINE. By Abdelmajid Hannoum. Heinemann Studies in African Literature. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2001. Pp. xix, 216. 1 illustration. $59.95.
Author(s) of Review: Lidwien Kapteijns [Wellesley College] The International Journal of African Historical Studies > Vol. 34, No. 3 (2001), pp. 684-686
This is an exhaustive study of historiographical and literary representations of the late-seventh-century North African female leader, the Kahina, who first defeated the Arab invaders but was then defeated by them. The author traces all accounts of the Kahina, from the first narratives of Arab historians, written 150 years after the event, to medieval, colonial, and postcolonial historical, literary, and oral (folk) representations.
The Kahina’s identity cannot be known, the author explains, so it is possible that she was Berber, Arab, Byzantine, Roman, Jewish, Christian, or pagan. Thus writers over the centuries have constructed her to serve their specific ideological purposes. This does not make the myth of the Kahina less important, the author argues, but more so, as it represents and maps contestations about the true nature of North Africa and its transformation over time from what it once was (Berber, Roman, Byzantine, and Christian) to what it is today (Arab and Muslim). The author shows that these representations were rarely innocent and he traces “to examine what may be called an ideological conquest ... how North Africa, from its conquest by the Arabs to its independence from the French, was subdued ideologically by the elaboration of a mythology which has made it sometimes Arab, sometimes French, sometimes Berber, and sometimes Jewish” (p. xvii).
In Chapter 1, “From Memory to Myth,” the author analyzes Arabic historical accounts from the ninth to the fourteenth centuries, at the end of which time the themes of the myth were complete. Until then, however, Arab historians kept adding new themes, possibly from oral traditions not recorded by their predecessors or for other reasons. In these early accounts, the Kahina is mostly an antihero who stands in the way of the Arab Islamic conquest and civilizing mission. The Kahina also gathers folkloric detail in this period as an exceedingly obese and wild-haired sorceress, who spread terror and destruction in the land. It was the famous Ibn Khaldun who, seven centuries after the actual events, claimed that the Kahina belonged to a Jewish Berber tribe and traced Berber origins back to the Middle East. From then on the myth of the Kahina became tied up not only with the Arab civilizing mission but also with that of Berber origins.
Chapter 2, “Colonial Histories,” traces French and Jewish representations of the Kahina. The French colonial mythology, best represented by Felix Gautier (1927), represented the Kahina as a (Jewish) Berber defender of Roman, Christian North Africa against the Arab Muslim invaders. This allowed the French, first, to regard the Berbers as the truly indigenous North Africans subjected and oppressed by Arab Muslim newcomers and, second, to understand seventh-century Berber resistance against the Arab invasion as the Old and New Testaments’ resistance against the invasion of the Qur’an. In this chapter Hannoum also traces Jewish appropriations of the Kahina. Thus Andre Chouraqui (1952), a Jewish Israeli author of North African descent, saw in the Kahina the beginning of the ongoing struggle between Jews and Arabs.
In Chapter 3, “From History to Fiction,” Hannoum discusses twelve French novels, almost half of them written by women. Mostly these fictional works supported colonial historiography in that they promoted the cause of a French Algeria by excluding Arabs and presenting Berbers, flow assigned European origins, as natural allies. However, these novels also included a couple of anticolonial interpretations of the Kahina as a timeless lover of freedom. Jewish literary representations of this period presented North Africa as originally Jewish and thus fashioned for themseives a mythical North African ancestry. Chapter 4, “PostColonial Memories,” deals with Arab and Berber representations of the Kahina. Most influential were those by writers belonging to the [b]Salafi movement such as Tawfiq Madani and Mubarak Mili. Inspired by the Egyptian Muhammad Abduh, these writers of the 1930s introduced the idea that the Berbers had only resisted the Arab conquests because they had initially misunderstood the civilizing mission of Islam. Moreover, since the Berbers were really Semites, they were not even really different from the Arabs. Hannoum shows how the Salafi writers reversed the French colonial mythology point by point, thus creating their own mythology later used by more explicitly nationalist writers.
In this chapter Hannoum also discusses the first truly decolonized history of North Africa by ‘Abdallah Laroui (1973). In the latter’s account, it is the Byzantine Christians who become the anti-heroes, as they caused the Arab defeat of the Berbers by withdrawing the support they had initially offered. For Laroui, the Kahina “serves to articulate the myth of a free North Africa, aware of its own identity, eager to keep its autonomy, and willing to fight for it” (p. 127). According to Hannoum, this representation of North Africa as integrating east and west is currently the dominant historical representation. The author conciudes this chapter with an account of contemporary Berber nationalists, who see the Kahina primarily as a non-religious Berber heroine who resisted the invading Arab Muslims—reproducing, but now for their own purposes, elements of the colonial mythology. While he mentions feminist representations of the Kahina as a powerful, militant, female leader in a precolonial Berber society in which women could at times become equal to or exceed men, these are not analyzed in detail and do not appear to present any new insights.
Chapter 5, finally, deals with North African literary representations from after the 1950s. While a discussion of authors such as Kateb Yacine and Nabil Fares may be indispensable, there is no doubt that the author is running out of steam at this point and that the book begins to read like a mere catalogue of references to the Kahina. For most African historians, certainly, this book’s interest lies in its earlier chapters on historiography and in the always sobering insight that historical writings reveal as much about the historians’ present circumstances as about the past they set out to interpret.
LIDWIEN KAPTEIJNS Wellesley College
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Note: This review was used "Accessibility Option - TIFF Format" Some words may occur illegible.
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: [QB] I am just curious as to how she looked like in life. The description of her being dark-skinned may be a clue. Who said she was a woman?
Research in African Literatures 33.4 (2002) 226-227
Book Review
Colonial Histories, Post-colonial memories: The Legend of the Kahina, a North African Heroine
Colonial Histories, Post-colonial Memories: The Legend of the Kahina, a North African Heroine, by Abdelmajid Hannoum. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2001. xvii + 216 pp. ISBN 0-325-00253-3 cloth.
In Colonial Histories, Post-colonial memories: The Legend of the Kahina, a North African Heroine, Abdelmajid Hannoum pieces together a puzzle of narratives that created and modified the Kahina's story along the centuries. Thanks to his limpid writing, the readers can follow the intricacies of this fascinating myth central to ancient and modern communities in the Maghreb. Different voices and—often conflicting—perspectives indeed emerge progressively from Arabic, Berber, Jewish, French/European, nationalist, and feminist writings.
The basic plot of the story is a quest (4) including a hero/anti-hero conflict and the need of remedy for a situation of disorder. The context is given by the Arabic-Islamic conquest of the Maghreb and the fight of the Kahina, queen of the Berbers in the Aurès Mountains (the pre-Saharan central area of present Algeria). Abdelmajid Hannoum convincingly shows how historical and contemporary variations of the story are shaped by either apparently minor modifications or substantial changes in actions and characterization. Early Arabic versions, written in the ninth century, present the Kahina as an infidel female leader who plunges the Maghreb into disorder and tyranny and is finally overcome by the Muslim heroes who restore Islam, peace, and order. In Maghrebi medieval versions, the story of the Kahina illustrates Arab and Berber bravery and Berbers' free decision to join Islam, while in precolonial and colonial French historiography she becomes a Roman and Christianized Berber—even transformed into the Patriarch Jean—opposing the Arabs and their conquest of the Maghreb. By and by the Kahina is a North African Jewish woman or man (104), a nationalist anti-colonial heroine (113, 119, 130), a communist ideal (170), a present-day Algerian feminist model (147), and the symbol of the Amazigh fight for the rights of Berber minorities (139). As Hannoum writes in the introduction: [QUOTE]"Having exhausted the Mediterranean categories of ethnic groups, she [the Kahina] also exhausted gender categories" (xv-xvi).
A stronger theoretical approach would have reinforced the study as far as orality is concerned. The large oral production concerning the Kahina and her origins is mentioned more than integrated in the analysis (see 13, 150). Studies on Berber oral narratives such as those by C. Lacoste-Dujardin, T. Yacine-Titouh, and P. Galand-Pernet are not mentioned or taken into consideration. These studies not only would have offered a theoretical framework for the treatment of Berber oral productions, but would also have clarified qualifications and actions of the myth. For example, the element of the Kahina adopting the hero by giving him her breast is not only a general Mediterranean folkloric theme (13), but a specific qualification of the teryel, the ogress, representing female negativity in Kabyle Berber oral narratives. Likewise, the origin myth from ancient Rome (see Mercier) collected in Chaouia Berber villages of the Aurès—the place of the Kahina's fight—would have presented a local Berber voice speaking in the polyphony of ancient and modern versions and interpretations [End Page 226] on Berber myths of origin (see Boulhaïs; Dakhlia; Fremeaux; Merolla). One can also observe some simplifications in the treatment of Maghrebian contemporary literatures, as in the case of the "Berberist" label attributed right away to writers such as Kateb Yacine and Nabile Farès, which disregards the multilayered and nuanced discourses that emerge in the whole of their respective works (see Woodhull 1993).
Altogether, this book does a great service to all those who are interested in the comprehension of group, class, and gender relationships in the Maghreb and provides a balanced reading of subjects still controversial in present political debates. Hannoum does indeed much more than collecting and interpreting different versions of a Maghrebian foundational myth. Firmly setting his analysis in the contexts of production of myths and ideologies, he is able to trace the subjective making of history and to enlighten the entwined positions of ancient and modern historians and literary writers. Colonial Histories, Post-colonial memories: The Legend of the Kahina, a North African Heroine helps us to rethink the story of the Maghreb and the reciprocal apprehension of the different "selves" that lived, competitively or cooperatively, in such a vast geopolitical and cultural area. The Kahina becomes "a symbol of the encounter and the clash between civilizations" (52) and—as the author writes—once again demonstrates the force of the never-ending process of narrative re-invention.
Daniela Merolla is a professor at Leiden University in The Netherlands. Works Cited
Boulhaïs, N. "Recherches sur l'Aurès, bibliographie ordonnée. " Etudes et Documents Berbères (1998): 15-16, 284-312.
Dakhlia, J. "Des prophètes à la nation: la mémoire des temps anté-islamiques au Maghreb." Cahiers d'Etudes africaines, 107-108, XXVII-3-4, 1987: 241-267.
Fremeaux, J. "Souvenirs de Rome et présence française au Maghreb: essai d'investigation. " Connaissance du Maghreb [Paris] 1984: 29-46.
Galand-Pernet, P. Littératures berbères, des voix des lettres. Paris: PUF, 1998.
Lacoste-Dujardin, C. Le conte kabyle. Paris: La Découverte, 1970.
Mercier, G. Cinq textes berbères en dialecte chaouia. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1900.
Merolla, D. "Il 'tempo di Roma' in alcuni racconti orali dei gruppi berberofoni chaouia dell'Aurès (Algeria)." Studi e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni. Roma: Scuola di Studi storico-religiosi dell'Università di Roma. 54. 12.1 (1988): 133-50. See also Contes chaouis de l'Aurès d'après G. Mercier par M. Lafkioui et D. Merolla, Küppe, Germany, 2002 (in print).
Woodhull, Winifred. Transfigurations of the Maghreb. Feminism, Decolonization and Literature. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993.
Yacine-Titouh, T. Les voleurs de feu: éléments d'une anthropologie sociale et culturelle de l'Algérie. Paris: La Découverte/Awal, 1993.
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posted
Hey Arwa -- F U C K YOU -- not for info from the book which I own and have read and the fact that I said the material I posted was enthusiast but your faggot ass attitude and inability to academically disagree without resorting to the pettiness of name calling.
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: I'm going to post something I wrote up on the Kahena and ask everyone's forebearance toward its enthusiasts elements. The Kahena is historic personage of legendary proportions and not even the most critical of recent analytical works on her can conclude anything about her or her sobriquet's true meaning or actual etymology.
quote:Originally posted by Arwa: I didn't know you are also a myth propagator--that is worse than being a troll!
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
So your mission to judaize the Berbers failed, eh?
Let me tell you something, troll. You will never survive one second in the academic world. It's not a place for jimbo jimbo "science".
Why do you not provide for once a research article, O Great Troll? Come on! Go to library and use JSTOR or Project Muse. Or are you afraid of to **** on your pants?
Who thought you and the Salafists have something in common.
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There are countless references to La Reine de Aures "Diyha La Kahena" on the francophone Internet. There are many books. She is the Jewish Berber Queen discussed in many forums. This woman from the Djerou of the Zenata.
Shalom chaver, I must also tell you before I continue that on an important Sefardic site there are articles about the Jews of Timbuktu. They love the White Jews whose skins are white as snow who have attached themselves with the Tuareg, but who are gentically different. They say the original Jews from Cyrene were White and some present Jews in southern Morocco and areas south are Black because Black slaves joined up with the Jews.
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posted
Thanks for the input, Red. Yes, I have heard about the peoples of Cyrene being white, and I also know that there are Berbers in Northwest Africa especially the coastal ones who look like that way today but I can't help but wonder since as you say she was part of the Zenata people.
Posts: 26236 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
However anyone may see her today they are all fanciful when they buck against the pen portrait left by the Arabic scholars closest to her in time
quote: "[She] was, without a doubt, a fearsome woman, half queen, half sorceress, with dark skin, a mass of hair and huge eyes; according to the Arab chroniclers, when she was angry or possessed by her [maggidim] her eyes would turn red and her hair would stand on end."
If anyone cares to delve into the relative "whiteness" or "blackness" of people in Cyrene (Imazighen, Greeks, and Jews) or the colour range of the Jews of the 2nd century who migrated west and southwest from Cyrenaica and Tripolitanian, open a new thread and we can discuss the matter there (although for my part it'll only be a revisit of what I've already posted here and on TNV forum over the years, direct quotes from Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Arabic sources. Obviously it needs constant retelling since those facts still haven't been recognized yet).
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posted
I CAN'T HELP BUT NOTICE THAT ANYONE OF GREAT IMPORTANCE IN HISTORY NO MATTER WHERE THE LOCATION THE MUST BE WHITE CLOE PATRA,BEETHOVEN,OR EVEN JESUS THE LIST GOES ON IF WHITE ORIGINATED FROM EUROPE WHICH IS A COLD DARKER REGION AND BLACKS FROM AFRICA A HOT AND LIGHTER REGION WHICH EXPLAINS THE DIFFERENCE IN ARE SKIN COMPLEXION WHY WHEN EVER THERE IS SOMEONE WHO HAD IN IMPACT ON HISTORY THEY ARE WHITE EVEN IF THEY ARE FROM AFRICA WHEN THE ORIGINAL RACE IN AFRICA AT THAT TIME WHERE BLACK
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^^As always, thanks Takruri!
Of course I don't doubt the Africaness of Dahia or any of her Amazigh peoples regardless of their complexions. And although I am not as 'race'-obsessed like a few of our newcomers to the forum here, I am just curious as to how she looked like in life. The description of her being dark-skinned may be a clue.
There was a program that aired a few years ago on one of the history-oriented channels that portrayed al-Kahina more like modern North Africans...basically a white actress. The lazy scholarship of the historical community on not adding context to a region like North Africa is shameful.
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posted
It helps to know that Kahina was a woman of the tribe of Maghira, Maghrawa or Jerawa or Jawara (plural in Arabic). The Maghira, Maghuri or Magherawa - a tribe of the Tuareg still live in the Sahel.
The Maghrawa and Iforas (referred to as Banu Ifren by Arabs) and other Tuareg of Mali are descendants of the Zenata who were related to the "black Jews" of Wargla in Algeria.
The Jewish "Ifren Maghrawa" settled at Wargla and other places. E.J. Brill's First Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1913-1936, Vol. 9, p. 1123. T. Houtsma editor, published 1993.
Thus, A. Godbey wrote, “in the Wargla Oasis of Algeria, 350 miles from the Mediterranean, is a colony of Jews ‘as black as Negroes.’” see The Lost Tribes: A Myth. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1930.
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"The phrase Black Jews has changed meanings through time. Originally it had nothing to do with race or skin colour but signified a heretic. Though the Jews of Wargla in Algeria were dark skinned they were called black because of a few practices they had that stood outside gaonate norms." Huh!
I guess some people aren't interested in history. Posts: 4226 | From: New Jersey, USA | Registered: Mar 2007
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Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: However anyone may see her today they are all fanciful when they buck against the pen portrait left by the Arabic scholars closest to her in time
quote: "[She] was, without a doubt, a fearsome woman, half queen, half sorceress, with dark skin, a mass of hair and huge eyes; according to the Arab chroniclers, when she was angry or possessed by her [maggidim] her eyes would turn red and her hair would stand on end."
If anyone cares to delve into the relative "whiteness" or "blackness" of people in Cyrene (Imazighen, Greeks, and Jews) or the colour range of the Jews of the 2nd century who migrated west and southwest from Cyrenaica and Tripolitanian, open a new thread and we can discuss the matter there (although for my part it'll only be a revisit of what I've already posted here and on TNV forum over the years, direct quotes from Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Arabic sources. Obviously it needs constant retelling since those facts still haven't been recognized yet).
These images were in the 2nd post where see their sources.
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If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were the same racist and anti-Semitic chick who accused Takruri of being a 'Jew'.![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
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