posted
From the scenery of the amazing quantity of underlying misinformation in a series of immaterial comments made about Saharan, Sahelian and coastal North African 'Berbers' in a recent thread about "Moors", even after extensive discussions of "Berber" gene pool time and again, it might be worth some effort to get to the bottom of exactly what it is, that some individuals just don't seem to get about the relevant genealogical facts thus far put forth. Earlier mystifications or speculations of "Berber" speaking groups, i.e. as remnants of Upper Paleolithic European migrants from Iberia or some Neolithic immigrants from southwest Asia, are outmoded; this status quo stems from compilation of both previous and most recent genetic findings, to be supplemented by linguistics and perhaps archeology. For instance, it should be known by now that the M81 variant of E3b1, has been found in Sudan and Ethiopia. In relation to this, whatever might have been the parameters used by Cavalli-Sforza et al (1994), it is understandable that Tuareg groups were found by these authors to be genetically closest first to some Sudanese groups, amongst which the Beja were the closest yet, and then Ethiopian groups - undoubtedly invoking the likelihood that the east African ancestors of the said Tuareg groups diverged from the same wave(s) of East African migrants that were also ancestral to the Beja, probably somewhere in the Sudanese region, while others from more or less the same waves of migration, proceeded northward and eventually moving to the northwestern portions of Egypt where the “Siwa” groups now reside. So getting back to the E3b1 lineages in question, it's been known that this same E3b1 variant is older in the "Berber" groups of northwest Egypt than counterparts further west on the African coast. The mutation itself might have occurred in sub-Saharan East Africa, i.e. from the Sudanese to Ethiopian general region, with the marker having been relatively restrained from expanding in the populations here, only to allow the Holocene migrating groups to become a founder population for the marker in North African regions and the Sahara; further studies for the ages of M81 lineages found in sub-Saharan east Africa, and specifically amongst which groups, would perhaps be insightful in this regard.
I reiterate, with regards to these west Afrasan speaking groups/"Berbers":
These were male-biased Afrasan speaking migrants from sub-Saharan East Africa, moving to Northeast Africa and westward in the Sahara and then to coastal Northwest Africa. These male-biased migrants, it would appear, interbred with their nearest available and/or accessible females, in addition to whatever females they might have taken along with them from their point of origin. This may well explain why we see trends whereby the Siwa "Berbers" of Egypt significantly carry East African specific matrilineages, the coastal west African "Berbers" predominantly carry West European matrilineages obtained from genetic exchanges with populations in the Iberian peninsula, west Saharan "Berbers" nearest to the coastal west African "Berbers" seem to be intermediate in terms of frequencies when compared against their northward “Berber” neighbors and their southward west African neighbors, while other west Saharan-Sahelian Berbers [including Tuaregs] predominantly carry west African matrilineages. But even in coastal west Africa, the mtDNA distribution pattern can be patchy at times, as we have seen in Tunisia via the Cherni et al. study, whereby we come across "Berber" ethnic groups with notably high frequencies of sub-Saharan [East African and west African specific] matrilineages. This “Berber” phenomenon [pointed out just now] also explains, albeit indirectly, why "Berber" speakers show skin tone gradients from lightest in the coastal west African regions to dark in northeast Africa, and dark in the Saharan-Sahelian regions.
Something of note, is the consideration of mtDNA carried by females accompanying the male-biased "Afrasan" speakers from their point of origin, likely within the vicinity of the Sudanese to Ethiopian region: There have been questions as to which lineages would have been representative of the females accompanying ancestral male-biased “Berber” migrating groups from their point of origin. M1 comes to mind, as being one of these lineages accompanying the male-biased "Berber" migrations. This lineage is found in not only predominantly in East Africa, but also found in some frequencies in southwest Asia, a general region which is known for its predominantly Afrasan-speaking populations, and in west Africa. Coincidence?...well, I see no reason this can‘t be examined further.
Posts: 5964 | Registered: Jan 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
^^All in all, it should not be surprising that Berber lineages in general--female but especially male, are overwhelmingly and predominantly African.
Which is why I don't understand some folks incessant claims of "ambiguous" North African Berbers who are somehow the result of some extensive "mixing" with non-Africans. Posts: 26322 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
| IP: Logged |
In spite of her vast geographical dimensions and natural extremes, the Sahara has never been a barrier which had completely isolated Black Africa from other civilisations, in the same sense as the Atlantic Ocean separated the New World from the Old. Yet it was not a long time ago when European historians were willing to explain that the apparent backwardness of African cultures was a consequence of their lack of contacts with the outside world. Contrary to this opinion was the more widespread tendency to claim that all progress in African past had been initiated by invasions of more advanced peoples arriving from the Mediterranean. This idea was propagated especially by colonial writers who were eager to find traces of Egyptian, Jewish, Phoenician, Roman and Arab cultural influence everywhere in Africa, including the southernmost tip of Cape Province. Today this arrogant attitude is often replaced by a more neutral concept of cultural diffusion, although the fundamental idea is still intact: the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa were not able to develope any innovations like metallurgy, urbanism, or state-formation themselves, but already since the distant past they have needed the help of foreign advisors.
However, the notion that Africans have always been nothing but passive objects in their encounter with other civilisations, "having no interests to explore the world outside their own home village," is both oversimplified and ahistorical. The establisment and success of regular trans-Saharan trade, for example, was not possible without the active participation of West Africans who understood perfectly well, how to utilize the new opportunities offered by the commercial contacts to the Islamic world. Yet, in the authorized African historiography, this point is usually passed over with few words only.
The trans-Saharan trade was not merely an economic phenomenon, but it connected Western Africa to the Mediterranean world on the intellectual level, too. Listening the tales of traders, the medieval Arab geographers learnt to know the sub-Saharan Africa which they called Bilad al-Sudan, "The Land of the Blacks", although their knowledge covered only the areas lying close to the desert edge, Sahil, (SAHEL) or "the shore". In Christian Europe, the gradual accumulation of rumours concerning the treasures of Western Africa encouraged the Portuguese to seek their way to the fabulous Guinea where gold was said to grow in earth like carrots. The Arab and European discovery of sub-Saharan Africa is documented and discussed in numerous works - much less attention has been paid on the West African discovery of the world behind the Sahara. A reason for this silence is certainly the lack of evidence: it is extremely difficult to reconstruct the West African idea of the world, contemporary to that of the medieval European and Arab, because those West Africans who crossed the Sahara left no documents, and all that is known about them is based on accounts written by others. Yet there are some pieces of information both in the contemporary and in the later Arabic and European sources which allow us to make speculations - or at least questions - concerning the West African knowledge of outside world during the age when the caravans of Sahara were the only link between the African, the Islamic, and the European cultures. http://www.hf.uib.no/institutter/smi/paj/Masonen.html
More info on the Berbers:
Bargawata The Bargawata were a Berber tribe on the Moroccan Atlantic coast.
After the conversion to Islam at the beginning of the 8th century and the Maysara uprising (739-742) the Bargawata Berbers, a branch of the Masmuda, formed their own state on the Atlantic coast between Safi and Sala. The founder was Salih ibn Tarif (749-795), who had taken part in the Maysara and set himself up as a prophet. He promulgated a religion with elements of orthodox, Shiite and Kharijite Islam, mixed with astrology and heathen traditions. Supposedly, he had his own 'Koran' in the Berber language.
Under his successors al-Yasa (795-842), Yunus (842-885) and Abu Ghufail (885-913) the tribal kingdom was consolidated, and missions sent to neighbouring tribes. After initially good relations with the Caliphate of Cordoba there was a break at the end of the 10th century with the ruling Umayyads. Two Umayyad incursions, as well as attacks by the Fatimids were fought off by the Bargawata. From the 11th century there was an intensive guerilla war with the Banu Ifran. Even though the Bargwata were subsequently much weakened, they were still able to fend off Almoravid attacks - the spiritual leader of the Almoravids, Ibn Yasin, fell in battle against them (1059). Only in 1149 were the Bargawata eliminated by the Almohads as a political and religious group.
The Masmuda were one of the largest Berber tribal confederacies in the Maghreb, along with the Zanata and the Sanhaja.
History
The Masmuda setted large parts of Morocco, and were largely sedentary and practised agriculture. The residence of the Masmuda aristocracy was Agmat in the High Atlas. From the 10th century the Berber tribes of the Sanhaja and Zanata groups invaded the lands of the Masmuda, followed from the 12th century onwards by Arab Bedouins (see Banu Hilal).
Ibn Tumart united the Masmuda tribes at the beginning of the 12th century and founded the Almohad movement, which subsequently unified the whole of the Maghreb and Andalusia. After the downfall of the Almohads, however, the particularism of the Masmuda peoples prevailed once more, as a result of which they lost their political significance and became arabicised. Remnants of the Masmuda survive in form of the Hhaha of Algeria, and of the Shleuh in the High Atlas.
The Rways tradition (poet-singers using the Amazigh language, tashelhit region) is one of the most outstanding traditions in the poetical and musical landscape of southern Morocco. Its defining feature is the co-existence of both poetry and music. Paulette Galand-Pernet describes this tradition as "the poems of professional singers. The trouveurs both compose and perform their works; they travel around the country, usually as part of a group, of which the younger members undergo a professional apprenticeship by working alongside more experienced performers, under the guidance of a leader."
Lhadj Belaid, a singer-poet and a troubadour, was one of the most remarkable writers of poetry and music in the whole of Morocco. Paulette Galand-Pernet used to say that he is greatly renowned. With his standing as a poet, he trained many trouveurs. He was born in Anu n Adu, near to Tiznit, but his date of birth is unknown (it can only have been during the second half of the 19th century; Alexis Chottin and Paulette Galant-Pernet, who were interested in Amazigh poetry, thought that he must have been sixty years old in 1933). He was born into a poor family and was orphaned whilst still young. He had to leave Koranic school and began to do all kinds of work: shepherd, leader of a troup of acrobats in Tazerwalt (a place known for its marabout: Sidi Ahmed U Mussa) etc. In Tazerwalt, he gave free rein to his love for poetry and music and began to learn the first rules of this art in a troupe of singer-troubadours before forming his own group, with Mohamed Boudraa, Ali Es Saouiri and M’barek Belahcen also becoming members. The forming of this troop allowed him to maintain close contact with tribal elders and Makhzenian representatives. He seems to have died around 1945. Paulette Galand-Pernet points out that the Rwayes that she asked about this could not give her the date of his death.
Audio of Tamazighs (by Belaid I think) Scroll to bottom of page: http://www.majdah.com/vb/showthread.php?t=28235 (It would be great to get a translation of his lyrics to hear the stories they tell about TRUE Berber history PRIOR to the Banu Hilal ARAB invasions.)
Masufa
The Masufa were an important group who became know n as the Almohades. These Berbers went on to take over from the Almoravids. They are also related to the Tuareg. Ibn Battuta speaks of the remnants of the Masufa in the great city of Timbuktu:
"[The sultan] has a lofty pavilion, of which the door is inside his house, where he sits for most of the time. . . . There came forth from the gate of the palace about 300 slaves, some carrying in their hands bows and others having in their hands short lances and shields. . . Then two saddled and bridled horses are brought, with two rams which, they say, are effective against the evil eye. . . . Dugha, the interpreter, stands at the gate of the council-place wearing fine garments of silk brocade and other materials, and on his head a turban with fringes which they have a novel way of winding. . . . The troops, governors, young men, slaves, the Masufa, and others sit outside the council-place in a broad street where there are trees. . . . Inside the council-place beneath the arches a man is standing. Anyone who wishes to address the sultan addresses Dugha and Dugha addresses that man standing and that man standing addresses the sultan. If one of them addresses the sultan and the latter [the Sultan] replies he uncovers the clothes from his back and sprinkles dust on his head and back, like one washing himself with water. I used to marvel how their eyes did not become blinded."
Discussions on the history of the various groups in the Sahara and the Advance of Islam:
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic