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[QUOTE]Originally posted by alTakruri: [QB] Moor is a slippery term in the extra African world and Moorish identity varies through time. At the origin of our word Moor is the Greek word mauros an adjective meaning dark applied as a Latin noun Maurus denoting the people of the Roman province Mauritania consisting of what is now the north parts of western Algeria & Morocco. Procopius History 3.13.29 reports: [QUOTE] And I have heard this man say that beyond the country which he ruled there was no habitation of men, but desert land extending to a great distance, and that beyond that there are men, not [b]black-skinned like the Mauretanii[/b], but very white in body and fair-haired.[/QUOTE] So the first Moors so named by the Greeks and Romans were North African Imazighen aka Berbers notably darker than the north Mediterraneans and some other Imazighen. Not long after the above quote was written Arabs and Arabized "middle easterners" and Iranians professing Islam overcame Amazigh resistance last led by queen Dahya alKahina of the Aures in eastern Algeria. Though technically part of Numidia rather than Mauritania all these Imazighen adopting Islam and under Arab orders invading and successfully conquering what is now southern Spain came to be called Moros. 150 years later ibn Qutayba wrote down Wahb ibn Nunabbih opinion: [QUOTE] Kush and Kan`an's descendants are the [b]various[/b] races of blacks: Nubians, Zanj, Qaran, Zaghawa, Ethiopians, Copts, and Berbers.[/QUOTE] Maur started out as a north Mediterranean concept of a specific North African region but after the birth of al Andalus aka Muslim Spain, the term Moor came to generally mean African Muslim in the European languages. Though the Black a Moor is the Moor that mostly captures our view there were also Tawny Moors and White Moors. Their ascent in Europe survives in surnames of their European descendents: Moore, Blackmoor, Tanimer, Whitmore, etc. The term Black a Moor is a contraction of the phrase Black as a Moor. The dominant image of a Moor as literally black, though they were a variety of complexions, is because of two Andalusian dynasties that arose from what is now the modern nation of Mauretania. They were the al Murabitun and al Muwahhidun which included large numbers of what are now Senegalese who are among the blackest skinned people on earth. Many of the Zenaga al Mulathimun were themselves very dark. The legacy of the Roman age Mauritanii and the Moros of al Andalus live on in the names of Morocco and Mauretania. To Africans the Amazigh people of those countries are the Moors and not the Gnawa people of the Sahel and Savanna. In particular the Mauritanians are the Maurs divided into Beydan white Maurs and Haratin black Maurs. Though some Fulani and Wolof have Mauritanian citizenship that stretches back to pre Almoravid days they are not Maurs nor do they seek to call themselves Maurs. Yemini Arabs penetrated to Mauritania a thousand years ago and eventually became the ruling class among the Beydani which also includesZenaga. The peculiar Hasaniya dialect of Arabic is theirs but these Yeminis are by no means the origin of the Maurs in fact being the last people and the only Arabs to acquire the name Moor which properly belongs to the northwest Africans. The Gnawa or western Sudanese are not Moors. The Gnawa attribute the destruction of the Songhai empire to a Moorish invasion from Morocco. The descendents of the Moroccan conquest of Songhai, which included Spaniards and I think Scotts in their invasion force as well as genuine Moors, are known as the Arma. I dont think any ethnic group located below the Sahara between the Atlantic and Lake Chad other than the Arma call themselves Moors. Its the Euros who indiscriminately threw the word Moor around to the point that even Indians and Filipinos were called Moors. . [This message has been edited by alTakruri (edited 18 January 2005).] [/QB][/QUOTE]
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