Over most parts of the world human migrations can be traced back in history. Most of us have ancestors that are known to have moved from somewhere else, whether Native Americans spreading south from Asia via the Bering Straits in past millennia or Christian Lebanese seeking a safer life in America after this year's fighting. Here and there around the world however, are groups of people who, if not truly indigenous, have at least been in situ for so long in areas where there is no archaeological record of any prior human habitation, that they can be regarded anthropologically as aborigines. The Kurds that Xenophon and his Ten Thousand met up with are quite recognisably the same endlessly troubled people we hear of today. The Klick‐speaking peoples of South Africa were leading their stone age hunter‐gatherer lives there long before the Dutch from the south and the Bantu from the north barged in on them.
In a similar way the Berbers have formed the majority of the population of the northern fringe of Africa, from the Egyptian border to the Canary Islands, ethnographically quite distinct from the negroid peoples from south of the Sahara, since the dawn of human history. Archaeological evidence suggests that their Capsian ancestors split off from the Cro‐Magnon somewhere around 7000BCE, and that they have simply been in place ever since. They have never really had a nation state, and they have suffered endless invasions and conquests – the earliest known invasion is recorded on the pre‐dynastic Stele of Tehenou in Cairo museum, dated 2,000 years or more before the establishment of the Phoenician colony at Carthage. The Romans fought them in their earliest colonial campaigns – Scipio Africanus gained his title for his campaigns against the Berber King Jugurtha, but even Augustus Caesar could not wholly subdue them, and merely created a semi‐independent client kingdom under Juba. North Africa was really consolidated politically by one of the most extraordinary migrations in history, when one of the Teutonic tribes invading the Roman Empire swept round from what is now central Poland, through France, through Spain, and across into Mauritania to set up the Vandal kingdom of Arian Christians. There they seem to have established the German tradition of getting their towels down onto the best bits of the beach early and then relaxing heartily with the aid of large quantities of the local plonk. This curious political structure might well have brought long‐term stability to the area, were it not for the Emperor Justinian, who attempted to reunite the whole Roman Empire and, in overthrowing the Vandals, merely ended up paving the way for the Arab conquest.
As the Ottoman Empire declined in the nineteenth century the French established a strong colonial presence in the area, subsequently joined by the Italians (the North African colonies were an important part of Mussolini's plans for Italian hegemony in the Mediterranean). The Arab conquest has, however, proved the longest lasting external influence so far. It is clear that, even in the century since the publication of my bedside classic edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (my main source of general information) the process of Arabization of the Berber language and culture has galloped ahead. Arabic is largely replacing the Tamazight languages. Similarly, stricter forms of Islam, having swept away the last vestiges of Judaism and Christianity, are struggling against the more democratic Mozabite and matrilineal Taureg versions. Throughout this long and disjointed history the Berbers have produced at least one Roman emperor – Severus, a whole string of Christian saints, most notably St Augustine, writers ranging from Apuleius and Tertullian to Ibn Battuta and, probably, Ibn Khaldun (though Khaldun did claim noble Arab descent). Most especially they have produced warriors, ranging from Jugurtha, to Tariq Ibn Zaid (the eponymous conqueror of Gibraltar – “Jebel Tariq”), to the French Goumieres who fought alongside the British Ghurkas at Monte Cassino.
Remarkably little of this fascinating history is reflected in this very inadequate dictionary. Though most of them are mentioned in the brief Time‐Line which introduces the book, there are no entries for Jugurtha or Juba, no entries for Severus, Tertullian or Apuleius, no entry for the Vandals themselves or for Justinian and Belisaurus who overthrew them. The Goums do not get an entry of their own – one of them, General Oufkir, who subsequently commanded the French commandos in Indo‐China, gets a mention, but mainly in connection with his later political involvement in Morocco. There is a persistent Banu Hilal myth that Goliath was a Berber. There are tribes in the Maghrib which still claim to be descended from him or his followers, but even this curious piece of folklore barely rates a mention. The French conquest does get covered, but there is no mention of the Italians. I looked up Tariq and found a reference “Tariq see Al‐Andalus”. There is, however, no entry under the heading Al‐Andalus, though there is one under Andalus, al. Similarly, under the heading Languages there is a cross‐reference in bold lettering to Tamazight, but, turning to T all we find is a reference back “Tamazight, see Languages”. The dictionary format is not, in any case, really suitable for this sort of book. A history, in chronological form with a geographical introduction and a linguistic appendix would, in my view, be a much more effective way of bringing the stories of all the peoples described in this series alive for us. It is most especially unsuitable for this particular book, where the bulk of the entries are to an English version, in English alphabetical order, of the Arabization of Tamazight names and terms coming from a totally different linguistic culture. The result is rather a mess – an assorted mishmash of places and names, mainly covering the history of North Africa west of the Egyptian border since the Arab conquest.
Aside from the chronological time‐line and introduction, the actual dictionary occupies just over half of the text. Over one‐third of the book is devoted to an exhaustive bibliography in which the author has attempted to list absolutely every book or journal paper he can find that is directly related to North Africa. The largest proportion of these is in French, but a variety of other languages are represented. This would in itself be a worthwhile exercise. It is a potentially useful scholarly resource, but it does not, for example, include Gibbon – still a mine of information on the history of the area prior to the completion of the Arab conquest, nor does it mention any of the useful web sites I have managed to track down in the last few days. There are also some 20 pages of maps showing the political situation in North Africa at various stages. It is a pity that there are no maps showing climate and land‐use changes, and that these changes are barely touched on in the text. One of the factors encouraging the Arabization of North Africa is the enormous growth of the Sahara Desert during the past couple of millenia, which has forced the surviving inhabitants to move from an agricultural to a pastoral economy. Much more could have been said on this topic.
Khaldun's al‐muqad‐dimah is a very important historical work – as a crucial influence on Toynbee's Study of History if nothing more. I am surprised to find however, that his two volumes relating to the history of the Berbers have never been fully translated into English, only into French. This would be an interesting project for some historical linguist. Indeed, there is much to be done if the culture of this fascinating group of peoples is to be preserved. At the moment the assorted Tamazight languages are just about holding on, rather in the same way that Gaelic, Irish, Welsh, Manx, Cornish and Breton are forcing themselves to keep alive in the face of the onslaught of American English. A good general geographical, historical and linguistic introduction would be a useful asset. The best that can be said is that this dictionary contains quite a lot of the raw materials for such a book, and might be worth considering by reference libraries, in default of something more coherent.
