13. For the Federal Government, what is the status of Tamaziɣt in Algeria? a) Are there any legal or practical restrictions for public use of the Tamaziɣt language? b) From when and to what extent, from which class and from which level, are the insured courses taken? c) What is the real commitment of the Algerian state in the promotion of Tamaziɣt? d) Is the Federal Government aware of the promotion of the policy of linguistic Arabization exercised by the Algerian Government against the Berbers?
14. What does the Federal Government know about the social situation, human rights situation and the political situation in Kabylia?
a) Does the Federal Government know if any activists of the Union for the Kabyle Republic (URK), the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia (MAK), the independence and the grouping for the Kabylie, are persecuted?
b) What does the Federal Government know about the abuses, detentions, ill-treatment or torture of activists seeking independence for Kabylia?
c) Does the Federal Government know if the activists of the Movement for the Independence of Kabylia are persecuted by the State and security forces with threats of loss of work or study (extended threats) as well as to family members?
d) What does the Federal Government know about the disproportionate concentration in Kabylia by the security forces (army, police, gendarmerie, intelligence)?
e) What does the Federal Government know about the use of weapons in Kabylia delivered by Germany to the Algerian army?
f) Is the Federal Government aware of reports of law enforcement officials’ responsibility for forest fires in Kabylia and what are the consequences of these actions?
g) Does the Federal Government know the degree of responsibility and involvement of the Algerian state in the killing of more than 120 demonstrators, mainly young protesters in Kabylia and Algeria, during the 2001 Black Spring by Algerian guards?
h)What does the Federal Government know about the repression of the military forces against demonstrators carrying Berber or Kabyle flags during the recent mass demonstrations against Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s presidential candidacy?
15. What are the Federal Government’s political and social knowledge of human rights in Ghardaia and the antecedents and consequences of the conflict between the Mozabites and Chaamba?
Lyazid Abid
]]>They are present, showing their faces without fear and with courage. They sing and express themselves, they fight alongside men because it is the same fight for freedom and independence as our ancestors did.
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Despite these observations also made by Marcais and Andre Julien, both historian specialists of North Africa, these official historians have preferred to write about the amazing fable of the Arab presence in the Mediterranean basin rather than leaving the history book with blank pages.
]]>A panel discussion was put in place with the following participants:
– Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Social Anthropologist
– Mayssa Issa, journalist in France Media Monde Arabian from the baath party
– Khaled Yassine, artistic director, Beirut & Beyond
– Tshawe Baqwa, MADCON artist
– Cecilie Hellestveit, Moderator, International Law and Policy Institute (ILPI)
All these people obviously had a very festive moment, with a lot of laughter and a friendly atmosphere that only contributed to the common battle against evil.
Everything went successfully and according to their plan until it was time for questions. I began my intervention by asking them if they know that South Africa today does not belong to the white Europeans. The consent in this was signaled with big smiles from the panel.
I pointed out that the Arab representative spoke about Arab countries in North Africa. I remarked that there are no Arab countries in North Africa. There are Arab-ruled states and the Arab world they speak som much about is an artificial world, created by French and English colonialism. North Africa are not Arab countries. These lands belong to the Berber people. Then I asked them, among other things, how it’s like among 300 artists, no native North Africans who are colonized by the Arabs.
It was clear that my question had struck them down as a lightning strike. They were crasping blindly in the dark, trying desperately to get away from my question. Instead of Cecilie Hellestveit responding to the question I had addressed directly to her, she pretended to translate my questionnaire to the English-speaking Arab in the panel to translate what I said in Norwegian so that she spent a lot of time to avoid answering until I banned them saying “Peace is a very serious mission, it must be taken seriously!”
Then suddenly they all stood up and finished the discussion they thought would do well for their egos. They simply escaped as bandits who were taken with their hands full of loots.
It felt very good to see them jamming the tail between the legs.
Kabyle potery
The two words for olive tree in Berber
Excluding the micro-local forms, specialized or clearly borrowed (including Semitic: Punic or Arabic), the berber language has two basic names of the olive-oleastre: azəmmur ” olive ” or ” wild olive ” depending on the region, which is the most widely attested; and āliw/ālew limited to the tuareg and specifically refers to a Saharan variety of wild olive.
1. azəmmur (zamora and zemmuri) “strong”
The spread of the word azəmmur (and its feminin tazəmmurt) to a vast area of the Berber world – from Jebel Nefoussa in Libya throughout Morocco – and its great formal stability confirm its ancient character. The term is also very widespread in the North African (and Iberian) toponymy – often under arabized forms: zamora, zǝmmuri… – and already attested in the medieval Arab sources in the eleventh century (Al-Išbīlī). At the semantic level, a very interesting distribution is found : all eastern and central Mediterranean regions (Tripolitania through Kabylia), with an ancient olive tradition, give azəmmur meaning ” olive tree (cultivated)”, then the western and southern regions (Berber dialects of western Algeria and Morocco), where olive growing is less important and more recent, give it the sense of “oleaster” and borrow the Arabic name of the grown olive tree : zzitun, zzutin, zzitunǝt.
Morphologically, the term azəmmur presents the typical shape of a passive participle of the root ZMR, which refers to the concept of “power, to bear, to endure, to be able”. This formal information suggests that azǝmmur is a secondary qualifying form and not a primitive lexeme. In semitic, this root, which is found in the variants DMR / ZMR, evokes the notion of “force”. The link with the Berber/Semitic root ZMR form a semantic link between the olive tree and the concept of “force, strength/ endurance, ability …” which is not without interest on the symbolic level when it comes to the virtues attributed to the olive tree. Incidentally this would confirm the secondary nature of the name azəmmur
The Tuareg, southern variety of the berber language, has a form āliw, ālew, plur. āliwən which refers to a variety of wild olive tree which, from a botanical point of view is a subspecies of Olea europaea. It should be noted right away that āliw, ālew/āliwən is perfectly integrated with the morphological structures of the language, by its scheme and its plural, which is an indication of its ancient use, if not its “indigeneity.”
The word has a clear resemblance – Charles de Foucauld had already pointed in his monumental Tuareg-French dictionary – with Latin forms olea / olīua / oleum (olive, olive tree, olive oil), ancient Greek borrowing ἐλαία .
The Great Emile Laoust (1920), referring to the importance of olive cultivation during the Roman period, in particular in Tripolitania, raises that the Tuareg ālew / āliw was borrowed to Latin. The argument has some plausibility given the dialectological isolation of this form wish is only attested in Tuareg and it is established that at least part of the current Tuareg populations comes from the Libyan northern regions of Tripolitania (Gast, 2008 , Ibn Khaldun, I). Latin etymology was generally accepted by later authors, with the exception of the hispanicist R. Ricard on the basis of the presence of a form Aleo in Portuguese, emit serious doubts about it and formulate the idea that “it is once again the common vocabulary fund of the Mediterranean world” (1961, p 184.).
And, of course, the Latin origin (or Greek) of the Tuareg āliw, although plausible, should be regarded as a mere hypothesis – and not as the most probable
In one hand, the term olea / ἐλαία is not of Indo-European origin (Meillet 1975, p 302-303.). Since the olive tree (wild) grows spontaneously around the Mediterranean, we must necessarily admit that the Indo-European have borrowed it to a “Mediterranean” – or “Aegean” languages according to Meillet – when they arrived on the shores of the Mediterranean. The term is already attested in Mycenaean Greek (Linear B), ie the XIVcentury BC, this means that it has been borrowed from a “Mediterranean” language at a very early date, well before the Greeks installation in Cyrenaica which dates only VII century BC: the assumption of a loan by the Greek in the Berber region of modern Libya is clearly excluded. But other possibilities remain open:
− Parallel Greek and Berber borrowing from a unidentified “Mediterranean” language
− Borrowing to the Greek from a “Mediterranean” language which, itself, would have borrowed from Berber
− Finally borrowed from the archaic Greek to Berber in previous contacts during the founding of the Cyrenaica’s colonies… The linguistic data, rather ethno- and Paleobotanical lead to favor the latter hypothesis.
As an important element must be admitted: there are traces of āliw (or related forms) in other Berber dialects . Kabyle linguist Boulifa (1913) had already drawn attention in a small glossary Kabyle name of a shrub, the Filaria (Phillyrea angustifolia L.) of the Oleaceae family: tamətwala. Phillyrea angustifolia evokes the olive in appearance, with its narrow leaves rather dark green, lance-shaped, 2 to 6 cm, and evergreen. Boulifa proposed to analyze this word as a compound of tamət+ wala, and put the second element in relation with the Tuareg āliw. This division is quite acceptable and even almost certainly because it is difficult to see in a such Berber word a single or derived form. It may be noted that the field of botany is the one where the largest number of compounds is found in Berber . The second component, wala, may well be the Kabyle corresponding of the Tuareg āliw, whose the /ā/ , long and non-alternating indicates the presence of an old initial consonant, probably the semi-consonant / w / or laryngeal / h / (< *wliw / *hliw), and reinforces the connection with the Kabyle –wala and the assumption of a common primitive root or *WLW or (* HLW). We can therefore, without insurmountable difficulties, semantically as in formal terms, connect the tuareg āliw to the Kabyle *wala(w) implied by tamǝtwala.
If the same root, denoting endemic shrubs of the same botanical family is found in the Tuareg and Kabyle, Berber dialects geographically distant from one another, the assumption of a native origin āliw/ * WLW is not at all excluded; and consequently, that of a Greek borrowing to Berber, direct or indirect, to becomes a serious track, while the opposite hypothesis – Berber directly borrowing from Greek via Latin – becomes symmetrically very unlikely.
It should be stressed that the contacts between the Greek / Aegean world and the Berber world are very old and date back at least to the last centuries of the second millennium BC ( Camps 1985, pp. 50-51) : they both predate the founding of the Greek colonies of Cyrenaica (VII century BC) and it’s compatible with the presence of the Mycenaean Greek term (XIV BC). Herodotus himself explicitly mentions several technological or cultural borrowings made by the Greeks from the Berbers. And if one has long had strong reservations to admit cultural borrowing in this sense, it is, as rightly wrote by G. Camps (1985, p 50.), because:
“Obsessed by the Greek genius we hardly recognize that the Libyans, these barbarians, these “north african stragglers” to use an expression of E.-F. Gautier, have been able to teach anything to the Greeks. ”
It also comes logically to formulate the idea that āliw “oleaster” had to precede the berber azǝmmur “olive tree / oleaster” qualifying secondary form (verbal adjective), as stated above.
Of course the proper linguistic question of the origin of the term āliw can not be dissociated from the historical and ethnological origin of the culture and the exploitation of the olive tree in North Africa . However, paleobotany establishes both the African origin of the genus Olea and the ancient presence of pollen of Olea europaea in North Africa : from – 20 000, especially in the north of Tunisia. In terms of its operations and its culture, G. Camps, who devoted a long passage to the olive tree in Masinissa (1961, p. 87-91), considers that the Berbers practiced grafting of wild olive tree before Phoenician influence and noted that, according to the express testimony of the pseudo-Scylax , “the inhabitants of Djerba knew how to pull oil from the fruits of the oleaster.” In other words, the Berbers exploited in the middle of the IV century BC, the fruit of the native uncultivated shrub, which ultimately makes the borrowing of its name from the Greeks rather unlikely, a fortiori to Latin. Emile Laoust noted that the Chleuhs, Berbers of the High Atlas, still extract oil that was “bitter, of little used, reserved for lighting” from the fruit of the wild olive.
More broadly, it seems well established that in the entire western Mediterranean, domestication – or “pre-domestication” – of the olive tree is prior to the antique Punic, Greek or Roman olive cultivation, and is rooted in the Neolithic (Terral 1997). In North Africa and throughout the western basin of the Mediterranean, the Punic, Greek or Roman influence was late and focused on aspects of agronomic techniques, crop improvement and production techniques of the oil (presses), as well as storage and marketing.
Finally the plural form of the Tuareg āliwən also means a marriage ritual chant:
“… The use of the rhythm āliwən is exclusively reserved to verses sung by women in some wedding ceremonies. Verses, very few and all very old, composed on this rhythm are part of the wedding ceremony and handed down from generation to generation without knowing when or by whom they were made. The rhythm Āliwənis native of Ajjer and is very old. The women of the camp where the marriage takes place sing in chorus to the rhythm āliwən in the morning of day of the wedding. ” ( Foucauld, III, p 1094).
It is a quite remarkable symbolic that marriage is also clearly associated with the olive tree : evocation of sustainability, regeneration capacity, fertility with reference to the multiplicity of fruit …? This data also confirms the antiquity of the cultural roots of the olive tree in the Berber societies.
In conclusion, on the basis of the Berber language data, reinforced by paleobotanical and ethnological data, the two fundamental denominations of the oleaster and the olive tree (āliw / azǝmmur) seem to be native and pan-Berber, first āliw, being the oldest and certainly the first name oleaster (or from the Oleaceae family).
Consequently, the Berber form āliw has a very good chance to be the origin of the Greek ἐλαία and then of the Latin olea and all avatars resulting in a multitude of languages.
Salem Chaker. Berber Professor, University of Aix-Marseille
Notes
En berbère, pour certaines classes lexico-sémantiques (animaux, végétaux), le masculin est un générique ou collectif (azǝmmur = « l’espèce olivier », « les oliviers ») et le féminin un singulatif (tazǝmmurt = « un olivier »).
Cf. Laoust 1920, p. 492-495 ; pour une approche plus globale de composition lexicale en berbère : Chaker 1984, chap. 10.
« Ils font beaucoup d’huile avec le fruit de l’olive sauvage », Pseudo-Scylax, Périple, 110 (texte et trad. de E. Cougny & H. Lebègue, Paris, Renouard, 1878-1892 ; consulté sur Internet).
Orientation bibliographique
Al-’Išbīlī Abulḫayr, Kitābu ʿUmdati ṭ-ṭabib fī maʿrifati nnabāt likulli labīb (Libro base del médico para el conocimiento de la Botánica por todo experto) / s. V/XI), (Bustamante J., F. Corriente F. y M. Tilmatine M., Eds.), edición, notas y traducción castellana, Madrid, 2007, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, vol. II (Fuentes arábico-hispanas : 33).
Basset A., La langue berbère, Londres, 1952 (1969).
Besnard G., Rubio de Casas R., Christin P. A., Vargas P., “Phylogenetics of Olea(Oleaceae) based on plastid and nuclear ribosomal DNA sequences: Tertiary climatic shifts and lineage differentiation times”, Annals of Botany, 104, 2009, p. 143-160.
Boulifa A., Lexique kabyle-français, Glossaire, Alger, Jourdan, 1913.
Camps G., Massinissa, ou les débuts de l’histoire, 1961, Alger, Imprimerie officielle.
Camps G., « Pour une lecture naïve d’Hérodote. Les récits libyens (IV, 168-199) », Storia della Storografia, 1985, 7, p. 38-59.
Chaker S., Textes en linguistique berbère (Introduction au domaine berbère), Paris, Editions du CNRS, 1984.
Chaker S., Encyclopédie berbère ; s.v. :
Aliw (olivier sauvage)” (A167), fasc. IV, 1987 ;
“Azemmur (olivier)” (A346), fasc. VIII, 1990 ;
“Olivier – Olive”, fasc. XXXV (O16), 2013.
Chantraine P., Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque : histoire des mots, 1968-1980 (nouvelle édition 2009), Paris, Klincksieck.
Cohen D. et al., Dictionnaire des racines sémitiques…, Louvain/Paris, Peeters, 1993-2011 (10 fasc. parus).
Ernout A. & Meillet A., Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine, Paris, Paris, Klincksiek, 1994 (1ère éd. : 1922).
Foucauld Ch. de, Dictionnaire touareg-français (dialecte de l’Ahaggar), Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1950-1952, 4 tomes.
Gast M., Des Huwwara aux Kel-Ahaggar, la Saga d’une tribu nomade au Sahara central, Alger, Cnrpah, 2008.
Green P. S., “A revision of Olea L.”, Kew Bulletin, 57, 2002, p. 91-140.
Ibn Khaldoun , Histoire des berbères, 4 vol., Paris, A. Maisonneuve, 1925 (1978).
Laoust E., Mots et choses berbères, Paris, 1920, p. 444 et sq.
Meillet A., Linguistique historique et linguistique générale, Paris, Champion, 1975 : « A propos du nom du vin et de l’huile », p. 297-304.
Naït-Zerrad K., Dictionnaire des racines berbères…, II, Paris/Louvain, Peeters, 1999.
Prasse K.-G. et al., Dictionnaire touareg-français, Copenhague, Museum Tusculanum Press/University of Copenhaguen, 2003.
Ricard R., « Latin “olea“, touareg et portugais “aléo“, hypothèses et rapprochements », Bulletin hispanique, t. 63/3-4, 1961, p. 179-185.
Terral J.-F., 1997 – La domestication de l’olivier (Olea europaea L.) en Méditerranée nord-occidentale: Approche morphométrique et implications paléoclimatiques,Thèse de Doctorat, Université Montpellier-II.
]]>Banquet of Cupid and Psyche from “Metamorphoses” of Apuleius, a berber writer and berber history !
The West is built with the Berbers and should be with them. From Charlemagne to Napoleon and De Gaulle to Holland, French policy has not only been the same but genocide for Kabyle and Berbers in general. The Berbers are, culturally, historically and geographically, a people of the West to which the West has turned its back by ingratitude, ignorance, cowardice and jealousy. Today, the majority of europeans intellectuals and academics sometimes ignore our existence, not knowing that by ignoring us, they totally ignore the history of Europe, the history of Christianity and its history shortly. In their heads, the Algerian is an Arab and North Africa (Tamazgha) is an Arab Maghreb. It makes you want to vomit.
The history of North Africa, we need to tear pan by pan from the clutches of Francarabia. If we recover the history of these Christian martyrs that all believe they are French, while a large part of the European and Tamazgha history will be restored: Adrien (adrian of canterbury), Alexandre, Anastase, Arcade, Augustin, Aurele… Cassien, Célestin,Cécilienne, Cler, Commode, Constantin, Corneille, Cyprien… Damien… Émilien, Eugène… Félix, Fidèle, Flavien, Florent, Fortunat, Fulgence… Gelase, Germaine… Hermès… Janvier, Jules, Just, Justine… Laurent, Macarie, Marcel, Marcelin, Marcienne, Martial, Maxime, Miltiade. Monique… Octavien… Paulin… Saturnin, Sévère, Séverin… Tertullien, Théodore, Théodule, Thimotée, Valérien, Victor, Victorin, Vincent.,Zenon
Flying gallop chariot
By Hamiducc.
When a child, growing in my native Kabylia, I used to sing song… one that still sticks in my mind: When comes Spring in Kentucky… I didn’t know where Kentucky was… so I substituted the word Kabylia… in the song… and what a beautiful song it was then… and I still find myself humming it occasionally..
And this brings me to the idea of the arab world: I remember vaguely that I was told some folks in Algiers and surrounding area spoke a strange language, a mixture of berber and Arabic… Although theses people were berbers, I know this since many of them happened to be my cousins; one would call them arabs… Why? Don’t ask me.. Because the answer is simple.
When the first French settlers came to what they named Algeria, they assumed the country’s people were arabs. As simple as that.
For us Kabyle, we never asked ourselves the question as to what we were, it would have been absurd. But today, we realize the History had failed us.
When Algeria was busy fighting to recover its independence, some dark forces were at work, in the shadows of foreign lands. Somewhere in the middle east, some Algerians had the idea that if they aligned them selves with the so called arab world, they would get badly needed help.
How wrong they were!
They discovered a world that did not correspond to what men thought… and still today, the average western man is unaware that the arab world exist only in the mind of some with a hidden agenda. Hidden agenda, mind you, because there were some gains along with keeping that myth alive. You know, there is oil out there and specially a docile group of diverse people….. If we consider the Moslem world, western countries refer to them as the arab world! Egypt has long been one that trumpeted its ideology… in the name of “arabs”…. Needless to say that it took them more then 20 years to slide into a forgotten state. Iraq? Syria? … Where did the Assyrians, the kurds, druses Armenians… and all those ancient people go? Did they just fade away with the time? No they are still there, by acquired the arab language and culture. But does that make them arabs? In case you answered YES, then you should also consider all the descendants of slaves in the USA as being white… since the acquired the white ways, language and culture… Then we have the whole of North Africa…. True, some regions have developed a new language… from berber and Arabic… and yet the common man does not know that the morrocan peasant can not understand an Egyptian or a jordanian…
Where is the arab world?
There is not any…Only a myth…
More over, when we talk about the arab unity, the arab league….Where has it been .. or where is it ? I submit to you, it is a joke!
Islam is probably the only common link between these people and yet, for a person who has gone through these countries, the Islam one practices in one region is totally different from one in another region… It amuses me to read in Internet some lost characters who pretend in some unity… Just imagine the Christians pretending that across the globe everyone is in tune to the Vatican…
The World today, and mainly the Western World, must awake: The idea of a Greater Middle East… is a fancied world that must be dropped… for the good of all concerned.
I crisscross North America…and mainly USA… a Country with One Constitution, one Federal Government… and yet we have a diverse peoples from coast to coats… Don’t tell me that people of New Mexico Maine, Alabama… or Montana are alike!
I would laugh in my beard and dare say you know not the United States peoples..!
It’s the same with the so called arab world: I’ll tell you something about my native Algeria: Peoples from different region are so different… you could swear you are in different countries In this is quite normal: If the nation of the USA was born in 1776 … Algeria as we know it was born in 1830….. and before that it amount to a series of mini states that formed confederations as the time required alliances…
Only when settled by the French did these territories acquire a sort of state hood before independence in 1962… The French Revolution is still incomplete… and yet it started almost fifty years earlier… then how do you see Algeria? The same applies to the whole of North Africa…
So please, let forget the terms used to name theses countries: We have names… so why do some people insist on telling us we live in the Magrheb, In the Great Middle East..
Please, leave us alone: We live in North Africa just as you live in North America or South East Asia…
Please let ban the word Maghreb because it has no meaning. Maghreb means literally WEST…. I beg to ask: West of WHAT ? Why not East of the Atlantic for that matter! As for arab countries? There may exist one or two… if theses folks who inhabit them recognize themselves as arabs….
The United States refused to call itself an English Country although initially… Englishmen seceded from Great Britain… then why name us arabs since everyone know we are not arabs…
Unless… unless the western world is ignorant of the facts.
In which case, I invite all and everyone to get educated in the subject…. And I am sure that if you inquired… you will find out… that there maybe some connection with some middle eastern people… but the mainstream of peoples are anything… but arab… in the very countries you so wrongly call “arab countries”!
]]>The hatred felt by every Muslim is in opposition to what the media and Koranic texts say, is not directed exclusively toward Jews. Even if they have a high place in the hierarchy of hate! Hatred towards Kabyle people nearly equal to the hatred of Muslims towards the Jewish people.
This hatred is expressed from the mouth of an “intellectual” Muslim. who said confidently before an audience acquired that the Kabyle woman, the base of the Kabyle society, is inhabited by the devil, because she always made the wrong choice.
Understand by this that, the Kabyle woman is rational, disobedient to their diktats but fundamentally decent. In the 7th century the Berber queen who face the Arab and Muslim invasion. tells what was their astonishment to be fought by a woman.
“They are surprised that you are led by a woman, because they are slavers. They cover their women to better sell to them. For them the most beautiful girl is a commodity. It is important that they are not seen too closely. They envelope them, they are hidden like a stolen treasure. .It is important that it does not talk, nobody listens to her story. A free woman scandalize them. Therefore, for them, I am the devil. They cannot understand, they are blinded by their religion. “
These are the words of the Berber queen Dihya said in the 7th century. With this word is that it will respond to the “intellectual” Muslim, in 2016.
]]>All Saints Ukrainian Church on East 11th Street, with its colorful mosaic facade, was the unlikely venue on Saturday Jan. 16 for the metro area Berber community’s celebration of their traditional new year holiday , Yennayer. On the wall of the church’s downstairs meeting space, paintings of orthodox saints formed a backdrop to the flag of Kabylia—the increasingly restive Berber region of Algeria’s northern mountains. By an interesting chance, it has the same blue and yellow colors as the Ukrainian flag. It was still a little odd to hear strains of North African music and eat delicious couscous in a Ukrainian church.
The Berbers were in North Africa for thousands of years before the arrival of the Arabs in the seventh century. 2016 is 2966 in their calendar, which starts counting from the founding of a Berber dynasty in Egypt under Pharaoh Sheshonq I in 950 BC. Back then, the Berbers were known to the Greeks as the Libyans. They were later known to the Romans as the Numidians. They became known as the Berbers due to their association with the “barbarian” Vandals who passed through North Africa on their way to sacking Rome. But they have always called themselves the Amazigh—free people. (The plural is Imazighen.)
Article has been updated and enriched by a video of the conferance to the Dr. Sadi Robin Melbouci in english
Yennayer has taken on a special significance in the current Amazigh cultural renaissance—especially for the inhabitants of Kabylia and their worldwide diaspora. The highlight of the celebration at All Saints Church was an exposition by Sadi Melbouci, an Amazigh businessman and political leader who flew in from his home in Denver for the affair, entitled “Kabylia’s Path to Freedom.” Tired of what they see as second-class citizenship under a regime officially committed to Arab nationalism, more and more Kabyles (as the indigenous Amazigh of the region are called) view themselves as a colonized people, and are calling for independence from Algeria.
“We share common values of liberty and justice with Americans,” Melbouci said. “The United States declaration of independence is testament to all who seek freedom around the world.” By his history, Kabylia was at least de facto independent from ancient times until 1857, when it was forcibly absorbed into the French colony of Algeria—with much bloodshed.
Melbouci envisions an independent Kabylia as a North African Switzerland—citing its commitment to peaceful secularism and tradition of decentralized “village republics,” as well as its mountainous (and comparatively green) landscape.
The cross-fertilization with the East Village Ukrainian community began in October, when followers of the Kabylia Self-Determination Movement (MAK) symbolically raised their blue-and-yellow flag on their own portable pole outside the UN building, as a statement of their intent. Days later, they held a celebration of the feat, with live music and couscous, at the Ukrainian National Home restaurant on Second Ave. And the Ukrainian struggle against Russia over the past generations is arguably a parallel to the Kabyle struggle against Algeria.
Four days before the East Village Yennayer celebration, thousands of Imazighen marked their new year by marching in Tizi Ouzou, Kabylias’ central city, to assert their right to self-determination. They also rejected proposed constitutional changes unveiled by Algeria’s government earlier this year.
In addition to limiting presidents to two terms—a concession to pro-democracy advocates—the constitutional reform would make the Berber tongue, Tamazight, an “official language.” This upgrades its current status as a “national language,” instated in 2002 following a wave of Berber protests the previous year. But the new protesters consider the change inadequate, as it maintains the primacy of Arabic. They also reject constitutional provisions that only Arabic-speaking Muslims can be elected to the presidency.
MAK’s New York coordinator Mansour Bensahnoune Ulhady told me: “By putting Tamazight in a secondary paragraph in the so-called constitution, the Arab regime of Algeria really showed its colonial nature… This Yennayer march clearly gave the Kabylian independence movement a great mandate in pursuing the fight for independent and free Kabylia, and for establishing a strong democratic and secular state that will serve as an example and model for all North Africa and all the oppressed peoples of the world.”
It gave this old peacenik pause when Melbouci called for US military bases in a free Kabylia. He portrayed the country as a potential bulwark against jihadism throughout the region. “If US had military bases in Kabylia, what happened in Benghazi would not have happened,” he said.
In any case, Kabylia could erupt into the world headlines very soon—despite the fact that few outside the Berber diaspora have heard of it in the United States. Once again, the East Village is ahead of the curve.
]]>Pharaoh Ramesses II
The analysis of the Pharaoh Ramesses II
The mummy was examined in 1886 by Gaston Maspero and Dr. Fouquet, first thorough investigation of the mummy. The investigations were carried out with the means of the time: detailed observation of the body, various measurements.
In 1974, to determine the causes of death of Ramesses II and other mummies, including that of Merneptah, investigations were undertaken under the direction of Maurice Bucaille with Egyptian colleagues and a dozen other French collaborators in various medical disciplines. The results were communicated among others, the Academy of Medicine and the French Society of Legal Medicine. His book The Mummies of the Pharaohs and medicine presents the final results of his research.
Many modern techniques were used, radiological and endoscopic explorations, investigations in the dental field, microscopic research, forensic, etc. A find of great importance due to the use of X-ray films of high sensitivity allowed to show the existence of a very serious injury to the jaw of Ramses II, extensive osteomyelitis of the lower jaw of dental origin. Maurice Bucaille concludes that these injuries were probably fatal condition that the king did not have other undetected serious diseases (due to the inability to examine the chest organs associated with mummification) and that could be the pharaoh who pursued Moses and the Hebrews, for he died in frightful suffering resulting total physical disability.
A study of the mummy of Ramesses II, the Museum of Man in Paris in 1976, concluded that the pharaoh was a “leucoderma, Mediterranean type similar to that of North African Amazigh”.
Pharaoh Ramesses II (of the 19th Dynasty), is generally considered to be the most powerful and influential King that ever reigned in Egypt. He is one of the few rulers who has earned the epithet “the Great”. Subsequently, his racial origins are of extreme interest.
In 1975, the Egyptian government allowed the French to take Ramesses’ mummy to Paris for conservation work. Numerous other tests were performed, to determine Ramesses’ precise racial affinities, largely because the Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop, was claiming at the time that Ramesses was black. Once the work had been completed, the mummy was returned in a hermetically sealed casket, and it has remained largely hidden from public view ever since, concealed in the bowels of the Cairo Museum. The results of the study were published in a lavishly illustrated work, which was edited by L. Balout, C. Roubet and C. Desroches-Noblecourt, and was titled La Momie de Ramsès II: Contribution Scientifique à l’Égyptologie (1985).
Professor P. F. Ceccaldi, with a research team behind him, studied some hairs which were removed from the mummy’s scalp. Ramesses II was 90 years-old when he died, and his hair had turned white. Ceccaldi determined that the reddish-yellow colour of the mummy’s hair had been brought about by its being dyed with a dilute henna solution; it proved to be an example of the cosmetic attentions of the embalmers. However, traces of the hair’s original colour (in youth), remain in the roots, even into advanced old age. Microscopic examinations proved that the hair roots contained traces of natural red pigments, and that therefore, during his youth, Ramesses II had been red-haired. It was concluded that these red pigments did not result from the hair somehow fading, or otherwise altering post-mortem,but did indeed represent Ramesses’ natural hair colour. Ceccaldi also studied a cross-section of the hairs, and he determined from their oval shape, that Ramesses had been “cymotrich” (wavy-haired). Finally, he stated that such a combination of features showed that Ramesses had been a “leucoderm” (white-skinned person).
Balout and Roubet were under no illusions as to the significance of this discovery, and they concluded as follows:
“After having achieved this immense work, an important scientific conclusion remains to be drawn: the anthropological study and the microscopic analysis of hair, carried out by four laboratories: Judiciary Medecine (Professor Ceccaldi), Société L’Oréal, Atomic Energy Commission, and Institut Textile de France showed that Ramses II was a ‘leucoderm’, that is a fair-skinned man, near to the Prehistoric and Antiquity Mediterraneans, or briefly, of the Berber of Africa.”
It is interesting to note the link to the North African Berbers: some Berber tribes, such as the Riffians of the Atlas Mountains, have incidences of blondism reaching almost 60%, and they have a percentage of red-haired people which is comparable to that of the Irish.
These facts have not only anthropological interest however, but also great symbolic importance. In ancient Egypt, the god Seth was said to have been red-haired, and redheads were claimed to have worshipped the god devoutly. In the Ramesses study cited above, the Egyptologist Desroches-Noblecourt wrote an essay, in which she discussed the importance of Ramesses’ rufous condition. She noted that the Ramessides (the family of Ramesses II), were devoted to Seth, with several bearing the name Seti, which means “beloved of Seth”. She concluded that the Ramessides believed themselves to be divine descendants of Seth, with their red hair as proof of their lineage; they may even have used this peculiar physical feature to propel themselves out of obscurity, and onto the throne of the Pharaohs. Desroches-Noblecourt also speculated that Ramesses II may well have been descended from a long line of redheads.
Her speculations have been proved correct: Dr. Joann Fletcher, a consultant to the British Bioanthropology Foundation, has proved that Seti I (the father of Ramesses II), had red hair. It has also been demonstrated that the mummy of Pharaoh Siptah (a great-grandson of Ramesses II), has red hair.
We may also note the anthropological description of Ramesses’ mummy, which was written by the Biblical historian Archibald Sayce:
“The Nineteenth Dynasty to which Ramses II, the oppressor of the Israelites, belonged, is distinguished by its marked dolichocephalism of long-headedness. His mummy shows an index of 74, while the face is an oval with an index of 103. The nose is prominent, but leptorrhine and aquiline, and the jaws are orthognathous. The chin is broad, the neck long, like the fingers and nails. The great king seems to have had red hair.”
All of these features are characteristics of the Nordic race. Finally, we should note that Professor Raymond Dart declared that the Nordic race was the “Egyptian Pharaonic type”. He then went on to state specifically, that the head of Ramesses II is “pelasgic ellipsoidal or Nordic” in type.
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