Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Live Free or Die Trying: The Berbers
The fertile land revealed after the great thaw was a magnet for near- eastern nomads, early
ancestors of Morocco's Amazigh (plural Imazighen, loosely translated as 'free people')
who may have been distant cousins of the ancient Egyptians. They were joined by Mediter-
ranean anglers and Saharan horse-breeders around 2500 BC, with Phoenicians showing up
fashionably late around 800 BC and East Africans around 500 BC.
When the Romans arrived in the 4th century, they didn't know quite what to make of this
multicultural milieu. The Romans called the expanse of Morocco and western Algeria
'Mauretania' and the indigenous people 'Berbers', meaning 'barbarians'. The term has re-
cently been reclaimed and redeemed by the Berber Pride movement, but at the time it was
taken as quite a slur.
The ensuing centuries were one long lesson for the Romans in minding their manners.
First the Berbers backed Hannibal and the Carthaginians against Rome in a protracted spat
over Sicily known as the Punic Wars (264-202 BC). Fed up with the persistently unruly
Berbers, the new Roman emperor Caligula finally declared the end of Berber autonomy in
the Maghreb (northwest Africa) in AD 40.
The emblem on the Berber lag is the Tiinagh letter 'yaz' - it symbolises a free person (
amazigh
),
the Berbers' name for themselves.
Defying Orders under Roman Noses
True to his ruthless reputation, Caligula divided relatively egalitarian Berber clans into sub-
servient classes of slaves, peasants, soldiers and Romanised aristocrats. This strategy
worked with Vandals and Byzantines, but Berbers in the Rif and the Atlas drove out the
Romans with a campaign of harassment and flagrant disregard for Roman rules. Many Ber-
bers refused to worship Roman gods, and some practised the new renegade religion of
Christianity in open defiance of Roman rule. Christianity took root across North Africa; St
Augustine himself was a Berber convert.
Ultimately Rome was only able to gain a sure foothold in the region by crowning local
favourite Juba II king of Mauretania. The enterprising young king married the daughter of
Mark Antony and Cleopatra, supported scientific research and performing arts, and helped
foster Moroccan industries still vital today: olive-oil production from the region of Volubil-
is (near Meknès), fishing along the coasts, and vineyards on the Atlantic plains.
