The Berbers.
The indigenous population comprised in the races of Tunisia, and known generally as Berbers, may be computed at about one million. They are a hybrid people, the descendants of the “Libyans” of Herodotus and Scylax, of the Mauri or Maurusii, of the Gætulians, of the Romans, and of the Numidians. All these races have nothing in common with the Phœnicians. Herodotus already knew this, and remarks that whereas the Libyans and Ethiopians were the original inhabitants of North Africa, the Phœnicians and Greeks were immigrants.
It was long before any distinction was made between the various racial groups of Berbers; it was only observed that there were amongst them both fair and dark types. It was not until men such as the archæologist Tissot and the well-known Duveyrier had broken the ground, and in later years the famous anthropologists, Doctors Collignon and Bertholon, had succeeded in throwing light on the native languages, that a way was opened which led to a correct solution of the origin of the Berber peoples, and their division into groups.
I made the acquaintance of Bertholon in Tunis; he is at present President of the Geographical Society there, the “Institut de Carthage.” From my conversations with him, and from the information I acquired from his works and those of his predecessors, I think I am able to indicate the principal groups.[6] Within these are again included lesser groups, not, however, needing special mention here.
1. The Berbers of the oases (of the Néanderthal type).
These are the Gætuli of the ancients, who at the present day live where they were found in olden times; that is in the southern oases—the home of the date-palm.
This race, so far as can be ascertained, has always inhabited El Jerid, to the west of Gabés, for Sallust mentions this people as dwelling there, and regarded them as the oldest inhabitants of this country.
They are a peaceful and somewhat indolent race, who cultivate their gardens and tend their palm trees.
From olden times they have been maltreated by the surrounding warlike nomads and mountaineers, against whom they were incapable of defending themselves. Indeed, they have frequently been compelled to pay their tormentors largely to protect them from other predatory tribes.
They have, therefore, always been in a wretched dependent position, which has tended to develop their indolence, and has been the source of the deterioration of their morals.
For instance, since olden days, they have had a regular marriage law, but this institution has little meaning for them, women being held in great contempt, and the men not even doing them the honour of being jealous of them. This state of affairs can be accounted for by the tendency of the men to form illicit connections. Formerly, deceived husbands were openly ridiculed in the oasis of Gofsa and never took serious offence; in fact, it was customary to select as kaid one of those who had been most compromised in this respect. The nominee had to undergo a strange ordeal on his election. He had to ride through the oasis on a donkey, seated facing the tail, and wearing a grotesque head-dress. Thus he was paraded to the great amusement of the inhabitants, and, perhaps, to his own satisfaction.
These kind of husbands are known in Tunisia and Algeria alike as “Tahan,” the word signifying not only he who is betrayed, but further, he who is betrayed for the sake of gain.
2. The dark Berbers (Dolichocephalous, or long-headed type), of short stature, like the Iberians, the natives of the Mediterranean littoral, the Cro-Magnon, and the Sordi types.
The Tunisian Berbers of this group closely resemble the natives of the Pyrenees and of Languedoc, and of the great islands in the Mediterranean Sea. Their chief characteristic is a tendency toward murder, feud, and fray.
In the three “arrondissements” of Ain Drahm (in the Khrumir mountains), Bizerta and Kef, all in north-west Tunisia, where this type prevails, no less than forty-one murders and assaults were committed last year alone, whereas in the whole of the rest of Tunisia there were only twenty-nine. This computation includes only the crimes committed by natives. This propensity to shed blood exists also amongst the kindred race north of the Mediterranean.
It is startling to observe that this temperament prevails wherever the brown dolichocephalous peoples are found.
Other characteristics which they have in common are their warlike disposition, their devotion to agriculture, and their pronounced clannishness.
For example, when the French came to Tunisia, the Khrumirs, the most typical of the tribes belonging to this group, were formed into three leagues, composed of fifteen tribes, which were again subdivided into forty-three divisions, although the whole population numbered only five thousand and seventy-one persons, of whom only one thousand four hundred and seventy were men capable of bearing arms. In other words, there were only forty-three armed men in each division.
The tribe Nefza in the same province had innumerable chiefs of clans.
A peculiarity of the people on either coast of the Mediterranean is their strong inclination to fetichism, whatever may be the form of their religion.
The Khrumirs are Mussulmans only in name. Their religion is confined to observing the fast (Ramadan), and to a holy horror of all unbelievers. They never pray, and are unacquainted with any ritual. They own some Marabout tombs, enshrining saints to whom peculiar influence is attributed, and who are worshipped like positive idols.
One of these is adored because he takes care that parents who ill-treat their children shall be punished through his intervention.
Some punish perjurers.
Sid Abdallah-ben-Jemet, the famed Marabout, at whose tomb the Khrumirs assembled to oppose the French when these arrived in 1881, is, like many others, celebrated for the cure of fevers. One protects the crops, another is the special patron of fountains. In short, all these Marabouts are worshipped as lesser gods. Beneath Islamism, idolatry flourishes as in olden days; the gods have merely changed their names.
Amongst the Khrumirs, family ties are very slack, woman being regarded as a mere beast of burden. Marriage can be dissolved with the greatest facility. In many tribes a man can take to himself a wife without the intervention of any sort of authority. When the price agreed on—generally a pair of oxen—is paid, the man takes his bride home, and then invites the elders of his tribe to a banquet.
Among the Ushetta a peculiar custom holds. After their feast is concluded, the bridegroom and his friends plunder all the tents of the “duar” for edibles for another meal—continuing until they can find nothing more to devour.
The woman is usually bought without her consent being asked, and it often occurs that, just after a daughter’s marriage, the father will request the bridegroom to return the bride, as in the meantime another man has offered for her a higher price. Thus he sometimes gets double payment, as, when a couple is compelled to separate, the purchase money is not returned.
The intellectual condition of this people is of the narrowest. Scarcely a hundred can be found who can read, and few can count up to a hundred. Neither have they any knowledge of what has occurred in their own country even within the last century. Their industrial arts are primitive; even pottery-making is unknown.
The Khrumirs are extremely quarrelsome, and are always fighting among themselves. No market or feast can pass without blood being shed.
The abduction of women by armed men is common. The comparatively unattached existence of the women facilitates illegal connections. A great number of these nomads have, therefore, as mistresses married women, either in their own “duar,” or in the neighbourhood.
A Khrumir will rove at times both far and wide, and even in winter will brave snow and bad weather to reach his beloved. Formerly death was the punishment inflicted on a woman whose guilt was discovered; since the French occupation they do not venture to kill her, but she is severely chastised, or sometimes handed over to her lover, who is forced to pay to the betrayed husband the sum for which he bought her. Still women continue now, as formerly, to be the primary cause of many a murder.
For “to die in your bed” the Ushetta say “to die like a donkey.”
The vendetta with all its consequences prevails to a greater extent than in Corsica.
In some tribes it was the custom when a mountaineer had been murdered, and after his death had been sufficiently howled over, to slaughter a sheep. Kinsmen and friends were invited, and all those who partook of the meat united in an oath to avenge the death. Blood money (dia) existed, but was seldom accepted.
When it suited them, all individual differences were laid aside that they might unite to plunder in fellowship. Anyone venturing amongst the Nefza tribe in old days was immediately despoiled.
So lately as 1878, when the Auvergne was wrecked near Tabarka, all on board were completely stripped, even to their shoes. In 1885, when another ship was wrecked at the same place, its cargo was instantly pillaged, though under the guardianship of the French authorities. Needless to say, robberies are of daily occurrence. Even in 1888 an officer’s horse was stolen on the road to Ain Drahm, in the Khrumir mountains.
The prevalence of theft has originated a peculiar mode of earning a livelihood. Certain individuals gain their subsistence entirely by pursuing and finding stolen cattle. They follow the track of the animals, mark the road taken, and, as a rule, discover where the booty is concealed. They often offer terms to the thieves if these show signs of fear, and thus extract money both from the man who has been robbed, when they recover his property, and from the thief, who pays not to be given up. The robbers naturally commit murders and other serious crimes, for to them the concealment of their robberies is all-important. In 1888 two Kabail were thus plundered and murdered by the Khrumir. The latter had ordered their women to burn the corpses, but an inquiry was made and all was revealed, and subsequently three of the culprits were hanged at Tunis.
Until the French in 1881 put a check on them, the Khrumir were uncontrolled. When the Bey’s soldiers arrived to collect taxes, they were received with gun-shots, and were generally compelled to retreat.
Very often they defeated the Bey’s whole army, as in 1855, when they cut down Ahmed Bey himself as he fled from them; and when the Nefza massacred three hundred men in a pass north of Beja.
Even since the French occupation they have broken out. When, in 1887, the officials who controlled the tobacco monopoly went amongst them to make certain inquiries, they rose in arms, and a regular battle was fought in which men were both killed and wounded.
To this day they frequently revolt against their own chiefs, and very often kill them.
Like practical people they sometimes palm off on the authorities a decrepit old man, who is hung instead of the actual murderer.
They do not venture to make open war against the French, but they wreak their vengeance by setting fire to the grand cork-woods in the Khrumir mountains, although aware that if caught and imprisoned they are undone.
Finally, we must bear in mind that, according to Sallust, the mingling of the races of Gætuli and Berbers of short stature (the Cro-Magnon type) resulted in the people known as the Numidians. In ancient times they had no fixed dwellings. Thus Polybius relates that Massinissa’s greatest triumph was that he had induced them to live in settled abodes.
3. The fair-haired Berbers (Brachycephalous—short-headed, the Grenelle and Celtic type).
(a) The Grenelle type is found in Spain and probably in Morocco, as in Malta and on the coasts of Tunisia.
(b) Brachycephalous Berbers of the Ligurian type. In Tunisia these are found on the island of Jerba, in the Matmata mountains, and, again, along the coast, more especially about Susa; but they are also scattered throughout the interior of the country. They are akin to the Mozabit and the Kabail, and to the old Celtic cognate races.
The resemblance of these types to those of the people on the corresponding northern shores of the Mediterranean is very striking. The brachycephalous population of the ancient “Gallia Cisalpina,” in the valley of the Rhone, in Auvergne, and in the Alps, is of light complexion, and peaceful temperament, for neither vendetta, coltetta, nor maffia, nor, generally speaking, any similar description of crime, is known amongst this people.
In Eastern Tunisia, along the coast from Susa as far as the island of Jerba, the soil is, comparatively speaking, well cultivated. The Berbers there wear a peculiar costume (narrow blue trousers and a woollen coat, but rarely the burnous). The peaceful agriculturists are, in some districts, also traders, and in others remarkably good seamen. The region they inhabit is therefore more highly civilised than the rest of Tunisia, and most of the soldiers of the 4th battalion of Tirailleurs are enrolled from amongst these natives, since they lend themselves better to discipline, and are more easily commanded than the natives of Algeria.
On the whole, the agriculturist in Tunisia is found only amongst the brachycephalous tribes. This alone is a remarkable connecting link, but there are many others which certainly indicate that on both sides of the Mediterranean we find a cognate race.
As the Auvergnats, the Savoyards, and the Piedmontese leave their hearths and homes for a while to earn money in various ways in European towns—how many little Savoyards have we not seen formerly in Denmark with their hand-organs and marmots?—so do the Berbers journey forth, the Mzaboas, the Kabail, the people of the island of Jerba, of Eastern Tunisia, or of the Matmata mountains, to the towns on the south coast of the Mediterranean to earn a substantial sum of money, with which on their return home they may buy palms, a few head of cattle, and—a wife. For instance, at the Grand Hotel in Tunis I found a couple of men from Duirat serving in the kitchen.
Like their brethren in France, the Berber traders are born democrats.
Between their social organisation and that of the Celts one finds more than one point of resemblance.
Thus there is a comparatively limited religious spirit, combined with great superstition, equally amongst the Roman Catholic Auvergnats and the Mohammedan Kabail.
On my way to Tunis I passed through Auvergne, where I observed many old villages built on the tops of hills. In the Matmata, and later in the Kabail mountains, I was struck with the similarity of the Berber villages to those I had seen in Southern France.
Finally, I may remark that in many places on the North African coast one sees stone cairns and monuments that are strikingly like those found in France, and, moreover, at home in Denmark also.
It stands to reason that in a country like Tunisia, which since time immemorial has been inhabited by so many different races, it is not always easy to trace the various types when these are closely intermingled. Still there may always be found amongst these mixed peoples a few individuals who bear, in a greater or lesser degree, the impress of a marked racial tendency.
In the oases that lie towards the south-east, one finds, for instance, brachycephalous Berbers intermingled with the original Berbers of the oases—the descendants of the Gætulians.
One is soon struck with the consequence, amongst others, of the high value set on the chastity of the girls whom they desire to marry; in direct contrast in this respect to the dwellers in other oases.
In Central and Western Tunisia one finds not a few Berbers mingled with the Arabs. Those who are nomads live as do the aristocratic Arabs; but those who have fixed abodes are, on the contrary, republican in thought and feeling.
They were originally governed by a “Jemáa,” or superior assembly, whose decrees were made in accordance with local tradition (kanun), which was regarded as law; the kanun being held in even greater honour than the Koran.
Since the French occupation, legal jurisdiction has been established over the whole country, with kaids, khalifas, and sheikhs, and a superior tribunal in Tunis. This curtailment of their former liberties has placed the Berbers on the same footing as the Arabs, and has led to the disappearance of their ancient institutions.
The Berber language is distinct from the Semitic. It has now nearly died out in Tunis, and is supplanted by Arabic, but it still survives on the island of Jerba, where at least one document exists written in the ancient characters. Also I found it still spoken in many of the villages near Duirat in the Matmata mountains, but the written language is absolutely forgotten there.
According to Tissot, this language is in the main similar to all the dialects spoken in the Sahara by the Tibu and the Tuareg right away from Senegal to Nubia, but of course not including the new dialects spoken by the Negroes or Sudanese.
The Tuareg language is that which most nearly approaches that of the Berbers; but those independent peoples, who call themselves Imoshag, Amazigh, Shloh, may be said to be more closely akin to the Kabail, Zauau of Algeria, and the Berbers of Tunisia.
In my book, Algeria and the Sahara, I described my travels through the Sahara, and at the same time gave a short sketch of the Tuareg bands. Here I will give from the best works[7] of French travellers, but adhering as far as possible to Bertholon’s account, a brief supplementary commentary on the status of woman in these desert tribe communities, for their position is quite different from that occupied by their sisters in Mohammedan countries.
A Tuareg woman exercises a decided right of option in the matter of marriage. Indeed, without her consent, and unless she herself has chosen a husband, she cannot be given in marriage, and, in spite of the Koran, she has found the way to prevent her husband taking a second wife.
Amongst the Tuareg tribes in the Western Sahara, monogamy is so firmly established that it has given rise to the following adage: “The man who takes two wives invites death to his tent.”
Divorce, so easily obtainable amongst Mohammedans, is almost unknown to the Tuareg, and is, besides, very difficult of accomplishment. It can only take place after the case has been submitted to a court of arbitration composed of four persons—two for each of the married pair.
The Tuareg woman is not her husband’s slave; she is his equal, she sits beside him at meals, and can take long journeys alone, for she is not shut up like an Arab woman.
Whilst the man journeys afar with the caravans, or on freebooting expeditions, she remains at home to direct affairs. But this is not all, for she studies old traditions, is highly enlightened, and far in advance of the men in knowledge of old customs and manners, and also of the art of reading and writing the Tuareg language. In short, it is she who preserves their traditions and is acquainted with their literature, and indeed sometimes ranks as the highest authority of the tribe.
Duveyrier relates that amongst the eastern Tuareg the women take part in the councils when the tribes assemble, just as did the Iberian women in ancient days.
In the battlefield it is often dread of the women’s scorn which drives the men to make the utmost efforts to return victorious.
“This trait reminds one of the Iberian maidens, who chose their husbands from amongst the bravest warriors.”
Descent on the mother’s side alone ennobles, and the children belong to the family of the wife.
For instance, the son of a nobly born woman and a slave is acknowledged as free born, whereas the son of a slave and a free man remains a slave. But, in favour of the latter, certain tribes have created a particular caste called “Iradjenat,” who, though yet slaves, are exempt from certain heavy labour.
It must be added that the women have entire control over their own property.
Inheritance in the tribes goes from a man to his brother, and, in default, to the son of a sister, but never to the direct progeny.
In such communities misconduct on the part of women is not tolerated, it is simply punished with death. Captain Bissuel relates that a native of the province of Setif killed his sister by order of his father, they having learnt that she was leading a dissolute life. Both father and brother mourned for the poor culprit, but were convinced that they had only done their duty.
On the other hand, according to Duveyrier, the Tuareg lawfully claim le droit du seigneur from their female slaves, before these marry.
The same custom is mentioned by Herodotus as obtaining amongst the Adyrmachidæ in the neighbourhood of Egypt.
The western Tuareg regard this custom as despicable.
The Tuareg have to give their wives a dowry, which varies in amount. The western Tuareg, for instance, give at least six camels, a negress, and a complete costume.
These are the principal features of Tuareg customs. They have many points in common with those of the mystical Amazons and the Iberians of antiquity.
Even now among the Basques the man plays a subordinate part. The woman rules and controls the house. “The husband is her head servant,” who brings to the house only himself and his labour, together with a stipulation for progeny.