The Human Race

by Louis Figuier

71.—MOORISH COFFEE-HOUSE AT SIDI-BOW-SAID, NEAR TUNIS.

The Berbers.—The Berbers are the race which from very ancient times inhabited the mountains of the Atlas chain, or wandered amidst the deserts of the Sahara. The Berbers are split up into a great number of tribes, of whom the four principal are, the Kabyles, the Shellas, the Touariks and the Tibbous.

The traveller in Kabylia is struck with admiration, for its lofty mountains, the gentle and pleasing undulations of its plains, and its valleys interlaced with the windings of countless streams. Its inhabitants are pastoral, agricultural, and laborious. The headdress of their women is fashioned to suit their habit of carrying on their head jars of great weight. They balance these by rigidly straightening their waists, round which they wind, some score of times, a girdle of coarse woollen cords. Their garment is simply a piece of woollen cloth fastened together by a couple of pins over the bosom.

The Kaybles are not, like the real Arabs, nomadic. They remain, on the contrary, faithful to one spot. Whilst the Arab inhabits a tent, removable at will, and in accordance with the requirements of his family, the Kabyle lives in a stone dwelling, and his homestead is a regular village. In truth, the Kabyle is not an Arab; he is of African origin, a Berber, somewhat modified by the different races that have in turn settled on the African shores of the Mediterranean, but whose customs and physical characteristics have always remained the same.

The Roman armies subdued the Kabyles dwelling on the Mediterranean coasts, and drove them into the mountains. The principal aim of the successive Roman governors in Africa, was to drain the country of its resources to supply the insatiable requirements of Rome, and the extravagant liberality continually lavished on its citizens by the Emperors of this capital of the world. Rome thus accepted from Africa but slaves and labourers. Those of the conquered, who were unwilling to pass under the heavy yoke of the Roman governors, abandoned the plains and retired to the mountains, inaccessible retreats, whose ravines and forests offered innumerable obstacles to the cruelty of centurions, and the rapacity of prætors. At a future period, led by enterprising chieftains, they sallied forth from these natural fortresses to assail and ultimately to definitively repulse the Roman power.

To give an idea of the Kabylia of to-day, and of its organization, we will quote a few details from “An Excursion to great Kabylia,” published in 1867, in “Le Tour du Monde,” from the pen of Commandant Duhousset, an officer in the French army.

“In Kabylia,” he says, “the household composed of the members of one family is termed kharouba; each kharouba forming part of the village or déhera, elects one of its members as a dhaman to represent it at the municipal council, and to defend its interests: in a word, to be responsible for it.

“The different déheras are further united together under the name of arch.

“In each village authority is administered by an amin, elected by turns from each kharouba. It is the duty of this official to watch over the execution of the written laws, drawn up under the name of khanoun, and which are merely the recital of the customs handed down from time immemorial in Kabylia.