The Berbers, short, squat figures, high cheekbones, small eyes, square frames, great walkers, only becoming horsemen by necessity, as when the Arabs have forced them to the desert; as fond of mountains as the Arabs are of plains; in general agriculturists, whereas the Arab in his true sphere prefers a pastoral life; the Berbers, little known outside their mountains, look rather Scottish in appearance, that is, Scotch as ordinary mortals see that race, and not as seen through “kailyard” spectacles. It may be that the Berbers are a noble race, but personally I should apply the adjective “noble” to the Arabs, and to the Berbers give some such qualifying phrases as “relatively honest,” “tenacious,” or perhaps, best of all, “bourgeois,” which, to my way of thinking, best expresses the characteristics of those Berber tribes who, in the north side of the Atlas, are dominated by the Sultan’s power. Where they touch one another to the south upon the confines of the desert, it would be hard to give the palm for savagery; and the great Berber tribes, Ait Morghed and Ait [90a] Hannu, have become practically Arabs in their customs and their use of horses. The Tuaregs, [90b] on the other hand, have remained absolutely Berber, and indiscriminately attack Arabs and Christians, and all who cross their way.
As to the name of Berber, ethnologists, after the fashion of all scientists, have disagreed, taken one another by the beards, and freely interchanged (and I suppose as faithfully received) the opprobrious names which render the disputes of men of science and of theologians so amusing to those who stand aside and put their tongues out at both sorts of men.
Breber, Baraba, Berber, all three phases of the word are found. Some learned men derive the word from the Greek, and make it simply stand for Barbarian. Others, again, as stoutly make it Arab, and say it means “People of the Land of Ber.” [90c]
Ibn Jaldun (always an innovator) has his theory, which seems just as good as any other man’s. He makes the Berbers to descend not from Shem, but Ham (Cam as the Arabs call him), and relates that Ham had a son called Ber, whose son was called Mazirg, and that from Ber came the Beranis, who, in time, and by corruption of the word, turned into Berberes. If not convincing, the theory shows invention, and smacks (to me) of the derivations I have heard hacked out, so to speak, with a scalping knife round the camp-fire; for, uncivilised and semi-civilised men waste as much time in seeking to find out how the form of words got crystallised as if they had diplomas from their universities.
Strangely enough, the people we call Berbers do not know the name, and call themselves Tamazirght, that is, the noble. Their language is called Amzirght, and resembles closely the Tamashek spoken by the Tuaregs, the dialect of the tribes of the Riff Mountains, and that of the Kabyles of Algeria. [91a] The Arabs neither use the word Tamazirght nor the word Berber, but call the Berber tribes “Shluoch,” that is, the outcasts; the verb is “Shallaha,” and the term used for the speech Shillah, [91b] a sort of Shibboleth in Europeans’ mouths, for very few even of those (who, like the Germans and the Spaniards can pronounce the guttural) ever attain to the pronunciation of the Arabic and Berber semi-guttural, semi-pectoral aspiration of this word.
Till the last twenty years the greater portion of the Berber tribes, although Mohammedans, owned but a nominal allegiance to the Sultan of Morocco, and lived almost independently under their Omzarghi (lords), Amacrani (great one), and Amrgari (elders), but nowadays, even in Sus and in the desert, the Sultan’s authority is much more felt. In fact, until quite lately they lived as their forefathers—the Getulians, Melano-getulians, and Numidians—lived before them, with the exception that being driven to the mountains they had greatly lost the horsemanship which made them famous to the ancient world. Even to-day it is not rare to see them ride, just as the Roman writers said the ancient Numidian cavalry rode, without a saddle or a bridle, and guiding their horses with a short stick, which they alternately change from hand to hand to make them turn.
The words Mazyes, Maziriciæ and Mazyces occur in many Greek and Roman writers, and seem not impossibly to be derived from Amazirght, or from Mazig, the most ancient form known of their appellation. Leo Africanus, himself a Moor, [92] calls them Amarigh, and says of them “they are strong, terrible, and robust men, who fear neither cold nor snow; their dress is a tunic of wool over the bare flesh, and above the tunic they wear a mantle. Round their legs they have twisted thongs, and this serves them also for shoes. They never wear anything on the head at any season; they rear sheep, mules and asses, and their mountains have few woods. They are the greatest thieves, and traitors, and assassins in the world—” [93]
Even to-day this picture of them holds good in most particulars. The Berbers of the mountains seldom wear turbans or anything but a string tied round their foreheads. Generally they have a linen shirt to-day, but often wear the tunic as Leo Africanus says, and now and then one sees them with the twisted leg bandages like Pifferari. As to their moral character, after some small experience, I rather hold to the view of Leo Africanus, than that of Mr. Walter Harris. One thing is certain, that they cannot lie more than the Arabs do, but then the Arabs lie so prettily, with so much circumstance, and such nice choice of words, that it all comes to be a matter of individual taste, for there are those who had rather be deceived with civil manners by an Italian, than be cheated brutally by a North Briton, for the love of God.
The first of all the tribes we hear of in history as living in Morocco are the Autoloti of Ptolemy, who seem to be the Holots, who now live in El Gharb, that is, the country between Tangier and the Sebu. In Hanno’s Periplus, the same word occurs, and the description of their country seems to tally with the territory where they live.
Luis de Marmol, who was long prisoner with the Moors in the sixteenth century, places a people called Holots, near to Cape Azar. Now it is certain that the Holots are Berbers, and the testimony of the writers referred to goes to prove the long continuance of the Berbers in the land, and also seems to prove that in ancient times, as now, the Berbers were not nomads, as the Arabs were, but stationary, as they are to-day. Graberg di Hemso, in his curious “Speechio Geographico di Marocco,” says, “Questi Mazighi della Tingitana fabbricarono, ne quella costa in vincenanza del capo Bianco la citta di Mazighan, che porta ad oggi il loro nome di nazione.” He quotes no authority for his statement, and it is certainly at variance with fact, for Mazagan was founded by the Portuguese in 1506, and it is called Djedida, i.e., New Town, by the Arabs; still the name of Mazagan may yet commemorate an older town under the style of Mazighan.