Berberophone

The French, however, were unsuccessful in their attempt to exploit the Berber-Arab dichotomy. For this failure a French Berberologist blames General Lyautey: “. . . under the impulse of Lyautey, the French succeeded in accomplishing what the Sultan had attempted without success. This was the unification of arabophone and berberophone Morocco.[…]”

The Mzāb area is well-known as the home of a berberophone khāridjite community.

For historical and political reasons rooted in the history of Algeria and the political authority of the Moroccan Sultan, Jews (whether arabophone or berberophone) remained an intermediate ethnic group on the margins of the French preoccupation with the culture and identity of the Muslim population.

But while attempting to downplay the ‘racial’ or ethnic connotations that Arabisation seemed to some, already, to imply, the regime’s dominant line also implied that no distinctively Berber or berberophone culture could be considered legitimately part of an Algerian national patrimony.

Colonial analysts were shocked during the last part of the century to observe that in spite of all of their efforts to define and strengthen the Berber community, the number of berberophones was actually declining and that knowledge of Algerian Arabic was spreading rapidly.

Smaller groups of berberophones live in Tunisia (among others on the island of Djerba), Lybia (Jebel Nefousa and various Saharan towns) and Egypt (Siwa).

Berber speakers make up an estimated 25 per cent of Algeria’s population. Other major concentrations of berberophones are found in the Aurès mountains, in the Tassili/Ahaggar of the far south, and in the Mzab of the central Algerian pre-Sahara.