Tamazgha
Berber land
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tamazgha (Latin Tamazight: Tamazɣa; Neo-Tifinagh Tamazight: ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵖⴰ) is a neologism in the Berber languages denoting the lands traditionally inhabited by the Berber people within the Maghreb.[1] The term was coined in the 1970s by the Berber Academy[2] and, since the late 1990s, has gained particular significance among speakers of Berber languages.[3] Tamazgha is both the discursive and geographic embodiment of an Amazigh imaginary of a language and culture that were once unified and had their own territory,[4] or more simply, the land that Berbers have inhabited since antiquity.[5]
While the region was once unified by its culture and language,[6][7] it has never been a single political entity.[8] The territories that it would encompass are Canary Islands and the Siwa Oasis, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, Western Sahara, and parts of Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Senegal.[9][10]
Overview
Historically, Berbers did not see themselves as a single cultural or linguistic unit,[11] and there was no singular endonym for the speakers of the languages descended from what is now called Proto-Libyan. Instead, more specific terms for each subgroup were employed such as the Kabyle term Leqbayel or the Shawi term Ishawiyen.[12] Berber peoples did not refer to themselves as Berbers/Amazigh but had their own terms to refer to their own groups and communities.[13]
Ramzi Rouighi argues that Berbers started being referred to collectively as Berbers following the Arab Muslim conquest of the Maghreb in the 7th century. This word referred mostly to groups in northwest Africa.[14] This was then solidified during French colonization when 'Berbère' became a relatively common term of self-identification.[15]
In an attempt to reclaim the identity from the history of colonization, the Agraw Imazighen (a Paris-based Kabyle activist association that dissolved in 1978 and was known as the Berber Academy before 1969) coined the term Tamazɣa using the pre-existing triconsonantal root M-Z-Ɣ[16] in the 1970s to refer to the lands where the different Berber languages were spoken.[2]
The term has been translated into Spanish as Mazigia, abbreviated as MZG and used as an alternative international license plate code for some people.[17]