Notice bibliographique
- Notice
Type(s) de contenu et mode(s) de consultation : Texte noté : sans médiation
Auteur(s) : Rwīġī, Ramzī
Titre(s) : Inventing the Berbers [Texte imprimé] : history and ideology in the Maghrib / Ramzi Rouighi
Publication : Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, copyright [2019]
Description matérielle : 261 pages : ill. ; 24 cm
Collection : The Middle Ages series
Lien à la collection : The Middle Ages series
Note(s) : Includes bibliographical references p. 239-257 and index
Before the Arabs conquered northwest Africa in the seventh century, Ramzi Rouighi
asserts, there were no Berbers. There were Moors (Mauri), Mauretanians, Africans,
and many tribes and tribal federations such as the Leuathae or Musulami; and before
the Arabs, no one thought that these groups shared a common ancestry, culture, or
language. Certainly, there were groups considered barbarians by the Romans, but "Barbarian,"
or its cognate, "Berber" was not an ethnonym, nor was it exclusive to North Africa.
Yet today, archaeologists and linguists routinely describe proto-Berber groups and
languages in even more ancient times, while biologists look for Berber DNA markers
that go back thousands of years. Taking the pervasiveness of such anachronisms as
a point of departure, 'Inventing the Berbers' examines the emergence of the Berbers
as a distinct category in early Arabic texts and probes the ways in which later Arabic
sources, shaped by contemporary events, imagined the Berbers as a people and the Maghrib
as their home.0Key both to Rouighi's understanding of the medieval phenomenon of the
"berberization" of North Africa and its reverberations in the modern world is the
Kitab al-'ibar of Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), the third book of which purports to provide
the history of the Berbers and the dynasties that ruled in the Maghrib. As translated
into French in 1858, Rouighi argues, the book served to establish a racialized conception
of Berber indigenousness for the French colonial powers who erected a fundamental
opposition between the two groups thought to constitute the native populations of
North Africa, Arabs and Berbers. 'Inventing the Berbers' thus demonstrates the ways
in which the nineteenth-century interpretation of a medieval text has not only served
as the basis for modern historical scholarship but also has had an effect on colonial
and postcolonial policies and communal identities throughout Europe and North Africa
-- Ramzi Rouighi
Sujet(s) : Berbères -- Afrique du Nord -- Histoire
Berbères -- Afrique du Nord -- Historiographie
Berbères -- Identité collective -- Afrique du Nord -- Histoire
Indice(s) Dewey :
961.004 933 (23e éd.) = Histoire - Afrique du Nord - Étude en relation avec les Berbères et Touaregs
Identifiants, prix et caractéristiques : ISBN 9780812251302. - ISBN 081225130X
Identifiant de la notice : ark:/12148/cb46597498c
Notice n° :
FRBNF46597498
(notice reprise d'un réservoir extérieur)
Table des matières : Pt. I : Medieval Origins ; 1. Berberization and its origins ; 2. Making Berbers
; Pt. II : Genealogy and homeland ; 3. The Berber people ; 4. The Maghrib and the
land of the Berbers ; Pt. III : Modern Medieval Berbers ; 5. Modern Origin ; 6.
Beacons, guides, and marked paths ; Conclusion.
