The Golden Age of Moorish And Numidian Civilisations During the Middle Ages, Moor was a common term to refer to the Muslims of the Islamic Iberian Peninsula and North Africa, who were of Berbers "amazigh" descent. They inhabited the Iberian Peninsula after the Muslim conquests of the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates. Today, the word remains associated with the Morrocan immigrants in Spain, and is considered a pejorative word. It is sometimes used in a wider context to describe any denizen of North Africa. Similarly, in Spanish, the cognate moro is considered a racist and derogative term. But the Spanish still use it and even think of it as a neutral word in local sayings such as "no hay moros en la costa" (lit. "there are no moors on the coast Although the Moors came to be associated with Muslims, the name Moor pre-dates Islam. It derives from the small Numidian Kingdom of Maure of the third century BC in what is now northern central and western part of Algeria and a part of northern Morocco. The name came to be applied to people of the entire region. "They were called Maurisi by the Greeks," wrote Strabo, "and Mauri by the Romans." During that age, the Maure or Moors were trading partners of Carthage, the independent city state founded by Phoenicians. During the second Punic war between Carthage and Rome, two Moorish Numidian kings took different sides, Syphax with Carthage, Masinissa with the Romans, decisively so at Zama. Thereafter, the Moors entered into treaties with Rome. Under King Jugurtha collateral violence against merchants brought war. Juba, a later king, was a friend of Rome. Eventually, the region was incorporated into the Roman Empire as the provinces of Mauretania Caesariensis and Mauretania Tingitana; the area around Carthage already being the province of Africa. Roman rule was beneficial and effective enough so that these provinces became fully integrated into the empire. During the Christian era, two prominent African churchmen were Tertullian and St. Augustine. After the fall of Rome, the Germanic kingdom of the Vandals ruled much of the area; a century later they were displaced by Byzantine incursions. Neither Vandal nor Byzantine exercised an effective rule, the interior being under Moorish Berber "amazigh" control The Berbers resisted for over 50 years Arab armies from the east. Especially memorable was that led by Kahina"HIHIA" Queen the Berber prophetess of the Awras, during 690-701. Yet by the 92nd lunar year after the Hijra, the Muslims had prevailed across North Africa, some 5.6 million of Iberia's 7 million inhabitants were Muslim by 1200 AD, virtually all of them native inhabitants. The persecution and forced conversion to Catholicism of the Muslim population during the time of the Catholic reconquista in the second part of the 15th century, causing a mass exodus, are considered the main reasons why their number shrank to one-third by 1600.

les amis au tombeau de masinissa

Kabylie or Kabylia (Kabyle: Tamurt n leqbayel) is a cultural region in the north of Algeria. It corresponds more or less with the homeland of the Kabyle people. It is part of the Atlas Mountains and is located at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. Kabylia covers several districts (wilayas) of Algeria: the whole of Tizi Ouzou and Bejaia (Bgayet), most of Bouira (Tubirett) and parts of the wilayas of Bordj Bou Arreridj, Jijel, Boumerdes, and Setif. The Fatimid dynasty of the 10th century originated in Petite Kabylie, where an Ismaili da'i found a receptive audience for his millennialist preaching, and ultimately led the Kutama tribe to conquer first Ifriqiya and then Egypt. After taking over Egypt, the Fatimids themselves lost interest in the Maghreb, which they left to their Berber deputies, the Zirids. The Zirid family soon split, with the Hammadid branch taking over Kabylie as well as much of Algeria, and the Zirids taking modern Tunisia. They had a lasting effect on not only Kabylie's but Algeria's development, refounding towns such as Bejaia (their capital after the abandonment of Qalaat Beni Hammad) and Algiers itself. After the Hammadids' collapse, the coast of Kabylie changed hands regularly, while much of the interior was often effectively unruled. Under the Ottoman Turks, most of Kabylie was inaccessible to the deys, who had to content themselves with occasional incursions and military settlements in some valleys. In the early part of the Ottoman period, the Belkadi family ruled much of Grande Kabylie from their capital of Koukou, now a small village near Tizi-Ouzou; however, their power declined in the 17th century. The area was gradually taken over by the French from 1857, despite vigorous local resistance by the local population led by leaders such as Lalla Fatma n Soumer, continuing as late as Cheikh Mokrani's rebellion in 1871. Much land was confiscated in this period from the more recalcitrant tribes and given to French pied-noirs. Many arrests and deportations were carried out by the French, mainly to New Caledonia. Colonization also resulted in an acceleration of the emigration into other areas of the country and outside of it. Algerian immigrant workers in France organized the first party promoting independence in the 1920s. Messali Hadj, Imache Amar, Si Djilani, and Belkacem Radjef rapidly built a strong following throughout France and Algeria in the 1930s and actively developed militants that became vital to the future of both a fighting and an independent Algeria. During the war of independence(1954-1962), Kabylie was one of the areas that was most affected, because of the importance of the maquis (aided by the mountainous terrain) and French repression. The FLN recruited several of its historical leaders there, including Hocine Aït Ahmed, Abane Ramdane, and Krim Belkacem. Tensions have arisen between Kabylia and the central government on several occasions, initially in 1963, when the FFS party of Hocine Aït Ahmed contested the authority of the single party (FLN). In 1980, several months of demonstrations demanding the officialization of the Berber language, known as the Berber Spring, took place in Kabylie. The politics of identity intensified as the Arabization movement in Algeria gained steam in the 1990s. In 1994--1995, a school boycott occurred, termed the "strike of the school bag." In June and July of 1998, the area blazed up again after the assassination of singer Matoub Lounes and at the time that a law generalizing the use of the Arabic language in all fields went into effect. In the months following April 2001 (called the Black Spring), major riots — together with the emergence of the Arouch, neo-traditional local councils — followed the killing of a young Kabyle (Masinissa Guermah) by gendarmes, and gradually died down only after forcing some concessions from the President, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Since 23 March 2007, the Military of Algeria has conducted extensive searches in the Kabylie region in search of members of the GSPC. Two major roads, between Béjaïa and Amizour and between El-Kseur and Bouira, have been partially closed. The bombings in Alger on 11 April 2007 rendered this search all the more urgent, as the GSPC has recently become the Maghrebin arm of the Al-Qaida Network.

salto paracaidista