Download or read book We Are Imazighen written by Fazia Aïtel and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To the world they are known as Berbers, but they prefer to call themselves Imazighen, or “free people.” The claim to this unique cultural identity has been felt most acutely in Algeria in the Kabylia region, where an Amazigh consciousness gradually emerged after WWII. This is a valuable model for other Amazigh movements in North Africa, where the existence of an Amazigh language and culture is denied or dismissed in countries such as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. By tracing the cultural production of the Kabyle people—their songs, oral traditions, and literature—from the early 1930s to the end of the twentieth century, Fazia Aïtel shows how they have defined their own culture over time, both within Algeria and in its diaspora. She analyzes the role of Amazigh identity in the works of novelists such as Mouloud Feraoun, Tahar Djaout, and Assia Djebar, and she investigates the intersection of Amazigh consciousness and the Beur movement in France. She also addresses the political and social role of the Kabyles in Algeria and in France, where after independence it was easier for the Berber community to express and organize itself. Ultimately, Aïtel argues that the Amazigh literary tradition is founded on dual priorities: the desire to foster a genuine dialogue while retaining a unique culture.
Download or read book Imazighen written by Margaret Courtney-Clarke and published by Clarkson Potter Publishers. This book was released on 1996 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As she has in her previous books, Ndebele: The Art of an African Tribe and African Canvas: The Art of West African Women, Margaret Courtney-Clarke turns her sensitive eye on women whose lives have seldom been observed. Her photos explore the remarkable arts and rapidly changing way of life of the Berber women of North Africa. 230 full-color photos.
Download or read book We Share Walls written by Katherine E. Hoffman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We Share Walls: Language, Land, and Gender in Berber Morocco explores how political economic shifts over the last century have reshaped the language practices and ideologies of women (and men) in the plains and mountains of rural Morocco. Offers a unique and richly textured ethnography of language maintenance and shift as well as language and place-making among an overlooked Muslim group Examines how Moroccan Berbers use language to integrate into the Arab-speaking world and retain their own distinct identity Illuminates the intriguing semiotic and gender issues embedded in the culture Part of the Blackwell Studies in Discourse and Culture Series
Download or read book Artistry of the Everyday written by Lisa Bernasek and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2008-12-15 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In Artistry of the Everyday: Beauty and Craftsmanship in Berber Art, anthropologist Lisa Bernasek gives an insightful overview of Berber history and culture, focusing on the rich aesthetic traditions of Berber craftsmen and -women. She also tells the stories of the collectors whose generosity enhanced the holdings of the Peabody Museum. In a final chapter, she looks at Berber arts in the present day, examining how traditional arts are being used in new forms by Berber artists in North Africa and Europe."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book North Africa written by Phillip C. Naylor and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2009-12-03 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: North Africa has been a vital crossroads throughout history, serving as a connection between Africa, Asia, and Europe. Paradoxically, however, the region's historical significance has been chronically underestimated. In a book that may lead scholars to reimagine the concept of Western civilization, incorporating the role North African peoples played in shaping "the West," Phillip Naylor describes a locale whose transcultural heritage serves as a crucial hinge, politically, economically, and socially. Ideal for novices and specialists alike, North Africa begins with an acknowledgment that defining this area has presented challenges throughout history. Naylor's survey encompasses the Paleolithic period and early Egyptian cultures, leading readers through the pharonic dynasties, the conflicts with Rome and Carthage, the rise of Islam, the growth of the Ottoman Empire, European incursions, and the postcolonial prospects for Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Western Sahara. Emphasizing the importance of encounters and interactions among civilizations, North Africa maps a prominent future for scholarship about this pivotal region.
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of the Berbers Imazighen written by Hsain Ilahiane and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-03-27 with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Berbers, also known as Imazighen, are the ancient inhabitants of North Africa, but rarely have they formed an actual kingdom or separate nation state. Ranging anywhere between 15-50 million, depending on how they are classified, the Berbers have influenced the culture and religion of Roman North Africa and played key roles in the spread of Islam and its culture in North Africa, Spain, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Taken together, these dynamics have over time converted to redefine the field of Berber identity and its socio-political representations and symbols, making it an even more important issue in the 21st century. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of the Berbers contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 200 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, places, events, institutions, and aspects of culture, society, economy, and politics. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Berbers.
Download or read book Amazigh Arts in Morocco written by Cynthia Becker and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In southeastern Morocco, around the oasis of Tafilalet, the Ait Khabbash people weave brightly colored carpets, embroider indigo head coverings, paint their faces with saffron, and wear ornate jewelry. Their extraordinarily detailed arts are rich in cultural symbolism; they are always breathtakingly beautiful—and they are typically made by women. Like other Amazigh (Berber) groups (but in contrast to the Arab societies of North Africa), the Ait Khabbash have entrusted their artistic responsibilities to women. Cynthia Becker spent years in Morocco living among these women and, through family connections and female fellowship, achieved unprecedented access to the artistic rituals of the Ait Khabbash. The result is more than a stunning examination of the arts themselves, it is also an illumination of women's roles in Islamic North Africa and the many ways in which women negotiate complex social and religious issues. One of the reasons Amazigh women are artists is that the arts are expressions of ethnic identity, and it follows that the guardians of Amazigh identity ought to be those who literally ensure its continuation from generation to generation, the Amazigh women. Not surprisingly, the arts are visual expressions of womanhood, and fertility symbols are prevalent. Controlling the visual symbols of Amazigh identity has given these women power and prestige. Their clothing, tattoos, and jewelry are public identity statements; such public artistic expressions contrast with the stereotype that women in the Islamic world are secluded and veiled. But their role as public identity symbols can also be restrictive, and history (French colonialism, the subsequent rise of an Arab-dominated government in Morocco, and the recent emergence of a transnational Berber movement) has forced Ait Khabbash women to adapt their arts as their people adapt to the contemporary world. By framing Amazigh arts with historical and cultural context, Cynthia Becker allows the reader to see the full measure of these fascinating artworks.
Download or read book Berbers and Others written by Katherine E. Hoffman and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Berbers and Others offers fresh perspectives on new forms of social and political activism in today's Maghrib. In recent years, the Amazigh (Berber) movement has become a focus of widespread political, social, and cultural attention in North Africa, Europe, and the United States. Berber groups have peacefully yet persistently laid claim to ownership over broad areas of creativity in the arts, politics, literature, education, and national memory. The contributors to this volume present some of the best new thinking in the emerging field of Berber studies, offering insight into historical antecedents, language usage, land rights, household economies, artistic production, and human rights. The scope, depth, and multidisciplinary approach will engage specialists on the Maghrib as well as students of ethnicity, social and political change, and cultural innovation.
Download or read book Inventing the Berbers written by Ramzi Rouighi and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2019-08-02 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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, it is common to see studies of the Christianization or Romanization of the Berbers, or of their resistance to foreign conquerors like the Carthaginians, Vandals, or Arabs. 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. Key both to Rouighi's understanding of the medieval phenomenon of the "berberization" of North Africa and its reverberations in the modern world is the Kitāb al-'ibar of Ibn Khaldūn (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.
Download or read book The Berber Identity Movement and the Challenge to North African States written by Bruce Maddy-Weitzman and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like many indigenous groups that have endured centuries of subordination, the Berber/Amazigh peoples of North Africa are demanding linguistic and cultural recognition and the redressing of injustices. Indeed, the movement seeks nothing less than a refashioning of the identity of North African states, a rewriting of their history, and a fundamental change in the basis of collective life. In so doing, it poses a challenge to the existing political and sociocultural orders in Morocco and Algeria, while serving as an important counterpoint to the oppositionist Islamist current. This is the first book-length study to analyze the rise of the modern ethnocultural Berber/Amazigh movement in North Africa and the Berber diaspora. Bruce Maddy-Weitzman begins by tracing North African history from the perspective of its indigenous Berber inhabitants and their interactions with more powerful societies, from Hellenic and Roman times, through a millennium of Islam, to the era of Western colonialism. He then concentrates on the marginalization and eventual reemergence of the Berber question in independent Algeria and Morocco, against a background of the growing crisis of regime legitimacy in each country. His investigation illuminates many issues, including the fashioning of official national narratives and policies aimed at subordinating Berbers in an Arab nationalist and Islamic-centered universe; the emergence of a counter-movement promoting an expansive Berber "imagining" that emphasizes the rights of minority groups and indigenous peoples; and the international aspects of modern Berberism.
Download or read book Women and Social Change in North Africa written by Doris H. Gray and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-11 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging analysis of grass-roots activism, migration, legal, political and religious changes as basis for social transformation.
Download or read book Black Shield Maiden written by Willow Smith and published by Random House Large Print. This book was released on 2024-05-07 with total page 641 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Willow Smith and Jess Hendel comes a powerful and groundbreaking historical saga about an African warrior in the world of the Vikings. “Intimate, tender, and fiercely epic.”—Tomi Adeyemi, author of Children of Blood and Bone Lore, legend, and history tell us of the Vikings: warrior kings on epic journeys of conquest and plunder. But the stories we know are not the only stories to tell. There is another story, one that has been lost to the mists of time: the saga of the dark queen. This saga begins with Yafeu, a defiant yet fiercely compassionate young warrior who is stolen from her home in the flourishing Ghānaian empire and taken to a distant kingdom in the North. There she is thrust into a strange, cold world of savage shield maidens, tyrannical rulers, and mysterious gods. And there she also finds something unexpected: a kindred spirit. She comes to serve Freydis, a shy princess who couldn’t be more different from the confident and self-possessed Yafeu. But they both want the same thing: to forge their own fate. Yafeu inspires Freydis to dream of a future greater than the one that the king and queen have forced upon her. And with the princess at her side, Yafeu learns to navigate this new world and grows increasingly determined to become one of the legendary shield maidens—to fight not only for her freedom but for the freedom of others. Yafeu may have lost her home, but she still knows who she is, and she’s not afraid to be the flame that burns a city to the ground so a new world can rise from the ashes. She will alter the course of history—and become the revolutionary heroine of her own myth.
Download or read book The Berbers written by Michael Brett and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 1997-12-08 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Berbers provides a comprehensive overview of the history of the Berber-speaking peoples.
Download or read book Seeking Legitimacy written by Aili Mari Tripp and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-08 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comparative study based on extensive fieldwork, and an original database of gender-based reforms in the Middle East and North Africa, Aili Mari Tripp analyzes why autocratic leaders in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia adopted more extensive women's rights than their Middle Eastern counterparts.
Download or read book When We Were Arabs written by Massoud Hayoun and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2019-06-25 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE ARAB AMERICAN BOOK AWARD • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR The stunning debut of a brilliant nonfiction writer whose vivid account of his grandparents' lives in Egypt, Tunisia, Palestine, and Los Angeles reclaims his family's Jewish Arab identity There was a time when being an "Arab" didn't mean you were necessarily Muslim. It was a time when Oscar Hayoun, a Jewish Arab, strode along the Nile in a fashionable suit, long before he and his father arrived at the port of Haifa to join the Zionist state only to find themselves hosed down with DDT and then left unemployed on the margins of society. In that time, Arabness was a mark of cosmopolitanism, of intellectualism. Today, in the age of the Likud and ISIS, Oscar's son, the Jewish Arab journalist Massoud Hayoun whom Oscar raised in Los Angeles, finds his voice by telling his family's story. To reclaim a worldly, nuanced Arab identity is, for Hayoun, part of the larger project to recall a time before ethnic identity was mangled for political ends. It is also a journey deep into a lost age of sophisticated innocence in the Arab world; an age that is now nearly lost. When We Were Arabs showcases the gorgeous prose of the Eppy Award–winning writer Massoud Hayoun, bringing the worlds of his grandparents alive, vividly shattering our contemporary understanding of what makes an Arab, what makes a Jew, and how we draw the lines over which we do battle.
Download or read book The Favorite Sister written by Jessica Knoll and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Another irresistible thriller” (Entertainment Weekly) from Jessica Knoll—author of Luckiest Girl Alive—the New York Times bestselling story about two sisters whose lifelong rivalry combusts when they join the cast of a reality show—resulting in murder. Brett and Kelly have always toed the line between supportive sisters and bitter rivals. Brett grew up as the problem child, constantly in the shadow of the beautiful and brilliant Kelly—until Kelly tarnished her reputation by getting pregnant while in college and keeping the baby. Now Brett—tattooed, body-positive, engaged to a powerful female lawyer, and only twenty-seven—has skyrocketed to meteoric professional success through a philanthropic cycling business. Untethered by children of her own, she’s fueled by the bitter resentment of her youth. Brett’s become the fan favorite on a reality show featuring hyper-successful, beautiful, and hugely competitive entrepreneurial women—think Real Housewives meets Shark Tank. Goal Diggers’ success means Brett is the object of vitriol and jealousy among her cast mates. Meanwhile, Kelly, penniless and struggling to raise her daughter alone, finds herself crawling back to Brett to beg for a job. When Kelly is cast alongside Brett and her three shameless costars—Stephanie, Lauren, and Jen —shocking secrets come to light. And Brett and Kelly will do whatever it takes to keep the world, and their cast mates, in the dark. The show’s executives expect a season filled with the typical catfights and posturing that makes these shows catnip for the viewing public. But no one expects that the fourth season of Goal Diggers will end in murder… “Engrossing…Deliciously savage and wildly entertaining” (People, Book of the Week), The Favorite Sister is “a twisty, sexy thriller, jam-packed with wit and snark” (Glamour). This “binge-worthy beach read” (USA TODAY, 3 out of 4 stars) offers a scathing take on the oft-lionized bonds of sisterhood, and the relentless pressure to stay young, relevant, and salable.
Download or read book The Votive Crown written by Paula Constant and published by Fehu Press. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 839 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spain, AD 687: Three children come of age amid the turbulent decline of Visigothic Spain. Yosef is preparing to leave Granada with his father on a trading mission to the East. His friend, wild, silent Laelia, is unsure of her betrothal to the aristocratic Theo. Then Oppa, scheming son of the new Visigoth king, comes south, hungry for riches and for blood. Within days, Laelia is wounded, Theo is enslaved, Yosef’s father has been killed and Yosef himself has fled a false accusation of murder. Now his perilous journey through the Arab lands of North Africa becomes desperately important - and loyalty becomes a choice. Set against a sprawling medieval landscape, The Votive Crown is the first full length book in the Visigoths of Spain saga, following the fortunes of three Spanish families caught in the fall of the Visigothic kingdom and the Arabic conquest of Spain. It is preceded by a prequel novella, The Saharan Queen. Theudemir of Aurariola (Theo) is a Spanish nobleman betrothed sent to fight abroad in the Imperial fleet. When the fleet is attacked at sea, Theo finds himself alone and enslaved on foreign shores. As he battles to survive and rejoin the fleet, Theo is sustained by his bond with Lælia, the fierce, pagan Spanish heiress to whom he is betrothed. Raised among the tribes of the old Roman South, Lælia is not accustomed to the trappings of the Toletum court, nor the corruption she finds there. After Theo is lost at sea, Lælia must find a way to escape a forced marriage to Oppa, the sadistic royal bastard. As Spain slides toward civil war, Lælia uncovers an old secret that may be the key to Oppa's undoing. Yosef is the son of a Jewish merchant who is about to embark upon a perilous trading journey to the far East when a brutal act by Oppa sees his father murdered, and Yosef himself exiled. Deep in Saharan sands he joins the forces of warrior queen Dahiya as they battle the oncoming Arab army, and searches for Theo, whose help he is reliant on for the safe outcome of his journey. As Spain descends further into chaos, Emperor and Caliph war for control over the medieval Circle of Lands. In a world on the brink of collapse, love, loyalty and honour unite Spain's children across distance and time.
