Just when you thought the holidays were finally over, more are about to hit: Amazigh ("Berber") New Year, and also by coincidence this year the Prophet's Birthday, Mawlid al-Nabi, both in the next few days.
But in the case of Yannayer, the so-called Amazigh New Year, there's some disagreement about the date, with some in Algeria celebrating on January 12, and others insisting on January 14.
Now, as I've explained at greater length a couple of years ago, Yannayer is part genuine traditional observance, and part a modern creation, a product of the contemporary Berber Revival. North African farmers traditionally followed a solar calendar or planting, since the Islamic calendar,being purely lunar, moves around the seasons and cannot be used as a agricultural calendar. This is the practice throughout the Middle East: In the Levant the old Syrian months are used, and in Egypt the Coptic calendar. North African agriculturalists kept the nmes of the old Roman months and followed the Julian calendar; New Year's is called "Yannayer," from "January." The Julian calendar is currently 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar, so the Julian New Year falls on January 14 under the Gregorian calendar.
Amazigh Flag
But many of the trappings of the modern Berber celebration are what the late historian Eric Hobsbawm called the "Invention of Tradition," modern creations aimed at reviving national identity. This includes the fact that this new year will be 2964 in the Berber Calendar. This calendar was a creation of the Académie Berbère, a group of young intellectuals, mostly Algerian Kabyles, who introduced the common Berber flag often seen today and popularized he use of the ancient Tifinagh alphabet to write Tamazight; it was somewhat arbitrarily decided to date th Berber calendar from 950 BC, when Pharaoh Shoshenq I ascended the throne of Egypt. Shoshenq (or Sheshonq) was Libyan, and that was good enough to persuade the Académie Berbère to consider him the first Berber in history. So the era does not really date from 950 BC but from Paris around 1968 AD.
And apparently the tendency of many Algerian Amazigh to celebrate Yannayer on January 12 instead of 14 also dates from 1968, though it isn't clear why the two-day difference from the Julian calendar occurred; some accounts suggest a simple error in calculation, though as Eastern Christmas jusy reminded us, many religions and cultures retain the Julian calendar for some purposes. Maybe it was the political ferment in Paris in 1968, or something, but the January 12 date seems to have stuck for some Algerian Amazigh, while elsewhere the January 14 date is followed. Given the post-2011 revival of Amazigh identity in Tunisia and Libya, which last year held a big concert for Yannayer, they also obsrve the holiday formerly limited mostly to Morocco and Algeria.
A happy new year to Amazigh readers, on whichever date you prefer.
I've said before that despite the disappointments of "Arab Spring," the enthusiasm of "Amazigh Spring" has not dissipated. The Amazigh or "Berber" peoples of North Africa have been enjoying a cultural recrudescence. Though the large Amazigh populations in Morocco and Algeria were always politically active, the Amazigh peoples of Libya were long repressed, with Qadhafi denying their very existence and their language banned. They, and he small Amazigh population of Tunisia, have gone through a conscienceless-raising of sorts. One indication of this has been more widespread celebration of the traditional Amazigh New Year, known as Yennayer (January), on January 14. (Or, among many Algerian Imazighen, on January 12.)
January 14 is simply the date January 1 in the Julian calendar, now running 13 days behind the Gregorian, and it is the traditional New Year for North African agriculturalists, Arab as well as Amazigh. Since the Islamic calendar is purely lunar, it is of little relevance for planting or harvest as it moves around the solar calendar from year to year. Just as in Egypt the fellahin, Muslim or Copic, use the Coptic months as their agricultural calendar,o do North Africans use the old Roman months (Yennayer=Januarius) for planting. (The Coptic calendar is also Julian, but their New Year is in September.) Amazigh in particular have embraced Yennayer as a particularly Amazigh holiday.
Since the Amazigh Spring began I've posted several background pieces on the New Year. My 2012 posting went into the background in some detail. That post also addressed the modern creation of an Amazigh "era," the source of that 2965 date above. While the Julian agricultural calendar is real and ancient, that 2965 date is what the late historian Eric Hobsbawm called "the invention of tradition," a modern creation pretending to antiquity. The Academie Berbere in Paris in the 1960s introduced a "Berber" era based on the accession to the throne of Egypt of the Pharaoh Shoshenq I (also Sheshonq) in 950 BC (roughly). Shoshenq came from Libya, so they identified him as Berber (still the most common usage at the time. (The modern Kurdish calendar era, which dates from the rise of the Medes in about 612 BC, is a parallel case.)
My 2013 (or 2963 if you prefer) New year's post dealt mainly with the big blowout concert held at a stadium in Tripoli (which will clearly not be repeated this year, but was equally unthinkable under Qadhafi.
I would urge the curious to read these previous posts.
The Tamazight New Year's Greeting is spelled many different ways in English (Assegas Amagaaz, Asegas Amegaz), or as below, which also shows it in the Tifinagh script. (The link is to my 2011 post on Tifinagh. And remember "Berber" is not a single dialect/language, and Tifinagh is usually back-spelled from French, Arabic, or English transcriptions.)
I'm a day or so late this year in wishing my Amazigh readers a happy New Year 2963. Due to other commitments I let it slip past me. But this gives me occasion to link to this report of the unprecedented Amazigh New Year's concert held in Tripoli on Saturday. As the Libya Herald's report notes, "There has been nothing like it in Tripoli ever seen before." Further from that report:
A huge jubilant crowd poured into the main football stadium in
Tripoli last night, Saturday, for the first celebration in more than 40
years of the Amazigh New Year, which started today. It is the year 2963
in the Amazigh calendar.
From around 5pm, several thousand people from all Amazigh and
non-Amazigh towns and places across the country descended on the stadium
in Tripoli’s Sport’s City for a concert that it was — so far — one of
its kind.
The crowd filled the entire stadium and seats were eagerly sought by
them families that had come along for the event. There were far more
people than had been expected. “It means everything to us ” said Salam
Al-Arussi, a teacher and Amazigh rights activist.
“It has always been a dream and I never thought I would live to
witness such day, I am so overwhelmed with happiness — and frustration
that I didn’t do what youngsters did and overthrow the tyrant” said
Ahmed Abodaya, a 47-year-old engineer attending the event.
I explained here last year how the traditional North African Berber or agricultural calendar begins its new year on the old Julian calendar New Year, now January 14 (though many Algerian Amazigh observe on January 12). In that blog post I also noted that the dating system is a modern "invention of tradition," choosing to date the calendar from the Pharaoh Shoshenq I, considered by Berber nationalists as the "first Amazigh in history." So this is the year 2963.
This has been the three day Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday here in the US, and as a result I am late in wishing Amazigh Berber readers a happy new year according to the old (Julian) agricultural calendar on January 14.
And this year, Algerian Imazighen have some good news for the new year; a proposed constitutional change that would make Tamazight "a national and official language" alongside Arabic. An Academy of Amazigh Language is also promised, perhaps to standardize various existing languages into a national language.
In 2004 a constitutional change made Tamazight a "national" language but not an "official" one. Arabic is still defined as "the national and official language of the state," while Tamazight is "also a national and official language." The addition of "official" is new.
Yes, Algeria changes constitutions frequently, and President Bouteflika is ailing and there are rumors his brother is calling the shots, but this is yet another example of the growing assertiveness and recognition of the Amazigh role in contemporary North Africa.
We talk a lot about "Arab Spring" or the "Arab Awakening," but not all those who have awakened are Arab. In both Libya and Tunisia, Amazigh (so-called "Berber") populations have made their feelings known, and have won support from their brethren in Morocco and Algeria, where they constitute a larger proportion of the population. Especially in Libya, where Qadhafi forced the Amazigh to take Arab names and famously claimed the Tamazight languages are just "dialects of Arabic," the Amazigh heartland in the Jebel Nefusa became a major center of resistance. A glance back at my earlier posts on Berbers, Imazighen, and the Tamazight languages tags, will trace many of the events of the past year, with links to Amazigh videos, websites, etc.
Amazigh Flag
Many Amazigh nationalists or those seeking to reclaim a distinct identity in their own nations have taken to marking the "Amazigh New Year." Because the Islamic calendar is purely lunar and dates move around the year, agricultural societies need a solar calendar as well, to determine times to plant and harvest; in the Levant the old Semitic month names are used; in Egypt, the names of the Coptic months, and in North Africa, the names are derived from the Roman names, and the older Julian calendar is still used. Tomorrow is the first of January (Yennayer) in the Amazigh and North African agricultural calendars.
Shoshenq I (Wikipedia)
As for the era, with tomorrow as the first day of 2962, this stems from what historian Eric Hobsbawm called the invention of tradition,, a modern innovation which purports to be, and ultimately comes to be seen as, ancient. In the 1960s, the Academie Berbere in Paris introduced a "Berber era" dating from 950 BC, the approximate date when the Pharaoh Shoshenq I (or Sheshonq I) ascended the throne of Egypt. Shoshenq was of Libyan origin, so they identified him as the first identifiable Berber in history. (They also promoted the use of Tifinagh script, which has gained some traction with Berber activists.) While not an actual historical era in the usual sense, it's a symbol of awakening Amazigh idenity.
The Amazigh are major contributors to the history and culture of North Africa, though the Arab nationalist regimes that have been in charge have underplayed their role. Algerian blogger Lameen Souag has a recent post about his hometown of Dellys, and his first anecdote (but read the whole post) depends on a bilingual pun: whereas aman means "safety" in Arabic it means "water" in Berber, and the local custom was to sprinkle water on newlyweds. But it only works if one knows both languages. North Africa is inextricably a product of Arab and Amazigh both, and to any Imazighen who may be reading this, a happy 2962 or whatever date you want.
Okay, I said I won't normally post weekends, and now I've gone and done it both days. But when something catches my interest, I may decide to get my ideas down while they're fresh. While the Iraqi elections seem (on first report) to have gone off fairly well, with decent turnout, there's been an outbreak of violence in the Algerian Saharan Mzab Valley. It's a bit hard to tell from some of the reports what exactly started the trouble, but it seems to have both ethnic and sectarian content. The Mzab area includes one of Algeria's concentrations of Berbers, but the Berbers of Mzab, unlike those of the Kabyle region, are Ibadi rather than Sunni Muslims.
A few of the current reports can be found here, here, and here, to provide some links in English. The troubles have been concentrated so far in the town of Berriane, and there were similar outbreaks there last year, as noted here.
There would seem to be two aspects to the tensions: one an ethno-linguistic one, between Berbers speaking the Mzabi Berber language and Arabs speaking Arabic; and the Ibadi-Sunni religious division. (The "Malekites" referred to in some of the linked articles are followers of the Maliki madhhab or legal rite of Sunnism; Maliki Islam is the dominant form in much of North Africa west of Egypt and, at least formerly, in parts of Upper Egypt.)
The Ibadis are an interesting survival in their own right: they are the only Islamic sect left over from the Khariji (Kharijite) movement of the first century of Islam. The Kharijis broke with both the Sunni and emerging Shi'i groups, insisting that the Imam of the community could come from any background so long as he was pious. At a time when most Muslims were debating whether the Imam had to be a direct descendant of Muhammad or merely o the tribe of Quraysh, the Khariji said the Imam could be any, Muslim, "even an African slave." If that were not politically incorrect enough for the first Islamic century, there are claims that some Kharijis were (according to their enemies, who wrote most of the history) that even woman could serve as Caliph. Today they may seem modern and politically correct, but their tactics and approach to their fellow Muslims made them the radical jihadis of their day.
I must note, at this point, that the Ibadis themselves reject the name "Khariji" because they do not see themselves as outside the greater Muslim umma, and do not share with the mainstream Kharijis (all dead centuries ago) the idea that non-Kharijis are kuffar or unbelievers and must have war waged against them. "Khariji" means "those who withdraw, or go out" and does not apply to the Ibadis, who are prepared to live with non-Ibadi Muslims, whereas other Khariji sects preached jihad against both the Sunni and Shi'a. This is one of those positions that, whatever its religious base, doesn't work well in the real world: all the hard-core Khariji sects, being minorities, fought to the death and, being outnumbered vastly, are no longer out there.
Kharijism started as a sort of "third way" movement in a sense, but like absolutist minority groups anywhere, they vanished. The Ibadi variety (and again they don't call themswelves Khariji) was the only one to survive into our time.
Kharijism in its Ibadi form lasted longest on the peripheries of the Caliphate, particularly in Oman and the Maghreb. Ibadis are still found in both places: Ibadism is the majority faith among Omanis, though the expatriate population and the fact that the Sunnis are concentrated in the cities means that Sunnism is also important there today. In North Africa, Ibadism was once dominant, under the Rustamid dynasty and some earlier Khariji/Berber mountain kingdoms, and there are islands of Ibadis scattered about the Maghreb today: in the Mzab and Ouargla oases of Algeria (these troubles are in Mzab) , the island of Djerba in Tunisia, and the Jabal Nafusa in Libya. They are found virtually nowhere else besides Oman and the former Omani empire, such as Zanzibar and other Indian Ocean ports where Omanis long traded.
The Omani and North African Ibadi groups were out of touch with each other for 1000 years or so, but I understand Oman has sought to create links in the late 20th century and beyond. Today, Ibadism isn't that distinguishable, for most adherents who aren't clerics or theology professors, from Sunnism except in some obscure theological points (such as whether the Qur'an/Koran is created or existed from eternity), and thus doesn't make a lot of difference in most people's day-to-day practice of the faith. In Oman both Ibadis and Sunnis are Arabic speaking (with some asterisks about minor language groups), but in Algeria the split is along the Berber/Arabic line.
Berber-Arab troubles are hardly new in Algeria, where the government's post-independence Arabization program, aimed at eradicating the dominant cultural role of French, was seen as eroding Berber-speaking elements. Ironically, the Berbers, resisting Arabization, became the great defenders of French, and the government became insistent on the dominance of Arabic: in the past Berber radio broadcasts, publications etc. were banned or strictly regulated, though much has been liberalized in recent years under President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. (And of course most educated Algerians, Arab or Berber, are still very comfortable in French. And Arabic is essential for Berbers if they're going to be anything other than rural peasants. But there's also a revival (or first blossoming) of Berber literature, both in Algeria and in France. Trouble in the Kabyle -- or Kabylie, as the area is called in French -- area erupts from time to time, but there there is no added sectarian element, except that most of the Berber population are a bit more secular than their Arab neighbors.
If you want more background, just Google "Tamazight" and follow on from there. "Berber" being just the French variant of the Arabic form (barbar) of the Greek barbaros (non-Greek people all of whose language sounds -- to Greeks -- like bar-bar) and thus related to our "barbarian," the Imazighen peoples would rather not be called Berber, or have their Tamazight language called that, but then it's going to take a long time for the man in the street to start using "Imazighen," or the various tribal/linguistic names, or "Tamazight," even among Arab Algerians (though I think the word "Tamazight" appears in the new Constitution's discussion of national languages).
The Algerian media are not very clear on what started the latest round of troubles in Berriane ("troublemakers" have been mentioned), and there have been allusions to gang elements in both ethnic groups, but I've also seen press reports of attacks on the party headquarters of the Socialist Forces Front (FFS), which is essentially a Berber political party, so the ethnic element may be more important here than the sectarian one.
And a caveat: it's always a little unclear in these incidents whether the rivalry is purely ethnic/religious or something else, and since this seems to involve young men attacking other young men, it may be little more than plain old street gangs that happen to divide along linguistic lines. I know there were cases during the troubles in Upper Egypt in the 1990s where the fighting between the police and the Islamists happened to divide along tribal or family lines and sometimes reflected old vendettas. I don't intend to overemphasize ethnosectarian violence in the region: there is no need to throw oil on already troubled waters, or to encourage ethnic and religious rivalries. But some of these issues, especially those involving Berber-Arab issues, are little known in the West, or at least the English-speaking West. (France, with its large population of Algerian-origin residents, is more familiar with them.)
An Aside on the "Plague" Story
As an aside: there is probably no connection, but the odd story that made the rounds a week or so ago about an alleged "biological warfare" incident which supposedly killed some 40 members of Al-Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) due to an accident (here's one account from Stratfor here or Google will turn up many more), supposedly took place in the Tizi-Ouzo area. Though as far as I know AQIM is almost entirely an Arab organization (the Berbers tend to be more secular), Tizi-Ouzo is also the heart of the Berber Kabylie. (It's also a mountainous region and thus a good place for radical movements to hide.) I have no reason to believe there is any connection, but there are two stories out of two rather different Berber regions of Algeria in a short time.
On the plague story let me empathize, at least for now, with those who think there is something fishy about the story. Though first reported in some (non-government) Algerian papers, it was broken in the West by Britain's The Sun, usually better known for its Page Three Girls (and no, I won't link) than its intelligence connections. The Washington Times claimed to have a confirmation from the US intelligence community, but the original reportage was from unusual sources and the international health organizations have said they've had no reports of an outbreak of plague. And plague, I'm told by those who know something about biological weapons, isn't easy to weaponize. Bubonic plague needs rats or fleas to spread, and pneumonic plague usually requires close personal contact. Plague is native to Algeria though, and a localized outbreak that had nothing to do with weaponization might be more credible than the "experiment gone wrong" version that's making the rounds. But the story may prove to have more to it.
I'm on vacation. As I did last year, I've prepared a series of posts in advance on historical, cultural, and linguistic topics that are not time-constrained. If events warrant, I will add current posts, but at least one new post will appear daily in my absence. Enjoy.
This is Part One of a multi-part post which, I hope, will be of interest not just to those interested in Coptic and Aramaic, but to anyone interested in the survival or non-survival of minority languages throughout the Middle East. It seeks to answer, or explore the elements of an answer, to this question: Aramaic today still has over half a million speakers; Coptic, though one of the most ancient languages on earth, and the Copts being the largest Christian group in the Middle East, has been reduced to a liturgical language for centuries. Why?
During my vacation postings about this time last year, I had several posts about Aramaic and Syriac through the centuries, spoken Western Aramaic today, and spoken Eastern Aramaic today. Aramaic, once the lingua franca of the whole Middle East, with inscriptions found from Egypt to China and India, still lingers in a few islands of speakers — some 15,000 speakers of Western Aramaic, in Syria, and perhaps half a million speakers of Eastern Aramaic in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and a Western Diaspora. Most of these speakers are Christian, but there are Muslim speakers in Syria, and others are Jewish, Samaritan, or Mandaean. It is also of course the liturgical language of several Eastern Christian denominations, Karaite Judaism, Samaritanism, and Mandaeanism. See last year's posts, linked above, for more.
When Coptic Pope Shenouda III died earlier this year, a commenter raised an interesting question: why does Aramaic still survive as a spoken language, however scattered, while Coptic is reduced to only a liturgical language? The Copts are by far the largest Christian community in the Middle East, and their language, which is merely the last form of Egyptian, has an unbroken lineage of some 4500 or more years. Yet it has been several centuries since anyone learned Coptic at their mother's knee; it is today a religious and scholarly, not a native, spoken tongue. Why did Aramaic survive (if hanging by a thread) as a spoken tongue while Coptic did not?
It's a great question. I'm not sure there's a single answer, and it also requires us to delve into some controversial debates (like, exactly whendid Coptic cease to be spoken natively? 14th century? 17th century? 19th century? All have their advocates). And since my doctoral dissertation was on the ‘Abbasid period in Egypt, the eighth and ninth centuries, a key period of Arabization and Islamization, it brings up some memories of my own historical research. (And contrary to my younger colleagues' claims, I did not write my dissertation during the ‘Abbasid period.)
Though perhaps too many of my posts tend to focus on Egypt, I think this one actually has considerable interest beyond that. What has preserved other non-Arabic languages across the Arab world, not just Aramaic but bigger languages like Kurdish and the Amazigh/Berber tongues, Nubian, Armenian, Circassian, Mehri and the other surviving South Arabian languages, etc?
If the Caucasus, Sudan, and North Africa were included, the map would be even more colorful.
But these islands of minority languages, ranging from big ones like Kurdish to tiny enclaves like the three towns north of Damascus that speak Western Aramaic, all have survived, for various reasons, in the sea of Arabic.
Yet Coptic, with 4000 years of history and a cohesive minority that outnumbers many of those whose languages endure, is only a liturgical tongue today? Why?
Bear in mind that I don't know the answer, but I intend to spend several posts considering the evidence.
A Short History of Egyptian
The earliest evidence of proto-writing in the Nile Valley is gradually being pushed back, but seems to date from around 3200 BC or even a couple of centuries earlier. By the time a language can be discerned through the proto-writing, that language is Egyptian. That language, after millennia of evolution, is still used in parts of the liturgy of the Coptic Orthodox Church, and may have been in daily use as a spoken language as recently as three centuries ago. That is nearly 5000 years of a living, if changing, language. The earliest Chinese writing dates from the second millennium BC, and Hebrew was reduced to a liturgical language for some 1500 or more years before its revival; neither can approach Egyptian in terms of probable, documented endurance as a language. (Though, like Chinese, that language changed enormously through the millennia.) The hieroglyphic writing system had a simplified form known as hieratic, and eventually evolved a more cursive system called demotic, and the language evolved through multiple changes.
Coptic is merely Egyptian in its latest form. It was written in the Greek alphabet, with an additional six (or in one dialect, seven) characters taken from demotic. Coptic was Egyptian transformed through Hellenization and Christianization, and thus was influenced by external elements, while remaining Egyptian. Though it had a lengthy history of its own which I'll discuss next time, it also was very much the tongue of Egypt, and was spoken for more than a millennium in its own right.
Check in after the weekend to see where I'm going with this. Since not everyone will be interested, other posts will be interspersed.
As they say, nothing succeeds like success, and the fact that the Nefusa rebels have been running the table on Qadhafi means they're getting a lot of attention.
In 2012 I began a (very) occasional series of posts labeled "Vanished States," about nascent states that had only brief lives. History is full of such states, so I limited my scope to the 20th century. I did posts on the Republic of Hatay (1938-39), the Syrian Arab Kingdom under Faisal (four months in 1920), and the Hashemite Kingdom of the Hejaz (1916-1925). Then I for some reason didn't return to the theme, though there were many other candidates. Today, one that would provide a model for many anti-colonial guerrillas, but also a model for modern technological means of colonial powers' suppressing suppressing "native" resistance: the five year life of the Rifian Republic and the brutal Rif War, in which Spain, and eventually France as well, would dismantle it. It was arguably the only Tamazight-speaking "state" to enjoy brief independence in the past century.
Morocco had been the last of the North African states to come under European colonial rule, with Spain, which had long held an enclave at Ceuta, declaring a protectorate along the northern coast, while France, often opposed by Germany, sought to create a protectorate in the rest of Morocco proper. (Spain also expanded into the future Western Sahara.) By 1912 France and Spain held their own protectorate zones in Morocco, and in 1923 Tangier became an international city.
While the Sultan of Morocco had little choice but to acquiesce, his nominal subjects were not so willing. As they had already done in Algeria, the French spent much time in warfare with rebellious tribes: think of just about every Foreign Legion movie ever made.(except for The Last Remake of Beau Geste) (1977). Often the fiercest resistance came from Amazigh ("Berber") tribes, from the desert Touareg to the mountain tribes of the Atlas in French Morocco and the Rif Mountains in Spanish Morocco. (Although al-Rif in standard Arabic means "the countryside" and, because the l of the article elides as ar-Rif, one may assume this is the origin of the name, but it seems to be an indigenous Tamazight name, Arif, which just happens to sound the same (and in Arabic is spelled al-Rif). It takes Berber derivatives (the language is Tarifit) and some have suggested it relates to the Canarian name Tenerife. In Morocco it refers not to any countryside but specifically to the mountain range along the country's northern coast, which is not geologically part of the Atlas, but linked with the Spanish chain across the Strait of Gibraltar, including Gibraltar itself.
Flag of the Rifian Republic
It's the Rif we're interested in here, for here, where for five years, the Tagduda n Arif as it was known in the Tarifit form of Tamazight, or the Confederal Republic of the Tribes of the Rif, had its life.
This was no evanescent fantasy. For five years the Rifian Republic held the Spanish Army at bay, only succumbing after a brutal war in which France joined with Spain and which saw mustard gas dropped from aircraft despite the post World War I Geneva Protocol against the use of poison gas. The Rifian Republic had its own flag, its own currency, and a national anthem you can hear later in this post. It had a charismatic leader who had both political and military talents. His name would eventually be ranked among the greatest anticolonial resistance leaders: ‘Abdel Krim.
‘Abdel Krim
Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi, to give him his formal Arabic name, or Muḥend n Ɛabd Krim Lxeṭṭabi in one transliteration of his Tarifit name, was born in Ajdir, the future capital of his Rifian Republic, in 1882 or 1883. He and his brother were given traditional Islamic educations in Ajdir, Tetouan, and Fez, and also Spanish educations, becoming translators. He became Chief Qadi in Melilla (the Spanish enclave, not part of the Protectorate) and published a newspaper in Spanish.
Alarmed at Spanish efforts to occupy unoccupied areas of the Rif, ostensibly to combat the warlord/brigand Ahmad al-Raisuni (he of Teddy Roosevelt's "Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead" [Raisuni is the proper spelling] ultimatum; another post for another day), ‘Abdel Krim returned to Ajdir and raised his revolt.
Spanish Morocco; Rifian Republic's Claimed Borders in Red
Colonial powers often began these sorts of wars with a fundamental assumption of their own superiority. When the Spanish general moving into the claimed territory received an ultimatum from ‘Abdel Krim, he reportedly laughed it off. In July of 1921, after a fierce battle at Annual, some 8000 Spanish troops had died out of a force of 20,000. Annual remains a major resistance victory against a colonial army, a sort of proto-Dien Bien Phu.. The Spanish Army soon discovered that it was a poor match for highly motivated mountaineers defending their own territory. At its worst point, it found itself holding little more than Melilla and the area around Tangier.
Rifian One Riffan Note
On September 18, 1921, the Rifian Republic's independence was formally declared. It adopted its own currency, the Riffan, The images I've found are in Arabic and English, not Spanish or French. (There was no accepted version of writing Tarifit at the time.)
The Rifian Republic, though unrecognized internationally, would become a model for many later anticolonial struggles. ‘Abdel Krim's guerrilla tactics (he never had more than a few thousand truly professional fighters, the rest being tribal militia's defending their home turf) would become a model for later guerrilla fighters such as Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and the FLN in Algeria, though the latter also had the model of the great resistance fighter ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri.
In keeping with acquiring all the trappings of sovereignty, the Rifian Republic also had a rather martial National Anthem:
Chastened by their losses, the Spanish began relying on their own version of the French Foreign Legion to wage the Moroccan fight. The second in command was a colonel named Francisco Franco. You may have heard of him.
Through 1921 and 1922 the war was fierce, and the Spanish performance uneven despite numerical and technological superiority. The performance of the Spanish Army in the Rif helped propel events in Spain as well, and the 1923 coup by General Miguel Primo de Rivera was in part a reaction. That would set the stage for the whole Spanish tragedy of the 1930s, the Revolution, Civil War, and proxy rehearsal for the Second World War.
By 1924, the Spanish were resorting to dropping mustard gas from aircraft, violating the new Geneva prohibitions but also learning aerial bombing tactics. Britain and France were also learning bombing strategies from fighting colonial resistance, that would see fruition in 1939-45. Germany had no colonies after 1918, so it practiced in Spain.
Back in the Rif, France had moved forces into areas disputed with the Rifian Republic and Rifian forces attacked them. The French had already had discussions with Spain about intervention, and the French were far more experienced with North African warfare than the Spanish. (Not to mention the well-established reputation of the French Foreign Legion, technically known in military terms as "pretty badass.")
French intervention and a massive Spanish landing of troops, combined with aerial bombardment and the use of mustard gas, eventually turned the tide. But the Rif War was as fierce as it got at the time. Wikipedia isn't always a great source, but their casualty figures are: Spain: 23,000 casualties of whom 18,000 dead; France: 10,000 dead and 8,500 wounded; Rifians, 30,000 casualties including 10,000 dead.
For contemporary Americans, Time magazine is a fading shadow of its former self, but when it was founded in 1923 it was radically new: a weekly summary of the news of America and the worlf. From the beginning each issue had a portrait on the cover. Down into at least the 1970s, being on the cover of Time was a sign you had made it. As near as I can make out, the first Middle Easterner to appear on Time's cover was Atatürk on March 24, 1923; then Fuad I of Egypt on April 28 of the same year; in 1924 nobody unless you include Greece (Venizelos).
Then, in 1925, only the third Middle Eastern figure to appear on a Time cover, is, on August 17, 1925, was none other than ‘Abdel Krim. Sure, he's sinister looking, but it reminds us the world took him seriously.
On May 26,1926, at Targuist, ‘Abdel Krim surrendered. Given his experience with Spain, it is probably no surprise that he surrendered to the French.
Like other French captive nationalist leaders, he was sent to Réunion in the Indian Ocean (just as the British favored the Seychelles or Mauritius), where he lived in comfortable exile from 1926-1947. In the latter year he was allowed to move to France, but managed to gain asylum in Egypt.
After Moroccan independence, King Muhammad V reportedly invited him to return to Morocco, and he is said to have said he would not return until all French forces were out of North Africa. He lived to witness the independence of Morocco and Tunisia and the expulsion of the French base at Bizerte, and finally, he lived to witness the end of French rule in Algeria in July of 1962.
‘Abdel Krim going into exile
Almost exactly seven months after the last colonial forces left the Maghreb, ‘Abdel Krim died in Cairo on February 6, 1963.
I'm on vacation. As I did last year, I've prepared a series of posts ahead of time on historical, cultural, and linguistic topics that are not time-constrained. If events warrant, I will add current posts, but at least one new post will appear daily in my absence. Enjoy.
Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then happy low, lie down!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
Henry IV, Part II
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there thE antic sits,
Richard II, Act 3, Scene 2
Shakespeare's troubled kings do not find models among the crowned heads of the Middle East (though in an earlier era the late King Hussein of Jordan, or his ghostwriters, wrote a book entitled Uneasy Lies the Head). In the last decade, the heads of almost every mainstream Arab republic has been toppled or is on the verge of it:
Iraq: Saddam Hussein, toppled 2003, subsequently executed
Tunisia: Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, toppled 2011, in exile
Egypt: Husni Mubarak, toppled 2011, imprisoned
Libya: Mu‘ammar Qadhafi, toppled 2011, killed while fleeing
Yemen: ‘Ali ‘Abdullah Salih, negotiated out of office
Syria: Bashar al-Asad, fighting a civil war he appears to be losing
Sudan: ‘Umar al-Bashir, engaged in the early stages of an Arab Spring-type revolt
With the exception of Lebanon, the debatable "Algerian exception," and rather marginal states like Mauritania and Djibouti, Arab republics have either undergone dramatic transitions or are in the process of them.
The Kings, Amirs and Sultan are another matter. One might edit Shakespeare: in the Middle East, Easy Lies the Head That Wears a Crown. Not one monarch has fallen, at least not since the overthrows of the Libyan monarchy in 1969 and the Iranian Shah in 1979. Only Bahrain's throne has truly been in jeopardy, saved by Saudi intervention. Saudi Arabia, Oman, Jordan, Morocco, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE and Iran have faced some demonstrations and challenges, but of these only Jordan, and the aforementioned Bahrain, seem to have even had much worry. A fair amount has been written about a "Moroccan exception," but it's true of the other monarchies, again Bahrain excepted, as well.
Of course everyone knows that some of the richer states, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE, have all used their oil revenues to provide lavish welfare states for their people, and have increased the flow whenever protest reared its head. But not all the Gulf states, and certainly not Jordan or Morocco, can turn on the oil largesse at will. So is the common ground really monarchy? Does the Divine Right of Kings (and Amirs and a Sultan) trump popular will?
If you're reading this expecting a clear cut answer, I don't have one. The monarchies are enormously different from each other. Morocco has had a unified state since the Middle Ages, was never under Ottoman rule, had only a brief colonial period (1911-56 ), and the present Alaouite dynasty has ruled since the 1600s. The first two statements and to some extent the third are also true of Oman, and the ruling Al Bu Said dynasty has ruled since 1749. Both have historical depth, national identity, and dynastic legitimacy working for them. Moroccan Sultans and, more recently, Kings have long been called "amir al-mu'minin" (commander of the faithful), a traditional title of Muslim caliphs, and have historical religious leadership claims.
The other monarchies have differing claims on legitimacy. Most of the rulers of the Arabian Peninsula, other than Oman, emerged from local ruling families (in the Saudi case, local rulers in the Najd, but with alliance with the Wahhabi religious establishment). Many of the families have roots in the 1700s, often under British protection during the 19th and 20th centuries.
Jordan's Hashemites have an impeccable descent from the Prophet and were hereditary Sharifs of Mecca, but only achieved political rule in the 20th century, under British patronage, in the Hijaz, (briefly) Syria, Iraq and Jordan. Today they cling only to Jordan.
It is no coincidence that Bahrain, where a Sunni family rules a Shi‘ite majority, has been most unstable during the present upheavals, dependent on Saudi intervention. Other states (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Dubai) have Shi‘ite citizens but in the minority. Moroccan Kings have long finessed the Arab-Berber split in Morocco by at various times portraying both identities (many Kings, including Hassan II, took both Arab and Berber wives). The Sultan of Oman is an Ibadi so the country's historic majority, though increasingly eclipsed by Sunnis, share some identification with the ruler.
So legitimacy is a factor. So is the ability of the oil states to buy off their populace. And so to some extent is the fact that in Jordan and Morocco at least, there are enough of the trappings of a constitutional monarchy to allow the King to deflect blame to a Prime Minister (as Jordan tends to do) or to allow the opposition a role (as in the creation of an Islamist PJD-dominated ministry in Morocco). Of course these may prove to be temporary solutions, but they've worked so far.
If you were expecting profound answers or theoretical ones, ask some political scientist. I'm a historian and I examine the context without trying to fit the facts to some Procrustean theoretical bed. (Sorry, political scientists, forgive the zinger.) But I thought I'd leave you with my ruminations on the matter, though with no answers.
Scholars routinely lament the lack of a really good, scholarly, dictionary of etymology for Classical and Modern Standard Arabic. Even more wanting are decent studies of etymology for the spoken colloquials; there are many dictionaries, but few that are very helpful for etymology of distinctive dialectal terms. Instead there are many websites that offer assumptions with no sourcing cited, and many of these are popular folk etymologies. Linguistics blogger Lameen Souag has a very interesting post at Jabal al-Lughat on this theme: "Arabic Substrate Etymologies as Urban Legends."
As he notes:
In Arabic as in English, social networks have a constantly flowing
undercurrent of poorly sourced, manipulative stories being shared and
reshared by people who vaguely think they sound right. Over the past,
say, five years, I've noticed the emergence of a linguistically
interesting new subgenre within this miasma of lies and half-truths:
etymological tables purporting to prove the massive contribution of Berber, or Syriac, or (more rarely) Coptic,
or perhaps some other pre-Arab substrate to the local Arabic dialect.
These tables, in my experience, never cite an academic source, and
rarely cite anything at all; closer examination generally reveals a
farrago of correct etymologies and bad guesses.
He links (included in the post, and all in Arabic) to social media posts for Berber, Coptic, and Syriac, and then examines some of the assertions, finding some of them valid, others unsubstantiated, or just plain wrong, concluding:
The optimistic take on this is that it shows that there's a real public
demand in the Arabic-speaking world for information on etymology and on
substrate influence. The pessimistic take is that people just want
"information" confirming what they want to believe - in this case, that
they're not really that Arab after all. (The converse case also exists,
of course - recall Othmane Saadi
- but I haven't seen as much of it circulating on social media, though
that may just reflect my own bubble.) The reality is probably somewhere
in the middle.
But read the whole thing, especially the case studies. I should note that Dr. Souag himself started a blog on the historical origins of Algerian colloquial (الأصول التاريخية للدارجة الجزائرية), but there have been no posts since last year.
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