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.

I've talked about Yannayer several times in previous tears, While the Julian date for the New Year is an ancient one in North Africa, celebrating it has become more popular with revival of Amazigh pride and identity in recent years. As I have noted before, the so-called Berber era, dating from 950 BC, is a modern nationalist invention; by that reckoning this is the year 2962, As I also noted in a previous post, while January 14 is the correct date of the Julian New Year, some Algerian Imazighen celebrate on January 12 instead.

 I like to think there is some small, eccentric subset of my readers who have been asking themselves, "why is he spending so much time  on history and current events and neglecting posts on obscure linguistics of dead Middle Eastern languages?" I even like to think that a subset of that subset has been mumbling, "You haven't had a single post on Punic since the summer of 2013! " Then, you may recall, we discussed the question of whether spoken Punic (the language of Ancient Carthage) survived until the coming of Arabic.

Actually, maybe none of you are thinking that. But not being a linguistics expert, I have to refer you to someone who is, Lameen Souag over at Jabal al-Lughat, who also deserves congratulations for his 10th anniversary of blogging. I also recently linked to his posts about the officialization of Tamazight in Algeria.

In this particular link. "Raisins from Carthage to Siwa," Souag, citing a Facebook post, notes that the standard word in Tamazight dialects for "raisin" is usually either a Berber phrase meaning "dried grapes" or is a loan word from Arabic, but that in Djerba in Tunisia, Zuwara and other places in western Libya — and, curiously, at Siwa, the only Berber enclave in Egypt —the root in use is found in a late inscription in Neo-Punic. The root is also documented in Hebrew, as is often how Punic and Phoenician inscriptions are deciphered. (Hebrew, Phoenician, Punic and Canaanite are extremely similar languages.)

Souag, who has written a book on Siwi and its relations to other Berber languages, notes that Carthaginian influence, and Neo-Punic, never extended east of central Libya, so what explains the presence in Siwa of all places? He answers:

The answer is simple, as I discuss in the introduction to my book Berber and Arabic in Siwa (Egypt): modern Siwi seems to derive mainly from a Berber variety spoken much further west, which reached Siwa only during the Middle Ages. There very probably was a Berber language spoken in Siwa before that, but if so, it has left very few traces.

 I, at least, find that fascinating.

You may think the holidays are over, but don't forget the traditional Berber agricultural New Year, Yannayer, usually celebrated January 14, the new year in the Julian Calendar, though some Algerian Amazigh celebrate today, January 12.

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.

See articles: in French here, Lameen Souag on the subject here and on party reactions here and an article on expanding Tamazight language teaching here, and the links to pdfs of the new constitution in Arabic and French.

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.

The Algerian Army has deployed in the Mzab Oasis towns pf Ghardaïa, Guerara, and Berriane following renewed ethno-sectarian violence between the Arab Sunni and Amazigh Ibadi communities. At least 22 people died in violent clashes over the past week. President Bouteflika ordered the Army in and Prime Minister Sallal has visited the troubled region

Ironically, in my first week or two of writing this blog back in 2009, I was reporting on clashes in Berriane. (Kal at The Moor Next Door wrote a detailed response to that post, from which I learned much.) In late  2013, violence was renewed after desecration of a cemetery, and has broken out sporadically sense. What were once mostly Amazigh towns are now mixed, and the language split (which as Kal noted is not like in the Kabyle, where French was more entrenched in colonial times) is reinforced by the fact the Arabs are Sunni and the Berbers Ibadi. As Lemeen Souag pointed out in 2014, even the etymology and spelling of Ghardaïa are matters of dispute.

The government is apparently blaming the Socialist Forces Front (FFS), a Berber-based opposition party whose main strength is in the Kabyle, and has arrested a local FFS activist in the Mzab, Kameleddine Fekhar,

Hocine Ziyani, La reine Tin Hinan, (Wikimedia)

Let's do a cultural post far from any of the current (and slowly merging into each other) wars. (And a hat tip to Diana Buja for calling this to my attention.) A post at the Ancient Origins website discusses "The Monumental Tomb of Queen Tin Hinan, Ancient Ancestress of the Tuaregs."

Besides being an interesting story in its own right, it gives me a chance to talk about the prominent role women leaders have played in the history of North Africa's Amazigh ("Berber") people.

In 1925 a monumental tomb was excavated in Abalessa in southern Algeria near Tamanrasset in the mountain region known as Hoggar (Arabic) of Ahaggar (Berber/Tamazight/Tamasheq) by archaeologist Byron Khun de Prorok. It contained the remains of a woman buried with fine jewelry, and inside an elaborate structure that may have been a Roman frontier fort. Coins and later carbon dating suggest a 4th or 5th century AD date.

The Tuareg, the nomadic Saharan Amazigh people who live in southern Algeria and Libya, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and some neighboring countries, consider this the tomb of their legendary Queen Tin Hinan, who is considered the ancestress of the Tuareg people and the ruler of the Hoggar region. In Tuareg tradition, the monumental tomb is that of Tin Hinan, or T'in Hinan, ancestress and Queen of the Tuareg people. Tin Hinan literally means "she of the tents," or "she of the camp," and she is also known as Tamenukalt,  or "Queen."

Some of the traditions relating to Tin Hinan, such as those which make her Muslim, are unhistorical if the identification of the tomb (4th-5th centuries AD) is accurate. In Tuareg tradition she is said to have come from Tafilalt in the Atlas to the Ahaggar, along with a servant, Takamat. Tin Hinan was held to be the ancestress of the Tuareg nobility, and Takamat of the commoners.

There is no certainty, other than popular identification, that the monumental tomb is really that of Tin Hinan or even that Tin Hinan is a historical figure, and some have even suggested the skeleton may be male. But there is an interesting coincidence. The skeleton found in the tomb, now in the museum in Algiers, shows a deformity that may  indicate that the  woman in question was lame. Now, in Ibn Khaldun's universal history Kitab al-‘Ibar, the most famous parts of which (after its "Introduction," the famous Muqaddima) are the sections on Berber genealogies and history, translated into French by de Slane as Histoire des Berbères, Ibn Khaldun says that the Huwwara, Lamta, Sanhaja and other Berber tribes all claim descent from a single woman, a queen he calls "Tiski the Lame." Many students of the Hoggar region, including Charles de Foucauld, the famous missionary at Tamanrasset who studied the languages and traditions, have assumed or argued that Tiski may be identical with Tin Hinan (which is a title, not a personal name). And Ibn Khaldun says the place name Hoggar derives from Huwwara.

Clearly, a monumental female tomb adorned with jewelry suggests a powerful queen, The Tuareg traditions of Tin Hinan and Ibn Khaldun's tale of Tiski the Lame both speak of an ancestress Queen of the Tuareg of the Hoggar. And the skeleton found in the tomb appears lame.Separating out legend from fact is difficult.

it is a reminder, though, that Amazigh history in the pre-Islamic period witnessed instances of strong female leadership. Another example at the time of the Arab conquest of the Maghreb is the woman resistance leader called by Arab historians al-Kahina (the priestess or sorceress; a cognate of "cohen") who led the resistance in what is now Algeria and is variously considered Berber or Byzantine or both,

Some further readings and videos, in French except for a couple:

Dida Badi, Tin-Hinan; une modèle structural de la société touarègue," in Etudes et documents berbères, pp. 199-205.(at academia.edu)

M. Gast, entry "Huwwâra, Houuara, Houara, Hawwâra," in Encyclopédie berbère.
 
Ibn Khaldun, Histoire des Berbères et des dynasties musulmanes de l'Afrique Septentrional, translated by Wlliam MacGuckin Baron de Slane, Vol. I (Algiers, 1852), pages 272-273 (Google Books).

Daily Kos; "The Tuaregs I: Tin Hinanm the mother of us all:"

El Watan (Algiers),  "Tin Hinan, une reine ou un roi ? 

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.

And last year I dealt with the discrepancy between those Algerian Imazighen who observe the New Year on January 12 while everyone else marks it on January 14.

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.)

More vacation posts are coming soon. Meanwhile,  I wanted to point you to another interesting post by linguist Lameen Souag: "A South Arabian loan into Libyan Berber?"  You'll recall that I posted a while back about the surviving non-Arabic South Arabian languages ("The Endangered South Aranisn Languages of Oman and Yemen") including Mehri. After previously debunking myths that Berber and Mehri are related and that Berber is descended from Arabic, he now finds an apparent example of a Mehri loanword in Libyan Zuwara Berber. Coincidence or actual borrowing? Both languages belong to the greater Afro-Asiatic language family, but to quite distinct subfamilies (Berber and South Semitic).

It's rather unusual that I have two posts in succession on Amazigh ("Berber") languages, but after my previous post on Mzab in Algeria, here's another: "Morocco Lifts the Ban on Amazigh Names."

The High Commission of the Civil Registry confirmed on Monday the freedom of Moroccans to choose the names of their children, provided the names do not breach morality or public order, without distinction between Arabic, Amazigh, Hassani, or Hebrew names, and in accordance with the provisions of the law relating to civil status.

Hasssani is a dialect of Arabic particularly associated with Mauritania an the Western Sahara.

Anir, Sifaw, Tifawt, Thiyya, and Bahac are some of the many Amazigh names that had been unauthorized in Morocco.

The Amazigh families have been denied the right to name their children some Amazigh names since 1996, when a circular was sent to Moroccan civil status registry offices banning Amazigh names.

Since then, activists have led a fierce campaign against what they call a “racist and discriminatory law” targeting Amazighs, and Amazigh associations have been putting pressure on Moroccan authority to recognize Amazigh names.

Arab Spring may be withering, but the less-touted Amazigh Spring seems to be moving right along.

I haven't blogged about it, but there has been a recent resurgence of ethnic/sectarian clashes in Algeria's Mzab Valley, an oasis region in the Sahara where Berber tribesmen who speak Berber and practice the Ibadi sect of Islam live alongside Arabic-speaking Sunni Muslims of the Maliki legal school (like most North African Sunnis). Actually, in my second month of blogging I wrote about an earlier outbreak of Sunni-Ibadi violence in the town of Berriane. The latest round of violence involves the town of Ghardaia, largest town in the Mzab.

The Algerian linguist-blogger Lameen Souag, whose Jabal al-Lughat blog I frequently quote, (as recently as noting his new book just a week ago), has a new post on a linguistic aspect of the conflict: "Ghardaia: etymology, spelling, and politics." It's interesting, and I hope he won't mind my doing such extensive quoting (the Linguistics professor explains it better than I could). Please go read the whole thing. He sets the stage thus:

What's going on is far too localised to be explained in terms of "Arabs" and "Berbers" (contra AFP); at most, it's between Chaamba (Sh`ānba) and Mzabis (Mozabites). But the Mzabis speak Berber, practice Ibadi Islam (a small minority sect), are native to the town, and have a famously strong mercantile tradition; the Chaamba speak Arabic, practice Maliki Islam (like the rest of Algeria), used to be nomads with a strong martial tradition, and by and large are less well off. . . .

And after some more background, gets to the linguistic aspect:

Oddly enough, however, not only language but even etymology is being used as a tool of division. As I looked through page after depressing page on the events, I was surprised to notice that, while Mzabi pages, and neutral ones, spelled Ghardaia غرداية (Ghardāyah), Chaambi pages rather consistently spelled it غارداية (Ghārdāyah). The latter spelling turns out to be based on a folk etymology, deriving the name of "Ghardaia" from Arabic ghār "cave" plus Dāyah, the name of a woman – who some Chaamba claim was from the Arab tribe of Said Atba, proving that Arabs got there before the Mzabis did (قبائل الشعانبة… بنو سُليم الجزائر.) Mzabis have a version of the same etymology, in fact (chanson amazigh mozabit) – but according to them, Daya was a saintly Ibadi woman from Touat, proving that they were there first.

Either version is problematic, since the name is pronounced ɣərdāya (Berber taɣərdayt), not ɣārdāya. The Said Atba idea is especially implausible: in 1053, when Ghardaia was reportedly founded, Ibadi Berbers had been trading across the Sahara for centuries, whereas Arab nomads had barely begun to reach the area. Phonetically, the more obvious etymology is Mzabi Berber taɣərdayt "mouse" – but who'd name a town "Mouse"? Delheure suggested a derivation from tiɣərdin "shoulders", a term found in Ouargli Berber, based on its topography (followed eg here). Dabouz compares it to a Nafusi term reportedly meaning "land next to a wadi". No proposal seems entirely satisfactory, which is itself an indicator of the placename's antiquity.

Be that as it may, this pointed use of "cave of Dāyah" reinforces my impression that what's going on is a mapping of economic grievances onto ethnic/religious categories. Adding this one letter effectively says "Mzabis own this place, but by rights it should be ours" – a thoroughly wrong attitude. الله يهديهم ويهدينا!

 The last line means "May God guide them and guide us."

Egypt has only one language in the Berber language family spoken within its borders: Siwi, spoken in the Siwa Oasis in the Western Desert. Algerian linguist Lameen Souag, whose linguistics blog Jabal al-Lughat is wonderful but far too rarely updated, has announced the publication of his new study: Berber and Arabic in Siwa (Egypt): A Study in Linguistic Contact.

He outlines the contents at the link, and the publisher's announcement is here. It's almost 300 pages (but also almost 50 Euros). He comments:

Based on part of my doctoral thesis [at SOAS] but significantly expanded, this book:

• proposes a classification of Siwi within Berber, and a corresponding probable account of where this Berber variety originated;
• describes the grammar of Siwi, in greater detail than any previous work;
• establishes how, and how much, long-term contact with Arabic has affected its grammar;
• examines the dialectal affiliations of Arabic loans in Siwi, providing further evidence that this contact involved very different varieties at different periods;
• provides a number of fully glossed Siwi texts of different genres, illustrating Siwi grammar and casting light on Siwi culture.

Some interesting-sounding stuff here for anyone interested in Berber, in contact borrowing among languages, or minority populations in the Arab world. I know Lameen only through commenting on each other's blogs, but bravo.

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.

Misr, as perhaps most of my readers know, means Egypt. But because it also means Misr al-Qahira, Cairo, sometimes just called Misr in other parts of Egypt, the capital and the country can be semantically confused or conflated. (The same holds true for Tunis (for the city and for Tunisia), Al-Jaza'ir (Algiers and Algeria), and sometimes Al-Sham (for Damascus and for Syria or the whole Levant). The confusion is not merely semantic. In the world views of many Cairenes, Egypt consists of Cairo, of Alexandria (one does need the sea), perhaps some Red Sea resorts, the rural village your grandfather came from, and the roads in between. If this is true for Cairenes, it is even more true for the Western media. During the Egyptian revolution and all that has happened since, probably 80-90% of the reporting was from Cairo and the rest from Alexandria with occasional, rare, reporting from the Canal cities where, obviously, a vital Western interest is located.

Exceptions remain rare but, intriguingly, three separate and unrelated links came to my attention in the past 24 hours, so I thought I'd use the serendipity to note each of them.

• At The Christian Science Monitor, Kristen Chick offers a lengthy (8 web pages) tour of Upper Egypt since the coup-or-whatever-it was, "In Egypt, journey down a Nile of discontent." She does start in Aswan so she gets the "down the Nile" part right.

• A very interesting looking book, by Zeinab Abul-Magd, "Imagined Empires: A History of Revolt in Egypt."  University of California Press page here; Amazon page for ordering here. I haven't read it, but resist this:

Through a microhistory of a small province in Upper Egypt, this book investigates the history of five world empires that assumed hegemony in Qina province over the last five centuries. Imagined Empires charts modes of subaltern rebellion against the destructive policies of colonial intruders and collaborating local elites in the south of Egypt.

Abul-Magd vividly narrates stories of sabotage, banditry, flight, and massive uprisings of peasants and laborers, to challenge myths of imperial competence. The book depicts forms of subaltern discontent against “imagined empires” that failed in achieving their professed goals and brought about environmental crises to Qina province. As the book deconstructs myths about early modern and modern world hegemons, it reveals that imperial modernity and its market economy altered existing systems of landownership, irrigation, and trade— leading to such destructive occurrences as the plague and cholera epidemics.

The book also deconstructs myths in Egyptian historiography, highlighting the problems of a Cairo-centered idea of the Egyptian nation-state. The book covers the Ottoman, French, Muhammad Ali’s, and the British informal and formal empires. It alludes to the U.S. and its failed market economy in Upper Egypt, which partially resulted in Qina’s participation in the 2011 revolution. Imagined Empires is a timely addition to Middle Eastern and world history.

•  Lameen Souag's always interesting Jabal al-Lughat blog has a piece on "Siwi Political Slogans" (a specialist on Berber linguistics among others he has studied the dialect of Egypt's Siwa oasis), and apparently they may not be General Sisi's biggest fans:

However, this year's events in Egypt have apparently brought even Siwa to the point of mounting a couple of demonstrations. Egyptians have displayed a seemingly inexhaustible facility for coming up with rhyming couplets for use as slogans in demonstrations, and I woke up this morning and saw an example of the same genre in Siwi:

فل اسيسى فل نشنى نمل لا جندول
fəl a Sisi fəl • nišni nəṃṃəl la ga-nədwəl
Go, Sisi, go! • We have said we won't go back

I asked a few Siwis about the issue, and apart from general points, one reason they gave for supporting Morsi particularly struck me. Since long before the revolution, the Egyptian security forces have viewed the border populations – Bedouins in Matrouh and Sinai, as well as Siwis – with great suspicion; many army/police jobs are closed to them simply for where they come from. As far as the core state is concerned, they're not thought of as real Egyptians, but as clannish minorities under Egyptian control, with undesirable cross-border ties and a predilection for going places the state doesn't want them to be in. Many Siwis felt that Morsi was reversing this situation, attempting to develop the border regions and treating their inhabitants as fellow Egyptians; a resurgence of military rule obviously threatens those gains. 

Almost two weeks ago now, I posted about an Economist column about Arabic dialects. Among the comparisons discussed there were the mutual intelligibility or lack thereof of various dialects. Algerian language blogger Lameen Souag also responded to the Economist piece with a detailed discussion of the Algerian case at his Jabal al-Lughat blog: "So How Different are Egyptian and Algerian Arabic, Really?"  (Unsurprisingly given the influence of Egyptian TV and movies, Algerians can understand Egyptian, though it may not work so well the other way.) I planned to link to his post right away, but then something happened in Egypt or somewhere, and I'm just now getting around to it. If you're interested in the whole diglossia issue and/or know either dialect, do read it.

And now, Lameen has added a post on a subject most of us know a lot less about: "So How Different are Algerian and Egyptian Berber?" He compares the Kabyle Berber (Tamazight) of Algeria with the Siwi of Egypt's Siwa Oasis.

Presumably reflecting the growing Amazigh awakening, Wikipedia is now available in Kabyle, the Berber language of eastern Algeria and one of the most widely spoken. [Note: Link was corrupted; now fixed.]

I'm not sure about the page I linked to as I don't know Kabyle, but I think it has something to do with Kabyle linguist and author Mouloud Mammeri.

A translation of the Qur'an (or as Muslims would say, of the meanings of the Qur'an, since only the Arabic text is the literal word of God) into Tamazight has been completed — at Medina in Saudi Arabia. According to this article (in French),  which refers to it as the "first" Qur'an in Tamazight, an earlier translation published in Morocco in 1999 was withdrawn from sale after controversy erupted. The article alludes to some concerns in Algeria that the translation, which allegedly is comprehensible regardless of the form of the language spoken, might promote Wahhabi teachings.

I'm not certain but this may be it. But back in 2007 Lameen Souag noted another "first" translation into Tamazight, which he referred to as "more like the last first Tamazight Qur'an." That post spells out the history in some detail, and no, this one definitely isn't the "first" translation.

UPDATE: See Lameen's comment and link in the comments.

I've fairly frequently linked (given the infrequency of his posts) to the linguistic posts of Algerian blogger and Berber/Saharan languages linguist Lameen Souag at his Jabal al-Lughat blog, most recently on his post about a Chinese description of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate.

In recent years he's been a little silent, being the sort of person (though I only know him online) who gets distracted from blogging by distracting stuff like writing and defending a doctoral dissertation, getting married, moving from England to France, starting a teaching career, writing books, and so on. Anyway, he seems to be back with a vengeance. Lately he's been posting frequently, and in fact his last four posts all should have relevance to those with an interest in the Maghreb. Links to each with a few comments;

Learn Tamezret Berber with Cartoons. Tamezret is a small Tamazight (Berber)-speaking town in southern Tunisia, and a center of the Amazigh revival in that country. There are now several sites devoted to its local dialect, including one using cartoons.

The Language of Academia: Algeria and France. Despite a quarter century of Arabization in the primary and secondary schools, half the courses in Algerian universities are still taught in French.

Review: La question linguistique en Algérie. Review of a book by Chafia Yamina Benmayouf (also quoted in the above post). She apparently is an unapologetic Francophone, disdainful of Arabization, and equating French with "modernity." Lameen disagrees:

As for her vision of the future, I would consider it close to a worst-case scenario. Her tactical and qualified support for Algerian Arabic does not entail actually using it for anything important; while rather hostile to Standard Arabic as a medium for university education, she takes it for granted that French is appropriate in that context, and indeed is the perfect vehicle for anything related to modernity. But, frankly, I do not want a French-language-mediated "transfer of modernity from the north shore to the south shore of the Mediterranean" (p. 118); I want an Algeria with the self-confidence and self-awareness to learn from a variety of examples and choose its own path, not mechanically follow in France's footsteps. Nor do I believe that relegating "modernity" to a foreign language is likely to help Algeria achieve it!

Nonetheless, I'm glad I read the book. It's fascinating – if sad – to discover that there exists an Algerian intellectual prepared to take a position this extreme in favour specifically of French; I don't believe I've ever met one. Could one find a corresponding phenomenon in France, I wonder – some professor eagerly advocating for more English in the bureaucracy and the universities, and condemning supporters of French as narrow-minded nationalists?

Didn't they kick the French out 51 years ago? But this is still a controversy in Algeria, were many senor officials still aren't that comfortable in literary Arabic.

Ethnologue Update Comments. There's a new version online of the standard Ethnologue reference on world languages, itself a controversial issue at times; Lameen assesses the improvements (and flaws) of their coverage of North African and Saharan languages. including one Mauritanian language, Imeraguen, which apparently may not even exist.

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.

Here are stories  on the celebrations in Morocco and on how Algeria banned a march by a Kabyle separatist movement. though clearly the real story is the celebration in Tripoli, where under Qadhafi the regime banned Amazigh language, names, and cultural elements, even denying the very existence of a separate culture. Also see a BBC account here with  a video (which I can't embed here) on the concert and the first Amazigh-language magazine in Libya.

Here is a short video clip of the Tripoli concert that is embeddable:

The Amazigh revival throughout North Africa continues apace, and Tunisia, though it has the fewest actual speakers of Tamazight languages in the Maghreb, is among them: the southwestern Tunisian town of Tamazret (or Tamezret) is holding its 20th Annual Festival of Tamazret, emphasizing the town's ethnic heritage.

The Festival's Facebook page is here;  the webpage of the sponsoring Association for the Protection of the Heritage of Tamezret is here (mostly in French, some Arabic); the Festival's program (in Arabic) is here.

Tamazret and other villages in the Matmata area speak a form of Zenata, a division of the Berber or Tamazight languages. A website in French on the Tamazret dialect can be found here.

This blog has frequently noted the growing identity movement among North Africa's Amazigh (plural Imazighen) or "Berber" peoples, especially with the revolutions in Tunisia and Libya. And of course Algeria and Morocco have large and influential Amazigh populations. So which government has the most Imazighen in the Cabinet?
Apparently, as of now, France:


UPDATE: But See the comments, below.

For those of you interested in the Berber (Tamazight) languages, there's a new blog concentrating on those spoken in Libya and Egypt (Siwi in the Siwa Oasis, the only Berber language spoken in Egypt). The author calls it Oriental Berber, (I can see the name may raise questions, since "Oriental" carries a lot of baggage when "Eastern" might have done fine, and "Berber" may annoy some activists. It's a collaborative blog by three authors, one of them Lameen Souag of the Jabal al-Lughat and more recently the blog on Algerian Dardja etymology, الأصول التاريخية للدارجة الجزائرية, which I introduced here recently. Souag's post about the new blog is here. His other collaborators are Marijn van Putten of Phoenix's Blog, and Adam Benkato.

They helpfully describe the Berber languages they plan to cover:

We will finish off with a short overview of some of the languages to be discussed on this blog:

• Aujila Berber (Aujili) is spoken in the oasis of Aujila, Libya. From a historical point of view, it is a fascinating language, as it is one of the few that retains Proto-Berber *β (as v). Other languages that have retained this consonant are the Tuareg languages (as h) and Ghadamès (as β). Syntactically and morphologically Aujila is an interesting language, as it has lost much of the typically Berber features such as ‘state’, clitic fronting and has quite a different verbal system from other Berber languages.
• The only Berber language that is spoken in Egypt is Siwa Berber (Siwi), in the oasis of Siwa in the western desert. Like Aujila, it has undergone intensive restructuring of the grammatical system, and fascinatingly, seems to share several of these grammatical features with Aujila.
• Ghadamès, an oasis in western  Libya on the border with Tunisia, is the home of Ghadamès Berber (Ghadamsi), the other Libyan language that retains the Proto-Berber *β. Ghadamès is a fascinating language for historical linguists as it also shows some traces of the long lost Proto-Berber consonant *ʔ. Patterns in the oriental Berber languages are the lack of ‘state’ marking, and a radically different verbal system than the more familiar Berber languages of western North-Africa. The verbal system of Ghadamès may just be the most exotic reconfiguration of all the languages of this region.
• North of Ghadamès, still in western Libya, we find the Nefusa Berber (Nefusi) languages spoken around the Nefusa mountains, in the cities of Nalut, Jadu, Kabaw, and Yefren (to name a few). These languages have received quite substantial academic attention, from the perspective of oriental Berber. Nevertheless, further research, especially into its linguistic history, will be well worth it.
• High up north on the coast of Libya, we find Zuara, where the Zuara Berber language is spoken. This language has received quite considerable attention due to the recent publication of Mitchell’s work, edited by Harry Stroomer and Stanley Oomen (Mitchell et al. 2009). The Zuara language is not generally considered to be part of the Eastern Berber languages, and is sooner associated with the Northern Berber languages, similar to Tunisian Berber. Nevertheless, this language could use more attention, and maybe in the future of this blog we will focus on it.
• Sokna Berber (Sokni) was (or is still) spoken in the oasis of Sokna in west-central Libya. Our only record of Sokni comes from 1924, when only a few dozen people were reported to still speak the language. Though distinct from Fogaha Berber, there is some historical relationship between the two.
• El-Fogaha Berber, traditionally considered to be the same language as Sokna Berber, seems to be lexically quite divergent. A more in-depth study of this language, will definitely give a clearer indication of the underlying relations between these two languages.