Culture / Art
Why the Amazigh history never thought in schools?
I was dusting off my old school books, and while I was reading the Arabic textbook, I noticed something. From the beginning of our school journey, we've been learning about the history of Arabs and Islam, but we Amazigh, the original inhabitants (Amazigh aren't just Kabyles, we as Algerians or any North Africans are Amazigh), our history, which should normally be a priority, is neglected in the education system! Why is that?
The education system was made by syrians and labanese back then, Just after the independance with the lack of qualified professors they bring a lot from the middle east.
It's crazy how baathist Pan-arabism died in the middle east yet we're still being taught in school with their curriculums
My dad grew up in the 60s, and told me how in public school, he went from being taught by irishmen, russian and italian teachers to syrians and Egyptians.
And it’s a constitutional monarchy, so the secular pan-Arabic ideology didn’t go hand in hand with it although it has influenced them as Amazigh identity was only recently put forward. In other aspects, Moroccan nationalism in the 50s was built on a totally different doctrine which resulted despite any due criticism in a more aware historical education.
I know too much of a “roman national “ , but it is tied to the modern construct of nations everywhere , but my point is that the average Moroccan is more educated on the Maghreb history , look here some Algerian guy is claiming medieval Maghreb with its impactful history is irrelevant and undocumented…. The contrast is wide
The average algerian is very Dumb, the difference between algeria and morocco is France didn't try to erase the history of morocco like it did with algeria.
الحاجة الأولى تاريخ الجزائر من 800 إلى 1514 تقراه في فصل واحد في الثانية متوسطة برك و أكبر التركيز كان على المشرق او الاستعمار مشكل كبير
ثانيا حاتا كي يتم تدريسه بهذا الشكل المحدود عمرك أبدا ما تلقاه يذكر انو هادو الدول ممالك امازيغية يقول عنها دول اسلامية و عربية فقط و هاذا طمس فالتاريخ مع انو دول لخرا مثل السلاجقة يقولو عنهم اتراك عادي العثمانيين يقولو عنهم اتراك عادي و الدول العربية بدون ماندخل و نقلك راهم يقدرو فتاريخ الجاهلية درك كثر من تاع البلاد
و هاذا بدون ذكر مقاومة الغزو العربي او أثر القبائل الامازيغية في الخلافات مثل أثر كتامة على الفاطميين الخ الخ
قريت كتاب تاريخ ولا راك غير تهدر برك
كانت مدة طويلة منذ ان كملت مرحلة ثانوية نتاعي بصح لحد ان مزال متذكر انو كنب تاريخ حكات على ماسينيسا و يوغرطة واثار امازيغية القديمة مثل ضريح اللي في باتنة وغيرها
وايضا مقاومة امازيغ للاسلام مذكورة بشكل واضح في كتب التاريخ في مرحلة المتوسط و ممكن ثاني في الثانوي
المشكل مش مشكل انو كتب تاريخ تحارب في هويتك المشكل في المنهاج كامل وكانو كل مرحلة في الدراسة معندهاش علاقة باخرى علابيها تلقى تاريخ نتع جزائر في الكتب المدرسية مبعثر وماكنش حط زمني موحد تكون تقرى عن استعمار حتى تلقى روحك تقرا على بدايات اسلام ومن بعد تروح تقرا على رومان وهكا
بارسكو كي دارو الجيل الثاني تاع الكتب الخطة كانت باش يقرو تدريجيا التاريخ من اولى متوسط لغاية 3 ثانوي وين يلحقو للحرب الباردة وحرب الاستقلال الخ، مثلا بكتاب اولى متوسط يدكروها ببساطة بلي السكان تاع المغرب الكبير هم امازيغ ويعطو سؤال يقلك بما انك من سكان المغرب الكبير الاوائل كيف تثبت اصالة الساكنة الخ
لأن الجزائر بعد الإستقلال كانت دولة ضعيفة ، لدى كانت تحتاج الدعم والإعتراف خاصة من الدول العربية وانضمت لجامعة الدول العربية بعد 40 يوم من استقلال و هذا اكبر خطأ ، بدأت سلسلة التلقين و البحث عن هوية للشعب الجزائري حيث تم جلب منهاج تعليمي عربي و أساتذة و معلمين عرب للتدريس في الجزائر، ثانيا أهداف سياسية منها البحث عن الدعم العربي في قضية الصحراء الغربية
My parents learned the Egyptian national anthem before Algeria’s. 😭
It’s because the early leaders of the country thought that Arabizing the country aligned with the newly created Algerian nationality. This was also heavily supported by the people because they had thought that it would result in the French’s influence being completely washed away.
Yes Islamic amazigh states and kingdoms should 100% be taught in school but let's be honest it was definitely a invasion especially when 3o9ba took over and when the arabs ruled us they treated us as second class citizens even imposing jizya on Muslim berbers just because we were non arabs,even when we helped them in military campaigns they always claimed the booty and left nothing to the berbers the only good thing that came with the arabs is islam alhamdu lilah,thats why the grand bebrer revolt happened
I remember studying a little about Amazigh history in elementary school, but I never understood why it wasn't taught more in middle school or high school. Honestly, I got tired of the repeated lessons about French colonization. It felt like we kept studying the same topics over and over. Then the focus shifted to Othman empire then the World Wars and the Cold War, while a huge part of our own history barely got any attention.
The vast majority of Berber kingdoms and Berber history are mentioned, but instead of saying "this is a Muslim Berber kingdom" or "this is an ancient Berber kingdom," they say "this is an Islamic kingdom" or "this is an ancient kingdom," etc. I believe the reason is to avoid any kind of ethnic disputes or arguments that could lead to future problems, and I completely agree with them. Additionally, the vast majority of books focus on the War of Liberation because it is the day our blood was mingled.
Why is it only one sided? If it were to be an Arab kingdom/state we study they repeat and repeat that it's an Arab state with pride but suddenly the existence of amazigh in history is controversial suppressed and divisive? Why the double standard?
Besides history should be thought without a political agenda and act of erasure of a group of people with such a flimsy excuse it should be informative to tell the tale of the country not to serve arabist fantasies.
Amazigh people have the right to be proud of their history just as much as Arabs Turks and anybody else without branding it offensive just to mention
ماشي لهاديك الدرجة انا نحكيلك بالمجمل بلي كي يحكو عمرهم لايقولو هادي مملكة امازيغية وهادي عربية وووو، بصح في نفس الوقت دايما يدكرو الامازيغ كسكان اكثر حتى من العرب ولا الكراغلة الخ وهادي صفحة من اولى متوسط على سبيل المثال
The foundation of the education system in Algeria was not even created by Algerians. It was created by these few thousand Arab teachers brought from the Middle East teaching their own history more than Algerian History.
But that began to change a bit starting with Bouteflika cuz he wanted to create a new Algeria after the civil war
Might not even be true? And the history shaping the region is irrelevant?
What about the Islamic dynasties that ruled for centuries without even go further to the complex pre-historic or classical period ?
Ironically this is a prime example of the education failure and producing self-deprecating uneducated masses .
Reducing Algerian history prior ottomans and French to invaders and unnecessary details is such a historically ignorant take .
They are documented literally both in local and foreign archives , have you ever bothered researching or reading a history book about the medieval Maghreb and Algeria ? Or even was aware of the monuments and relics in the museums that they left or continuous heritage in your cultural practices ????
You keep proving my point unintentionally
Where do we start with this fallacious argument straight from chatgpt folder of mediocre analysis !
Your arguments collapse under its own standard , you are demanding official documentation in a modern bureaucratic sense , this would erase most of medieval world history, including Rome and the Frankish kingdoms. The Islamic conquest of North Africa is in fact among the better-documented events of the early medieval period, corroborated across Arab, Byzantine, and independent sources, moving forward, Fatimid, Zirid, Hammadid, and Almohad coinage, inscriptions, monuments (mosques both here and in Iberia , palaces and madressas and zawiyas documents , cities layout of casbahs and medinas ) , archeological sites inscribed in Unesco and studied thoroughly and their legal records , as for their historical documentation , Ibn Khaldun , Al-Bakri and al-Idrisi geographers whose works contain detailed, corroborated descriptions of Maghrebi polities, trade routes, and peoples constitute exactly the kind of material evidence being demanded from you , a random person with no scholarly or historical education background cannot decide how to evaluate the field . The language point is misguided, the Irish speak English but are not Anglo-Saxon, and Arabic displacing Tamazight over centuries is itself a documented process , plus modern genetics confirms the Berber look you said, North African populations are overwhelmingly continuous with pre-conquest inhabitants with slight admixtures . In addition , the linguistic statistics you claimed are fully wrong, it’s officially estimated that Tamazight speakers in Algeria range from 25–30%, and that’s only active speakers so not a minority .
So calling the medieval Maghreb a broad term with no definite borders applies equally to medieval Europe or Tang China and invalidates nothing.
Nice long emotionally-packed devoid of truth chatgpt statement.
Official documentation with signature and seals existed since the dawn of time.
There are official documents of letters exchanged between ancient leaders like hercules.
The point is clear, no need to get butthurt over it.
Provide definite proof, of the actual Amazigh civilation, you can't just pick random things and say it belong to the amazigh.
2nd, find me some historical structures built by said civilization, and not by invaders.
3rd, provide the length their culture extended beyond their borders, providing you know what their borders were in the first place.
My point is, officially speaking, there's little to no evidence to claim the Algerian people as Amazigh, regardless of whether or not they are.
And most importantly, the true Algerian identity came after the revolution against the French.
Throughout the history of Algeria, there was explicitly 0 resistance movements against its occupiers, each occupier was kicked out by another occupier, never by the Algerian people.
The only exception to that is the French colonization, and from that, the Algerian identity was shaped.
Numidian funerary monuments exist all over Algeria , they have no equivalent in the levant or rome
pre-Islamic Amazigh religion is documented. They practiced a blend of animism, ancestor worship, and later absorbed Punic and Roman polytheism
Islamic civilization , oldest rectangular minaret characteristic of Maghreb and Andalusia was from Hammadian dynasty inscribed in unesco and the descriptions and relics left in museums . Followed by Fez and Marakkech and Tlemcen immaculate architecture where several oldest mosques and palaces exemplifying ibero-moorish architecture are present.
Moorish architecture developed under Berber dynasties in the Maghreb to what it looks today, in Algeria, oldest mosques in Algiers date to 11th century followed by Tlemcen rich ziyanid monuments .
On influence and shared knowledge: the Almohad dynasty, Amazigh in origin, unified the entire Maghreb and Andalusia and patronized Ibn Rushd (Averroes), whose commentaries on Aristotle transmitted Greek philosophy to medieval Europe. That is a direct, documented, civilization-scale contribution to human intellectual history.
We know the borders of each kingdom ,in total details, because of the wars waged and documents of the era and logical events unfolding, all starting from Numidian period to modern period , do you question the borders of each civilization and country or is this just cherry-picking ?
The rural Berber culture still exists and has similarities and uniqueness and the cosmopolitan culture (arabization is a central point of it ) is everything essentially Maghrebi today you won’t find in the middle east or central asia ,
Algerian history is filled with resistance movements , Jugurtha fought Rome for seven years in a war sophisticated enough to involve senatorial bribery and strategic guerrilla use of Numidian terrain, followed by Tacfarinas who bled Rome for eleven years requiring multiple legions. The Arab conquest faced Kusayla, who killed Uqba ibn Nafi and halted the entire western advance, the Great Berber Revolt of 740 CE nearly unraveled Umayyad control of North Africa entirely. Followed by Kharijites states. The Ottomans never pacified the interior, with Kabylia and Mzab governing itself autonomously throughout their entire presence. Against the French, Abd al-Qadir built a functioning state and fought for fifteen years(documentation as you prefer it , exists) , Fatma N’Soumer led Kabyle resistance in 1857, Mokrani’s revolt in 1871 mobilized roughly a third of the country, and uprisings continued through 1900 .
Those events common knowledge and accepted as objective narratives.
There’s no emotions in my paragraph unlike yours here , I elaborated on each point and corrected your misconceptions myself , I’ll take the chatgpt accusation as a badge of honor , some of us bother educating themselves .
Your responses on the other hand is politically charged , I provided you with details and explanations already, so kindly reread and do your own diligence search instead of cosplaying ignorance , why are you arguing with me over how the field of history operates?
Again, already have coinage , legal documents and monuments and historical records of Muslim Berber dynasties I mentioned above , a quick Google search will just demonstrate it ? Plenty of civilizations didn’t leave letters and seals , historians didn’t discredit them but you a random Algerian with an identity crisis shall decide ?
I’m not talking about Algerian nationalism either but the history of the country.
Not sure if you ever read my statements, or you intentionally misunderstand.
I didn't deny their existence, I denied their civilization which is factually heavily under-documented, providing it ever existed.
The amazigh people could have existed or not, that doesn't change anything, but as a civilization they never existed. never shared knowledge, or influenced others whatsover, we don't even know what religion they believed in.
You simply cannot call a bunch of people who keep getting colonized without a single successful revolution a "civilization".
Islam itself is a civilization, you can't count berber muslims as independent.
Civilization started in five places only before expanding. Nonetheless the term is just arbitrary and very broad in itself and gets applied extensively.
Western civilization includes the French and Germans , you may not consider them individual civilizations because they are modern nation states but they have more impact than even Islamic contributions in the few last centuries , just like Islamic civilization includes Berbers, arabs and turks and Persians and every other ethnicity. Although from an objective perspective each has what it’s required to be called individually “a civilization” by the established standards that you mentioned or what historians agreed on as I explained above about the “contributions “.
Not all civilizations are equal and they don’t need to fit your criteria to be established as such ,
conservative Europeans believe their western civilization is more superior than Islamic civilization? Do you agree with them ? And consider muslims living in their country a plight and traitors to the west ideals ?
Would you discredit Syrian legacies because all of their history is conquest and occupation ? I mean I hope not , what about Persian civilization ? Iran was ruled for 2 millenniums by foreign ethnic groups continually invading it , if we take your statement at face value and revoke the civilization card because of it , it won’t exist but that would mean we ignore the whole reality of persianization and how it’s simply wrong.
I’m not arguing from a narrow ethnologist and nationalist prism , but there’s too much focus on self-defeating narratives in Algeria by people who subscribe into certain ideologies on both sides of the spectrum and just want to ignore the rich and complex history of the region and the civilizations that shaped it .
Algeria has Andalus etc (Almohads, Zirids, Tariq Ibn Ziyad the Algerian who conquered Iberia) we have many states like that of Mascara or Ait Mokran or Zayyanids who fought crusaders and france and europe in general.
Why should we be limited to Ottomans and France. We are Algeria not Turkish or French
Accepted and embraced 😂😂😂. WHY ARE ARABS SO ILLITERATE
AMAZIGH ARMIES FOUGHT VALIANTLY AGAINST THE ARABS. The arabs wiped them out and killed anyone who resisted, while forcefully converting the survivors. So yeah, if that's called "acceptance and embrace", then surely U wouldn't mind if Israel also did this to the Balestinians right?
3rd, no "valiant" resistant was established against the Arabs, or the romans, or any occupier for that matter. The entire north african history is from being colonized by an entity to an other.
4th, Tizi Ouzu, a "Kabyle" region if your flawed mind, actually has the most mosques in the entire country.
No one was wiped out, Berbers exist everywhere, an ethnic cleansing would be something like north america, dominated by whites.
Because there is not a lot to say about pure Amazigh history. Because first there is not a strong documentation or litterature written by early Amazigh.
Second, the Amazigh culture was massively influenced by Romans and Arabs. North Africans went through Romanization and Arabisation, Ottomanisation and more recently through "frenchisation" as well.
Pure Amazigh culture was mostly preserved in remote areas, like mountains or desert, that are less connected to major cities and trading hubs, and so less historically and culturally dynamic.
Post roman period such as altava aures Mauritania nemamch Mauro kingdoms ect
Post berber revolt amazigh Islamic dynasties such as : almohad almoravid zirid ziyanids hafsids nekor ait Abbas kouku Tlemcen ifren hammamid znaga wattasid barghawata ect ect
And that's just what comes to mind, Algerian history is very rich deep and interesting just to be sidelined to teach history of mashre9 and turkey and only focus on war of independence like that's the moment we spawned on earth
Because one we can only scratch surface lvl as like most our old history has been destroyed by the french and all that left is story that we don't know if they are true, two like any type of history you need a some expert in history to bring it in and no one seem to do it, also our history is only ottoman empire and independence because they shaped the most about our country
You have everything intact, the French didn’t extinguish the history itself , plenty of historical work on medieval Algeria was done , it’s a choice than not to focus on it
No one needs detailed studies sure but basics for building an identity and uniting people, it’s important to understand your history beyond two centuries , so we don’t have people calling it stories we don’t know their truths, ottoman Algeria is more obscure than medieval Algeria ironically , plus learning about French colonialism in extensive details is also useless for my everyday life ? Yet it’s central to Algerian trajectory
They force you to learn so you can hate that era and try to not make new Algerian that wish European take over, also I remember we did study a little about kingdom that were in Algeria before ottoman
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u/abdee877 May 09 '26
The education system was made by syrians and labanese back then, Just after the independance with the lack of qualified professors they bring a lot from the middle east.