I regularly catch myself writing “Berber” to describe the native inhabitants or a dynasty from North Africa, only to have several questions come to mind that compel me to use another term. Is this word offensive? Anachronistic? Too expansive? Too limited? Too colonial? There seems to be a tension in the word, even though it appears widely in translations and monographs on the Mediterranean. Ramzi Rouighi’s Inventing the Berbers seeks to illustrate how the ill-defined concept of the Berbers came to be and how it persists despite its problematic creation and habitual recreations. In short, he argues that the Berbers as defined as the original inhabitants of North Africa did not exist, but were instead an invention of historians. The concept of the autochthonous Berbers emerged progressively in several iterations from the seventh century onward until they became inextricably tied with the people of North Africa in the modern period. Historians for centuries used the concept of the “Berbers” as a convenient archetype to advance an argument or worldview within their work or wider society. Like the concept of “Indians” within the history of North America, this development was uneven and haphazard--and initially did not involve the Maghrib--but eventually settled upon this region and its people through the work of several Muslim scholars, especially Ibn Khaldun, and their modern translators. Even when scholars rejected the established and later colonial image of the Berbers, they did not wholly discard the notion that an indigenous collective of peoples once existed by that name or designation in North Africa.
Rouighi labels this lengthy and circuitous process “Berberization” (2). Although this is a shorthand for contextualizing the meaning of “Berber” across generations of scholars, the author repeatedly emphasizes that this book is not a literary assessment of the term. Berbers are not the medieval Maghribi equivalents of Goths or Franks that might be traced back with some small degree of historical accuracy. There were no Berbers in Africa, or anywhere for that matter, until Arabic chroniclers spoke them into being to describe those people who resisted conquest and rule. In fact, the Berbers often tell us more about the historians of a period and their agenda than about the Berbers themselves. Early chroniclers projected a variety of opposing images and descriptions for the Berbers over the course of centuries that had more to do with a personal or cultural agenda than historical accuracy. Later historians built upon some of these images or created their own, but they were largely comfortable with the incomplete or incoherent picture that they transmitted. This inexactitude or fixation on a particular facet did not stem from any maliciousness on their part any more than in their modern counterparts. There was no plan behind “Berberization.” However, modern historians assumed that their precursors possessed a similar approach to history and thus mined earlier sources for factual information on this people group. When these endeavors proved unwieldy or were discovered to serve a particular agenda, scholars diversified their approach and made recourse to anthropology, linguistics, and even biology to track down the Berbers with no consensus.
Rouighi’s argument corresponds to its tripartite division over the course of six chapters. The first part outlines the disparate ways in which Arabic writers used “Berber” to describe peoples from Palestine to the Atlas during the Middle Ages. Rouighi takes pains to inform the reader that this is not a review of how the concept or opinion of Berbers appears and changes in the historical record. He emphasizes here and elsewhere that there were no Berbers before the seventh century, just as the Greco-Latin understanding of “Barbarian” did not apply to a specific people or geographic area. The first chapter focuses on Arabic conquest narratives wherein early historians use “Berbers” as a foil for the advancing Muslim forces across the Middle East, only to shape-shift to those who resisted imperial control in Africa and later Iberia. These incongruent usages provided what Rouighi calls specters or ghosts that later generations of historians could use in their own works with little or no regard for an original meaning (45). The second chapter moves the discussion from the initial periods of conquest in Africa to the rise of Maghribi empires. These discussions are interspersed with legal case studies to demonstrate how the concept of “Berber” traditions and customs was already moving from scholarship to everyday life. In both instances, Rouighi illustrates how local affairs often drove the conceptualization of this term, leading to Andalusi and Fatimid examples of “Berber” practices that bear little resemblance to each other or to those in the Maghrib. The term could denote a military function, slave status, or an ethno-political faction, depending upon the author and context, but with little or no coherence across time or space.
The second part treats a historiographical turn in the later Middle Ages that attempted to establish a pseudo-history for “Berber” peoples alongside other Muslim regional groups. The third chapter establishes how a focus on genealogy granted a degree of historicity to the notion of a Berber culture and society. The scholar most responsible for this turn is Ibn Khaldun, whose position as the forerunner to several scholarly traditions allowed his claims about the Berbers to achieve canonical status with historians. However, Rouighi demonstrates how Ibn Khaldun’s emphasis on genealogy as an organizing principle reveals a debt to earlier scholars, particularly Ibn Hazm of al-Andalus. Thus, the Berbers continued to be repurposed to advance scholars’ arguments in which the Berbers serve a supporting role. In the case of Ibn Khaldun, genealogy covers up a gap in historical knowledge and gives the impression that he applied the same scrutiny to the Berbers that he did with Arabs. The fourth chapter elucidates how the Maghrib became identified as the home of the Berbers. Like “Berber,” the Maghrib was a shifting concept with indistinct borders among early conquest historians and later chroniclers. Premodern European scholars also had no stable geographical or cultural understanding of “Berber” despite the widespread use of the term. This confusion regarding the genealogy and geography did not inspire a rethinking, as scholars were comfortable to leave the Berbers within the realm of a “remote mythic past” that stood in place of history (128).
In chapter five of part three, Rouighi discusses how medieval sources wielded considerable influence over the Orientalists who shaped scholarly and colonialist understandings of Berbers and the Maghrib. Unlike previous Muslim chroniclers, Ibn Khaldun’s claims to a critical approach to sources and emphasis on the differences between peoples proved amenable to modern scholars. The partial French translation by William McGuckin de Slane continued the tradition of shaping the Berbers to a historian’s perception, picking and choosing those elements that fit the translator’s conclusions about the people of the Maghrib. While Ibn Khaldun had the Berbers possess a genealogy equivalent to that of the Arabs, de Slane imparted racial qualities onto them and highlighted the dynastic elements of his chronicle. The pioneering Orientalists that came after this landmark translation focused increasingly on ruling regimes and the racially unique qualities of Berbers. In chapter six, Rouighi chronicles how the ethnic element hardened into an emphasis on Berber ideology, specifically its religious fanaticism and resistance to civilization. When French and North African scholars eventually rejected these readings of Ibn Khaldun and other Arabic chroniclers, they neverthless engaged in a vain attempt to create a decolonialized historical understanding of Berbers. Rouighi concludes by offering brief statements about the most recent developments regarding the post-colonial conceptualization of the Berbers and the contemporary ambivalence toward Ibn Khaldun within North Africa.
Rouighi’s work is a compelling call for historians to become more comfortable with the historicizing work of scholars in both the past and present (190-191). He points out that medieval historians tend to maintain the status quo, taking a critical approach to the context of premodern sources and readings up to a point in time. After this point, historians often give their modern and contemporary counterparts the benefit of the doubt regarding their agendas as individually academic in nature. Indeed, the strength of Inventing the Berbers is its ability to treat the faulty concept of the “Berbers” from its seventh-century origins to the present. Early conquest historians not only receive the same treatment as post-colonial scholars, but Rouighi also manages to present these teleological readings without cant. In the end, modern historians are no less susceptible to their contexts than their premodern forerunners.
Inventing the Berbers is a very accessible work for medieval and modern scholars of the western Mediterranean. For scholars of the Islamic world who wish to incorporate the Maghrib into their studies, this book fills a particular need, especially for English audiences, as it familiarizes the reader with an expansive bibliography on medieval and modern sources in Arabic and French as well as a critical lens and vital assessment. In this way, it should be essential reading for scholars of North Africa as well as of al-Andalus and Egypt. However, Rouighi’s methodology also speaks to scholars of the Middle Ages broadly who are less familiar with the region. Much like Geary’s Myth of Nations, Rouighi dismantles the supposed medieval origins of a people and illustrates the power of these illusions. What is more, he demonstrates a need for historians to cultivate a higher degree of self-awareness regarding how our work reflects and reinforces cultural norms as well as disciplinary standards.