Moorish Literature

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Title: Moorish Literature
Author: Various
Release Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7977]
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LITERATURE ***
Produced by Eric Eldred, Cam Venezuela, Charles Franks
and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
MOORISH LITERATURE
COMPRISING
ROMANTIC BALLADS, TALES OF
THE BERBERS,
STORIES OF THE
KABYLES, FOLK-LORE, AND

NATIONAL TRADITIONS
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH FOR THE FIRST TIME
WITH A SPECIAL INTRODUCTION BY
RENÉ BASSET, PH.D.
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FRANCE, AND DIRECTOR OF THE

ACADÉMIE D'ALGER
SPECIAL INTRODUCTION.
The region which extends from the frontiers of Egypt to the Atlantic
Ocean, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger, was in ancient times
inhabited by a people to whom we give the general name of Berbers,
but whom the ancients, particularly those of the Eastern portion, knew
under the name of Moors. "They were called Maurisi by the Greeks,"
said Strabo, "in the first century A.D., and Mauri by the Romans. They
are of Lybian origin, and form a powerful and rich nation."[1] This
name of Moors is applied not only to the descendants of the ancient
Lybians and Numidians, who live in the nomad state or in settled
abodes, but also to the descendants of the Arabs who, in the eighth
century A.D., brought with them Islamism, imposed by the sabre of
Ogbah and his successors. Even further was it carried, into Spain, when
Berbers and Arabs, reunited under the standard of Moussa and Tarik,
added this country to the empire of the Khalifa. In the fifteenth century
the Portuguese, in their turn, took the name to the Orient, and gave the

name of Moors to the Mussulmans whom they found on the Oriental
coast of Africa and in India.
The appellation particularizes, as one may see, three peoples entirely
different in origin--the Berbers, the Arabs of the west, and the Spanish
Mussulmans, widely divided, indeed, by political struggles, but united
since the seventh and eighth centuries in their religious law. This
distinction must be kept in mind, as it furnishes the necessary divisions
for a study of the Moorish literature.
The term Moorish Literature may appear ambitious applied to the
monuments of the Berber language which have come down to us, or are
gathered daily either from the lips of singers on the mountains of the
Jurgura, of the Aures, or of the Atlas of Morocco; under the tents of the
Touaregs of the desert or the Moors of Senegal; in the oases of the
south of Algeria or in Tunis. But it is useless to search for literary
monuments such as have been transmitted to us from Egypt and India,
Assyria and Persia, ancient Judea, Greece and Rome; from the Middle
Ages; from Celt, Slav, and German; from the Semitic and
Ouralo-altaique tongues; the extreme Orient, and the modern literature
of the Old and New World.
But the manifestations of thought, in popular form, are no less curious
and worthy of study among the Berbers. I do not speak of the treatises
on religion which in the Middle Ages and in our day were translated
from the Arabic into certain dialects that borrowed literature, which
also exists among the Sonalulis of Eastern Africa and the Haussas and
the Peuls of the Soudan, has nothing original. But the popular
literature--the stories and songs--has an altogether different importance.
It is, above all, the expression of the daily life, whether it relates to
fêtes or battles or even simple fights. These songs may be satirical or
laudatory, to celebrate the victory of one party or deplore the defeat of
the True Believers by the Christians, resounding on the lips of children
or women, or shouted in political defiance. They permit us, in spite of a
coarse rhythm and language often incorrect, an insight into their
manner of life, and