Berber

The non-Semitic Caucasoid people of North Africa who since prehistoric times have inhabited Barbary – the Mediterranean coastlands from Egypt to the Atlantic. Their language, present-day Berber (a member of the Hamito-Semitic or Afro-Asiatic language family), is written in both Arabic and Berber characters and is spoken by about 10 million people: about one-third of Algerians and nearly two-thirds of Moroccans. Berbers are mainly agricultural, but some are still nomadic.

The Berber, who include the Tuareg, the Kabyles, and the Shawiya, were progressively Islamized from the time of the Arab invasion in the 7th century. They are mainly mixed pastoralists and agriculturalists, some groups being nomadic pastoralists. Although some desert groups have a hierarchical social structure, most are remarkably egalitarian. Today many have moved to the towns to become traders and labourers.

More than 100,000 ethnic Berbers from the Kabylia region of northeastern Algeria demonstrated September 1994 in their regional capital, Tizi-Ouzou, against the growing threat of militant Islam to their society and culture. Ancient customs survive in the mountain communities, such as the Kabyles of Algeria and the Riffs of the Atlas ranges in Morocco. Berbers are noted equestrians.

Berber

Town in the Nile state of northern Sudan, 50 km/31 mi north of Atbara, near the junction of the Atbara River and the Nile; population (2001 est) 22,500.

The town was the starting-point of the old caravan route across the Nubian Desert to the Red Sea at Suakin.