The Berbers of the Arabs

Abstract

Moors and Berbers The Arab conquest of northwest Africa is a major event in the fijield of North African Studies. For scholars, its most lasting efffects were the Islamization and Arabization of the Berber populations. While historians often disagree about the chronology, character, and extent of these processes, they all agree that they are essential to understanding the medieval period. In truth, the scholarly consensus is slightly more complicated than this more "popular" view. Specialists know that the category "Barbar" is of Arabic origin and thus that the Arabs could not have conquered peoples called Barbar prior to the conquest.1 Furthermore, while Latin and Greek sources refer to some people in northwest Africa as barbarians (βάρβαροι and barbari), the ideas associated with these barbarians wil be shown to be so different from the Arabic Barbar that it is difffijicult to confuse the two. Thus, in spite of the obvious linguistic similarity of the Greek, Latin, and Arabic terms, the Arabs did not apply the term Barbar to describe the exact same groups of peoples called "barbarians" in classical and late antique sources. So, who were the Barbar of the Arabs? Encapsulating a widely held view among specialists, Gabriel Camps explained, "The Berbers of the Arabs are the Moors of the Romans."2 According to this understanding, instead of conquering the Berbers, the