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There are a number of men among the Kabyles and other Berber tribes who make a profession of reciting poems, tales, and proverbs, and travel from one village or encampment to another in search of an audience. They know the national traditions, the heroic legends, and warlike adventures that pertain to each community, and are honored and welcomed wherever they go.
The Kabyles differing therein from the Arabs provide a fountain for either sex; and a visit by a man to the women's fountain is charged, in their singular code of penal fines, "inspired by Allah," a sum equal to five dollars, or half as much as the theft of an ox.
The Kabyles know no authority whatever besides that of the djemmaa, or folkmote of the village community. All men of age take part in it, in the open air, or in a special building provided with stone seats. and the decisions of the djemmaa are evidently taken at unanimity: that is, the discussions continue until all present agree to accept, or to submit to, some decision.
Aunt Caroline won't invite them to dinner, because then she sometimes wears fluffy things about which she has a foolish vanity. The collie is Angus's. The deerhound is Hamish's. The dandy is hers. The two Kabyles are Mohammed's, and the flotsam and jetsam is mine. There's a great deal more of it out of doors, but this is all that gets into the dining-room except by accident.
Thus the market-place is anaya, especially if it stands on a frontier and brings Kabyles and strangers together; no one dares disturb peace in the market, and if a disturbance arises, it is quelled at once by the strangers who have gathered in the market town. The road upon which the women go from the village to the fountain also is anaya in case of war; and so on.
Descent of Man, second ed., pp. 63, 64. See Bastian's Mensch in der Geschichte, iii. p. 7. Also Grey, loc. cit. ii. p. 238. Miklukho-Maclay, loc. cit. Same habit with the Hottentots. The great migrations. New organization rendered necessary. The village community. Communal work. Judicial procedure. Inter-tribal law. Buryates. Kabyles. Caucasian mountaineers. African stems.
These are easily seen, for all the villages are on hilly crests and visible from a distance. From the summit of Taourit el Embrank we can count more than twenty of these Kabyle towns, perched on the peaks around us, and separated by profound chasms. Every trait points out the distinction between the Kabyles and the surrounding Arabs.
For ages it has been a city of refuge, a sanctuary for person and property in a land of anarchy. Nowhere else are the proud Kabyles so skillful and industrious nowhere else are their women so much like Western women in beauty and freedom.
We may see the same till now in the Kabylian. cof: the Kabyles have their village community; but this union is not sufficient for all political, commercial, and personal needs of union, and the closer brotherhood of the cof is constituted. As to the social characters of the medieval guild, any guild-statute may illustrate them.
Himself, according to some accounts, a Berber, the young marabout early saw the importance of inducing the Kabyles to join with him and his Arabs in expelling the French. He affiliated himself with the religious order of Ben-abd-er-Rhaman, a saint whose tomb is one of the sacred places of Kabylia; and it is certain that the college of this order furnished him succor in men and money.
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