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Updated: June 9, 2025
The native people of the desert are mainly of the race to which the Arabs also belong, although there are many Arabs and negroes. The Tuaregs and Bedouin Arabs are the best known. The Tuaregs are thought to be the descendants of the Berbers and of the same race as the Carthaginians, whom the Romans many times defeated but never conquered.
Another account makes the number of men embarked on this occasion amount to twelve thousand, all but sixteen, a number consisting almost entirely of Berbers, there being but few Arabs among them; but the same writer agrees that Ilyan transported this force at various times to the coast of Andalusia in merchant vessels whence collected, it is not known and that Tarik was the last man on board.
The affinity between the Somal and the Berbers of Northern Africa, and their descent from Canaan, son of Ham, has been learnedly advanced and refuted by several Moslem authors. The theory appears to have arisen from a mistake; Berberah, the great emporium of the Somali country, being confounded with the Berbers of Nubia. Probably Zaidi from Yemen.
Alongside the Berbers we find everywhere a varying proportion of Arabs. The Arabs have colonized North Africa ever since the Moslem conquest twelve centuries ago. They converted the Berbers to Islam and Arab culture, but they never made North Africa part of the Arab world as they did Syria and Mesopotamia, and in somewhat lesser degree Egypt. The two races have never really fused.
This was in the month of September 1516. Don Diego landed "en el dia de San Hieronymo," and threw up entrenchments within gunshot of the town. De Vera opened fire on the walls of the town from his entrenchments, but hardly had he done so when Uruj, leading his corsairs, which formed the spearhead to an innumerable army of Berbers and Arabs, made a sortie.
But the Romans likewise called the aboriginal tribes of North Africa, Moors, or Mauri, and some contend that Moors and Berbers are but two different names for the aboriginal tribes, the former being of Greek and the latter of African origin. The Romans might, however, confound the African term berber with barbari, which latter they applied, like the Greeks, to all strangers and foreigners.
Amazirghs, Berbers, and Touaricks 2,300,000 Amazirghs, Shelouhs and Arabs 1,450,000 Arabs, mixed Moors, &c. 3,550,000 Arabs pure, Bedouins, &c. 740,000 Israelites, Rabbinists, and Caraites 339,500 Negroes, Fullans, and Mandingoes 120,000 Europeans and Christians 300 Renegades 200 Total 8,500,000
It is not probable that at any time Christianity had any real hold upon the Berbers themselves, and Islám itself sits lightly on their easy consciences. The Arabs had for the moment solved the Berber problem. They were the amalgam which, by coalescing with the scattered factions of their race, had bound them up together and had formed for once a nation of them.
The Arabs have given the Berbers a name of their own Shillah, which means "Outcast," referring back to the days when they drove them out of the plains up into the mountains; and it has stuck to them ever since. Travellers descant upon the noble Shillah race.
As peace once more split up the Berbers, the subjected Spaniards became strong by union, till at length the death-knell of Moorish rule in Europe sounded at the nuptials of the famous Ferdinand and Isabella, linking Aragon with proud Castile. Expelled from Spain, the Moor long cherished plans for the recovery of what had been lost, preparing fleets and armies for the purpose, but in vain.
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