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Updated: May 27, 2025
All kinds of songs are represented; the rondeaux of children whose inspiration is alike in all countries: Hanoteau, Poésies Populaires de la Khabylie du Jurgura, Paris, 1867, 8vo. "Oh, moonlight clear in the narrow streets, Tell to our little friends To come out now with us to play To play with us to-night. If they come not, then we will go To them with leather shoes.
Under Arab chiefs they would have overcome all Eastern Europe, had it not been for the hammer of Charles Martel, which crushed them on the field of Poitiers. The richest harvest of Berber songs in our possession is, without doubt, that in the dialect of the Zouaous, inhabiting the Jurgura mountains, which rise some miles distant from Algiers, their crests covered with snow part of the year.
Contes Populaires de la Khabylie du Jurgura, p. 239. Paris, 1892. Le chausseur. Legendes et contes merveilleuses de la grande Khabylie, p. 20. 2 vols. Tunis, 1893-1898. Le fils du Sultan et le chien des Chrétiens, p. 90. Histoire de Ali et sa mère. R Basset, Nouveaux Contes Berbers, p. 18. Paris, 1897. La Pomme de jeunesse. Spitta-bey, Contes Arabes modernes, p. 12. Ley de 1883.
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.
This anachronism renders the heroes of the tales more real, and they are real Berbers, who are alive, and who express themselves like the mountaineers of Jurgura, the Arabs of the Atlas; like the men of Ksour, or the nomads of Sahara. In general there is little art in these stories, and in style they are far below other collections celebrated through the entire world.
With the Khabyles of the Jurgura the preceding love-songs are the particular specialty of a whole list of poets who bear the Arab name of T'eballa, or "tambourinists." Ordinarily they are accompanied in their tours by a little troop of musicians who play the tambourine and the haut-boy.
Hanoteau, Poèmes Populaires de la Khabyle, pp. 179-181, Du Jurgura. This song, composed by Mohammed Said or Aihel Hadji, is still repeated when one wishes to insult persons from Aith Erbah, who have tried several times to assassinate the poet in revenge. Sometimes two rival singers find themselves together, and each begins to eulogize himself, which eulogy ends in a satire on the other.
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