Couched between the Atlas Mountains to the west and the Nile Valley to the east, the vast desert expanses of North Africa have housed human culture dating back to prehistoric times. Known in French as “Afrique du Nord” and in Arabic as the “Maghreb” (literally meaning “west,” as in the western part of the Arab world), North Africa comprises the countries of Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia. Many inhabitants of the region trace their roots to Amazing peoples (commonly known as Berbers) who have populated the region since antiquity. North Africans share some genetic traits with their Southern European neighbors, but the westward expansion of Islam in the seventh century and subsequent Arabization of North Africa has set the two regions on culturally, ethnically, and linguistically divergent trajectories. Colonization and subsequent waves of immigration over the last two centuries have resulted in a large North African diaspora in Europe, the Americas, and the Gulf states. France alone is home to nearly five million people of North African heritage.
North African history
Human settlement in North Africa dates back at least 200,000 years. Stone-age rock carvings in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains depict animals such as elephants, rhinoceros, and hippopotami in areas that are now covered in desert. By the sixth millennium B.C.E., domesticated plants and animals allowed for a transition from hunting and gathering to a pastoral economy. As the arid expanse of the Libyan Desert separated North Africa from Egypt, it was only after the arrival of Phoenician traders from the cities of Tyre and Sidon (in modern-day Lebanon) in the first millennium B.C.E. that the region came into the orbit of advanced societies in the Mediterranean basin.
Between the seventh–third centuries B.C.E., the Carthaginian Empire founded by the Phoenicians extended over most of coastal northwest Africa and included large parts of the Iberian Peninsula. In the seventh century B.C.E., the Greeks established colonies in Cyrenaica (modern Libya), an area which produced valuable agricultural products and livestock and which became one of the most important intellectual and artistic centers of the Hellenistic world. In the fourth century B.C.E., Alexander the Great conquered Egypt, which would be ruled by the Hellenistic Ptolemaic dynasty for three centuries. The Punic Wars (264–146 B.C.E.) saw the destruction of Carthage and the ascent of Rome as the major power in North Africa. In 30 B.C.E., future Roman Emperor Augustus conquered Egypt, consolidating Roman rule over the Mediterranean basin.
Nomadic Amazigh tribes occasionally came into conflict with the Romans. As the empire expanded, tribal lands were increasingly reduced, compelling these tribes to transition to a settled lifestyle. Under Roman rule, a thriving urban society developed in Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. By the third century C.E., Christianity had been established in Carthage, expanding rapidly across North Africa. During the fifth century, the Western Roman Empire was overrun by Germanic tribes: In 429, the Germanic Vandal people crossed from Iberia to North Africa, conquering the coastal region of modern-day Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, establishing the Kingdom of the Vandals. In 534, Byzantine general Belisarius conquered the Vandal Kingdom, claiming its territories for the Eastern Roman Empire.
In the mid-seventh century, Muslim forces of the newly established Islamic Caliphate forayed westward from Egypt into North Africa. Muslim forces faced fierce opposition by the Amazigh Jarawa tribe in modern Algeria, led by Queen Dihya (known in Arabic as al-Kahina), but by the turn of the eighth century, the Umayyad dynasty had consolidated its rule over North Africa. The region’s gradual Islamization and Arabization took centuries; in fact, Arabization has never truly been complete, as Amazigh people retain a strong ethnic, lingual, and cultural sense of identity to this day. Early Muslim Amazighs adopted a doctrinal position which rejected Arab superiority, and in the eighth century rebelled against Arab rule in the name of Muslim egalitarianism.
In the tenth century, an Arab Shi‘ite movement supported by Amazigh tribes in Kabylie conquered vast swaths of North Africa and established the Fatimid Caliphate, which — at its peak — extended from the Red Sea in the east to the Atlantic Ocean in the west. During the Fatimid period, the Banu Hilal tribe, numbering between 150,000–300,000 people, migrated from the Arabian Peninsula into North Africa. The Banu Hilal played a major role in the linguistic and cultural Arabization of the Maghreb. Starting in the eleventh century, a series of Amazigh dynasties came to power in North Africa and Iberia, notably the Almoravid dynasty (1040–1147) and the Almohad dynasty (1121–1269). Amazigh rule over North Africa lasted until the sixteenth century, when the Arab Sa‘di dynasty captured power in Morocco and the Turkish Ottoman Empire seized the rest of the Maghreb.
By the end of the sixteenth century, the Ottomans expanded their territory to encompass most of the Maghreb, and in 1603, the Alaouite dynasty ascended the throne in Morocco, a seat which it retains to this day. In 1798, Napoleon landed at the port of Alexandria and conquered Egypt, signaling the start of a 150-year period of European colonial presence in North Africa. France captured Algeria in 1830 and Tunisia in 1881, while Libya came under Italian rule in 1911. In 1884, Spain established a protectorate in the coastal areas of Morocco, later carving out and sharing zones of influence with the French. Following the Second World War, nationalism in the Maghreb was on the rise, and in the 1950s, Morocco, Tunis, and Libya gained their independence. Following a long and brutal war between Algerian nationalists and the French, which claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Algerians, Algeria won independence from France in 1962.
The discovery of oil in the Maghreb in the 1950s proved decisive in shaping the Maghrebi economy over the second half of the twentieth century. In 1965 a military coup brought Houari Boumédiène to power in Algeria, while in 1969, a military coup led by Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi overthrew the Libyan monarchy. In 2011, the death of Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire in protest against the government, sparked a protest movement across the entire Arab world. The “Arab Spring,” as it came to be known, culminated in the ousting of longtime rulers Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunis and Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya.
North African culture
In the Maghreb, the cultures of Africa, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean come together. The region is renowned for its souks (open-air markets), hosting a dazzling variety of trinkets, handicrafts, and carpets. Moroccan, Algerian, and Tunisian cities are rife with prominent examples of medieval Moorish architecture, such as the Koutoubia Mosque in Marrakesh and the Hassan Tower in Rabat. The hamsa, a palm-shaped amulet popular throughout the Middle East and North Africa, is said to have originated in Carthaginian North Africa. The geographic, social, and cultural diversity of North Africa is expressed through the rich and diverse culinary traditions of the region’s inhabitants. Ancient trade routes, links with the broader Mediterranean world, and an arid climate have all influenced Maghrebi cuisine. The world-famous markets of major Maghrebi cities are packed full of colorful spice mixtures, such as ras el hanout and baharat. The most famous North African dish is couscous (tiny steamed balls of crushed durum wheat semolina, usually served with a stew spooned on top), but shakshouka — a dish of poached eggs in spicy tomato sauce — has also gained currency around the world. The tajine, a type of slow-cooked dish named for earthenware pot in which it is prepared, is prevalent across the Maghreb, but ingredients and preparation methods vary regionally.
The Maghreb has been home to many renowned scholars and artists, none more so the Ibn-Khaldun (1332–1406), a Tunis-born Muslim scholar, widely considered one of the greatest philosophers of the Middle Ages and a forerunner of the modern disciplines of history, sociology, economics, and demography. In recent decades, an Amazigh cultural and lingual revivalist movement has sparked a renewed interest in traditional folk stories and melodies, embodied in artists like the Algerian-Kabyle musician Idris, whose 1973 hit, A Vava Inouva (“Oh my father”) struck a deep chord with Amazighs in both Kabylie and the diaspora.
North African languages
Inhabitants of North Africa mainly speak either one of the Amazigh languages, a variety of Arabic, or both. The Amazigh languages, like Arabic, belong to the Afroasiatic language family. The most common Berber languages are Shilha and Atlasic, native to Morocco; Riffian, spoken by Amazighs in Morocco and Algeria; Kabyle and Shawiya, native to Algeria; and Tuareg, spoken by Tuareg Amazighs who inhabit the southern reaches of North Africa. The Maghreb hosts a continuum of vernacular Arabic dialects with significant degrees of mutual intelligibility (excluding Egyptian and Sudanese Arabic), known collectively as Maghrebi Arabic. These dialects, known locally as darjia, borrow extensively from Amazigh languages and French, the latter being the most common Western language spoken in the region.
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