500 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1907. 
cerning them. The Celts (Galatians) who in the third century B. C. 
wandered into the northern half of the highlands in the interior of 
Asia Minor, can still, even when Mahommedan and speaking Turkish, 
be easily distinguished by their ight brown hair and blue or gray 
eyes, from the native Cappadocians with their jet black hair, nar- 
row faces, and peculiar noses. 
Tn an entirely different category from these disappearing remnants 
are two other aboriginal peoples, the Berbers and the Greeks. 
The Berbers, who belong to the Hamitic group, are an extraordi- 
narily interesting race, whose language and peculiarities have been 
studied far too little on account of the fact that even to the present 
day they energetically resist everything foreign. The principal re- 
gion where they live, the Atlas mountain territory, or Little Africa, 
was formerly called Barbary after these people, but this name, for 
no good reason, seems to have passed into disuse in modern times. 
In place of the name Berber, there is generally used a term, spread 
by the French in Algeria, namely, the word Kabyle. This word 
means nothing more than tribe. The comparatively pure Berbers of 
the high coast range in Algeria, eastward of Algiers, are called 
Kabyles, and likewise the mountainous region of Jebel Jurjura is 
called Greater Kabylia, and the mountainous region east of Bougie 
is known as Lesser Kabylia. 
The attention of the entire world has recently been centered on the 
Berbers. Once before in the middle ages these people played a very 
important part in the political and social development of the world. 
The Berbers were predominant in the armies that conquered Sicily 
and Spain and they were very prominent among the “Arabic ” 
teachers and artists of that time. 
The Aghlabites of Kairwan, founded in 669 A. D. by the Arabians 
under Sidi Okba, were Berbers, among whom scientific hfe had its 
beginnings in the ninth century. Berbers also were the Fatimides 
who have dominated in Mehedyia since the beginning of the tenth cen- 
tury, and the Zirides who took up the government of Tunis in place 
of the Fatimides when these transferred their capitol to Egypt. 
The sect of the Almoravides, made up of Berbers of the desert who 
had gone over to Mohammedanism, conquered Morocco in 1060 A. D. 
under the leadership of Abu Beker. His successor, Yussuf Ben 
Tashfin, founded Marrakesh and out of the present day Morocco and 
western Algeria formed a great empire, to which he also linked Spain. 
An even still greater territory, from Tangier to Barca, was held in the 
sway of the Almohades, who were another essentially Berber sect and 
dynasty. This brilliant epoch of the Berber domination lasted from 
1145 to 1269. Partly in their service, the alien Arabic tribes spread 
out farther and farther and as bearers of Mohammedanism forced 
their language and to some extent their customs upon the Berbers. 
