THE MEDITERRANEAN PEOPLES—FISCHER. 503 
and the name Mauren (Moors), from which in earlier times Morocco 
was called Mauretania, is derived by Tissot and Quedenfeldt from the 
Semitic Maurim, which, literally translated, corresponds to the term 
which the Moroccans now often apply to themselves, el-garbaua, the 
people of the west. The name Berber was known before the appear- 
ance of Greeks or Romans in north Africa, and still clings as a special 
collective name, Bréber or Beraber, to the tribes in the high central 
Atlas region of central Morocco. Those of the southwest are dis- 
tinguished from them as Schlu or Schloh, those of the north as 
Amaziges or Amazirghes. As in ancient times, there is now in Nubia 
the city Berabra. Somaliland is called Barbaria, and another Ber- 
berland les in the country of the Troglodytes between the Nile and 
the Red Sea south of the port of Berenice. These names indicate 
the wide distribution of the Berbers in former times. Even the 
cranial measurements of the old Egyptians show a similarity to those 
of the Berbers. It is to-day an unquestioned fact that the Guanches 
of the Canary Isles were Berbers. Berber inscriptions are found 
from Cyrenaica, at present inhabited by Arabs, all the way to the 
Canary Isles and far into the Sahara. 
The territory at present inhabited by the Berbers reaches from the 
oases of the Libyan desert to the ocean, and includes the entire 
western Sahara as far as the mountain oasis of Air and the bend of 
the Niger at Timbucto, and even Senegal, which owes its name to 
the Berber tribe Zenaga, a people speaking a Berber dialect, who 
migrated or were driven there from the southern Atlas valleys only 
since the sixteenth century. All the so-called Moorish tribes whom 
the French have encountered in Senegal are more or less pure Ber- 
bers. Everywhere in northwest Africa the French and Berbers are 
standing in opposition to each other. The Tuaregs of the western 
Sahara, who can be considered now as conquered by the French, are 
Berbers who were forced into the desert only in the middle ages, 
and who must be considered among the least mixed of all the tribes. 
Their incessant struggle with starvation in a land so scanty in prod- 
ucts has reduced them to an astonishingly small number and trans- 
formed them into desert bandits. According to the most recent 
French estimates the two great tribes, the Hogar and the Asjer, can 
place, respectively, only 1,200 and 300 warriors in the field. The 
language of these people is entirely free from Arabic words. They 
possess a script of their own, which is used, however, only for inscrip- 
tions on their shields, on rocks, and for verses at their occasional 
fests. 
The Shaamba in the Algerian Sahara, who were not much more 
than bandits, but who have been entirely subdued, are also Ber- 
bers. The same is true of the inhabitants of the oasis groups, Tuat, 
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