THE MEDITERRANEAN PEOPLES—FISCHER. 513 
pure nomads, for most of them may properly be ranked as semi- 
nomads. In any case, however, they are shifting and evasive. The 
tent villages of the seminomadic Berbers are also built in circular 
form, as indicated by their name, Duar. The cattle are driven 
into the circle each night, so that when I was among the Beni Ahsen 
of the Sebu plain of Morocco my tent, pitched inside the ring, on 
account of the predatory Zemmur, stood in the midst of herds of 
cattle. 
The language of the Berbers, the Tamazirt, the preservation 
and spread of which has already been considered, has been too 
little investigated as yet. It is broken up into a number of dialects, 
as might be expected from the wide distribution of the people. The 
study of it makes comprehensible, however, the meaning of the few 
fragments of old Libyan inscriptions which have come down to us, 
for on Libyan monuments of the period are found script characters 
still used by the Berbers, especially in the alphabet of the Tuareg 
Hogar. 
It is only since the Targi alphabet (Tifinagh) has been known that 
it has been possible to undertake in earnest the restoration work 
which began when the bilingual inscription of Thugga in Tunis was 
found. There is no doubt but that the present Berbers speak essen- 
tially the same language as their forefathers of the Roman period. 
The Libyan alphabet was then always used, but became obsolete in 
favor of the Arabic on account of Mohammedanism. Still it is as- 
sumed that there are old copies of the Koran in Berber characters 
among the Rif Berbers. 
The total number of Berbers at the present time may be roughly 
estimated at from 12,000,000 to 15,000,000. 
In the Atlas countries there must be differentiated from the Berbers 
not only the Arabs, but also the so-called Moors. Under this name 
are usually included all the Arabic-speaking city dwellers of these 
countries. This is a greatly mixed element of the population. The 
principal stock is without a doubt Berber, since even now Berber 
blood is being continually mixed with these “ city Arabs,” as they 
may be well called. The most varied collection of other components 
enters into the mixture, however. In ancient times there were the 
Pheenician and Roman colonists, then the Arabs and, especially since 
the fifteenth century, the so-called Andalusians, Mohammedan emi- 
grants from Spain, who spoke Spanish to some extent and were very 
often engaged in piracy. This brought Europeans in great numbers 
from all the Mediterranean countries, many of whom were absorbed 
in the Mohammedan population, becoming renegades. Christian 
women and girls were also brought and put in the harems. 
Immigrations of Jews into this territory also reached well back 
into the Roman period. In Cyrenaica in the beginning of the second 
