87* 



BARBARY. 



r.AKUARY. 



been the Mine M the Zcugitanians of subsequent geographers, being 

 the inhabitant* of a province immediately adjoining Carthage ; 

 ;.-d we admit the reading Zygantes in preference to Qyzantea. 

 (Herod, iv. 194. var. leet ed. Schweig.) Herodotus's account of the 

 maritime provinces of Libya ends with the Zygantes. Of interior 

 Libya he mention* the people of Augila, or the modern Audjelah, and 

 farther went the Garamantes, who used to hunt after the Ethiopian 

 Troglodytes, " the swiftest of all men known, who live upon lizards, 

 makes, and other reptiles, and who speak a language different from all 

 other people, and which resembles the cry of the bat." He also 

 places the Qindanes south of the Lotophagi. The Qindanes are 

 probably the people of Ghadames. He says that ten days west of 

 the Qaramantes were the Atarantes, the individual* of which had no 

 name. Ten days beyond the Atarantes he says there was a hill of 

 salt, and beyond it were the Atlantes, who inhabited the aides of Mount 

 Atlas. " I know," he adds, " the people who live in the highlands as 

 far as the Atlantes, but not those who live beyond." In another 

 passage he says that Mount Atlas is fifty days' journey west of the 

 couutry of the Lotophagi, which supposing he meant the high summits 

 of the Atlas of Mauritania, near Marocco, gives a tolerably correct 

 indication of the distance. Herodotus sums up his account of Libya 

 by saying, " It is inhabited by four races, as far as I know, two indi- 

 genous and two foreign. The indigenous are the Libyans to the north 

 and the Ethiopians to the south ; and the foreign are the Greeks and 

 the Phoenicians." It must be observed that besides the Carthaginians, 

 who are believed to have been originally a Phoenician colony, there 

 were Phoonician settlements on the coast of Mauritania, as mentioned 

 by Strabo and others. Of the origin of the Libyans, the aborigines 

 of North Africa, we know nothing. The Arabian historians pretend 

 that they were a colony from Yemen which came across the deserts 

 under one Melek Ifriki (Ibn Alraquiq, quoted by Mannol) in very remote 

 times. Of the Carthaginian empire Herodotus does not speak, 

 probably because Carthage was less immediately connected with his 

 main subject the wars of the Greeks and Persians than many other 

 of his episodes ; but though Carthage had not attained its greatest 

 height of power in the time of Herodotus it was a powerful state 

 when Xerxes invaded Greece. (Herod, vii. 165.) To the west of 

 Carthage was the country known hi the Roman period by the name 

 of Numidia, which nearly coincided in extent with the French 

 territories in Africa ; the eastern part of it belonged to tbe Massyli 

 and the western part to the Masssesyli, as far as the great river 

 Molochath. This river divided Numidia from Mauritania, the country 

 of the Mauri of Maurusii who extended to the columns of Hercules ; a 

 numerous and wealthy people, says Strabo, who were said to be 

 Indians who had come over with Hercules. South of the Mauri 

 Strabo places the Pharusii and the Nigretes, and farther still the 

 Hesperian Ethiopians. Beyond Mount Atlas to the south-east the 

 country now called Beled-el-jereed was inhabited by the Gtctuli. The 

 Garamantes appear to have been the people of Fezzon, although 

 Ptolemseua and other geographers have placed them much farther to 

 the west and south of Numidia. 



The Romans after having subdued Carthage extended their 

 dominion gradually over the whole of Northern Africa. They con- 

 quered Numidia after a long and arduous war with Jugurtha. 

 Cyrcuaica was afterwards bequeathed by its king Apion to the 

 Roman republic. Mauritania continued longer under its native kings, 

 and it was only in the reign of Claudius that it was finally subdued 

 by Suetonius Paulinas and united to the Roman empire, forming two 

 provinces : Mauritania Tingitana (so called from Tingis its capital), 

 which was the original Mauritania, extended eastward as far as the 

 rirer Molochath ; Mauritania Ctcsariensis which was the country of 

 the Mamtcsyli, or Western Numidia, extended eastward from the 

 Molochath to the river Ampsaga. To the east of the Ampsaga lay 

 the country of the Massyli, which retained its name of Numidia, and 

 extended to the east as far as the river Tusca. Beyond this river was 

 the province of Africa Propria, the former territory of Carthage, 

 which extended as far as the great Syrtis. To the eastward of the 

 Syrtis was tbe province of the Cyrenaica, the easternmost part of 

 which called Marmarica bordered upon Egypt. Such was the political 

 division of Northern Africa under the Roman empire. 



In the reign of Honorius, the Vandals, who had settled 

 themselves in Southern Spain, passed into Africa A.D. 428; their 

 king Genseric being invited to that conquest by Count Boniface, 

 the Roman governor, who had revolted against Honorius. The Van- 

 dals conquered the greater part of Northern Africa, where they com- 

 mitted tbe most horrible cruelties, and in great measure cleared the 

 country of its former inhabitant*. The successors of Genseric reigned 

 over Africa for about a century till the time of Justinian, who sent 

 Beliaarius to re-conquer the country. Belisarius defeated the Vandals, 

 and made their king Oelimer prisoner. Africa remained from that 

 time subject to tbe Eastern empire till about the middle of the 

 7th century, when the Saracens from Egypt invaded first Cyrcnaica 

 and afterwards Africa Propria. Okba-ben-Nafi, the general of the 

 Kalif Moawiya, overran Numidia and Mauritania as far as' the 

 Atlantic. In the year 670 he laid the foundation of Kairwan. < ikl 

 trussed the Atlas into Uictulia, where he was treacherously killed ; 

 his tomb was still seen in the time of Shaw near the banks of tie 

 Adjedec River, at the village of Seedy Okba. Fresh irruptions of 



Saracens from the oast completed the subjugation of the whole 

 country. Under the Kalif Walid I. (705-716) Musa was sent into 

 Africa with a large army, and ho subdued the whole of Mauritania, 

 driving away the Spanish Goths who had till then kept posse.- 

 the coasts. Tank, Musa's lieutenant, carried the war into S|iuin, 

 defeated Roderic, and laid the foundation of the Arab domin 

 Spain. Northern Africa was now entirely subject to the Arabs, and 

 the natives adopted the religion of their conquerors. Regions so vast 

 however could not long remain quietly under the dominion of the 

 distant kalifs, and the various governors and local chiefs aspired to 

 make themselves independent. The revolution which rained the 

 house of Abbas to the Kali fa to about the middle of the 8th century, 

 and the subsequent separation of Spain from their empire, led to the 

 breaking up of the power of the Eastern Saracens in Africa. Kdris, 

 a descendant of Fatima, founded an independent kingdom in Fe/., in 

 Western Mauritania, A.D. 788. Soon after, the Aglabides established 

 an independent dynasty at Kairwan in Eastern Africa. Later in the 

 9th century, the Zeiridca made themselves independent in Tunis and 

 the surrounding country. Frequent wars occurred between these 

 various powers, as well as between them and the Ommiade kalifs of 

 Cordova, the Abbaside kalifs of Baghdad, and the Fatimide kalifs 

 of Egypt. About the middle of the llth century the Moral* 

 Almoravides, a religious sect originally from Arabia but nettled in 

 the southern parts of Mauritania, effected a revolution in that country, 

 overthrow the Zcgries, and founded a new dynasty. They built the 

 city of Marocco, which became their capital; and thence they 

 over the whole of Mauritania, and also into Spain, where their emir, 

 Yussef, defeated both Christiana and Moors who opposed him, and 

 established bin dominion at Cordova, A.D. 1087. Cordova and Marocco 

 were both capitals of the empire of the Almoravides. The dynasty of 

 the Almoravides was overthrown in its turn by the Almnhades, another 

 sect which rose likewise in the southern regions of Mauritania, and 

 whose chief Abdulmumen took Marocco in 1147, and conquered the 

 rest of the country as well as part of Spain. His successors ho 

 lost Spain in the first part of the 13th century, and not long after 

 were driven away from Marocco by the Bpni Merinis, who won- in 

 their turn dispossessed by the Beni Oatazes, about the year 1470. In 

 the early part of the following century a fresh adventurer, Mohammed 

 Ben Hamed, who styled himself Sherif-el-Husheni and pretended to 

 be of Mohammed's lineage, started up among the Berbers of ! 

 south of the Atlas, and took Marocco. His son took Fez in 1544, 

 and founded the dynasty of the Sherifs, which has reigned over tin- 

 empire of Marocco ever since. While these events took place in 

 Mauritania, the eastern provinces of North Africa were divided into 

 a number of petty principalities. There were kings of Tlemsan, of 

 Teunes, of Boojeyah, of Tuuia, Kairwan, 4<x The two brothers Bar- 

 barossa in the 16th century conquered the whole country of the 

 ancient Numidiaus, of which they formed the state of Algiers : and 

 the younger brother, Khair-cddin, acknowledged the supremacy of the 

 sultan, from whom he received the title of Pasha and Regent of 

 Algiers. Soon after the sultan established in a like manner his supre- 

 macy over Tunis, which state or regency includes the Africa Pi 

 or country of the former Carthaginians. The country east of the 

 little Syrtis, or the nomadic Libya of the oncienta, including Cyr. 

 Proper, was formed about 1550 into a distinct pashulik, which took 

 its name from Tripoli, the chief town, and which extends to the 

 frontiers of Egypt. Thus the great divisions of the couutry retain 

 still, though under different names, nearly the same boundaries as at 

 the time of the Romans. The regencies of Barbary, although nomi- 

 nally subject to, are in fact independent of the Porte. The head of 

 each is absolute sovereign in his own dominions. As for the empire 

 of Marocco, the sultan has never claimed any authority over it. The 

 French conquest of Algiers is noticed under Ai.uf.im:. The divisions 

 of Barbary will be found fully described under ALOERIK, MAI 

 Tmrou, TUNIS, and ATLAS. 



Barbary is called by the Arabs of Egypt and of Asia Mo^ln-'-l., or 

 the West, and the people Moghrebins. The language of the ' 

 is called the Western Arabic, and differs from the Arabic of ; 

 and Syria. Some of the Arab tribes of the interior however are said 

 to have retained their original language, the Korvir-h, or Eastern 

 Arabic, The principal races that inhabit Barbary are, 1. The Moors, 

 who live in or near the towns, and who are a v 1 1 tot : many 



of them are descended from those who were driven out of Spain in 

 the 15th and 16th centuries. 2. The Arabs, who are mostly ui. 

 and tend their flocks on the plains of the interior. 3. The Berbers, 

 orKabyles, as they are called in Algiers and Tunis, who chiefly inlwl.it 

 the mountains and the valleys of the Atlas. 4. The Blacks, from 

 Soudan, who are mostly slaves. 5. The Jews, who ore very numerous 

 in the towns. 6. The Turks, who are the militia of the regencies, and 

 have children by Moorish wives, who are called Kooloolis. 



The length of Itarbary from east to west may be reckoned about 

 2000 miles from Bom ha, the eastern frontier town of the regency of 

 Tripoli, to the coast of Mogadore in Marocco. The breadth of the 

 country varies greatly. It is greatest in Marocco, where the inh 

 districts in the provinces of I >arah and Sus appear to extend south- 

 ward to about the 29th degree, or the latitude of Cape Nun, whilst 

 the northernmost point of the same empire at Cento is 35 50', : 



TO a breadth from north to south of about 470 miles. In the 



