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the traditions of the Shellooh are in favour of that suppo- 

 sition. The Shellooh, it must be observed, are a clans- 

 people, and great genealogists. They call themselves the 

 descendants of Mazigh, son of Canaan, and consider their 

 northern neighbours, the Brebber of Fez, as Philistines, 

 descendants of Casluhim, son of Mizraim. Ibn Khaldun 

 says of the Berbers in general that they are descended 

 from Ham, like the antient Egyptians. Graberg, Host, 

 Marsden, and others who have paid attention to the T am- 

 zirgt language, think that it has no affinity to the Ian 

 guages commonly called Shemitic. At the end of Cham- 

 berlayne's Oratio Dominica, London, 1715, there is a 

 Latin epistle from Jezreel Jones about the lingua Shilhensis, 

 which, he says, was once the language of both Mauri- 

 tanias, but is now confined to the inhabitants of Messa, 

 (Sejelmasa?) Dara, Sus, and the Reephean Mounts. The 

 difference between its various dialects consists, he says, 

 chiefly in the pronunciation: in many places they have 

 several words to express the same thing ; their sounds 

 are hissing and guttural ; many Hebrew, Latin, Greek, and 

 Punic words are mixed with their language, and they gene- 

 rally use the prefix AVt to the names of their tribes. He 

 compares their habits to those of the Irish ; and he gives 

 a vocabulary of about one hundred words of the Shillooh 

 language with the Latin meaning. The numerals are as 

 follows : 1, yean ; 2, seen ; 3, crat ; 4, koost ; 5, summost ; 

 6, sutheast ; 7, sad ; 8, tempt ; 9, tzaw ; 1 0, murrow ; 1 1, 

 yean d'murrow ; 12, sin d'murrow, &c. ; 20, ashedeen; the 

 other multiples of ten, he says, are Arabic: 100 is tameadon; 

 1 000 is woaphodon. Shaw, in his vocabulary of the Sho- 

 viah or Algiers Berber, gives ewan for 1, seen for 2, and 

 the other numerals, he says, are Arabic. 



Numerous other emigrants from the East are reported to 

 have settled on the coasts of Northern Africa at very 

 remote times, Hercules and his companions, Armenians, 

 Mudcs and Persians, Sec. Of the Persians we are told that 

 on landing they turned their boats topsy-turvy, and used 

 them as huts (Sallust, de Bella Jugurth., c. 18): but 

 these traditions cannot be considered as of any historical 

 value. The Phoenicians and Greeks came nest, and after- 

 wards the Romans, Vandals, Jews, Arabs, &c. This will 

 account for the great admixture of races in various parts of 

 the country, especially near the coasts ; but still one race, the 

 Amazirgh, appears distinct from the oldest times on record 

 as having maintained its identity, its habits, and a separate 

 language till the present day. The name Mazigh or 

 Amazirgh may be traced in Ae Greek and Roman writers, 

 in the Maxyes of Herodotus; in the Masices of Ptolemy, 

 who lived in Western Tingitana, between the river Zilis 

 and the cape Hermieum, now cape Cantin; in the Tamu- 

 siga of the Periplus, now Tafelne, south of Mogodor ; and 

 probably in the Massyli and Masssosyli of the Roman geo- 

 graphers. The little island before Algiers is called by 

 Ammianus Marcellinus, Insula Mazucana, and by the oldest 

 Arabian writers Jeczira Beni Mazighanan. Eustathius, in 

 his notes to Dionysius Periegetes (1. 195), calls larbas, the 

 Numidian, king of the Mazices and the Nomades. The 

 town of Mazagan, near the mouth of the Ummi-er-R'bie'h, 

 still bears the same name. 



With regard to the Arab immigrations previous to Mo- 

 hammed's sera, Ibn al Raquici, woo wrote in the llth cen- 

 tury, in his tree of African generations, quoted by Leo 

 Africanus and by Marmol, says that the Sabteans came 

 from Arabia across the Desert, under Melek Ifuki, who 

 gave his name to Africa. They consisted of five tribes, the 

 Senhagia, Massmudah, Zeneta, Hawara, and Gumera. 

 These were probably the Quinquegcntani of the Romans 

 ' They,' he says, ' were called African Berbers, while the 

 inhabitants of Tingitana who had settled there in very 

 remote times were called Berber Xiloes, or Shelloohs. The 

 latter lived in houses in the mountains, and s;ime of the 

 new comers from Arabia joined them, while the rest con- 

 tinued to live in adowar or tents. Their tribes were railed 

 Kabyles.' Now the very mixed race who, under the 

 name of Moors, inhabit not only the coasts and the chief 

 towns of Barbary, but are spread into the interior as far as 

 Sudan, and are every where distinct from the Berber or 

 Mazigh tribes, trace their origin to these Sabseans or 

 Himiarites. [See MOORS.] 



It is now generally believed that the Berbers of Fez, the 

 Shellooh of Marocco and Sus, the Showiah or Kabyles 

 of Algiers, and the Beni Mozab and other tribes of the 

 Belad el Jereed south of the Atlas, the Zuaves of the re- 



gency of Tunis, the A'dems of Ghadatnis south of Tripoli, 

 and the Tuaricks of the Great Desert, as well as the inha- 

 bitants of the Oases of Siwah, Audjelah, and probably of 

 Fezzan also, are branches of one great parent stock, the 

 Mazigh or aboriginal white race of Northern Africa. Their 

 various dialects are probably derived from one common lan- 

 guage, as far as can be judged from the scanty information 

 we have concerning them. Such is the opinion of Marsden, 

 Hornemann, Seetzen, Graberg, Venture, Ritter ; and such 

 was also the opinion of Ibn Batuta and Ibn Khaldun, who 

 was himself of Berber race, and who wrote a history of the 

 Berbers ; of Abu Mohammed Salehh el Gharnati, Shehab- 

 eddin, Leo Africanus, and other Arabian travellers, geo- 

 graphers, and historians. (See Hornemann's Vocabulary 

 of the Siu-ah and Audjelah Dialects ; Venture's Vocabu- 

 laire Berber, in Langles's French translation of Horne- 

 mann; Minutoli's Vocabulary of the Siwah Language; 

 Shaw's Vocabulary of the Showiah or Algerine Berbers ; 

 Host's Efterretninger om Morokos, in which is a vocabu- 

 lary Of the western Amazirgh ; and Vater's Mithridates.) 

 Seetzen and Venture think that the Barabra or Berbers of 

 Nubia are also derived from the same stock, and Seetzen 

 was assured by one of the Barabra pilgrims, that the Ber- 

 bers of the Nile understand the dialect of the Berbers of 

 Mughrib, or Marocco, who come with the caravans through 

 Nubia on their way to Mecca. (Seetzen's letter to Von 

 Hammer in the Fundgruben des Orients, vol. iii.) On the 

 coast of Adel, south-east of Abyssinia, is the harbour long 

 known by the name of Berbera. The Somaulis, the inha- 

 bitants of the country, are supposed by'some to be of Berber 

 race ; and the whole of this coast, from Cape Guardaful to 

 the straits of Bab el Mandeb, is called Barbaria in the 

 Periplus of the Erythrean sea. Again in Sudan, Ibn 

 Batuta, who travelled in the fourteenth century, found a 

 tribe of Berbers in the kingdom of Wadai or Bergu, which 

 lies west of Darfur, and the king of the country was then 

 of Berber race. (See Ritter's Africa, sec. 24, where he 

 speaks of the Berbers of Nubia, and sec. 31, where ho 

 speaks of those of Mount Atlas.) This supposed relation- 

 ship, however, between the Barabra of Nubia and the Ber- 

 bers of the Atlas is a matter of at least great doubt, and not 

 to be relied upon. [See BARABRA.] 



The word Amazirgh signifies noble and free. The letter 

 t prefixed to a noun constitutes the article, and the same 

 letter affixed to the end marks the feminine gender. Tama- 

 zirgt or Tomzirgt is the name they give to their language 

 and their nation. Amrgar means master, lord ; tamrgart, 

 mistress, lady ; agschish, male infant ; tagschist, female 

 child; aram, or elgum, a male camel; taramt, or telgumt, 

 a female camel ; agmar, a horse ; tagmart, a mare ; dabri- 

 can, black, adj. masc. ; tabricant, blackfem. ; damellel, tamel- 

 lett, white ; ilha, tilliat, handsome, &c. Most of their names 

 of towns, countries, and rivers begin and end likewise with 

 the letter/; Tafilelt, Tesset, Tarudant, Talent, &c. (Graberg, 

 Specchio del Marocco.) Ritter observes in support of the 

 hypothesis that the Amazirgh was once the language of all 

 northern Africa as far as the Red Sea, that certain pre- 

 fixes or affixes belonging to it are found in many local 

 names across the whole breadth of the continent, for instance 

 Daran, which means mountain, is found in the Abyssinian 

 Taranta, in the neighbourhood of the Hazorta tribes, who, 

 like the old Bejas, Bishareens, and other African tribes along 

 the Red Sea, he supposes to have been originally Berbers, 

 and again in Dar-fur, Dar-Fungara, Dar-Kulla, &c. The 

 name Tacrur, tecurol, is also found repeated in a number 

 of villages. Jackson and Ritter also give short tables of 

 words, common both to the Shellooh dialect and that of the 

 Guanchos, the old inhabitants of the Canary Islands, who 

 were a colony of the Amazirgh race. (Glasse's History of 

 the Canary Islands ; Bory de St. Vincent, Histoire des 

 Isles Fortuities.) 



In the empire of Marocco the aboriginal race is divided 

 nto two great sections, called by the Arabs Brebbcr in the 

 north, and Shellooh in the south. The Brebbfir inhabit the 

 northern part of the Great Atlas chain, extending from 

 Mount Err iff, near the coast of the Mediterranean, between 

 fetuan and Gomera, down as far as the province of Tedla, 

 south of the city of Fas or Fez, and near the sources of the 

 Treat river Umm-er-R'bie'h. They occupy likewise the 

 eastern bide of the same chain, extending into Tufilclt and 

 Sejelmesa, towards the state of Algiers, where their brethren, 

 the Kabyles, succeed them along the line of the Atlas to the 

 eastward. The Berbers were once the masters of all Tafi- 



