Berberi, Religion of the

BERBERI, Religion of the. - The present-day B., on whose origin scientists do not agree (Asiatic origin according to some, African or mixed according to others), are the descendants of those Libyan peoples well known to the ancients under the name of Gaetuli, Libyans, Numidians, etc., who occupied the vast expanse of territory stretching from the Mediterranean to the Sudan, from the Atlantic to Egypt, without ever managing throughout their entire history to organize themselves into large political units. In examining their religion it is appropriate to distinguish a pre-Islamic period and an Islamic period.

I. PRE-ISLAMIC PERIOD

The great particularism that is characteristic of the Berbers is reflected also in their religion. The individual tribes practiced naturalistic cults about which our information is rather scanty and fragmentary. Herodotus (IV, 188) speaks of a cult of the sun and the moon. Ibn Khaldun mentions Berbers who, still at the time of the Islamic conquest, worshiped the sun and the moon, while on the other hand the Guanches of the Canary Islands, now extinct, likewise venerated the sun until a relatively recent period. This cult seems confirmed by rock carvings in which a ram appears with its head surrounded by a disk: an influence of the Egyptian Amun-Ra seems probable. Besides the cult of the stars, the documents show us interesting phenomena of zoolatry. Corippus (6th century) speaks of a Gurzil, born of the god Ammon and a cow, worshiped by the Lagutan (inhabitants of present-day Tripolitania). Al-Bakri (11th century) mentions the worship of rams. Diodorus Siculus (XX, 58) alludes to a "Libyan" country where monkeys were considered sacred and lived together with men. Traces of totemism can be seen in the legendary alliance, of which Aelian speaks (Nat. Anim., I, 57), of the Psylli (a people of the Syrtis) with the horned vipers (κεράσται), whose venom supposedly had no power over them. The cult of stones and especially of caves (still present today) and of mountains (in particular the Atlas) must also have been widespread. Magical practices were widespread: the classical authors speak of rites to bring rain, still in use today. Interesting is Herodotus' mention (IV, 172) of the custom of the Nasamones, who went to sleep on the tombs of their ancestors after praying, and then conformed to what they had seen in a dream (a similar custom is documented among the present-day Tuareg of the Sahara and elsewhere). Even the present-day beliefs in genies and in sprites have in part very ancient origins. Information about the rites is scanty. Herodotus (XIV, 188) speaks of sacrifices that were supposedly made exclusively to the sun and the moon: before the victim was killed, a piece of its ear was cut off and thrown into the air. The dwellers on the shores of Lake Tritonis (central Tunisia) celebrated, according to the same author, an annual festival in honor of Athena (an indigenous goddess identified with the Greek Athena) during which, after an often bloody struggle among girls, one of them was carried in procession on a cart. Rock carvings showing people with raised arms, disguised as animals, etc., also seem to allude to ritual gestures. Some caves perhaps served as temples.

Notable were the influences of the Punic and Roman religions on the indigenous one: in some cases it becomes difficult to decide whether these are indigenous deities assimilated to foreign ones or vice versa.

Judaism was very widespread among the Berbers: many of the present-day Jews of North Africa descend from pre-Islamic Jews.

On the very earliest preaching of Christianity among the Berbers there is no precise information: in any case the new religion must have been an excellent anti-Roman pretext for this people so fond of independence. The Church of Africa enters history in 180 with the martyrs of Scilli and of Madaura. While the traditions concerning an apostolic origin of African Christianity are probably spurious, it seems certain that it penetrated into Africa through Carthage and that those first Christians were always on excellent terms with Rome. It was especially from the Berber population that the militant Donatists (v. DONATISMO) and Circumcellions (v.) were recruited: beneath these heretical movements were concealed tendencies of a social or national character. Dynasties of Christian Berber princes existed in western Algeria. With the Islamic invasion (7th century A.D.) African Christianity was not totally destroyed: as late as 1076 there were still two bishops in Africa.

II. ISLAMIC PERIOD

Even after the Islamic conquest, Berber nationalism found ways to support heretical movements: significant is the fact that strong Berber nuclei embraced heresies even diametrically opposed to one another, such as democratic ḥarīgism and legitimist ʿAlidism. The Almohad movement (1121 A.D.) destroyed, together with the last remnants of Christianity, almost every trace of Islamic heresy: at present the Berbers are Sunnis of the Mālikī rite, except for a few nuclei of Ibāḍī ḥarīgites in the Mzāb, in the Ġebel Nefūṣah and in the Ġerba.

On Berber soil two interesting attempts at religious reform were born, that of Ṣāliḥ ibn Ṭarīf (8th century A.D.) and that of Ḥāmim al-Muṭṭarī (10th century A.D.). Only the first seems to present some dogmatic divergence from Islam: in both, however, the ritual differences are many (abolition of certain prayers, change in the period of fasting, abolition of certain dietary prohibitions, recitation of prayers in Berber instead of Arabic, etc.). Both reformers wrote a sacred book of their own in Berber. Interesting is the prohibition of eggs, common to both religions, and which is still practiced in a Tuareg tribe. The religion of Ṣāliḥ ibn Ṭarīf, which developed fully only long after his death, was annihilated with the imposition of the Almohad dynasty in 1148; the other ended with its founder in 931 or 941.

Alessandro Bassani