Tanit

The Imazighen

    The Berbers (also called Imazighen, "free men", singular Amazigh) are an ethnic group indigenous to Northwest Africa, speaking the Berber languages of the Afroasiatic family. In actuality, Berber is a generic name given to numerous heterogeneous ethnic groups that share similar cultural, political, and economic practices. There are between 14 and 25 million speakers of Berber languages in North Africa (see population estimation), principally concentrated in Morocco and Algeria but with smaller communities as far east as Egypt and as far south as Burkina Faso.

The term Berber may have been derived from the Latin "barbari," a forerunner to the English "barbarian." Webster's New World Dictionary states that the term Berber refers to, "any of a Moslem people living in North Africa." Though this definition is extremely vague, the stereotypical idea of a Berber often depicted in literature and the media are of Caucasoid Semitic types. Anthropologist Dana Reynolds contends that the Berbers emerged as the result of admixture between non-African populations who moved into the Maghrib during the second millenium BC and the more ancient African indigenous inhabitants. This would account for the variance noted among the Berbers even in ancient times.

Their languages, the Berber languages, form a branch of the Afroasiatic linguistic family comprising many closely related varieties, including Taqbaylit and Tashelhiyt, with a total of roughly 14-25 million speakers. A frequently used generic name for all berber languages is Tamazight, not to be confused with the language found in the High and Middle Atlas.