The Andalusi origins of the Berbers?
Building on the contributions of H.T. Norris, Joaquín Vallvé Bermejo, Eduardo Manzano Moreno, Maya Shatzmiller and others about the Berbers, this article uses the difference between the political situation in al‐Andalus and the Maghrib in the eighth century to argue for a possible Andalusi origin of a particular use of the category “Berber.” Since before the Arab conquests the sources did not imagine that the “Berbers” inhabited northwest Africa and that today it is common to do so, the article introduces the idea of a Berberization to account for that transformation. It argues that al‐Andalus was an important early site of production of a specific notion of what Berber meant and seeks to show categories such as Arab and Berber did not refer to an unchanging objective reality and that they did not always carry the same connotations or support the same understandings. Embracing the limits posed by the historical record, the article participates in the effort of historians to replace ideologically informed convictions with a more nuanced delineation of the boundaries of the knowable.
Romanizing the Berbers
In the long and at times very tiresome debate on Romanization during the last quarter-century North Africa occupies a particular place. Nowhere has the equation of Rome with modern imperialism been more obviously applied, both by the colonial powers and by the colonized. The post-colonial perspective turned the earlier, benign view on its head, as the violence of the Algerian war placed the occupiers in stark contrast to the colonized, and what elements of acculturation could be found in the Algeria of the 1960s could be read as deliberate choices on the part of the Algerians, rather than the blessings of an enlightened imperialism.1 The debate on the nature of Romanization could with some justice be said to have begun with a memorable exchange between the late Yvon Thébert and Marcel Bénabou and Philippe Leveau.2 The subject was
The Origins of the Foundation Stories Genre in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Eastern Mediterranean
This article examines two types of foundation narrative prevalent in the biblical literature in light of as-yet-undiscussed parallels from ancient Greek and Mediterranean texts. The first type, embodied in the Genesis narratives and Greek genealogical traditions, portrays the founders as leaving a distant land to settle peacefully in a new land. The second is exemplified by the central hexateuchal theme of the Israelites’ migration to Canaan by dispossessing the native population as well as the Dorian migration traditions. Several factors indicate that the foundation story genre also became central and foundational in other small kingdoms around the Mediterranean—as indicated, for example, by the Phoenician–Luwian inscriptions referring to bt Mpš/Mopsus and related classical sources. The popularity of the genre in the ancient Mediterranean is striking in light of the fact that, while experiencing tribal migrations and wanderings, the great Mesopotamian and Egyptian kingdoms never represented themselves as “immigrants.” It is suggested that this genre may have emerged with the rise of the new, small-scale kingdoms in the Mediterranean basin toward the end of the second millennium b.c.e. The Phoenician and Greek colonization enterprises of the first third of the first millennium b.c.e. in particular increased awareness of the newly emerging states and focused attention on ethnic identity.