Arab-Berbers (Arabic: العرب والبربر al-ʿarab wa-l-barbar) are a population of the Maghreb,^{[citation needed]} a vast region of North Africa in the western part of the Arab world along the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Arab-Berbers are people of mixed Arab and Berber origin,^{[citation needed]} most of whom speak a variant of Maghrebi Arabic as their native language, some also speak various Berber languages. Many Arab-Berbers identify^{[citation needed]} primarily as Arab and secondarily as Berber.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}

The Arab-Berber identity came into being^{[citation needed]} as a direct result of the Arab conquest of North Africa, and the intermarriage between the Arabs who immigrated to those regions and local mainly Roman Africans and other Berber people;^{[citation needed]} in addition, Banu Hilal and Sulaym Arab tribes originating in the Arabian Peninsula invaded the region and intermarried with the local rural mainly Berber populations, and were a major factor in the linguistic, cultural and ethnic Arabization of the Maghreb.^[7][8]

Arab-Berbers form the core and vast majority of the populations^{[citation needed]} of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia, and about one-third of the population of Mauritania.^[9][10]

Arab-Berbers primarily speak variants of Maghrebi Arabic^{[citation needed]} which form a dialect continuum of more-or-less mutually intelligible varieties known as (Darija or Derja (Arabic: دارجة). which means "everyday/colloquial language".^[11] Maghrebi Arabic preserves a significant Berber, Latin^[12][13][14] and possibly Neo-Punic^[15][16] substratum which makes them both quite distinct and largely mutually unintelligible to other varieties of Arabic spoken outside Maghreb. Moreover, they also have many loanwords from French,^[17] Turkish,^[17] Italian^[17] and the languages of Spain.^[17] Modern Standard Arabic is used as the lingua franca.

Historical perspective[edit]

Since the populations were partially affiliated with the Arab Muslim culture, Northwest Africa also started to be referred to by the Arabic speakers as Al-Maġrib, the Maghreb (meaning "The West") as it was considered as the western part of the known world. For historical references, medieval Arab and Muslim historians and geographers used to refer to Morocco as Al-Maghrib al Aqşá ("The Farthest West"), disambiguating it from neighboring historical regions called Al-Maghrib al Awsat ("The Middle West", Algeria) and Al-Maghrib al Adna ("The Nearest West", Ifriqiya (Tunisia)).^[18]

The Maghreb was gradually Arabized with the spread of Islam in the 7th century AD, when the liturgical language Arabic was first brought to the Maghreb. However, the bulk of the population of northwestern Africa remained Berber or Roman Africans at least until the 14th century. Arabization was at least partly strengthened in the rural areas in the 11th century with the emigration of the Banu Hilal tribes from Egypt. However, many parts of the Maghreb were only Arabized relatively recently in the 19th and 20th centuries, such as the area of the Aurès (Awras) mountains. Lastly, the mass education and promotion of Arabic language and culture through schools and mass media, during the 20th century, by the maghrebis governments, is regarded as the strongest contributor to the Arabization process in the Maghreb.

See also[edit]

References[edit]