The Statue of Liberty Was Originally a Moorish Woman

The sketch of Bartholdi’s proposal for the Suez Canal shows a Muslim woman wearing traditional Arab clothing.Photo: Getty Images

“That might be surprising to people more familiar with the statue’s French roots than its Arab ones. After all, the statue’s structure was designed by Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel (yes, that Eiffel), and Lady Liberty was given to the United States by France for its centennial to celebrate the alliance of the two countries formed during the French Revolution. The statue’s designer, Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, was also French, but he found inspiration in a very different place: Egypt. In 1855, he visited Nubian monuments at Abu Simbel, which feature tombs guarded by gigantic colossus figures.”

Moorish- Berber/Arab Woman wearing cultural headdress and Statue of Liberty

“Bartholdi envisioned a colossal monument featuring a robe-clad woman representing Egypt to stand at Port Said, the city at the northern terminus of the canal in Egypt. To prep for this undertaking, Barry Moreno, author of multiple books about the statue, writes that Bartholdi studied art like the Colossus, honing the concept for a figure called Libertas who would stand at the canal. “Taking the form of a veiled peasant woman,” writes Moreno, “the statue was to stand 86 feet high, and its pedestal was to rise to a height of 48 feet.” Early models of the statue were called “Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia. Edward Berenson, author of Statue of Liberty: A Translatlantic Story, writes that Bartholdi’s concept morphed from “a gigantic female fellah, or Arab peasant” into “a colossal goddess.“

Source: The Statue of Liberty Was Originally a Muslim Woman

“And that monument was going to be a woman in the southern opening of the canal holding up a torch over her head and that woman was dressed in Arab peasant garb,” Berenson says. But when the ruler of Egypt, Khedewi Ismail Pasha, went bankrupt, the colossal Suez sculpture project was jettisoned. But the artist soon found a way to recycle his design. “A couple of years earlier, Bartholdi and his friends decided they were going to give a gift to the United States that was going to celebrate the centennial of the American Revolution,” Berenson explains. “And then, Bartholdi thought, ‘Ah! I’ve got a great idea! I can reuse this image but change it to fit the American Revolution.’” “Bartholdi changed the woman that was originally dressed in Arab garb into a Greco-Roman goddess of liberty. And the Statue of Liberty, as we know her today, was born.”

Source: The Statue of Liberty was modeled after an Arab woman Sarah BirnbaumGlobalPost

This early rendering of “Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia” features a peasant woman and has a strong resemblance to the Statue of Liberty.

“French designer Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s inspiration for the Statue of Liberty has been fairly well documented throughout history. Bartholdi’s first inspiration was a 110-foot statue of the Greek sun god Helios, commonly known as the “Colossus of Rhodes.” Author Barry Moreno writes in his book, “The Statue of Liberty,” that, “The Colossus of Rhodes influenced Bartholdi’s bold plans for the statue of Libertas. Like Helios, Libertas would stand at the entrance to a harbour, would hold aloft a lamp, and would have upon her head a nimbus (in the form of a spiked halo). But Helios stood only 110 feet high, while Libertas was to rise to a height of 151 feet 1 inch.”  

Makers: Frederic Auguste Bartholdi designed the Statue of Liberty. Getty Images

 

But the Colossus of Rhodes was also the inspiration for a previous statue that Bartholdi designed for a lighthouse at the approach of the Suez Canal: the Arab peasant woman. Moreno writes: “Auguste Bartholdi’s first important venture into modeling a great monument in the tradition of the Colossus of Rhodes was called Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia. In 1867, the sculptor proposed building this colossus for the reigning Egyptian khedive, Isma’il Pasha. Taking the form a veiled Egyptian peasant woman, the statue was to stand 86 feet high, and its pedestal was to rise to a height of 48 feet. Fearing it would incur too great an expense, Isma’il Pasha rejected the offer in 1869. “

Source: The Statue of Liberty Was Inspired by an Arab Woman or Muslim Woman-Truth! & Fiction!

Gustave Eiffel (the famous builder of the Eiffel tower, right) constructed the monument in New York harbor as a gift from the French people to the United States on the nation’s centennial

“According to the book The Statue of Liberty: A Transatlantic Story (Yale University Press, 2012), by New York University history professor Edward Berenson, the Egyptians rejected Bartholdi’s design, opting for a more cost-effective proposal.”

Source: Was the Inspiration for the Statue of Liberty a Muslim Woman?

Goddess Ishtar

Ishtar: “Goddess of Liberty and Personal Freedom. Ishtar was introduced to the Greeks as Astarte through the Phoenicians. We can see that the lineage of the Greek and Roman goddess of the planet Venus goes all the way back to ancient Babylon of around 3,000 BC.” “We know of Libertas being referred to as the Mother of Harlots by the famous Roman historian (and senator) Cicero’s writings. Cicero indicates that she was also a very early goddess of the Greeks even before early Roman civilization developed. Upon further investigation, we find that the Greeks had acquired knowledge of this being from previous empires in the Middle East and Egypt. This goddess was called Ashtoreth in Hebrew and in the Old Testament’s Greek version (the Septuagint). Ashtoreth becomes transliterated into the Greek as Astarte, which became the early Greek name for the goddess until it was later changed to Aphrodite. The Hebrew term Ashtoreth was itself a transliteration from the Babylonian dialect (Akkadian) term of Ishtar. Ishtar in the most ancient times was also referred to by the Sumerian dialect as Inanna or Ninanna meaning the Queen of Heaven or Lady of Heaven. In Canaan, this deity was called Ashtaroth. The Hittites called her Shaushka. The Phoenicians on Cypress initially referred to her as Astarte.”

“Isis was the name the Egyptians gave to her. This is how the goddess became introduced to the earliest Greeks. We know this transformation in part due to the written texts found by archaeologists plus from studying the character traits and descriptions. For instance, all these deities were actually just one goddess and she was associated with the planet Venus. Most had phonetic language roots in the transliterating aspects of the name Ishtar and this remained so until the Greeks changed the name to Aphrodite. Later the Romans referred to her in the Latin, initially as Libertas and later as Venus when they accepted more than just the Liberty doctrines.”

The Crown of 7 Spikes: “This symbol was to represent the enlightenment of the Babylonian sun god Shamesh/Utu. The idea was that this sun god’s occultic illumination could be focused by each of the 7 spikes of the crown. Each spike would flash this occultic enlightenment to each of the 7 “horas” or large landmasses of the world. In other words, the each spike would flash occultic enlightenment to a continent on planet earth. Each of the 7 spikes would then be representative of one of the 7 large landmasses or continents of the world.”

 The Tablets: “A common misconception is that the tablets represent the 10 Commandments that God gave to Moses. This is not true. The tablets are engraved only with the Roman numerals standing for July 4th, 1776. According to the preeminent Statue Historian, Marvin Trachtenberg in his book “The Statue of Liberty” the tablets represented a generic notion of the concept of law. This should not be confused with the Laws of Moses.”

Source: Is There An Ancient Secret Connection Between The Statue Of Liberty And The Anunnaki Goddess Inanna?

“Less well-known, however, is the direct ancient Egyptian connection between the colossus and the New York statue. The independence that Rhodes celebrated with the erection of the colossus had been gained only by the critical intervention in 304 bc of ships belonging to Ptolemy I, a former general of Alexander the Great and founder of the Egyptian dynasty that would last until the death of Cleopatra (VII) the Great. Ptolemy’s forces dispersed the siege of Rhodes begun in 305 bc by armies loyal to Antigonus I, a rival, former general of Alexander. Following the withdrawal of the enemy troops, Rhodes seized and sold their abandoned weapons and thus financed the harbor monument. Although it is the torch of liberty that is highlighted in both Greek and English dedication texts, the numerous green foam crowns sold to New York tourists indicate clearly that the most iconic aspect of the Statue of Liberty is her crown of solar rays, a feature typically restored in images of the lost colossus as well. Here again, there is a direct Egyptian connection, as Ptolemaic kings represented themselves as Helios on earth. In antiquity, the crown given to Liberty in New York was worn more prominently by Ptolemy III on his official coinage. Bartholdi’s statue has been intended originally for Port Said beside the Suez Canal (see over). The placement in Egypt would have been quite logical.”

Source: The Statue of Liberty and its ties to the Middle East

 

Moorish Princess Zaida of Seville, an Ancestor of the current Queen Elizabeth

Zaida of Seville (c. 1070 – 1100) Mistress of: King Alfonso VI of Castile. Tenure: c. 1091 – 1100. Royal Bastards: One – Three. Fall From Power: None; she married him.

“In her letters to Al-Mansur, Elizabeth I, over a period of 25 years, continually described the relationship between the two countries as “La buena amistad y confederación que hay entre nuestras coronas” (“The great friendship and cooperation that exists between our Crowns”), and presented herself as “Vuestra hermana y pariente según ley de corona y ceptro” (“Your sister and relative according to the law of the Crown and the Scepter”)” 

Source: Shakespeare Studies, Volume 31  edited by Leeds Barroll, Susan Zimm…

“Alphonso VI, white Christian king, who was so often beaten by Yusuf, took a Moorish wife, the lovely Zayda, who was the mother of his favorite son, Sancho.”

Source: Nature Knows No Color-Line: Research into the Negro Ancestry in the White Race By J. A. Rogers, Pg. 60 Chapter Spain & Portugal

“Genealogist Harold B. Brooks-Baker, publisher of Burke’s Peerage, Britain’s guide to the nobility. It is little known by the British people that the blood of Mohammed flows in the veins of the queen,” Brooks-Baker wrote to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at the time. Brooks-Baker connected Queen Elizabeth to Muhammad via Zaida of Seville, a Muslim princess from the 11th century who converted to Christianity and became King Alfonso VI of Castile’s concubine. However, it’s not clear if Zaida was actually related to Muhammad or not. Abdelhamid Al-Aouni, the historian who penned the article for Al-Ousboue, believes there is a connection, too. Using Zaida as his lynchpin, he traced Elizabeth’s genealogy back 43 generations all the way to Muhammad. The purported connection “builds a bridge between our two religions and kingdoms,” he tells The Economist.”

Source: Is Queen Elizabeth Related to the Prophet Muhammad?

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth meets with Jordan’s King Abdullah, in Buckingham Palace London Tuesday November 15, 2011.(AP Photo/ Lewis Whyld/Pool)

“Zaida, a Muslim princess living in 11th-century Seville, is one of the most extraordinary ancestors of the British royal family. Zaida’s bloodline reached the English shores through her engagement to Alfonso VI, king of León-Castile. From their offspring descended Isabel Pérez of Castile, who in the 14th century was sent to England to marry Edmund Duke of York, son of King Edward III of England. Their grandson, Richard, Duke of York, led a rebellion against King Henry VI which developed into the Wars of the Roses. Richard’s second son Edward took the throne in 1461. Thus the legacy of Islamic Spain – better known as al-Andalus – found its way into the Plantagenet royal court.”

“This lineage has been of recent interest both in the UK and in the Middle East, as it purportedly proves a family relationship between Queen Elizabeth II and the Prophet Muhammad himself. Respected experts and commentators such as Burke’s Peerage and Ali Gomaa, the former Grand Mufti of Egypt, have suggested that Zaida was the offspring of al-Muʿtamid, ruler of Seville and a descendant of the daughter of the Prophet, Fāṭima and her husband ʿĀlī. As a member of the Hashemite family, the descendants of Fāṭima and ʿĀlī, the Queen would count as relatives, among others, the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or the Aga Khan IV, Prince Shah Karim Al Hussaini, a close friend of the current Royal family.”

Source: Meet the Muslim princess Zaida, Spanish ancestor of the British royal family

“The claim gained little attention in the West over the subsequent decades. But Assahifa Al-Ousbouia, a weekly Arabic-language newspaper in Morocco, called attention to the theory again this week by publishing a family tree that claimed to trace the Queen’s lineage from Abu al-Qasim Muhammad ibn Abbad, the first independent ruler of Seville in what was then the territory of Al-Andalus in Spain. According to the chart published in Morocco and translated by the British press, Muhammad ibn Abbad is a great-grandchild of the Prophet Muhammad, who died in 632 in what is now Saudi Arabia. The line between the Prophet Mohammad, ibn Abbad and Elizabeth II thus links the current monarch with the founder of one of the three monotheistic religions, according to the newspaper. Historians have suggested that the connection is possible but not entirely irrefutable. Marriages between Spanish and British royals have been common throughout the centuries, and both the British and Spanish royal families descend from Queen Victoria. Brooks-Baker appears to have connected the Queen to the prophet through a princess named Zaida, a grandchild of ibn Abbad who converted to Christianity and became the concubine of King Alfonso VI of Castile.”

Source: THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND IS A DESCENDANT OF THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD, NEWSPAPER CLAIMS

“According to reports from Casablanca to Karachi, the British monarch is descended from the Prophet Muhammad, making her a cousin of the kings of Morocco and Jordan, not to mention of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader. Her bloodline runs through the Earl of Cambridge, in the 14th century, across medieval Muslim Spain, to Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter. Her link to Muhammad has previously been verified by Ali Gomaa, the former grand mufti of Egypt, and Burke’s Peerage, a British authority on royal pedigrees.”

Source: Is the caliph a queen? Muslims consider Queen Elizabeth’s ties to the Prophet Muhammad

“According to the family tree, she is descendant from the Prophet’s daughter, Fatima. According to the Economist, much of the purported link revolves around a Muslim princess called Zaida, who fled an attack on Seville in Muslim Spain in the 11th century and found refuge in the court of Alfonso VI of Castille. There, “she changed her name to Isabella, converted to Christianity and bore Alfonso a son, Sancho, one of whose descendants later married the Earl of Cambridge,” the Economist said. However, the report notes that Zaida’s own origins are not without debate. “Some make her the daughter of Muatamid bin Abbad, a wine-drinking caliph descended from the Prophet. Others say she married into his family,” the report said.”

Source: Is Queen Elizabeth descended from the Prophet Muhammad? New study revives old claims tracing the British monarch’s lineage back 43 generations to the founder of Islam

QUEEN ELIZABETH’S COUSIN

“In December 2017, Princess Michael came under fire for what critics regard as either extreme bigotry or a sign that she’s woefully out of touch: she wore a racist, blackamoor brooch to a luncheon attended by Meghan Markle, Prince Harry’s American fiancé, who is of biracial descent.”

Source: This Royal Cousin Is So Embarrassing Even Queen Elizabeth Is Fed Up With Her

QUEEN ELIZABETH’S COUSIN blackamoor brooch

“Princess Michael of Kent, a first cousin to Queen Elizabeth II, caused quite a social media stir last Wednesday (December 20) when she was photographed wearing what many called a “racist brooch” on her coat. The Princess was on her way to a Buckingham Palace lunch attended by Prince Harry’s fiancée, Meghan Markle – a child of a white father and African-American mother. The brooch in question was a blackamoor-style brooch that depicted an African figure. Blackamoor-style brooches are widely considered offensive, and the Princess was accused of being racist and out of touch by many on Twitter and Facebook.”

Source: QUEEN ELIZABETH’S COUSIN APOLOGIZES FOR “OFFENSIVE” BROOCH INCIDENT

A History of African Societies to 1870 By Elizabeth Isichei

 

“Ethnic’ identities were determined by occupation and religion as well as by language. The Dyula were a long-distance merchants, called Marka on the Niger bend; the Fulbe, ideally, pastoralist, the Bozo and Somono fisherman. The Dyula were Muslim, and the Bambara ‘pagans’. The social reality was fluid and changing, there was a Muslim presence in the Bambara states, and some Dyula were not Muslims. ‘It was not uncommon for FulBe to become Bozo, Bozo to become Somono, and…animist farmers to become Maraka Muslim traditionalist. Most Marka identified themselves as ‘white’ (the black were the recently converted).”

Source: A History of African Societies to 1870 By Elizabeth Isichei

Dana Reynolds-Marniche cited the above reference along with the following commentary:

“In other words after converting to Islam many of the Beriberi and people like the nomad Fulani and Tuareg came to refer to themselves as “whites”. The Marka Soninke (Wa’nGara/Wakar and Wa’Kore) were also called Dyula. “The Dyula were a long distance merchants, called Marka on the Niger bend…” They called themselves the whites due to their faith – Islam.  I told you Wa Kore and WaKara were Korah and Kore from Teras (Jeter/Jethro) but i know – many of us are in denial – too brainwashed. Believe it!

The newly remade film involving Kunta Kinte a man of Soninke/Mande stock. 

“Paradoxically the Wakoré are designated in the Tarikhs as blacks from the south, but in other sources e.g. al-Bakrî, al-Idrı¯sı – as whites from the North.”  See what I mean? Awkar, Wakara, or Wa’ngara and Wakore Malinke peoples were Beriberi from the North. The word “white” refers to their Muslim heritage.

Source: (The Wa’nGara: An Old Soninke Diaspora in West Africa. ” Andreas W. Massing 2000

“…most Marka. identified. themselves. as. ‘white’. (the. blacks were the recently converted.”)

Source: A History of African Societies to 1870 p. 223 Elisabeth Isichei 1997, Cambridge University press.

” Those who have read the peer-reviewed ‘Fear of Blackness” in West Africa would know this already. This is what was in the peer reviewed Fear of Blackness…..”

Furthermore another division of the Wakar or Wa’nGara merchants were the Songhai in some places called Zarma, Germa, Songhai i.e. Garama who founded the empire of the Garamantes.

“Like modern linguists, even colonialists knew the early Arabs used the term white for a type of blackness. Example hamam = “Being black. Becoming white. Being charred (a burning coal or billet)…”

Source: A Dictionary, Persian Arabic and English. By Frances Johnson. p. 493

Source: Dana Reynolds-Marniche

Moorish Spain By Richard A. Fletcher

 

“Thus far the Islamic presence in Spain has been considered from a western and Christian point of view. We should also attempt an assessment of its culture in the wider context of Islamic civilization as a whole. During the Middle Ages al-Andalus–as Moorish Spain was always known in the Arabic-speaking world-was little regarded in the Middle Eastern heartlands of Islam.”

“For the mandarins and intellectuals of sophisticated Damascus, Cairo or Baghdad, al-Andalus was a distant frontier outpost of Islam on the fringes of the known world, irredeemably dowdy and provincial. Yet from this dingy backwater there emerged some of the finest works of Islamic art and culture: for example, the great mosque of Cordoba, the Cuenca school of ivory carving, the poetry of Ibn ‘Ammar, the philosophy of Ibn Rushd (better known as to the west as Averros), the medical treatises of Ibn Zuhr, the Giralda of Seville and the Alhambra of Granada. Here too there are puzzles to be investigated.”

“This is to indicate some of the ways in which Moorish Spain might be thought to lay claim to our attention. But before we proceed further with the inquiry it will be as well to introduce the land which medieval Muslim and Christian shared, for the benefit of those who do not know it. A preliminary difficulty–of which doubtless the reader must already have become aware–is to decide what to call it. This is not a new problem: take for example the opening sentences of the description of Spain by the eleventh-century geographer al-Bakri.”

“People say that in ancient times it was called Iberia, taking its name from the river Ebro. Later it was known as Betica, from the river Betis which runs past Cordoba. Later it was known as Betica, from the river Betis which runs past Cordoba. Later still it was called “Hispania” after a man named “Hispan” who had once ruled there. Some people say that its true name is Hesperia, which is derived from Hesperus, the evening star in the west. Nowadays we call it al Andalus after the Andalusians who settled it.”

“Objections can be raised against nearly all the available options. Hispania and Hesperia sound precious and pedantic. Iberia risks being confused with the region of that name in the Georgian Caucasus. Spain as a term for the whole peninsular land mass between the Pyrenees and the Straits of Gibraltar is open to the objection that it will inevtiably suggest the modern state of Spain and thereby exclude the area covered by modern Portugal.”

“The political designations of the  Middle Ages were applied to territories whose size and shape oscillated wildy. Castile did not exist in the year 800, by the year 1000 it was a moderst county of the Kingdom of Leon, by 1300 it was the largest state in Europe. Al-Andalus meant nearly the whose of the peninsula in the eighth century, but by the late thirteenth it meant the tiny principality of Granada. Religous labels are misleading. Islamic pain always contained a sizeable communities of Christians and Jews, Christian Spain, similiary communities of Jews and Muslims.”

“Ethnic desginations are even more misleading. The language of common speech in al-Andalus, for Christians and Jews as well as for Muslims, was Arabic; but to speak as some have done of Arabic Spain is to give the impression that the land had been colonized by the Arabs, whereas the number of Arabs who settled there was very small. Moorish Spain does at least have the merit of reminidng us that the bulk of the invaders and settlers were Moors, i.e. Berbers from northwest Africa. But we shall need to bear in mind that they overlay a population of mixed descent-Hispano-Romans, Basques, Sueves, Visigoths, Jews, and others.”

“The read who looks for consistency of verbal usage in this book is going to be disappointed. When I use the term al-Andalus I understand by it that area of the Iberian peninsula under the control of Muslim authority, and the phrases Moorish, Muslim and Islamic Spain are to be regard as synonmous with it. I shall try to avoid using Spain to indicate the whole land mass but I do not expect to keep to this well meant resolution. I offer my apologies in advance to those who inhabit the peninsula today who are politically independant of the Spanish monarchy (in Portugal) or who think that they ought to be in the Basque country, Galicia and Catalonia).”

“What needs special emphasis in any account of Moorish Spain is the ease of contact between southern Spain and northwest Africa: the Straits at their narrowest are only twelve miles wide. In his poem Spain of 1937, later disavowed-W.H. Auden called the land that arid square, that fragment nipped off from hot Africa. how right he was. The relief, climate, and ecology of southern Spain parallel in Morocco. Shackled to Castile by the chance of history, Andalusia has a natural partner in Barbary, the land of the Berbers, to which indeed she was once linked until the land bridge burst and the waters of the Atlantic gushed in to make the Mediterranean.”

“The Berber and Black African soldiers were known in Andalusi slang as “Tangerines’ because so many were imported through Tangier. Spain was known colloquially as the Dar Dijihad, the land of jihad. The Roman provinces of North Africa fell swiftly to the Arabs. They conquered Egypt in the years 640-42, Cyrenaica and Tripolitania (i.e. roughly, the parts of modern Libya) in 643-47, and the province of Africa proper (which the Arabs called Ifriqiya, i.e. today’s Tunisia) by 670 when the new city of Kairouan, to the south of Tunis, was founded. But then the pace of conquest slackened. The Berbers put up fierce resistance to the Arab armies.”

“They were nominally subjected by the early years of the eighth century but continued to mount sporadic rebellions against Arab rule until the 740s and 750s. One way of taming the Berbers, and of simultaneously profiting from their fighting skills, was to encourage or compel their enlistment into Arab-led armies for the prosecution of military campaigns elsewhere. The prospects of adventure and plunder, possibly even of land, would appeal to the Berber warrior tribesmen. Regular military discipline would break down clan loyalties and values; Regular military discipline would turn them into good Muslims. This thinking probably influences the Arab leadership to undertake the raids on southern Spain which occupied the years before 711.”

“It is not clear, from the meager sources that have survived, why raiding should have turned into conquest. Partly, perhaps, it may have arisen from the inner dynamics of the early Islamic polity. The caliphs of the Umayyad dynasty who presided from Damascus over the vast sprawling Islamic empire which had erupted with such speed in the seventh century depended for their survival upon the allegiance of an Arab aristocracy imbued with a warrior ethic. (In this respect they were not unlike the rulers of other early medieval successor states to the Roman empire, such as the Merovingian and Carolingian kings of the Franks in Gaul and Germany.) Prudent rulers respected the habits and needs of their predatory nobilities. Expand or go under: this could have been the motto of any early medieval ruler, whether Christian or Islamic.”

Source: Spain By Richard Fletcher, Richard A. Fletcher

North Africa: A History from Antiquity to the Present

 

 

“Livy contemplated Polybius’s generous assessment as he described Hannibal’s exceptional transcultural consciousness, which the Carthaginian exploited: Hannibals’s army was composed of so many men who had nothing in common in terms of language, culture, law, weaponry, dress, physical appearance, and their reasons for fighting and he varied his exhortations accordingly….The Gauls could be aroused by their own particular and instinctive hatred for the Romans.”

“The Ligurians, who had been brought down from their rugged mountain homes, were inspired hopes of victory by the prospect of the rich plains of Italy. The Moors and Numidians Hannibal frightened by telling them how brutal Masinissa’s rule would be. He worked on their various races by inspiring different hopes and different fears. (Livy 2006, 602)”

“Although Polybius and Livy admired Hannibal’s transcultralism, Carthaginians characteristically evinced these sensitivities for centuries given their commercialism and their need to enlist mercenaries. They realized that Carthage’s survival depended on positive and patient interaction with diverse societies. Carthaginian transculturalism was not casual but crucial and compulsory.”

“Carthage remained independent, but hardly a threat to Rome. Instead, Numidia loomed as Carthage’s greatest menace, whose dynamic King Masinissa aspired to unite the Maghrib. The growth of Numidian power, coupled with the pathological fear of a potentially resurgent Carthage, led to another Roman expedition against its archival.”

“Aided by their Numidian allies, the belligerent Romans, commanded by the adopted grandson of Scipio, Scipio Aemilianus, finally breached Carthage’s walls after a determined and desperate defense. The Romans enslaved the survivors and destroyed the city, reputedly plowing its debris underground and then symbolically salting the land to prevent its regeneration. Establishing a new province, Africa Proconsularis, Romans settled permanently in North Africa.”

“Significant Berber kingdoms exercised considerable power and influence by the time the Romans defeated Carthage, notably Numidia. In addition, Mauretania (the country of the Mauri) bordered Numidia on the west and included Morocco. Although the Romans had allied with Berbers, specifically the Massyli, against Carthage, relations between them declined and ultimately led to the Jugurthine War. In the first century BCE, rivalries among Roman commanders contesting for power embroiled North Africa, ending the Berber Kingdoms and also Hellenistic Egypt. For the first time, an imperial state, the Roman Empire, ruled North Africa’s Mediterranean littoral and, in varying degrees, its hinterland from Egypt to the Atlantic.”

“Ibn Odhari refers to al-Kahina as a Malika or a queen. The resistance of Kusayla and al-Kahina remains important regarding contemporary Berber-Arab cultural controversy, such as the use of the Berber language, Tamazight. See also El-Aroui 1990.”

“Phillip Hitti credited the Arabs’ Semitic (refers to language, not ethnicity) kinship with the Phoenicians in expediting their relations with the Berbers who still spoke Punic in some regions: “This explains the seemingly inexplicable miracle of Islam in Arabicizing the language and Islamizing the religion of these [Berbers] and using them as fresh relays in the race toward further conquest” (Hitti 1970, 214). On the other hand, a significant number of bishoprics remained in North Africa three hundred years after the conquest (ibid.,361). Regarding Arabization, see also the section on the Bantu Hilal in this chapter. Musa’s trust in Tariq illustrated an exceptional sensibility between Arab and Berber, which obviously expedited the campaigns in the far Maghrib and Iberia.”

“The extraordinary expansion of the Umayyads also led to problems in North Africa. Animosity intensified between Berbers and Arabs. Berber, especially those who contributed to Arab success in al-Andalus and elsewhere, demanded the application of Muslim equality. Despite legal prohibitions, Arab administrators imposed taxes and even enslaved Berbers, fellow Muslims, and sent them to the East. The renowned Abbasid historian al-Tabari recounted how Berbers questioned the caliph and Umayyad authority: “They make us give them the most beatiful of our daugthers, and we say, ‘We have not found this in the Book or in the Sunna [the customs of the Prophet Muhamad (see below)]. We are Muslims and we wish to know: is this with the approval of the Commander of the Faithful or not?” (Lewis 1974,2:57-58). The Berbers subsequently revolted and in 741, led by a self-proclaimed “caliph” named Maysara, defeated an Arab force sent from Qayrawan. Although Maysar was eventually killed, the Berber revolt spread into Algeria and al-Andalus.”

Source: North Africa: A History from Antiquity to the Present By Phillip C. Naylor