Algeria from Within/Chapter 5

North Africa has been very aptly described as a melting-pot of the Mediterranean races, and, though all trace of invaders such as the Vandals and the Byzantines have vanished, the other peoples who came and conquered and were in turn defeated have left their mark on the inhabitants of to-day.

The Phœnician, the Roman, the Arab, the Spaniard, the Turk, can be seen in all parts of North Africa, and, though it requires perhaps a little study and experience to place one’s hand on the actual features of the past conquests, they are most striking when one is shown them. The original race of the country is, however, the Berber, and, in spite of these invasions which have devastated, reinstated, and again devastated his country, he has remained in a good many districts as pure as the Celts.

Roughly speaking, it can be said that to-day the pure Berbers are found in all the highest mountains, such as the Aurès above Biskra, the Kabyle country, and that portion of the Tellian Atlas known as the Ouarsenis, strongholds to which they returned during the various invasions, and where they remained unassailable while the tide of war ebbed and flowed beneath them. The people of the Mzab and the Touaregs of the Hoggar are also pure Berbers: in the case of the former because they were determined to remain pure and exiled themselves in the merciless desert, and in the latter because they were too far ​away to be touched by invasion. In other parts of Algeria intermarriage naturally took place during the various dominations, but, though Roman and Turkish traces remain, these are eclipsed by those of the Arabs.

Roughly speaking, therefore, it can be said that the groups of pure Berbers are located in the high mountains, in the Mzab and in the Hoggar; that the Berber influence is predominant among the people who inhabit the country immediately south of Algiers, as far as the southern slopes of the Atlas, the department of Constantine, and an arm of the southern territories running from Biskra down to Ouargla and the great belt of desert running right across the Sahara from the Atlantic to Tripoli on a latitude just south of El Golea.

The whole of the rest of the country—that is, the department of Oran, the whole of the southern tracts of the department of Alger, and the rest of the southern territories other than the belt named above—is decidedly Arab. The Berber is there, but the influence is almost entirely that of the nomad invader.

If you ask an intelligent native what his nationality is, he will reply that he is an Arab who has been slightly Berberized, or else he will say that he is a noble Arab—that is to say, a claimant to direct descent from Mohammed. While on this subject it is interesting to note what the conception of nobility is among these people. Outwardly, before the European, it is the title of bash agha or agha or caïd, but in reality this does not count with the people any more than Lord-Lieutenant of a county in England. To them it is merely a title imposed by the French, which they must respect just as they must respect the Colonel or the Administrateur. Aristocracy to them is the descent from the Prophet, or as one wise old gentleman once said:

​“To many of us nobility can be achieved by much learning.”

In other words, the scarlet burnous and the loud-sounding title would carry no weight if it were not enforced by the French authority.

To-day, therefore, the inhabitants of Algeria are Arabs and Berbers, of whom fifty per cent. claim almost pure Berber blood, and Frenchmen. There are many Spaniards in the department of Oran, and in the east a fair sprinkling of Italians and Maltese. The Jews, too, form an important section of the community; those who live in the north wear European dress, and in the south most of them wear Arab costume, with a certain little difference in the burnous, and in some districts they have robes peculiar to themselves. Their women, even in some families of the north, keep the dress of their people—the embroidered kerchief about the head and the rather shapeless frock. By a law known as the Décret Crémieux, voted in 1871 to facilitate the conscription of recruits for the Franco-Prussian War, all Jews north of a certain latitude in Algeria automatically became French citizens. It was not very popular at the time, but its consequences now are much appreciated. In spite, however, of this French citizenship and all the wealth acquired in commerce, the Jews of Algeria have kept themselves strangely apart. Even in Algiers all their shops are in a certain quarter; they close without exception on Saturday, and attend the synagogue with the utmost regularity. They never intermarry, and they form as distinct a race as the Arabs. In fact, in many districts—and especially in the south—they are always referred to as Israelites. Sometimes they are persecuted, but this merely knits them closer together. They despise the Arabs, but fear them, and tremble at any sign of force.

​The Arabs equally despise the Jews, but unfortunately they have got themselves rather into their hands through making use of them as money-lenders.

The actual French occupation of the land does not penetrate very far—in fact, in a great many areas the Frenchman is leaving the interior and returning to the coast. Again and again one passes through European villages with a church built to accommodate a thousand people or so, and one sees about twenty European dwellings in the town and the rest of the houses in ruins or inhabited by Arabs. What has caused this? Primarily, the inherent dislike of the Frenchman to expatriate himself. If he comes to Algeria it is with no idea of spending the rest of his days here. His one idea is to make enough money to permit him to return home to France and eke out a pinched existence in his native village, but with the satisfaction of being a rentier. Secondly, the rather ungrateful task of cultivating in a country where all depends on the rainfall. It is all right for the man who has capital and who can bide his time to pay off his losses of the bad year with the profits of the good, but it is heart-breaking work for the small landowner. Of course there are numbers of families who have settled in the cultivated regions and who have become Algerian, but they are the exception; their names can be counted off rapidly.

These men have great fortunes in wine, in cereals and tobacco, and their children have in many cases never seen France; but, generally speaking, the Frenchman is not a colonist, and it is very, very rare to see him away in the Sahara sheep-breeding or alfa-collecting. He has, however, done one rather contradictory thing in imposing his language on practically the whole country. With the exception of the nomads who wander about the Sahara, it is rare to come ​to any center and not find a French-speaking population.

The Arabs among themselves of course speak their own language; it is a strange dialect based on pure Arabic, but peculiar to North Africa.

Moreover, it differs in accent according to regions. For instance, the language of the south is much deeper and more guttural than that of Algiers, and the talk in Constantine and Oran, again, has many words and intonations not found in other centers.

I think that the correct name for this dialect should be Arabo-Berber. There is, of course, also the pure Berber spoken by the people of the Kabyle and Aurès Mountains, of the Mzab and the Hoggar; and, though Berbers are often found who can not speak anything else, it is almost a general rule to find them bi-linguists, while the majority talk French too. It is interesting to note that when the Sultan of Zanzibar came to North Africa the only people with whom he could speak fluently were the Berbers of the Mzab.

The Jews speak both Arab and French fluently; their Arab is often purer than that of the actual natives. A great number speak Hebrew among themselves.

However, to progress comfortably through the country, French is essential, and Arabo-Berber is a great help and inspires confidence among the people. Grammatically, it is a simple language, but the pronunciation is difficult and the number of words which mean the same thing requires one to have command over a large vocabulary. It is a language that can be learned only with a teacher.

These, therefore, are the peoples and the tongues of North Africa, and, armed with this knowledge, we can now penetrate further into the system of administration.