Amazigh
The indigenous people of North Africa, whose presence predates the Arab conquest of the seventh century, the Roman occupation, and the Phoenician settlements. The word means "free people" in Tamazight.
Amazigh (plural: Imazighen) is the self-designation of the indigenous Berber peoples of North Africa, a continuous cultural and linguistic presence across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and into the Saharan regions of Mali, Niger, and Mauritania. The name translates approximately as "free person" or "noble person" in Tamazight.
Amazigh culture was largely oral and material, transmitted through weaving, jewellery, tattoo, music, and oral poetry rather than written text. The visual traditions preserved in Amazigh textiles are therefore not decorative supplements to a literary culture but primary carriers of cultural knowledge and identity.
Since 2011, Tamazight has been an official language of Morocco alongside Arabic and French, and Amazigh cultural revival movements have gained significant momentum. The relationship between Amazigh identity and the Moroccan state across the twentieth century was politically complex, involving periods of suppression and periods of incorporation.
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