Today we spent the day driving 650km from Tripoli to Ghadames which is a small border oasis town on the Libyan-Algerian-Tunisian border tripoint. About 100km south of Tripoli we started to see things transition from the more Arab coastal part of Libya to the Berber community. The signage first on government and then shop signs started to be in Arabic, Berber and English script. Then as we moved on, the Berber script started to come first on the signage.
The Berbers or Imazighen people are the indigenous people of North Africa, numbering about 25 million people scattered from Morocco to Egypt. They settled in the Sahara between 10,000-20,000 years ago, when the Sahara was a fertile grassland teeming with wildlife that you’d find on the Serengeti today. At the time, the Sahara was more like Iowa or eastern Nebraska, with many rivers, a chain of lakes, and abundant fauna. Then about 7,000 years ago the worst environmental catastrophe imaginable happened to the Berbers. The climate changed: the rains became less frequent; the lakes evaporated or went underground; the trees disappeared, as did the fauna. The grasses gave way to rock and sand. Most people migrated to the coast or the Niger, Senegal or Nile river valleys (the latter eventually giving rise to the Egyptian civilization). But the Berbers adapted to the changing climate and found ways to eke out a living in their new reality. They are the ultimate survivor people.
In the 7th Century CE, the Arabs began their conquest of North Africa and conquered the Berbers. The Berbers learned how to speak Arabic and converted to Islam but were treated as second class citizens, being taxed at a higher rate than Arabs and sometimes forced into slavery. This oppression and marginalization continued on into the 20th Century and intensified under Qaddafi who tried to stamp out the Berber identity altogether. He quipped ‘’I don’t care what they do in their own homes but outside they are Libyans.’’ And for him, being Libyan meant being Arab.
So when the Arab Spring commenced in 2011, the Berbers were quick to join forces to bring down the Qaddafi regime. Their cities and villages often suffered some of the worst massacres and war crimes during that First Libyan Civil War. There are still some Berber villages that show evidence of that conflict.
After Qaddafi’s government fell and he was killed, the Berbers in Libya have had a cultural renaissance. Their blue, green and yellow with the double pitchfork flag flies everywhere, often more commonly seen than the Libyan national flag. They can now learn about Berber languages and cultures in school.
Many Berber towns have wall murals and art celebrating their liberation from the Qaddafi regime and some even have decommissioned tanks originally captured from Qaddafi forces on display.
On our ride out to Ghadames we stopped at some historic Berber trading posts and villages and learned about how they lived.
My Libyan photos are here (Opens in new tab.)
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