Between “Tamazight” and “Tamaghrabit

The concept of “Tamghrabit” has been spreading increasingly since the start of this millennium, attracting more new users among journalists, columnists, politicians and even Amazigh activists. In what sense is this concept used? What is its relation to the collective identity of Moroccans? And what is its relation, in particular, to Amazigh? Is it a relation of complementarity or of discord? Does it include a recognition of Amazigh and an enrichment of it, or does it impoverish it and aim to exclude it?

“Tamghrabit” and the Amazigh identity of Morocco:

It is clear that the concept of “Tamghrabit” is used to denote Moroccan specificity. If we analyze this “Tamghrabit”, that is, Moroccan specificity, we find that it is, first, of a collective nature, because “Tamghrabit” applies to the whole Moroccan people and is not limited to some rather than others or one region rather than another; second, that it expresses what is particular to the Moroccan people, matching its spirit and uniqueness; and third, that by it the people differs from and is distinguished from other peoples. And what do these three elements mean: the collective nature, the match with the people’s spirit and uniqueness, and the distinction from other peoples? They are the constituent elements of the concept of collective identity (see the article: “The Problem of Identity”, in the book “On the Amazigh Identity of Morocco”). And from where does a people draw its collective identity, that is, what gives it its specificity and uniqueness and makes it distinct from other peoples?

If we survey all the peoples that are distinguished from one another by their own collective identity, we will observe that the two main and primary elements that give a people a specificity unique to it and by which it is distinguished from other peoples are: 1. the geographical homeland, which is not always the geographical origin, which may differ from the homeland that is the “permanent and settled residence” of this people. And when we say “permanent and settled”, that means there may have been earlier, temporary and unsettled “homelands”. 2. its language, which arose in this homeland and thus became tied to it and dependent on it, even if this people has learned other languages and uses them for colonial, cultural, religious or scientific reasons, as is common among all peoples. In this frame of reference, geographical and linguistic, there arise over time, with social practice and the relations and systems that result from it, a culture, a mentality, myths, customs, behaviors, values, laws, knowledge, and social and political organizations…, all bearing the imprint of belonging to the same homeland and the same language, and constituting thereby a specificity that distinguishes the people who own this homeland and this language.

What is the permanent and settled homeland of Moroccans? And what is their language that arose in this homeland? This homeland is the Amazigh land, or North Africa, or the land of the Berbers as it is known in the medieval Arabic writings… And this language is Amazigh first, then Darija as a language that arose in the Amazigh land and did not come to it from outside like Arabic or French. Since this homeland is Amazigh, that is, North African, “Tamghrabit” cannot be anything other than the distinguishing specificity of this region, which is “Tamazight”, which constitutes the collective identity of Moroccans and of their neighbors belonging to the same homeland that is North Africa.

The name “Morocco” excludes the Imazighen from ancient history:

If it is clear and understandable, as we have shown, that “Tamghrabit” means the Amazigh specificity unique to the inhabitants of North Africa, that is, the Imazighen, what is neither clear nor understandable is that many Moroccan users of this new concept tend to employ it to exclude the use of “Amazigh”, “Imazighen” and the “Amazigh land”, and to replace all of that with “Tamghrabit”, “Moroccans” and “Morocco”…

As an example of this exclusion of the use of the word “Amazigh” and its derivatives (Tamazight, Amazigh land…) and its replacement with the word “Morocco” and its derivatives (Tamghrabit, Moroccan…), we find it among some writers who speak in their writings about North Africa in the pre-Islamic period, that is, when the words “Morocco” and “Moroccan” neither existed nor were used. Yet they insist on using the word “Morocco” and calling the North African of that period “Moroccan”. Thus Mr Mohamed Chaqir writes, in his article published in the electronic newspaper “Hespress” on December 19, 2020 under the title “Between the National Cause and the Nationalist Spirit”: “A meeting was arranged between King Bocchus and Sulla, commander of the Roman armies in the North African region, in which the Moroccan king first offered the Roman commander Morocco’s neutrality in the conflict between Rome and Jugurtha, on condition that the state’s borders not be touched”; “It seems that King Bocchus’s decision to hand Jugurtha over to the Romans resulted from careful political calculations aimed essentially at protecting the supreme interest of the Moroccan state”; “Handing over Jugurtha would end the war and keep its specter away from the Moroccan borders, and would also enable the Moroccan kingdom to expand, by seizing a large part of the territory of the collapsed Numidian kingdom. But the most important of the factors behind this decision was in particular preserving the survival of the Moroccan state”… Speaking of “Morocco”, of a “Moroccan” king, a “Moroccan” kingdom, “Moroccan” borders…, more than two thousand years ago is a kind of unscientific fiction. Whereas what is scientifically appropriate is to name historical facts by the historical names by which they were known in the historical period concerned. As for using the names they bear today, more than two thousand years later, besides expressing an ahistorical view of the history of that period, it is a kind of falsification of facts so that they conform not to what happened but to what the writer wishes had happened, namely that there be no Imazighen, no Amazigh, and no Amazigh states and kingdoms, under their Amazigh names… If it were permissible to call the state that existed in North Africa more than two thousand years ago the Moroccan state, it would be permissible by the same logic to call it the Alaouite state. This is the impasse to which failing to call things by their historical names according to their historical context leads.

Yes, we understand the ready objection that the name “Amazigh” was neither known nor in circulation at that time. Even if we grant that this is true (and it is not), it would be more fitting to use the names used in that period other than “Amazigh”, calling what the writer calls “Morocco” “Numidia” or the land of the “Moors”…, and writing: “the Numidian” or “Moorish kingdom”…, and the “Numidian” or “Moorish” king… It would even have been possible to settle for the known geographical name, “North Africa” (the land of “Ifriqiya” in Arabic writings), saying: the kingdom of North Africa, the king of the kingdom of North Africa. And when we want to be precise, if the context requires it, we say: the state of North Africa in the region now called Algeria, referring to the kingdom of Numidia whose center was in that region. Mr Chaqir knows these real historical names very well, as shown by his mentioning “the Numidian kingdom” and “North Africa” in the same text I cited above. Why did he leave these real historical names and use names that have no meaning in the historical context of that period? And if we justify using the modern name, “Morocco” and “Moroccan”, to speak of the history of North Africa more than two thousand years ago, by the absence of the name “Amazigh”, which was not in circulation at that date, it would be more fitting for that to justify using the modern name by which the Imazighen are known today. If neither the name “Amazigh” nor the name “Moroccan” was known or used in that period concerning the history of those called Imazighen today, logic dictates using the modern name applied to the Imazighen since they are the subject of the history concerned.

“Tamghrabit” and the exclusion of Amazigh:

This tendency to erase the name “Amazigh” and “Amazigh land” even when speaking of the same Imazighen and the same Amazigh land in ancient history, and to replace them with “Moroccans” and “Morocco”, will undergo a qualitative development with the use not only of the name “Moroccans” and “Morocco” to speak of those presumed to be Imazighen and an Amazigh land, but of the new concept that is “Tamghrabit”, derived from the word “Maghreb” and formed according to the rules of Amazigh grammar. The trick (even if not consciously intended) in using this concept is that it tempts even the activists who defend Amazigh (“Announcement of the founding of the ‘Tamghrabit Movement’ to spread the culture of difference, peace and coexistence and to rehabilitate Amazigh” — click here to read the news), because it apparently means that Moroccans are independent of Middle Eastern Arabism, since what constitutes their specificity is “Tamghrabit” and not Arabism. And this is what the Amazigh activists themselves defend and demand. From this angle the concept of “Tamghrabit” seems attractive and fine, even “Amazigh”. This is where the bait has caught its victims in the trap set. For even if we grant that “Tamghrabit”, as Moroccan specificity, apparently means separation from Eastern Arabism, it means in substance separation from Amazigh, which “Tamghrabit” obscures and eliminates in the word, then in the concept and content.

Since words carry meanings and contents, real and imaginary, historical and cultural, mythological and symbolic…, the word “Tamghrabit”, although formed in an Amazigh grammatical mold, obviously refers to the word “Maghreb” from which it is derived. And what is the problem? The problem is that the name “Morocco” (al-Maghrib) began to be used as the official national name of this country in the west of North Africa only in 1912, after the resident-general “Lyautey” imposed it, thereby excluding the original name by which the country of Morocco was known, namely Marrakesh, which all the European names for Morocco still preserve after adapting it to their languages’ pronunciation, such as: Marruecos, Maroc, Morocco, Marokko… It follows that Morocco’s specificity, that is, its identity that distinguishes it from other peoples, was formed only a century and nine years ago (we are in 2021). And even if we leniently accept that the name Morocco was known and current before 1912, although it did not mean specifically the Moroccan country except when mentioned together with the epithet “farthest” (the farthest Maghreb), since it was applied to all of North Africa, that is, what is called in the Arabic writings the “land of the Berbers”, that would lead to the same result: that Morocco’s specificity, that is, its identity that distinguishes it from other peoples, was formed only in the Middle Ages when the use of the name “Maghreb” began, which makes it easy to believe that this identity is Arab because the word Maghreb is an Arabic word and the Arabs were the first to use it. In both cases there is an exclusion of “Tamazight”, which, according to the logic of “Tamghrabit”, was not, before the word “Maghreb” appeared, the identity of the peoples of this region and did not constitute their specificity distinguishing them from other peoples.

On the other hand, since the concept of “Tamghrabit” refers to “Morocco”, as I noted, and since the concept of “Morocco” means nationality and does not mean collective identity, which is something that does not always match nationality (which the converted Arabizers know when they say Morocco’s identity is Arab), using “Tamghrabit” in the sense of Moroccan specificity involves a confusion between the concept of nationality and the concept of identity. What matters to us in this “confusion” is that it too excludes Amazigh and puts it definitively outside the subject, as it falls neither within the frame of nationality nor within that of identity. Added to that, this confusion also excludes Amazigh as an identity shared among the countries of North Africa, as a result of tying it to Morocco, which, having become a homeland and a nationality, no longer means anything but the Moroccan country, that is, the farthest Maghreb as the medieval Arabic writings called it. But if this confusion excludes Amazigh, it is so that Arabism constitutes a particular identity of Morocco, like the particular Arab identity of Kuwait, the Emirates, Bahrain or Saudi Arabia…, within the general Arab identity, that is, the one shared by the various Arab countries. This is the content of “Tamghrabit”, which combines identity and nationality. Morocco is Arab, but its Arabism is particular to its Moroccan nationality, which makes it distinct from the Arabism of the other Arab countries.

It seems that after the failure of criminal Arabization, one of the four principles of the National Movement, to eliminate Amazigh once and for all by Arabizing the human being and the environment, as the Arabizers advocate, recourse was had to the principle of “Moroccanization”, which is among these four principles. And if “Moroccanization” means replacing foreign cadres with Moroccan ones, “Tamghrabit” is the replacement of “Tamazight” by this “Tamghrabit”. Since Amazigh is still present, existing and even constitutional, despite the billions spent on Arabization to kill it, the solution is therefore to Moroccanize it, that is, integrate it into “Tamghrabit” as a mere tributary attached to it. Thus, thanks to the magic of “Tamghrabit”, the terms of the equation are reversed: “Tamazight”, which is the spring and origin into which “Tamghrabit” should be integrated as a branch and tributary, becomes a mere branch and tributary of “Tamghrabit”, which has become the origin and spring. What Arabization did not achieve in more than a century (yes, real, official, institutional Arabization began in 1912) of fierce war on Amazigh, “Tamghrabit” achieves in a few decades.

And the danger in “Tamghrabit”, with the consequences we have set out, is that it does not need the school, as educational Arabization does. Indeed, a low educational level helps the spread of the contents of “Tamghrabit” as a substitute for Amazigh more than an advanced educational level would. That is why “Tamghrabit” forms a kind of street culture that spreads through the “oral” without needing written media. This explains why many uneducated people settle the debate on Amazigh and identity by saying: “We are Moroccans, end of story. ‘Tamghrabit’ gathers and unites us.” We followed, amazed, the “Tamghrabit” program broadcast by the channel Medi1 TV on February 3, 2021 from nine to eleven at night, in which Amazigh was entirely absent in favor of talk about Jews, Arabs and Muslims, with emphasis on the latter two’s tolerance of the Jews, although these Jews, when they came to the region of Morocco before the Common Era, came to the Imazighen, who took them in and treated them with tolerance, respect and equality, before there were Arabs or Islam. And even when a young Israeli woman explained during the program that she was an Amazigh Jew from Tinghir, the presenter paid no attention, considering that the subject of Amazigh was of no importance in a debate on “Tamghrabit”. Indeed “Tamghrabit”, as I explained, aims to banish Amazigh as a subject worth discussing. This is also what the university professor who took part in the program did when he said: “The Jews came to Morocco before the Arabs”, “from which we understand from his words that Morocco was an empty land until the Jews and Arabs came to it and settled it. And Andalusia did not escape this mentality when the same professor spoke of ‘the blending of the ancient Arab culture and Jewish culture in Andalusia’” (from the critical analytical article on the program entitled: “‘Tamghribit’ of the Channel Medi1 TV” by Professor Lahcen Zahour, published on the site “Azul Press” — click here to read the article). This is “Tamghrabit” as presented by the channel Medi1, as confirmed by Mr Chaqir and reconfirmed by the university professor specializing in history (what history?) who took part in the program. As we observe, and as we showed before, what most characterizes “Tamghrabit” and determines its aim is ignoring Amazigh until everyone is ignorant of it, as if it did not exist and had never existed, as we saw with Mr Chaqir. Hence the danger of the culture of “Tamghrabit” to Amazigh, which perhaps exceeds the danger of the criminal Arabization policy because, as I said, it spreads through the “oral” and does not need learning, which qualifies it to become part of popular and colloquial culture.

“Tamarrakchit” instead of “Tamghrabit”:

If a name must be used, other than the name “Tamazight”, to express, as in the name “Tamghrabit”, nationality and at the same time to denote the collective identity of the Moroccan people so as to highlight its specificity that distinguishes it not only from Easterners but even from the other countries of North Africa with which it shares the Amazigh belonging, there is nothing more suitable or better than returning to the original name of the farthest Maghreb, which is Marrakesh. From it we form “Tamarrakchit”, which would denote the collective identity of a people and a state, the country of Marrakesh. Instead of “Tamghrabit” being, as intended, an Arab identity particular to Morocco within the general Arab identity, as I explained before, “Tamarrakchit” would be an Amazigh identity particular to the state of Marrakesh within the general Amazigh identity, that is, the one shared by all the North African states.

Arabic version | French version