From Dihya to El Mansouri: Women and Power in Amazigh Memory
On 29 September 2026, King Mohammed VI appointed Fatima-Zahra Mansouri as Head of Government and tasked her with forming the new government, in accordance with Article 47 of the Constitution, after the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM) came first in the legislative elections. She thus became the first woman to hold this post in Morocco’s history. At first glance the event may seem a break with the past, but anyone who looks into the memory of this land finds that entrusting leadership to a woman is not foreign to it, and that the Amazighs have, in this regard, a historical and cultural tradition worth recalling.
The legitimacy here is, beyond doubt, institutional and electoral. Mansouri did not reach the post by virtue of a cultural affiliation, but through a long political career that began in Marrakech, where in 2009 she became the first woman to head the municipal council, returned to its presidency in 2021, and went on to hold ministerial and party responsibilities. But major political events do not occur in a vacuum: they find in the collective consciousness a ground that makes them acceptable and understandable, and the ground on which this event takes place is a land where women have remained present in positions of leadership and counsel.
The story begins with the language itself. In the Amazigh language, a woman is called “tamghart”, the feminine form of “amghar”, the wise man of standing in the community. Precision requires noting that “amghar” is a title attached to specific charismatic figures among men, who must meet demanding conditions of experience, knowledge and a firm command of Amazigh customary law, whereas Amazigh women, without exception, are regarded as wise and as people whose opinion counts. In Amazigh culture a woman is not named by a form that belongs to dependence, but by one that belongs to the lexicon of dignity and authority, and the deep cultural weight of the word “tamghart” spares us further explanation.
The researcher Jawad Amsmoud, in an article on the status of the Amazigh woman published in the newspaper Tawiza, argues that social life among the Amazighs rests on two basic pillars: the land, “tamurt”, and the woman, “tamghart”, and that without the two the meaning of the man, the “amghar”, is incomplete. In this equation the woman is not a secondary or supplementary element but a partner in defining the man himself, and she has been likened to the land for reasons of fertility, life, identity and belonging. It is a symbolic reading consistent with the foregoing: the woman holds a fixed place in authentic Moroccan cultural space and, in the speech of Marrakchis, she is “moulat l-klam”, that is, in Arab culture, the one who holds the power to decide and settle.
Historical memory confirms what the language suggests. Dihya, known in the Arabic sources as al-Kahina, led the Amazigh resistance in the Aurès in the seventh century. Tin Hinan is regarded in Tuareg memory as the symbolic founder of the Hoggar society. Queen Kenza al-Awrabiya joined her husband Idris I in founding the Idrisid state. And the example closest to our subject is Zaynab an-Nafzawiyya of Marrakech, who was Yusuf ibn Tashfin’s partner in running the Almoravid state and whom historians describe as a woman of judgment and counsel. The Almoravids founded Marrakech, the city of Morocco’s head of government; so the political history of this very city is tied to an Amazigh woman who took part in decision-making, which points to a symbolic resonance between the two women.
This leadership was not an isolated exception; it had roots in daily life. Amazigh women are partners in the agricultural and craft economy and, under the customs of several regions, own their tools of production and their jewellery. They carry the language and memory through storytelling and oral poetry, and hold the floor in arts such as ahwash, ahidous and izran, in an oral society where memory was not written down in books. Women were one of the institutions that protected the community from dissolving, and they were always a refuge when the need for wisdom and leadership grew pressing. It is an authentic tradition among the Imazighen to honour women and entrust public affairs to them.
The presence of Amazigh women, with their voices, faces, work and songs, was part of the social order itself, not something hidden away or set apart.
It should be noted that we do not claim Morocco is the first Muslim country led by a woman: Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey and Indonesia preceded it, and in North Africa specifically, Tunisia. But the value of the Moroccan case is that the event comes in harmony with a cultural ground that does not resist it but lends it acceptance, within a constitution that enshrines equality and a family code that has undergone successive reforms. There are also outstanding Moroccan women who have proven their competence in many fields, among them Mrs Fatima Mansouri, who has never ceased to affirm her Amazigh descent on her mother’s side.
This tradition takes on added meaning in the broader national context: the Amazigh language was made official in the Constitution in 2011, the Amazigh New Year was adopted as an official holiday, and recognition of cultural plurality entered the definition of national identity. In this climate, invoking Dihya, Zaynab and Tin Hinan… is no longer a commemorative luxury but part of a deeper reading of Moroccan women’s history, one that says their presence in the public sphere is not entirely a recent development, and that modern Morocco recovers as much as it innovates. This is what Amsmoud sums up when he links restoring the dignity of women to restoring the dignity of the Amazigh language itself: for him, empowering women means embracing a civilizational view of the human being and honouring difference.
Let us put things in proportion: Fatima-Zahra Mansouri is head of a government for all Moroccans, who reached her post through elections, the Constitution and the trust of institutions, and her path cannot be reduced to a regional or cultural origin. Yet from the standpoint of memory, the event fits with what has remained present in the Amazigh imagination for centuries: a woman can be a leader, a reference point and a decision-maker. When a woman from Marrakech sits at the head of the government, it is neither foreign to this land nor the import of an alien idea; in one of its aspects at least, it appears as a return to an old meaning in a new constitutional form.
The argument that can be made is that our advance toward equality does not mean a break with ourselves: entrusting the leadership of the government to a woman is, from one angle, recovering an authentic part of who we are. Seen this way, the appointment is not merely a step toward political equality; it can also be viewed as recovering a part of Moroccan memory in which women were not always confined to the private sphere or excluded from decision-making circles. In Amazigh culture in particular, the historical memory is full of female figures tied to leadership, management and social standing, which makes women’s presence in the public sphere far from a newly invented or alien idea.
From here, the appointment of Fatima-Zahra Mansouri as head of government takes on a significance that goes beyond its immediate political dimension. On 29 September 2026 she became the first woman to lead the government in Morocco’s history, under Article 47 of the Constitution. The event should not be reduced to a victory for women in the narrow rights sense; it can also be read as a moment when the modern constitutional path meets certain components of Moroccan cultural memory.
Here precisely we can answer the hardline discourse that relies on the saying “No people will prosper who entrust their affairs to a woman.” The problem with this discourse lies not only in its stance toward women but in turning a historical saying into an absolute political rule, as if a person’s fitness for public responsibility were determined by their condition rather than their competence, their sex rather than their ability. This is a flagrant blow to the Moroccan Constitution, which expressly states that men and women enjoy, on an equal footing, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights and freedoms, and that the State works to achieve parity between men and women.
Above all, believing in equality does not require confrontation with religion or with society’s cultural identity. Moroccan society is not a single block of positions and perceptions but the product of multiple historical and cultural layers: Arab, Amazigh, Islamic, Mediterranean, African and Hebraic. Defending women’s presence in positions of responsibility therefore need not be presented as a victory of one culture over another, or of modernity over heritage; it can be presented as a fresh reading of the heritage itself. This reading concluded that the Amazigh spirit is present in the idea of appointing Fatima Mansouri as head of government, which perhaps explains the positive response to the event from the Amazigh cultural movement in Morocco, since the appointment fits its view of women in Amazigh society: Amazigh women were never, historically, merely objects of protection but also agents of leadership and management. Mansouri’s appointment can thus become, for the Amazigh movement, an occasion to reread the image of women in Amazigh culture.
Saying that women’s advance toward decision-making positions represents a “break with the self” therefore inverts the question inaccurately. The real break may be reducing our history to a negative stereotype in which heading the government is a male preserve, forgetting the active female models our societies have known in the family, society, the economy, culture and leadership. In our view, then, women recovering their place in decision-making is the recovery of part of the self, not a departure from it.
The value of the Moroccan experience here lies in the fact that equality need not be presented as imitation of the other; it can be built from within the Moroccan constitutional and cultural reference itself. When a woman heads the government, the real question is no longer: may a woman govern? It becomes the question most consistent with the logic of the modern state: does she meet the conditions of political responsibility, and does she have the competence, experience and capacity to bear the public trust? Her sex should not be the criterion for judging her.
Morocco thus rediscovers itself in light of its constitutional and social development, and equality is not always an import from abroad but a return to authentic elements of Moroccan memory, rediscovered in a new context.
Ahmed Zahid
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