Cyril Isnart

 

 

The Berbers of North Africa and the Sahara are considered, both in literature and by their political apologists, to be cultural groups which have survived contact with different civilizations over the course of history – from the Roman Empire to the Arab domination of North Africa. Their languages ​​are part of a particular and very varied linguistic family and their political organization is characterized by the importance of the tribe and the rigid hierarchy of their social relations. During the European colonization political and scientific manipulation tried to affiliate the Berber communities to the Romans and the Normans. That was the basic assumption behind most ethnological writing about the religious feast days, making great efforts to  compare ancient Roman religions, medieval European folklore and current Berber rituals. The New Year celebration and the ritual use of masks in the region of Tlemcen (located more than 500 km from Algiers, close to the border with Morocco), described in this Algerian television report is part of this interpretive genealogy which relishes phrases such as “agrarian cycle”, “fertility festival”, “ancestor worship”, while cultivating the romantic image of small village communities jealously guarding and practising authentic folk rituals which seem to come directly from some distant ancestral past.

However there are lines of continuity between the northern and the southern Mediterranean. The New Year celebration in the European Julian calendar has its Berber equivalent in Yannayer – the word for the first month of the year in the Berber language (whose etymology comes from Ianuarius, the Latin word for January) – just as the European medieval carnival seems to have its exact counterpart in the display and use of the masks of Ayred, shown in this film. Each of these feast days is part of the agricultural and solar calendar, with similar ritual sequences and characteristics (presence of silent masks, begging alms door-to-door, wishes for good health, the central role of youth and children, etc..). Moreover the experts and scholars interviewed, who unfortunately remain anonymous, put forward many arguments showing how similar the two cultures are, emphasizing the central role of communal celebrations in the Mediterranean agricultural calendar. The commentary, playing on the picturesque, the authenticity and pre-Islamic origins of these rituals, tends to dodge the more recent social, political and cultural issues which the Berbers also reveal in their cultural performances.

 

BERQUE Jacques, 2001, « Qu’est-ce qu’une tribu nord-africaine ? », Opera Minora II. Histoire et anthropologie du Maghreb, Paris, Bouchène.

Pâques Viviana 1975, « Carnaval, fête du mariage et de la mort », Revue des Sciences Sociales de la France de l'Est, n°4, pp. 276-294.

Kilani Mondher 1997 « La théorie des « deux races » : quand la science répète le mythe » in HAINARD J. et KAEHR R., Dire les autres, Lausanne, Payot, pp. 31-45.