Kahina

Al-Kahina (Arabic: الكاهنة, romanized: al-Kāhina, lit. 'the priestess'), also known as Dihya, was a Berber warrior-queen of the Aurès^[1] (present-day Algeria) and a religious and military leader who lived during the seventh century AD/CE.

Al-Kahina is known to have united various Berber tribes under her leadership to fight against the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb, leading the indigenous North African defense of the region then known as Numidia. She fought in multiple battles, notably defeating Umayyad forces in the Battle of Meskiana. Afterwards, she became the uncontested ruler of the whole Maghreb region,^[3][4][5][6] and remained so until being decisively defeated at the Battle of Tabarka.

There are various accounts of the circumstances surrounding her death, but she is thought to have died in modern-day Algeria towards the end of the seventh century, or early 8th century. For five years Al-Kahina ruled a free Berber state from the Aurès Mountains to the oasis of Ghadames (698–703 AD). She is considered one of the most famous figures of her era in the history of the Berber resistance to the Arab conquest.^[1] Her legacy has been retold through the oral tradition since her lifetime. There are various written accounts of her from precolonial and postcolonial perspectives.

Her real name is contested, but may be among the variations that exist today: Daya, Dehiya, Dihya, Dahya or Damya.^[7] Her title was cited by Arabic-language sources as al-Kāhina (the priestess soothsayer) (Arabic: الكاهنة). This was the nickname given to by her Muslim opponents because of her alleged ability to foresee the future.^[1]

Over four centuries after her death, Tunisian hagiographer al-Mālikī seems to have been among the first to state she resided in the Aurès Mountains. There is some debate about which Berber tribe Al-Kahina originated from. Seven centuries after her death, the pilgrim at-Tijani was told she belonged to the Lūwāta tribe.^[8] However, when the later historian Ibn Khaldun wrote his account, he placed her with the Jarawa tribe .

Various authors have claimed that Al-Kahina was Jewish^[9], Christian or of the traditional Berber pagan religion. Various sources suggest that she was of Jewish faith or that her tribe were Judaized Berbers.^[10] The idea that the Jarawa were Judaized comes from the medieval historian Ibn Khaldun . Hirschberg and Talbi note that Ibn Khaldun seems to have been referring to a time before the advent of the late Roman and Byzantine empires, and a little later in the same paragraph seems to say that by Roman times "the tribes" had become Christianized . As early as 1963, the Israeli historian H.Z. Hirschberg, in retranslating the text of Ibn Khaldun questioned this interpretation, and in general the existence of large Jewish Berber tribes in the end of Antiquity.^[1] In the words of H.Z. Hirschberg, "of all the known movements of conversion to Judaism and incidents of Judaizing, those connected with the Berbers and Sudanese in Africa are the least authenticated."^[11]

According to al-Mālikī, Al-Kahina was accompanied in her travels by an "idol". Both Mohamed Talbi and Gabriel Camps interpreted this idol as a Christian icon, either of Christ, the Virgin, or a saint protecting the queen. However, Tunisian historian M'hamed Hassine Fantar held that this icon represented a separate Berber deity, suggesting she followed traditional Berber religion. However, Al-Kahina being a Christian remains the most likely hypothesis.^[1] According to various Muslim sources, al-Kāhina was the daughter of Tabat, or some say Mātiya.^[2] These sources depend on tribal genealogies, which were generally concocted for political reasons during the 9th century.^[12]

Al-Kahina succeeded the Berber ruler, Kusaila, as the military commander of the Berber tribes in the 680s in opposition to Ummayad rule in North Africa by the Umayyad dynasty. By the 690s, Kahina had assumed personal command of the North African armies, a complex task given that the berber tribes were spread over a large geographical range of Ifriqiya - comprising Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya - and were religiously diverse, including Jewish, pagan and Christian tribes.^[13] As scholar Fatima Sadiqi states, "Kahina’s female leadership did not rely on institutionalized authority, but on recognized personal charismatic power".^[13]

After a successful campaign in Egypt and Carthage, (see Muslim conquest of North Africa), Arab general Hasan ibn al-Nu'man, was searching for his next enemy to defeat, and was told that the most powerful monarch in North Africa was "the Queen of the Berbers" (Arabic: malikat al-barbar) Al-Kahina, and accordingly marched into Numidia.

In 698, the armies met near Meskiana^[14] in the present-day province of Oum el-Bouaghi at the Battle of Meskiana (or "battle of camels") in Algeria.^[15] Al-Kahina defeated Hasan so soundly that he fled Ifriqiya and holed up in Cyrenaica (Libya) for four or five years.

Realizing that the enemy was too powerful and bound to return, Kahina was said to have embarked on a scorched earth campaign, which had little impact on the mountain and desert tribes, but lost her the crucial support of the sedentary oasis-dwellers. Instead of discouraging the Arab armies, her desperate decision hastened defeat.^[16]

Hasan ibn Al-Nu'man eventually returned and, aided by communications with the captured officer Khalid bin Yazid al-Qaysi adopted by Al-Kahina, defeated her at the Battle of Tabarka in 702 (a locality in present-day Tunisia near the Algerian border).^[1][17][18] However, according to the French historians Charles André Julien and Roger Le Tourneau, Kahina fought the Islamic conquest troops at El Djem Roman amphitheater but was killed in combat near a well that still bears her name, Bir al Kahina in Aures.^[19]

According to some accounts, Al-Kahina died fighting the invaders, sword in hand. However, other accounts report that after sending her two sons to the Arab military camp to convert to Islam and join their forces, she committed suicide^[13] allegedly by swallowing poison rather than be taken by the enemy. According to many historians, her sons Bagay and Khenchla converted,^[20] and led the Berber army to Iberia. However, the historian Ibn al-Athīr says they died with their mother.

Kahina's death is most likely to have occurred in the 690s or 700s, with 703 CE given as the most likely year.^[1] In that year, Kahina was, according to Ibn Khaldun, 127 years old. This is evidently yet another of the many myths which surround her. Regardless of the manner of her death, it is reported that she was beheaded, and her head was sent back to the Umayyad Caliph in Damascus as proof of her death.^[21]

Although there are ambiguities about the exact manner of her death, anthropologist Abdelmajid Hannoum summarised what we do know thus:

"Though the story of the Kahina may vary from one informant to another, the pattern is the same: the Kahina is the Berber heroine who fought the Arabs for independence."^[22]

Although Al-Kahina's wrtings, including poems and speeches were all destroyed after her death, she was adopted as a symbol by North African women in resistance to foreign occupation and against male hegemony.^[13] During the period of French colonisation of Algeria, Kahina was a model for the militant women who fought as part of the resistance. In the Kabyle insurrection of 1851 and 1857, women such as Algerian national hero Lalla Fatma N'Soumer and Lalla Khadija Bent Belkacem, who were known as chief warriors, took Al-Kahina as a model.^[23][24]

In the early 20th century, the French, anxious to Frenchify Algeria by Romanising its past, drew parallels between themselves and the Romans. The Algerian nationalists, seeking to tie Algeria to the East instead, draw the same parallels, but for them both Rome and France were colonial powers, responsible for the decline of Phoenician civilisation in the past, and Arabic civilisation in the present. Both ideologies used Kahina's mythology as a founding myth. On one side, she was the one who fought the Arabs and Islam to keep Algeria Christian, on the other, she was the one who fought all invaders (Byzantines or Arabs) to create an independent state.^[24]

In the present day, the image of Kahina is constantly used by Berber activists to showcase how they, as a people, are strong and will not be conquered or diminished by other communities. Her face is often seen in graffiti and sculptures around Algeria to showcase their support for the progressive ideals she represents. While her true appearance is still unknown, artists have depicted her with certain aspects that reinforce the progressive movement she is known to represent.

However, not all governments accept the ideals behind Kahina. One statue of Kahina in Baghai was condemned by the government due to blasphemy. The president of the Defense of the Arab Language, Othman Saadi, said that Kahina represented the resistance to Islam, and thus, should be condemned.^[25]

Another, lesser known account of Al-Kahina claimed that she had an interest in early studies of desert birds. While this view may or may not be plausible, some evidence has been recovered at a potential site of her death in modern-day Algeria ^{[clarification needed]} . Several fragments of early parchment with a painting of a bird on them were found, although there's no way to conclude the fragments were hers. However, it is possible that she began her interest while in Libya, as the painting was of a Libyan bird species.

• Umayyad conquest of North Africa
• Kingdom of the Aurès
• Kusaila
• Colonialism

• Ibn Khaldun, Kitāb al-Ibar. Usually cited as: Histoire des Berbères et des dynasties musulmanes de l'Afrique septentrionale, a French trans. by William McGuckin de Slane, Paul Geuthner, Paris, 1978. This 19th-century translation should now be regarded as obsolete. There is a more accurate modern French translation by Abdesselam Cheddadi, Peuples et Nations du Monde: extraits des Ibar, Sindbad, Paris, 1986 & 1995. Hirschberg (1963) gives an English translation of the section where Ibn Khaldun discusses the supposed Judaized Jarāwa.
• Hannoum, Abdelmajid. (2001). Post-Colonial Memories: The Legend of the Dihyā, a North African Heroine (Studies in African Literature). ISBN 0-325-00253-3. This is a study of the legend of the Dihyā in the 19th century and later. The first chapter is a detailed critique of how the legend of the Dihyā emerged after several transformations from the 9th century to the 14th.
• Hirschberg, H.Z. (November 1963). "The Problem of the Judaized Berbers". The Journal of African History. 4 (3): 313–339. doi:10.1017/S0021853700004278. ISSN 1469-5138. S2CID 162261998.
• Hirschberg, H.Z. (1974). A History of the Jews in North Africa. Vol. 1 From Antiquity to the Sixteenth Century (2nd ed., Eng. trans. ed.). Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-03820-2.
• al-Mālikī, Riyād an-Nufūs. Partial French trans. (including the story of the Dihyā) by H.R. Idris, 'Le récit d'al-Mālikī sur la Conquête de l'Ifrīqiya', Revue des Etudes Islamiques 37 (1969) 117–149. The accuracy of this translation has been criticised by Talbi (1971) and others.
• Modéran, Yves (2005). "Kahena. (Al-Kâhina)". Kahena. Encyclopédie berbère. Vol. 27 | Kairouan – Kifan Bel-Ghomari. Aix-en-Provence: Edisud. pp. 4102–4111. doi:10.4000/encyclopedieberbere.1306. ISBN 978-2-7449-0538-4. The most recent critical study of the historical sources.
• Talbi, Mohammed. (1971). Un nouveau fragment de l'histoire de l'Occident musulman (62–196/682–812) : l'épopée d'al Kahina. (Cahiers de Tunisie vol. 19 pp. 19–52). An important historiographical study.
• at-Tijānī, Rihlat. Arabic text ed. by H.H. Abdulwahhab, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt, 1994. French trans. by A. Rousseau in Journal Asiatique, section containing the story of the Dihyā is in n.s. 4, vol. 20 (1852) 57–208.