The Kabyle myth is a colonial trope that was propagated by French colonists in the

French Algeria French Algeria (french: Alger to 1839, then afterwards; unofficially , ar, الجزائر المستعمرة), also known as Colonial Algeria, was the period of French colonisation of Algeria. French rule in the region began in 1830 with the ...

based on a supposed binary between

Arab The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...

and Kabyle, consisting of a set of stereotypes of supposed differences between them. The Kabyle myth emerged in the 19th century with

French colonialism The French colonial empire () comprised the overseas colonies, protectorates and mandate territories that came under French rule from the 16th century onward. A distinction is generally made between the "First French Colonial Empire", that existe ...

in Algeria (1830–1962), positing that the Kabyle people were more predisposed than Arabs to assimilate into "French civilization."

History

While elements can be traced to the writings of

Abbé Raynal ''Abbé'' (from Latin ''abbas'', in turn from Greek language, Greek , ''abbas'', from Aramaic ''abba'', a title of honour, literally meaning "the father, my father", emphatic state of ''abh'', "father") is the French word for an abbot. It is th ...

and precolonial travelers, the myth was seriously elaborated by French colonists between 1840 and 1857. It emerged largely in the writings of French military men, such as and . The Kabyle myth was diffused between 1860 and 1871, reaching its climax between 1871 and 1892 before finally being abandoned as a basis for social policy in 1915.Lazreg, Marnia. “The Reproduction of Colonial Ideology: The Case of the Kabyle Berbers.” Arab Studies Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 4, 1983, pp. 380–95. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41857696. Accessed 31 Aug. 2022. The French colony came to consider the Kabyle population more prepared to assimilate into French civilization "by virtue of the supposed democratic nature of their society, their superficial Islamicization, and the higher status of Kabyle women," as well as the belief that they were ancient Christians, of Celtic origin, who could easily be re-Christianized. Among the proponents of this myth was the French officer , who claimed: "In one hundred years, the Kabyles will be French!" , a colonist theorist of "Berber separatism" and racist, claimed that the ''qanuns'' (customary laws) of the Kabyles came from someone who was "not of the family of Mohamed and

Moses Moses hbo, מֹשֶׁה, Mōše; also known as Moshe or Moshe Rabbeinu (Mishnaic Hebrew: מֹשֶׁה רַבֵּינוּ, ); syr, ܡܘܫܐ, Mūše; ar, موسى, Mūsā; grc, Mωϋσῆς, Mōÿsēs () is considered the most important pro ...

but of that of

Montesquieu Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (; ; 18 January 168910 February 1755), generally referred to as simply Montesquieu, was a French judge, man of letters, historian, and political philosopher. He is the principa ...

and

Condorcet Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis of Condorcet (; 17 September 1743 – 29 March 1794), known as Nicolas de Condorcet, was a French philosopher and mathematician. His ideas, including support for a liberal economy, free and equal pu ...

Eugène Daumas Melchior Joseph Eugène Daumas (4 October 1803 in Delémont, Switzerland – May 1871 in Camblanes), was a French general and writer. Biography Eugène Daumas entered the army in 1822. He became an officer in 1827 and went on to the cavalry ...

and Paul-Dieudonné Fabar published in 1847: ‘‘Beneath the Muslim peel, one finds a Christian seed. We recognize now that the Kabyle people, partly autochtonous, partly German in origin, previously entirely Christian, did not completely transform itself with its new religion. . .

he Kabyle He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...

re-dressed himself in a burnous, but he kept underneath his anterior social form, and it is not only with his facial tattoos that he displays before us, unbeknownst to him, the symbol of the Cross’’ (Daumas and Fabar 1847: I, 77).

Legacy

An analogous dichotomy played out in the Berber policy of the French protectorate in Morocco (1912–1956). According to Edmund Burke III, who described it as "one of the most enduring aspects of the French sociology of Islam, the myth and its supposed Arab-Berber dichotomy was fundamental to colonial discourse in North Africa, and its impact shaped postcolonial political discourse as well.

Alfred Rosenberg Alfred Ernst Rosenberg ( – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head of ...

s 1930 book ''

The Myth of the Twentieth Century ''The Myth of the Twentieth Century'' (german: Der Mythus des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts) is a 1930 book by Alfred Rosenberg, one of the principal ideologues of the Nazi Party and editor of the Nazi paper '' Völkischer Beobachter''. The titular ...

'', a touchstone of Nazi philosophy, includes the Berbers in with the Nordic Aryans and the upper classes of ancient Egypt as advanced superior races. This presumably{{speculation inline is based on Rosenberg's familiarity with the Kabyle myth.

References

Kabyle people Propaganda legends French Algeria