The Mozabites (self-name At Mzab, "people of the Mzab") are a Berber-speaking community of the M'Zab Valley in the northern Sahara of Algeria, about 600 km south of Algiers. Most are Ibadi Muslims. Population estimates range from about 150,000 to 300,000. UNESCO, M'Zab Valley; Alan Jones, Ibāḍiyya, Encyclopedia of Religion (via Encyclopedia.com); Wikipedia, Mozabite people
This page uses "mythology" loosely. The documented belief system is Islamic, and the stories below concern refuge, migration, the origin of the name Mzab, and the founding of towns, more than gods and spirits. Sources disagree on some dates and origins, and the page says where.
The Valley and Its Towns
The Mzab is a rocky plateau valley between the oases of Laghouat to the north and Ouargla to the south. It receives about 60 mm of rain a year, and summer temperatures can pass 45°C. Farming depends on a deep underground water table. Oasis gardens are planted in layers, with date palms on top, fruit trees beneath them and vegetables and fodder crops at ground level. Encyclopédie berbère, Mzab: Histoire et société (in French)
Five walled towns, called ksour (singular ksar), stand along the wadi: El Atteuf, Bounoura, Melika, Ghardaïa and Beni Isguen. UNESCO dates their founding between 1012 and 1350. Two more Ibadi towns, Berriane and El Guerrara, lie about a hundred kilometres away and were founded in the seventeenth century by Ibadi lineages that split off from the others after internal conflicts. Ibadis are a smaller share of the population there than in the five original towns. UNESCO, M'Zab Valley; Encyclopédie berbère, Mzab: Histoire et société (in French)
What Ibadi Islam Teaches
Ibadism is one of the main branches of Islam, alongside Sunni and Shia Islam, and it is far smaller than either. Ibadis accept the five pillars of Islam that all Muslims share. The branch began about twenty years after Muhammad's death, among a group of Muslims who broke with the majority during the first civil war (656 to 661 CE) over the conduct of the caliphs Uthman and Ali. The group was centered in Basra, took its name from Abdallah ibn Ibad, who appears to have been its political mentor, and recognized Jabir ibn Zayd as its first imam. After Jabir's death in 711 the community moved to remote regions, mainly Oman, Yemen and North Africa, and only in Oman and the Mzab did it survive in large numbers. Alan Jones, Ibāḍiyya, Encyclopedia of Religion (via Encyclopedia.com)
The doctrine differs from Sunni and Shia teaching in specific ways:
- Any believer who is morally and religiously irreproachable can be elected imam, whatever his race or tribe. The community is entitled to remove an imam who goes astray. Sunnis generally hold that the imam must come from the Quraysh, the tribe of Muhammad, and Shia Muslims hold that he must come from the family of Ali.
- In law, Ibadis give more weight to the Quran and less to the hadith (reports of Muhammad's words and actions) than other branches do. One result is that they do not impose the punishment of stoning for adultery, which is not in the Quran.
- Ibadi scholars have never declared the work of legal reasoning (ijtihad) closed, and they read works by Sunni and Mu'tazili authors while judging them by Ibadi tradition.
- Rules developed for living among a non-Ibadi majority allow marriage and mutual inheritance with non-Ibadi Muslims, and allow concealing one's beliefs when under threat, though not to the point of serving a non-Ibadi ruler.
Alan Jones, Ibāḍiyya, Encyclopedia of Religion (via Encyclopedia.com)
Modern Ibadis tend to downplay the branch's origin in the early Kharijite movements, and many reject the label "Kharijite" outright. The same encyclopedia entry notes that, until the late twentieth century, most of what was written about Ibadis came from hostile Sunni authors, which is one reason older descriptions should be read with care. Alan Jones, Ibāḍiyya, Encyclopedia of Religion (via Encyclopedia.com)
Scholars and Town Councils
Religious learning and local government in the Mzab run through the halqa, an assembly of scholars. The word originally named a combined religious and military institution of the early Ibadi states. After the last Ibadi imamate, at Tihert, fell, it became a method of teaching: students sit in a circle around a master, and candidates are admitted only after a probationary period of ascetic living, isolation, and physical and moral discipline. The first founding text of the Mzab's halqa, the Siyar of the 'Azzaba of Ghardaïa, dates from the early fourteenth century and aimed to train the Mzab's Ibadi elite, the 'azzaba. In the fifteenth century a reform set up two levels. The imessurda recite the Quran and other religious texts, and the irwen, advanced students whose name comes from the Berber verb for "write," become the learned class from which political and religious authority is drawn. Britannica describes an assembly of twelve scholars (halqa) that administers the five towns. Encyclopédie berbère, Mzab: Histoire et société (in French); Encyclopaedia Britannica, Mzab
Town councils called djemaâ issued rules on who could live in the towns in the eighteenth century. The council of Ghardaïa limited the number of houses held by the nomadic M'dabih early in the century, and a confederation-wide decision at the end of the century banned selling houses to nomads. The Berber Encyclopedia reads these measures as evidence of how much weight the Mozabites placed on keeping their community cohesive. Encyclopédie berbère, Mzab: Histoire et société (in French)
Mosques and the Plan of the Towns
UNESCO describes the layout of each ksar in physical terms. A wall surrounds the town, and a mosque dominates it. The mosque is built as a fortress and serves as the last place of defence in a siege, with an arsenal and a grain store, and its minaret works as a watchtower. Houses stand around it in concentric rings up to the ramparts. Each house is a cubic unit of a standard type. UNESCO reads this as the plan of an egalitarian society that protects family privacy and autonomy. A ksar, a cemetery, and a palm grove with a summer citadel make up each settlement. UNESCO, M'Zab Valley
The Berber Encyclopedia adds that the mosque is usually built on an older cult site called an aâssas ("guardian" in Berber), and that it is the sacred centre of the town. The market lies outside the walls and is the profane space where trade and contact with strangers take place. Wealthier families keep summer houses in the palm groves, where they stay in the hottest months. Encyclopédie berbère, Mzab: Histoire et société (in French)
Beni Isguen
Britannica calls Beni Isguen the sacred town of the Mzabite league. It bars people outside the sect from some quarters and does not allow strangers to spend the night within its walls. A deputy director of the local tourism office, quoted by the Algerian news site Algérie360, says that smoking is banned for residents and visitors alike, that short clothing for women and photographs without the guide's permission are not allowed, and that begging is banned because a system of social solidarity exists. He says residents regard smoking as both religiously forbidden and a health hazard. The same article describes a market, the Lalla Achou, where wool clothing and dates are sold at auction, and says the town is known for a carpet sold worldwide. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Mzab; Algérie360, Beni Isguen (in French)
Origin Accounts and the Refuge Story
The common account says the Mzab's Ibadis descend from refugees from the Rustamid state of Tihert, which the Fatimids destroyed in 909. This view is widespread in colonial-era writing and among Mozabites themselves. The Mozabite anthropologist Brahim Chérifi, summarized in the Berber Encyclopedia, argues that the settlement is more complicated. People lived in the valley long before Islam, as shown by Neolithic hearths and rock engravings dating back at least 3000 years BCE. Islam arrived in the second half of the eighth century, and Ibadism spread among Berbers who found its doctrine closer to their customs. Ibadis from the east moved in after the Hilali Arab invasions of the eleventh century, and those of Ouargla and Sedrata arrived in the thirteenth century, fleeing the Almoravids. The Encyclopedia's author suggests that these repeated persecutions strengthened a belief in a refuge oasis, which the scholar T. Lewicki called the "myth of Gugraf." Encyclopédie berbère, Mzab: Histoire et société (in French)
The same source gives three explanations of the name Mzab, which shows how origin stories get attached to a name. Medieval writers, including Ibn Khaldun, derived it from a group called Banu Musab. The Ibadi writer Amhammad Atfayyash (1914) linked it to the Arabic word mizab, "gutter," specifically the gutter of the sanctuary of the Great Mosque of Mecca, which would give the Ibadis a sacred link to Mecca. Chérifi proposes the Berber phrase At n Zab, "people of the Zab," a region around Biskra from which many Ibadis came. His conclusion is that the Mozabites do not share a single ethnic origin. Over the centuries they became a community held together by marriage within the group and by a single religion. Encyclopédie berbère, Mzab: Histoire et société (in French)
Berber Heritage in Practice
The Mozabites speak Mozabite (Tumzabt), a Zenati language of the Berber branch of the Afroasiatic family, with about 150,000 speakers. Many Mozabites also speak Algerian Arabic. Wikipedia, Mozabite people
Berber terms run through the community's institutions. The At Mzab name for themselves, the imessurda and irwen who study in the halqa, the igherman (lineage villages around water sources that preceded the ksour), and the aâssas cult sites under the mosques are all Berber words. The Berber Encyclopedia also notes that Ibadism spread across North Africa chiefly among Berbers. Villages in the valley were organized by lineage before the ksour were built, and rival factions (soffs) existed within the Ibadi towns. Encyclopédie berbère, Mzab: Histoire et société (in French)
Trade and Work
The Mzab's towns grew with trans-Saharan trade. After the caravan city Ouargla declined in the eleventh century, Mozabite merchants took a place in the trade routes. Under the Ottomans, Mozabite merchants in Algiers formed a guild with monopolies on slaughterhouses, flour mills and baths. In the 1850s the Mozabites negotiated an autonomous status with the French in exchange for an annual tribute and a tax on imported goods, and France formally annexed the Mzab in 1882. After independence in 1962, oil and gas fields at Hassi R'mel and Hassi Messaoud brought contracts and investment, and industrial zones grew at Ghardaïa and El Guerrara. The Berber Encyclopedia's author credits historical circumstances above all, helped by habits he names as part of Ibadi culture: a work ethic, solidarity within lineages, frugality and a tendency to save. Encyclopédie berbère, Mzab: Histoire et société (in French); Encyclopaedia Britannica, Mzab
Today
Two currents divide Mozabite religious opinion. A reform movement began in the early twentieth century under Brahim Bayoud, who had studied in Tunis and Cairo and was influenced by the Algerian reformist ulama led by Ben Badis. It sought to adopt new techniques, reform education and end the ban on women leaving the Mzab. Conservative religious leaders, especially in Beni Isguen, saw this as a danger to Ibadi doctrine. The conservatives favour keeping a distinction between sacred and profane life, and the reformers favour joining civil and religious life. Both claim to continue the original Ibadi doctrine. Encyclopédie berbère, Mzab: Histoire et société (in French)
The valley became the wilaya (province) of Ghardaïa in 1984. The Berber Encyclopedia reports that migration from elsewhere has shifted the demographic balance against the Ibadis, that coexistence with neighbouring Maliki Arab communities has long involved friction and at times violence, and that the unplanned building that has followed the growth now crowds the wadi bed and its banks. UNESCO notes that the valley's urban and population growth has accelerated since the early 1980s and that control of building near the palm groves and flood areas is a management priority. The valley has been a World Heritage site since 1982. Encyclopédie berbère, Mzab: Histoire et société (in French); UNESCO, M'Zab Valley; Algérie360, Beni Isguen (in French)