Damia al-Kāhina

Berber queen (r. c. 667-c. 702)

• Born: c. 650
• Birthplace: Aures Mountains (now in Algeria)
• Died: c. 702
• Place of death: North Africa (now in Algeria)

Damia al-Kāhina was queen of a Berber tribe and led the resistance to Arab expansion into North Africa in the seventh century.

Early Life

Damia al-Kāhina (DAY-mee-uh uhl-kah-HEE-nah), the Jewish queen of the Berbers, was born into the Jarawa tribe of Berbers, who were located in the Aures Mountains of Algeria. She has been called the Deborah of the Berbers (after the biblical Deborah) because of her military leadership of the tribe, and French writers have referred to her as the Joan of Arc of Africa. The name of al-Kāhina’s father was Tabita or Tatit, and some sources say that he was the chief of the group.

On her father’s death, al-Kāhina replaced him, although apparently after considerable infighting. Some reports say that she had two sons, one with a man of Byzantine (and thus Christian) origin and another who was Berber and perhaps Jewish, which indicates the cultural mixing that was occurring at the time. The Berbers in the region were known by the name Amazigh, which means “free” or “noble” and refers to their sense of independence. They were spread out over a vast region, including those occupying Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Although the Berbers were organized into various tribes under different rulers, they had common links of language and culture.

By the seventh century, when al-Kāhina was born, the various Berber tribes adhered to a mosaic of religious practices, especially Jewish and Christian. The Christian Berbers were allied with the Byzantine rulers, who, in turn, were known for persecuting the Jews. Before the confrontation between Christianity and Islam, it was not uncommon for entire tribes to convert to Judaism if their leaders did, and several tribes in the eastern world did convert to Judaism, including Yemenites, Khazars, and Berbers such as the Jerawa. In addition to the Berber Jews, who were mostly rural, Middle Eastern Jews resided in the urban centers along the coast and Spanish Jews fled the Visigothic repression in Spain . Although Jews in both North Africa and Spain were oppressed by their respective Christian kingdoms, they reacted differently to the Muslim invasion. The Spanish Jews welcomed it, while the Berber Jews resisted it, probably because their tradition of local autonomy was threatened by the Arab invasion. North Africa produced the unusual circumstance of Jews uniting with Christians, who had persecuted them, in order to oppose the Muslim advance.

The origin of the name Kāhina seems to have its roots in the Arabic word kahin, which means diviner, sorcerer, or priest; Kāhinah is the feminine form of the word. The comparable word in Hebrew is kohen, which has led to speculation that Kāhina might have been from a priestly Jewish family. For a thousand years after she died, her life was discussed almost exclusively in Arabic, and as a result the Arabic name became the established one. In pre-Islamic Arabia, the kahins were the guardians of holy places, and powers of sorcery or magic were also attributed to them. In the civil unrest in Arabia following the death of the Prophet Muḥammad, the local kahins frequently led the revolts. By calling this woman leader a Kāhinah, the early Arab narrators were identifying her as a non-Muslim and a diviner, or sorcerer. At that moment historically, the name probably also carried the implication of being a troublemaker or revolt leader.

The first reference to Damia al-Kāhina was made by the Muslim writer al-Wāqidī (747-823). Other writers from the same time period who mentioned her leadership in resisting the Arabs were Khalīfa ibn Khayyāt and al-Balādhurī. In later centuries, ՙAbd al-Hakam (ninth century), ՙAbd Bakrī (eleventh), and Ibn al-Athīr (thirteenth) also described the events surrounding her life. The account of Ibn Khaldūn, the respected Muslim cultural historian of the fourteenth century, synthesized the information from the earlier writers to make the most complete story of her life.

Life’s Work

Initially, Damia al-Kāhina’s power was limited to her tribe, but as the Arabs encroached from Egypt, she was able to rally the disparate Berber tribes to fight the invaders. Although she may have been the ruler of her tribe for as many as thirty-five years, it was her leadership of the broader Berber coalition against the Arabs that projected her into history. Eventually, she had wide influence over Ifriqiya, the Berber term for the area west of Egypt and the term that eventually gave its name to the entire continent. The Byzantine Christians had a strong presence in North Africa in the 600’, with their power concentrated in cities such as Carthage. The first Arabs arrived to Tunisia in 647, and by the 670’, there were Muslim converts and a Muslim military presence. The dominant Berber leader at the onset of the Arab advance was Kusayla, who initially sought to ally with them rather than fight, but he was later killed by one of the Arab leaders.

The assassination of Kusayla was seen as a traitorous act by the Berbers, and it seems to have led al-Kāhina to lose trust in the Arabs as well as to propel her into action against them. As al-Kāhina’s power grew, she suspended the practice of Muslim law and reportedly oppressed Muslim residents. Arab writers described a situation of civil unrest in the region that led Caliph Mu՚āwiyah I of the Umayyad Dynasty to intervene. He was religiously moderate, and he saw the Jews as allies against the Christian kingdoms and even established settlements of Jews in Tripoli, but he could not ignore what seemed to be a challenge to Islam. The war against al-Kāhina became a jihād in which the Arabs were committed to defend their co-religionists in the area and to spread the rule of Islam. She was accused of being a sorceress and cruel to her people, and this seems to have been part of the justification for invading and establishing Arab rule.

The caliph sent General Ḥassān ben al-Nuՙmān to quell the disturbances between Berbers and Muslims. The solution to the conflict was peaceful, and the general accepted a peace treaty with the Berbers, who agreed to pay an annual tribute. He remained in the region until the death of Caliph Mu՚āwiyah in 680. Eleven years later, there was renewed resistance from the Berbers, and he was again sent to the Maghreb by Caliph ՙAbd al-Malik. In 692, General Hassān marched with a large army to Carthage, which was the seat of the Byzantine rulers who had allied with al-Kāhina. The Byzantines abandoned the city in the face of the Arab advance, which marked the end of their influence in the region. After taking Carthage, Hassān turned toward the Aures Mountains, which were the stronghold of the Berber forces under al-Kāhina. Part of her strategy was a scorched-earth policy in which her forces withdrew from certain areas, leaving nothing behind for the advancing Arab army. She even destroyed her own fortified capital to keep it from being converted into an Arab stronghold. Hassān finally attacked the Berber forces led by al-Kāhina near the River of Tribulation (nahr al-balā). After a fierce battle, the Berbers defeated the Arabs and inflicted severe losses on them.

Among the Muslim prisoners taken by the Berbers was one named Khālid, whom al-Kāhina liked and adopted as her son. She released the others. The defeat was so disastrous for the Arab forces that Hassān withdrew and established the remainder of his army in a safe area on the coast near Barca in present-day Libya. Some writers suggest that al-Kāhina made attempts to establish peace with the Arabs at this point, but to no avail. Hassān did not attack again for another seven years, during which time he accumulated reinforcements, and he contacted Khālid to spy on the Berber forces. Khālid apparently complied, because there are stories of his hidden messages to Hassān being found inside a loaf of bread on one occasion and in the horn of a saddle on another.

In 697 or 698, General Hassān marched once again against the Berbers, some of whom defected to the Arab side, either because they saw the struggle to be futile or because of opposition to policies of al-Kāhina. Knowing about the divisions within her own people and the size of the approaching Arab army, al-Kāhina warned her sons that they might lose. She asked Khālid to use his contacts with the Arabs to protect her two sons as his own brothers in the case of her defeat. Even though she knew about his perfidy, he was her bridge to the Muslim world and her best means of protecting the lives of her sons.

The final battle came in 701 or 702, and the Berber forces were routed by the Arab army. Damia al-Kāhina was captured and killed, and oral tradition said that she died near a well that bore her name for centuries afterward. Her defeat and death did not end the confrontation, and the Berbers continued to resist the Arabs. Although most Berbers eventually converted to Islam, they still rejected Arabization. Jewish communities survived and did well under the Arabs, but the Arab-Berber conflict diminished only when the latter eventually regained power in the new Muslim North Africa.

After the Berber defeat, the two sons of al-Kāhina joined the Arab forces, and they were named the military leaders of the Jarawa and Aures regions under the new Muslim administration, the former being their mother’s tribe and the latter being her home region. The references by Arab writers to Berber defections and the naming of the two sons to important military positions in the Arab army emphasize the collaboration by Berbers with Arabs after their defeat.

Significance

Damia al-Kāhina was important as an extraordinary leader who not only ruled her people for many years but also was a strategic military commander. She united the Berbers in a way that perhaps no other leader has been able to do. Every cultural group in North Africa developed its own stories about her, and al-Kāhina became an even more complex persona in folklore.

The Arab groups against which she fought for so long portray her as an impediment to the eventual spread of Islam into North Africa. French writers have emphasized the Jewishness of al-Kāhina, claiming her as the representation of Western values staving off the advance of Muslim orthodoxy. They emphasize the Roman and Byzantine (that is, European and Christian) influences in the area, and they also refer to the presence of Byzantine forces in helping the resistance against the Arabs. Contemporary North African scholars celebrate her as a heroine and leader of the Berber people and as an example of their strength and resolution. More recently, Jewish writers also have described and evaluated the complex traditions surrounding al-Kāhina’s life. Some claim her as an example of leadership, willing to give her own life for her people, while others question her Jewishness. Feminist thinkers refer to her as an example of a strong woman who was successful in the traditionally male world of military leadership.

Damia al-Kāhina has a distinct significance to each group of people affected by her, and each group emphasizes different aspects of her life. She is beyond history, and she has become a legend with all of the elaborations on her life story expected of a legend.

Bibliography

Corcos, David. “Kāhina.” In Encyclopedia Judaica. Vol. 10. New York: Macmillian, 1972. The Kāhina was the queen of the Jerawa tribe of Berber converts to Judaism. She defeated the armies of Islam but was later betrayed and defeated. Her origins are controversial.

Hannoum, Abdelmajid. Colonial Histories, Post-colonial Memories: The Legend of the Kāhina, a North African Heroine. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 2001. Hannoum provides the most complete scholarly coverage in English of the folklore surrounding Damia al-Kāhina. He presents the various accounts of her life and traces the changes in them from the earliest Arab narrators to the present, including French colonialists, contemporary North Africans, feminists, and Jewish authors.

Roth, Norman. “The Kāhina: Legendary Materials in the Accounts of the ’Jewish Berber Queen.’” The Maghreb Review 7, nos. 5/6 (1982): 122-125. A review of important sources that discuss the history and folklore surrounding the Kāhina tradition, including Arab, French, and Jewish sources. Roth evaluates the potential validity of the various aspects of the story, including al-Kāhina’s name, her sons, her Jewishness, and strategic details.

Talbi, Mohamed. “Al-Kāhina.” In Encyclopedia of Islam. Vol. 4. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986. A concise description of al-Kāhina’s life and works.