Masinissa's language was Tamazight
When I read an article published in your respected newspaper on September 21 under the title - The language of the state of Massinissa was not Amazigh -, it became clear to me that the author of the article, Mr. Othman Saadi, wanted, through some information that deserves clarification and correction, to give the status of non-language to Amazigh and through that give a new identity to the Amazigh. Although there are drawings that link us to the Lower Neolithic (4500-3950 years BC), that is, with the emergence of mining (metallurgy) and livestock raising. As one of those who hold a completely contradictory theory to Mr. Saadi and his colleague Muhyiddin Amimur, who prefer that the scientific idea be met with a corresponding idea, I had to enter into this dialogue, following the reasoning provided in Mr. Saadi’s proposal, and saying the following:
First: The mother language of the Numidian state in the days of Masinissa was the Berber language, known as the Lybic Language, and this is in the regional - demographic and cultural sense - despite the recognition of specialists in rock writings (Epigraphy), that the Punic and ancient Greek (Hellenic) languages were used in gatherings. Urban, as well as to communicate with the Kingdom of Carthage. The best proof of what we say is the monument located in the Atban Castle with the remains of the Duchess of Tunis (Douga), that is, the original homeland of Masinissa. Let us mention that in the year 1631, in this place, in addition to a Punic rock manuscript, a rock manuscript in the ancient Libyan language glorifying Masinissa and It has now been located in the British Museum in London on G.Russel Street since 1852. In addition, I would like to draw attention to the partial inventory of 1,344 Libyan rock inscriptions that were found in northeastern Algeria and Tunisia, the most famous of which is the Tiddis Vase in the Mila Province in Algeria.
Second: The term Lybic is the unified linguistic and written source for the concept of Amazigh inheritance, which preserved its roots, especially in the Sahara, and reached us in the form of the Tifinagh Alphabet. As for the term Libyan, known in Latin-Roman writings by the symbols (LBY) and before it in the Pharaonic civilization Lybu, it is the first definition of the inhabitants of North Africa before this description changed to Berbers and then to Berbers. When the Italians invaded present-day Libya, they derived this name from their historical writings.
Third: To say that the Punic-Phoenician-Canaanite language was dominant in Tamzgha is, in my opinion, incorrect, neither in form nor content, especially when the professor diminished the actual existence of the Amazigh language and reduced it only to the phrase: Punic was surrounded by oral dialects. By Tamazgha, we mean what was known to the Romans and later the Arabs as Africa, which is the subcontinent extending from Gyzis, 195 km west of Alexandria in Egypt, to Mogador in Morocco, and expanding southeastward until it reaches the Berber tribes of Ouzou and Tibesti in Chad and the north. Darfur, Sudan, and south to Udalen, Burkina Faso. All of this area, which represents about a third of the African continent, was the historical homeland of the Libyan peoples, and despite their mixing, the majority of them descend from the starting point, that is, the human model of the Ain al-Hanash site near the city of Setif (Algeria). All American universities, especially Stanford, value this. The matter is the work of the great scientist Camille Arambourg, who discovered the site in 1947, and who confirmed that life in North Africa began with the appearance of man, and that this region, with its particular climate and terrain, knew the first signs of human intelligence. The website (Britannica.com), for example, gives us very important information about the North African race, which is represented by the Acheulean, and after it the Mostaurian and the Aterean, information that serves as conclusive evidence that all of these countries were not empty and were not created, either racially or Linguistically and culturally, it changed with the arrival of the Phoenicians in the seventh century BC.
Fourth: It would have been more appropriate and objective to distinguish between the ethnic and linguistic origins of the Phoenicians and not invent a language called Canaanite in Algeria for no other reason than a literary-political connection devoid of scientific and historical evidence. Here we do not differ in saying when we consider that the Phoenicians descend from the Canaanite bloc whose center may have been in Abu Kamal on the Euphrates Valley on the Iraqi-Syrian border. This bloc extends to the Lebanese and Syrian shores and then branches off to the Kingdom of Tire in Lebanon. The arrival of Queen Alyssa to the shores of Tunisia It was not the beginning of learning to speak. All historians confirm, through what was known in the past as the cowhide treaty, that the Phoenician queen, who asked the Berber king Hiarbas (I mean Hiarbas I) for permission to reside, had found the Libyans (ancestors of the Berbers) with a language, writing, and civilization. As a reminder, the Amazigh tribes known as the Garamantes, who lived in ancient times in current southern Libya, left us a stock of drawings that were the subject of scientific studies by Gabriel Gamps, especially with regard to the cultural significance of Garamantian tractors.
Fifth: The Canaanite-Phoenician-Punic sequence has no meaning in the ethnic and linguistic study of North Africa because it places the original Libyan element at the bottom level, that is, in the position of being influenced and not influenced. The beginning of the Punic language as a language and its separation from Phoenician came through the Libyan-Berber influence, and all specialists agree, and I will mention here. In particular, the historical journals of Harvard University (Loeb Classical History) stated that the historical borders of the beginning of the separation from the Phoenicians in the western Mediterranean basin began with the Carthaginian admiral Hanun (425 BC) and his text written in Punic on the bronze tables in ancient Carthage. He is the same admiral who said: They came as Phoenicians and became Libyans. In all this trouble comes the testimony of Chrysostom, the Greek philosopher and writer 155-40 BC, in his memoirs, when he said that Admiral Hannon was able to transform the inhabitants of Carthage from Tyrians into Libyans. As we have in This context is the description that Roman Arrian gave to Admiral Hanoun when he said in Indica that Hanoun is Libyan, that is, Berber in the ethnic sense. The Libyan-Amazigh language, although influenced by the horizontal script of Punic writing after it was vertical, gave to this language more than it took from it. The scholar (Stephane Gsell) makes a distinction Between the Geometric-angular origin of the Libyan-Berber language and the Cursive Style origin of the Phoenician origins.
Sixth: Let us now go to the region from which Professor Othman Saadi, the author of the article, hails, which is the Tebessa region, or what is known in Algeria as the Namamesha, especially when he said that Father Donna the Great, who died in the year 355 AD, was born in the city of Naqrin, which is the southern border of the region to which the professor belongs. Despite this, I agree with him about the great historical role of this region, but I confirm, by virtue of my knowledge of the Peutingerian tablet and the Latin (Tabula Peutingeriana) of the Roman maps, that the city of Niqrin did not exist at that time, despite the existence of the phrase (Nigresens), from which the current word for the oasis of Niqrin is derived. This phrase is a definition of tribes allied to the Romans and made up of nomads, which always built shops for buying and selling near the military village that appeared in the year 104 AD in Henshir, Syriac, 6 km south of the Naqrin Oasis. To avoid any theoretical controversy, I will only mention that the name of this person has been identified. The place is in Mount Majdur, adjacent to Henshir Basiryani, which is (Ad Majores).
Seventh: Until now, no historian has detailed the place where the birth of Donna the Great was known, which the Latin writings call “Donatus Magnus,” which the texts linked to the location of “Casae Nigrae” or “Cellae Nigrae,” meaning the Black Houses or the Black Cells, which was explained by Professor Saadi with two clicks. South of the city of Tebessa in Algeria. Although there was a French officer named Baradez who said in 1947 that Casae Nigrae might be located on the road linking Henshir in Syriac (Ad Majores) and Tamgza (Ad Turres) in Tunisian territory, but he concluded Its possibility was marked with a question mark. This information was quickly refuted through geographical analyzes in the Oxford Historical Journal, and the saga of the Black lands headed west between Oumash, Sidi Khaled and Ras al-Ma’ad in the state of Biskra.
Eighth: Involving the Donatists and the Circumcellions in the linguistic and ethnic explanation of the Berbers and then linking them to Canaanite and Qahtani origins may not be related to the anthropological study. The Donatists are a sectarian crisis that appeared with the arrival of Christianity to North Africa. As for the statement that the Islamic conquest established Punic as the language of the Berbers, this was not mentioned by any Islamic historian, noting that when the Donatist rebel Robba was killed in the year 434 AD in the Tizi region in the state of Mascara, and not Tizi Ouzou in the Kabylie region. The monument commemorating her martyrdom was engraved in Latin. This monument, which was found in 1899 and was transferred to the Algeria Museum in France after that. We are talking about 434 BC, meaning three centuries before the Islamic conquest.
Ninth: Talking about Amazigh culture and identity to infer political convictions is considered an attack on it and an injustice against it. Therefore, human heritage must be valued, and I personally am among those who respect Arab culture and its enormous wealth that is the foundation of human culture. As for distorting the name Masinissa and giving it a meaning that has nothing to do with nominal studies (Onomastic Studies: This is a grave mistake. Most of the names of people and places in the Amazigh heritage are ancient Libyan, not Qahtani or Adnani, and the majority of names end with the letter A, with the addition of the letter “S” or “L” in other titles. Massinissa means “our eldest,” not the old man, as Professor Saadi said. And in the end. I draw attention to the fact that it is necessary to write another article about what Saint Augustine mentioned about the Canaanites, because this prompts us to address the historical monuments that were said to be in the area of Taxas (Tigisis) in ancient times, which is near Ain Fakroun in the Algerian country. In this place, a group of people fleeing from Land of Canaan: We are the ones who fled from the face of Joshua bin Nun...successor to the Prophet Moses, peace be upon him.
Moroccan writer, Master of History, Madison University, USA
Zwaymia M. Arabi