North Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of the Western Sahara in the west, to Egypt and Sudan's Red Sea coast in the east.
Berbers, or the Berber peoples, also known as Amazigh or Imazighen, are a diverse grouping of distinct ethnic groups indigenous to North Africa who predate the arrival of Arabs in the Maghreb. Their main connections are identified by their usage of Berber languages, most of them mutually unintelligible, which are part of the Afroasiatic language family.
The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu are pastorally nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia (Iraq). The Bedouin originated in the Syrian Desert and Arabian Desert but spread across the rest of the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa after the spread of Islam. The English word bedouin comes from the Arabic badawī, which means "desert-dweller", and is traditionally contrasted with ḥāḍir, the term for sedentary people. Bedouin territory stretches from the vast deserts of North Africa to the rocky ones of the Middle East. They are sometimes traditionally divided into tribes, or clans, and historically share a common culture of herding camels, sheep and goats. The vast majority of Bedouins adhere to Islam, although there are some fewer numbers of Christian Bedouins present in the Fertile Crescent.
Beni Ḥassan is a Bedouin Arab tribe which inhabits Western Sahara, Mauritania, Morocco and Algeria. It is one of the four sub-tribes of the Banu Maqil who emigrated in the 11th century from South Arabia to the Maghreb with the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym Arab tribes. In the 13th century, they took the Sanhaja territories in the southwest of the Sahara. In Morocco, they first settled, alongside their Maqil relatives, in the area between Tadla and the Moulouya River. The Sous Almohad governor called upon them for help against a rebellion in the Sous, and they resettled in and around that region. They later moved to what is today Mauritania, and from the 16th century onwards, they managed to push back all black peoples southwards to the Senegal Valley river. The Beni Hassan and other warrior Arab tribes dominated the Sanhaja Berber tribes of the area after the Char Bouba war of the 17th century. As a result, Arabs became the dominant ethnic group in Western Sahara and Mauretania. The Bani Hassan dialect of Arabic became used in the region and is still spoken, in the form of Hassaniya Arabic. The hierarchy established by the Beni Hassan tribe gave Mauritania much of its sociological character. That ideology has led to oppression, discrimination and even enslavement of other groups in Mauritania.
Maghrebi Arabic, often known as ad-Dārija to differentiate it from Literary Arabic, is a vernacular Arabic dialect continuum spoken in the Maghreb. It includes the Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Libyan, Hassaniya and Saharan Arabic dialects. Maghrebi Arabic has a predominantly Semitic and Arabic vocabulary, although it contains a significant number of Berber loanwords, which represent 2–3% of the vocabulary of Libyan Arabic, 8–9% of Algerian and Tunisian Arabic, and 10–15% of Moroccan Arabic. Maghrebi Arabic was formerly spoken in Al-Andalus and Sicily until the 17th and 13th centuries, respectively, in the extinct forms of Andalusi Arabic and Siculo-Arabic. The Maltese language is believed to have its source in a language spoken in Muslim Sicily that ultimately originates from Tunisia, as it contains some typical Maghrebi Arabic areal characteristics.
The Banu Hilal was a confederation of Arab tribes from the Najd region of the central Arabian Peninsula that emigrated to the Maghreb region of North Africa in the 11th century. Masters of the vast plateaux of the Najd, they enjoyed a somewhat infamous reputation, possibly owing to their relatively late conversion to Islam and accounts of their campaigns in the borderlands between Iraq and Syria. When the Fatimid Caliphate became the rulers of Egypt and the founders of Cairo in 969, they hastened to confine the unruly Bedouin in the south before sending them to Central North Africa and then to Morocco.
The Shilha people, or Schleuh or Ishelhien, are a Berber subgroup primarily inhabiting the Anti-Atlas, High Atlas, Sous valley, and Soussi coastal regions of Morocco.
The Sanhaja were once one of the largest Berber tribal confederations, along with the Zanata and Masmuda confederations. Many tribes in Algeria, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, Tunisia and Western Sahara bore and still carry this ethnonym, especially in its Berber form.
The Masmuda is a Berber tribal confederation of Morocco and one of the largest in the Maghreb, along with the Zenata and the Sanhaja. Today, the Masmuda confederacy largely corresponds to the speakers of the Shilha (Tachelhit) Berber variety, whereas other clans, such as Regraga have adopted Arabic.
Arabized Berbers are Berbers whose language is a local dialect of Arabic and whose culture is Arab culture, as a result of Arabization.
Moroccans are the citizens and nationals of the Kingdom of Morocco. The country's population is predominantly composed of Arabs and Berbers (Amazigh). The term also applies more broadly to any people who share a common Moroccan culture and identity, as well as those who natively speak Moroccan Arabic or other languages of Morocco.
The Banu Ma'qil is an Arab nomadic tribe that originated in South Arabia. The tribe emigrated to the Maghreb region of North Africa with the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym tribes in the 11th century. They mainly settled in and around the Saharan wolds and oases of Morocco; in Tafilalt, Wad Nun, Draa and Taourirt. With the Ma'qil being a Bedouin tribe that originated in the Arabian Peninsula, like Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym, they adapted perfectly to the climatic desert conditions of the Maghreb, discovering the same way of life as in the Arabian Peninsula. The Ma'qil branch of Beni Hassan which came to dominate all of Mauritania, Western Sahara, south Morocco, and south-west Algeria, spread the Hassaniya Arabic dialect, which is very close to classical Arabic.
The Banu Ifran or Ifranids, were a Zenata Berber tribe prominent in the history of pre-Islamic and early Islamic North Africa. In the 8th century, they established a kingdom in the central Maghreb, with Tlemcen as its capital.
Arabic, particularly the Moroccan Arabic dialect, is the most widely spoken language in Morocco, but a number of regional and foreign languages are also spoken. The official languages of Morocco are Modern Standard Arabic and Standard Moroccan Berber. Moroccan Arabic is by far the primary spoken vernacular and lingua franca, whereas Berber languages serve as vernaculars for significant portions of the country. According to the 2024 Moroccan census, 92.7% of the population spoke Arabic, whereas 24.8% spoke Berber languages.
Beni Amer is an Arab tribe mainly present in Algeria, as well as Morocco. They are originally from the Zughba branch of Banu Hilal. The Beni Amer occupied the region of western Algeria around Oran after a gradual migration.
Maghrebi Arabs or North African Arabs are the inhabitants of the Maghreb region of North Africa whose ethnic identity is Arab, whose native language is Arabic and trace their ancestry to the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula. This ethnic identity is a product of the centuries-long Arab migration to the Maghreb since the 7th century, which changed the demographic scope of the Maghreb and was a major factor in the ethnic, linguistic and cultural Arabization of the Maghreb region. The descendants of the original Arab settlers who continue to speak Arabic as a first language currently form the single largest population group in North Africa.
The Hilalian dialects are a continuum of Arabic dialects of the Maghreb, which were introduced during the Hilalian invasions between the 11th and 12th centuries, as well as the migration of Arab Hilalian tribes to the Western Maghreb. These dialects played a great role in the emergence of the Egyptian and Maghrebi dialects. The Bani Hilal tribes settled in the region of Casablanca-Settat in Morocco, parts of Libya, central Algeria, and Tunisia.
The Chaouia is a plain and historical and ethno-geographical region of Morocco in the historical region of Tamesna. It is bounded by the Oum er-Rbi' River to its southwest, the Cherrate River to its northeast, the plain of Tadla to the southeast and the Atlantic Ocean to the northwest. The region covers a land area of nearly 14 000 km2. The term also refers to a tribal confederation that traditionally inhabits the region.
Lisan al-Gharbi is the name given to an extinct dialect of Berber that was spoken over much of the Atlantic plains of Morocco. It was closely related to Tashelhit. The Lisan al-Gharbi was the official language of the Barghawata Confederacy, and the idiom used in Salih ibn Tarif's "indigenous Qur'an".
The Arab migrations to the Maghreb involved successive waves of migration and settlement by Arab people in the Maghreb region of Africa, encompassing modern-day Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia. The process took place over several centuries, lasting from the early 7th century to the 17th century. The Arab migrants hailed from the Middle East, particularly the Arabian Peninsula, with later groups arriving from the Levant and Iraq.
