The Project Gutenberg EBook of Moorish Literature, by Anonymous

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Title: Moorish Literature

Author: Anonymous

Release Date: November 14, 2003 [EBook #10085]
[Most recently updated on January 28, 2004]

Language: English

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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOORISH LITERATURE ***

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.

MOORISH LITERATURE

COMPRISING

ROMANTIC BALLADS, TALES OF THE BERBERS, STORIES OF THE KABYLES, FOLK-LORE,
AND NATIONAL TRADITIONS

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH FOR THE FIRST TIME

WITH A SPECIAL INTRODUCTION BY

RENE BASSET, PH.D.

OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FRANCE, AND DIRECTOR OF THE ACADEMIE D'ALGER

1901

SPECIAL INTRODUCTION.

The region which extends from the frontiers of Egypt to the Atlantic Ocean,
and from the Mediterranean to the Niger, was in ancient times inhabited by
a people to whom we give the general name of Berbers, but whom the
ancients, particularly those of the Eastern portion, knew under the name of
Moors. "They were called Maurisi by the Greeks," said Strabo, "in the first
century A.D., and Mauri by the Romans. They are of Lybian origin, and form
a powerful and rich nation."[1] This name of Moors is applied not only to
the descendants of the ancient Lybians and Numidians, who live in the nomad
state or in settled abodes, but also to the descendants of the Arabs who,
in the eighth century A.D., brought with them Islamism, imposed by the
sabre of Ogbah and his successors. Even further was it carried, into Spain,
when Berbers and Arabs, reunited under the standard of Moussa and Tarik,
added this country to the empire of the Khalifa. In the fifteenth century
the Portuguese, in their turn, took the name to the Orient, and gave the
name of Moors to the Mussulmans whom they found on the Oriental coast of
Africa and in India.

[1] Geographica, t. xviii, ch. 3, Section ii.

The appellation particularizes, as one may see, three peoples entirely
different in origin--the Berbers, the Arabs of the west, and the Spanish
Mussulmans, widely divided, indeed, by political struggles, but united
since the seventh and eighth