Jews in Africa

Jews in Africa
Part I - The Berbers and the Jews
Fact Paper 19-I
© Samuel Kurinsky, all rights reserved

Berbers and Jews, a Unique Relationship; The Historical Background
The Berbers were Northwest African tribes inhabiting an area known as the Barbary Coast. The former Barbary States now comprise the modern states of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. The Berbers spoke variations of a Hamitic language, mainly Tuareg and Kabyle. The Tuaregs were nomadic Berber tribes ensconced along the trade routes across the Sahara desert. Other tribes settled near the coast.

Judaic presence in the continent of Africa can be said to go back to the Biblical sojourn of Abraham in the lush Nile Delta (Goshen), where Abraham, together with his entourage and herds of cattle awaited the passage of a drought in Canaan. It is also related in the Bible that the vizier to the Pharaoh, Joseph, summoned his family to join him in Egypt. Many Israelites followed, at first as settlers, and then as slaves captured in Canaan by the aptly characterized "Warrior Pharaohs."

After the states of Israel and Judah came into existence, Judaic traders traveled westward along the African coast with the voyagers of Tyre and Sidon, the Canaanite sea-farers referred to by the Greeks as the "Phoenicians." Jews composed a significant proportion of the major North African Canaanite settlement at Carthage (Kart Hadash, or "New City"), and Jewish presence has been well documented elsewhere along the coast during the Pre-Roman period. The Romans termed the Canaanite settlers the Peonicus Carthagenians, which in turn has been transcribed into the "Punic Peoples."

The Canaanite city-states of Utica and Carthage were ruled by a Soffut, akin to the Israelite shoffet, or judge. In Jews and Photography, George Gilbert notes that "in the Mellahs (the Jewish quarters) of Morocco it has long been legend that Jews settled in Northwest Africa even before the destruction of the second temple (586 BCE). In support of this belief one sees Hebrew inscriptions on tombstones in the Roman town of Volubilis (west of modern Fez)."1

Under the Ptolemaic Greeks (323-31 BCE), the Jews brought their technological, industrial and commercial expertise to Alexandria, one of the largest and economically important cities of antiquity. Judaic artisans, merchants and scholars composed some 40% of the population. They were organized into guilds with reserved sections in the synagogues. The tannaic scholar, Rabbi Judah, visited Alexandria and reported: "... they were seated there not in mixed order, but goldsmiths apart, silversmiths apart, and weavers apart, blacksmiths apart, coppersmiths apart, and weavers apart. So that when a poor [artisan] entered there, he recognized the members of his own craft and turned to them to find means for the maintenance of himself and his family."

Joseph ben Sirach (Ecclesiastus) writing during the Greek period at the end of the third century, describes the activity of Judaic artisans of his time in vivid poetry:

The maker of carving and cunning device,
Who by night as by day has no rest,
Who engraveth signet rings,
and whose art is to make the likeness true,
And his anxiety to compleyte the work,
So also the smith that sitteth by the furnace,
And regardeth his weighty vessels;
The flame of the fire cracketh his flesh,
And with the heat of his furnace he gloweth;
To the hammer’s sound he inclineth his ear,
And to the vessel’s pattern he directeth his eyes.

The Judaic artisans proudly wore distinctive badges of their particular trade. The tannaic scholar of the first century CE, Eleazer ben Azariah, said of the wearing of these badges, "There is something grand about artisanship; every artisan boasts of his trade, carrying boldly his badge on the street."

Judaic artisans continued to practice their trades in North Africa under the Romans. The Romans considered the manual trades base and inappropriate for themselves. It was none other than Emperor Hadrian Augustus who inadvertently complimented the industrious Jews of Alexandria in a report to his consul, Servianus; in placing them among the proletariat of the city he inadvertently credited them with being the skilled craftsmen of the city, and with the revolutionary process of glassblowing:

"[The Jews in Alexandria are] prosperous, rich and fruitful, and in it no one is idle. Some are blowers of glass, others makers of paper, all are at least weavers of linen or seem to belong to one craft or another; the lame have their occupations, the wounded have theirs, the blind have theirs, and not even those whose hands are crippled are idle."

Alexandria was, outside of Asia, the most populous Jewish center in the Diaspora. Philo estimated the number of Jews in Egypt to have reached the one million mark; Josephus had likewise numbered the population of Egypt as eight million, of which one million were Jews.

During the Ptolemaic period Judaic settlements spread across North Africa. In the Roman period they were a considerable part of the population of the large cities of Said and Memphis, east and south of Alexandria. They were likewise concentrated in seventeen cities west of Alexandria, a region called Cyrenaica, extending from modern-day Tobruk to Bengazi and Tripoli on the Libyan coast. The major towns of that region, Chersonesus, Cyrene, Ptolemais, Arsinoe, and Berenice had large contingents of Jews. This coastal region was vital to the round-the-Mediterranean voyagers of that era; it continued to be so for the next two thousand years. In the first century of the Common Era the total North African Jewish population approached two million in number.

The Judaic community of Cyrene was second only to Alexandria in importance. It had been settled by Alexander the Great with 40,000 Judaic soldiers and their families, and continued to expand in military and commercial importance as a Judaic garrison under the Romans. The second book of Maccabees was written by Jason of Cyrene; it served as an inspiration for many of the Jews of that city to join in the great Judaic rebellion of 66 C. E.

Judaic Rebellions in Africa
In the year 115 a race riot against the Jews took place by the Pagans and Greeks of the city of Cyrene. Usually, the Romans intervened to prevent the Jews from putting up a stiff defense. However, the Roman armies were then preoccupied with the resistance of the Jews in Babylonia (Parthia) to Emperor Trajan’s ambitious drive to place all of Mesopotamia under Roman rule. Almost no Roman soldiers were available in Cyrenaica to contain the riots or restrain the Jews, the regular army having been sent to Trajan’s aid. "Consequently, the Jews were able to fight back and to carry the battle into the places where the pagans resided. What is more, the Jews of the island of Cyprus, and those of Egypt joined in the fighting."2

The island of Cyprus enters the Judaic/African saga with the significant part the Cypriot Jews played in the succession of rebellions and resistance of the Jews against the Romans. Jews had been present in Cyprus far back into antiquity as traders accompanying the Sidonian and Tyrian seafarers. Then, "about 100 BCE, Jewish fishermen from the Judaic coast settled the island. Cyprus received many more Jews after the first Zealot rebellion, as thousands were sent by the Romans to slave in the copper mines.3

A Cypriot Jew, Barnabus, organized a rebellion against their Roman masters. He succeeded in arming the copper workers, Jews and Canaanites, "and secretly prepare them for insurrection. It was the Sabbath and the Jewish workers were given their customary day of rest. All was peaceful in the coastal towns, and the Jewish men were gathered in the synagogues for prayer as usual. Just as the sun went down on that Saturday night of June 19th, 117, the ram’s horn was blown. This was not a ritual observance, but the signal for a sudden and terrible civil war."4

The Jews wreaked revenge upon their oppressors in Cyrenaica. What had started as a race riot became a war. "The Jews of the three districts involved organized regular armies and took bloody revenge for all they observe to bear during the half century before. Trajan hurriedly sent Turbo, one of his generals, to restore order. Turbo’s soldiers were joined by the pagan population of the affected districts. They attacked the Jews, both the fighters and the peaceful population, more mercilessly than the Jews had attacked them. In the island of Cyprus every single Jew was killed, the total running into the thousands. A law was adopted never to permit a Jew to set foot on the island even if he were shipwrecked nearby. In Egypt and Cyrene the Jewish population was treated with almost equal ferocity. Thereafter the once flourishing Jewish community of Alexandria was definitely on the downgrade."5

The ignominy of having a rebellion almost succeed in destroying the Roman Empire led a Roman historian, Deo Cassius [LXVII, 32], 50 years after the event, to write a bitter, self-serving account of the Judaic victories. It was a rabid mixture of fact and fiction; intended to justify the atrocities wreaked upon the Jews for daring to challenge the rule of the Roman Emperor. The account included calumnies which lived on to haunt the Jews for centuries to come throughout Christendom.

"The Jews of the region of Cyrene," wrote Deo Cassius, "had put one Andreas at their head and were destroying both the Romans and the Greeks. They would cook their flesh, make belts for themselves of their entrails, and wear their skins for clothing. Many they sawed in two from their heads downwards. Others they would give to wild beasts and force still others to fight as gladiators."

"In all, consequently, two hundred and twenty thousand perished. In Egypt also they performed many similar deeds and in Cyprus under the leadership of Artemio. There likewise two hundred and forty thousand perished. For that reason no Jew may set foot in that land, but even if one of them is driven upon that island by force of the wind he is put to death. Various persons took part in subduing these Jews, one being Lusius, who was sent by Trajan."6

Thus, setting aside the obvious calumnies, we see that Cassius inadvertently documented the size of the Judaic community and the strength of the Judaic forces. The ferocity ascribed to the Jews was in fact practiced by the Romans, albeit cannibalism was not part of their extermination drive. In addition to the decimation of hundreds of thousands of Jews in Cyrenaica and Cyprus, the Jews of Egypt fell under the vindictive swords of the Romans.

"The aggadah, [Babylonian Talmud, Gittin, 57b] in its usual vivid fashion describes the greatness of the Egyptian Jewish community and the extent of the slaughter after the revolt: "[Hadrian, successor to Trajan] slaughtered in Egypt six hundred thousand and again six hundred thousand, twice as many as had gone forth from Egypt [at the time of the exodus]... so that the blood ran in the sea as far as Cyprus."7

Jews Move West
Blocked from escape to the east, many Jews found refuge to the west. The westward movement of the Jews from Egypt and Cyrenaica to the Barbary states was once again swelled by the expulsion of the Jews from Alexandria by Bishop Cyril in 414, and by recurrent Byzantine expulsions through the next few centuries.

The effect of each of the expulsions was short-lived. The Jews, uniquely the technologically advanced, literate, and commercially savvy element among the backward indigenous populations, remained crucial for the conduct of African industry and commerce. Economic difficulties resulting from successive expulsions led recurrently to liberalized policies and a new influx of Judaic artisans and traders. That the persecutions proved ineffective in obliterating Judaic presence is evidenced by the account of the subsequent conquering Arab general, ‘Amir ibn al-As, who reported that he found 40,000 tax-paying Jews resident in Alexandria alone, inferring the existence of a total Judaic population of several times that figure. The Arab general, stemming from a backward desert society, was likewise staggered to find 4000 "palaces," 4000 baths [!] and other visible evidence of a prosperous community within the city.8

Albeit the figures appear somewhat inflated, two facts are manifest from the Arab general’s report: The numbers of the Jewish community, and the high level of civilization encountered by the astonished Arab general. The confrontation of the primitive Arabs with the advanced science and technology of the Alexandrian Jews was repeated as the Arab armies crossed North Africa. Entering the arena as barbaric warriors, they eventually absorbed the attributes of an advanced civilization from the Jews.

Moroccan Muslim traditions relate that as the Arabs advanced, the Greeks evacuated the towns and cities. The Jews, however, stayed on, and their numbers were swelled by an influx of Jews from Syria and Egypt into the vacuum left by the Greeks.9

As a result of the Emperor Justinian’s intolerant policies in the sixth century, Jews were driven inland, and again found refuge among the hinterland Berber tribesmen. The Berbers not only welcomed the Jews, but eight of the tribes, impressed with the erudition and technological acumen of the Jews, disavowed their shamanistic, pagan concepts and adopted Judaism.

Judaic/Berber Alliance under Queen Kahena
Thus, in the year 694, when the rampaging Arab armies drove relentlessly westward along the Barbary Coast, the Jews found themselves allied with the Berbers against the invasion. The confederacy of Jewish Berber tribes rallied around the Jewish/Berber priestess Kahena. The Berbers crowned Kahena as queen, and accepted her as their military leader.

The story of Dehiyya al-Kahina malkat Afriqah (Queen of Africa) is told by Ibn Khaldun, in a literary biography in Hebrew by N. Sloushz. Khaldun’s rendition leans heavily on legendary sources, but Salo Baron notes that "Nevertheless this account is essentially confirmed and amplified in many significant details in the more recently published chronicle of an older Arab writer, ‘Ubaud ibn Salih ibn ‘Abd al-Halim."10

Khaldun’s chronicles about "this medieval version of the prophetess Deborah" hold that the priestess lived 127 years, and governed the tribe of Jeraua with the aid of her three sons for 65 years. Clearly an expansion of the truth, the historical kernel of the legends remains a classic of women’s participation in the resistance to tyranny, "as women sooth-sayers and tribal leaders in war and peace had long been known and poetically extolled even among the pre-Islamic Arabs."

Monroe Rosenthal and Isaac Mozeson paid tribute to many noteworthy women warriors in their book, Wars of the Jews, and report about Kahena that "The Berbers of the Aures mountains retain legends of her bravery. She was said to have been born to a poor Jewish family of cave-dwellers. A chieftain of a Judeo-Berber tribe terrorized her Aures mountain settlement and demanded Kahena as a wife. When she rejected him he slaughtered people of her village. She then gave herself to him, but, like the Biblical heroine, slew him with a nail to the skull on the wedding night."11

The Arab armies enriched themselves as they rampaged across Persia, Afghanistan and northern India to the east, and then in Egypt and Libya to the west. "The march of Islam had barely missed a step when, in 694, the Arab forces drove into Africa Minor. Expecting an easy sweep, the Moslems met fierce resistance in Barbary."12

The Berbers rallied around their queen, the Jewess, Kahena, swearing to follow her into battle against the invaders. The Judeo/Berber army was swelled by soldiers of the pagan Berber tribes after their king Kocilla was killed by the Arabs. Queen Kahena became truly the queen and military commander of all the Berbers!

"Lions of Africa and Judah," the queen would shout to her Berber troops, "show these Arabs that we will never be enslaved by Islam. Our beloved Africa will remain free. Let our slogan be the cry of the Zealots of old: Freedom or death."

Under their valiant queen, Northwest Africa was cleansed of Arab mercenaries. Commander Ukba, who had at one point broken through all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, was killed in a Berber ambush. His armies were pushed back in retreat to Kairwan, the new Moslem base in central Tunisia. "The arrogant Ukba had tried to intimidate the proud Berbers with force instead of patiently trying to convert them to Islam with face-saving diplomacy." 13 Queen Kahena’s skills were again tested in the second, more massive Arab invasion. A new Arab general, Hassan, had driven across North Africa with a fresh army of 40,000 horseman, and had taken Carthage from the Byzantine Greeks. Queen Kahena did not confront this massive force, but outflanked it by taking the city of Bagia from its Byzantine garrison. She roused the Christian population to join her forces in resistance to the Islamic invaders. When the Arab army laid siege to liberated Bagia, Kahena and her army streamed out of the city by secret passageways. They circled around to assault the enemy from behind a rocky prominence at Wadmini. The queen’s cavalries spent the night in the saddle, forcing the Arab horsemen to do likewise. The relentless pressure through the night took a toll on the on the travel-weary Arabs, who were not in their native environment and were disadvantaged by an ignorance of the terrain.

With the break of dawn, "the Berber cavalry attacked - spurred on by their fiery queen. The townspeople of Bagia, Greeks, Copts and Phoenicians, united and inspired by Queen Kahena, simultaneously marched out on foot at the Arabs’ rear. The Berbers charged with their rugged mountain ponies, while the Moslems countered with their swifter but more nervous Arabian stallions. A thousand Berber lances clashed with slashing Arab scimitars, as the impassioned Judeo-Berbers threw themselves at the fanatic Moslem Ishmaelites. The Arabs were completely routed. The main body of the army retreated as far as Gabes, while stragglers were driven into the wilderness where they perished."14

Under their triumphant queen’s command, the Berber armies liberated Carthage, and swept on across North Africa to free it from both the Byzantines and the Arabs. The local Christians hailed the queen as liberator from the Arabs, and the Judaic communities, who had suffered dreadfully under heavy Roman and Byzantine taxation, hailed her as their deliverer. Kahena’s armies swelled with Jewish volunteers from the numerous hill communities that dotted the ridges of the mountains. The Bishop of Bula Regia had flowers strewn along her path.

For the next five years, the coalition of the diverse local elements held firm, and the region enjoyed a peaceful period of freedom from foreign domination.

The wily Arab commander, Hassan Ibn Numan, learned through bitter experience that the dedicated armies under queen Kahena’s command were a formidable force. He set out on a classic "divide and conquer" diplomatic maneuver in preparation for another invasion. Noting Christian antipathy toward the Jews, he sent emissaries to the Christians, offering a carrot of proposed tolerance while playing on the latent fear and hostility toward the Jews.

The North African Christians were fearful of Visigothan conquest. They were susceptible to Hassan’s deceptive promises of autonomy, and their latent anti-Semitism proved more powerful than the peace and freedom they enjoyed under Judeo/Berber hegemony.

At the time, the Spanish Jews were suffering under Visigothan rule in Spain. The Visigoth kings instituted a antisemitic regimen at a succession of ecclesiastical councils at Toledo. They decreed forcible baptism, forbade circumcision and the observance of the Sabbath, festivals and rites. "Jews were flogged, executed and their property confiscated, were subjected to ruinous taxes, forbidden to trade, and, at times, dragged to the baptismal font."15

Hassan cunningly played upon the Judaic concern for their co-religionists suffering Visigothan oppression. He held out an olive branch to the Jews and proposed a joint Iberian invasion to rescue the Sephardic Jewish community from Visigothan tyranny. "Hassan’s seductive offer was actually first proposed by the Spanish Jews themselves. It was they who requested that the Arabs and the forces of Queen Kahena join to conquer the Iberian peninsula. The Spanish Jews were desperate for help in light of harsh new decrees that appropriated all their property, forbade them from all navigation and trade with Africa, prohibited all business with Christians, and required all converted Jews to eat non-kosher food in the presence of supervising clergy."16

The Judeo/Berbers were lulled into failing to mobilize for defense against the Arab army. Hassan ‘s new, fresh army of 60,000 troops, swept swiftly across the continent, this time unresisted and even sustained by the Christian communities in their path.

It soon became clear that Hassan had no intention of halting at Barbary’s borders. Unprepared, the Berber army was thrown into retreat. The queen, learning too late of the Arab perfidy, hastily mounted a counter-offensive. In desperation, the queen launched a scorched earth campaign in the path of the thundering Arab troops, burning fields, cutting down trees, and destroying dwellings to deny sustenance and booty to the invaders.

The queen’s plans were also frustrated by an enemy within her ranks. "Just as King Saul lost his kingdom upon sparing the Amelekite king, Queen Kahena lost hers when she spared the brave and handsome Khalid Ibn Yessid El Kaisi, a srikingly aristocratic youth among the captives."17

Khalid feigned to have become a loyal adopted member of Kahena’s own family. Secretly remaining a devoted Muslim, Khalid passed critical information to general Hassan about planned surprise attacks and ambushes. Thus armed, Hassan was able to prevail. Finally, probably concerned that his perfidy was about to be exposed, the trusted spy slipped out of the Berber camp, and was rewarded by Hassan with the position of deputy commander. Khalid’s intimate knowledge of Berber encampments, haunts and hideouts was a major factor in sealing the queen’s doom.

Unable to evade confrontation with the far more numerous forces under Hassan, "the two armies clashed head-on in a decisive battle at the ancient [Roman] amphitheater at Thysdrus, the modern town of El Jern. In the shadow of Rome’s former African glory, the fate of Barbary was decided. Arab historian Ibn Nuvairi records that the Berbers and the Jews fought like furies, and only the will of Allah allowed the Moslems to triumph. The remnants of the Berber force fled to the Aures mountains, with the queen’s guard at the rear. Her men begged her to flee to the safety of the Moroccan hinterlands, but Kahena preferred to remain with a handful of men holding a mountain pass against the onrushing Arabs. Like a true Zealot, she died with sword in hand.

The ignoble Hassan had her decapitated head sent back to the Arab Caliph, Abd el-Malik."18

The Jews and Berbers were given a choice: convert to Islam or die. Some 50,000 refused to convert and were massacred. The others opted for conversion.

Judaic/Berber Participation in the Islamic Conquest of Southern Iberia.
The converted Jews and Berbers became a significant part of the Arab forces which invaded Iberia. The commander of the joint Berber/Arab army which crossed the strait between Africa and Europe to conquer Spain in 711 CE was a Judeo/Berber convert said to have been one of the sons of Queen Kahena. His Arab name, Jibral-an-Tarik, became transcribed into the name of the fortress, Gibraltar, and the rock is referred to as Tarik’s rock.

Many African Jews entered conversion pragmatically, secretly continuing their faith as did the Marranos of a later period. The Iberian Jews consequently collaborated fully with the invaders. The pragmatism of the converted Jews proved advantageous to both the Arabs and the Iberian Jews. The Arabs were dependant on both the Berber convertees and the Iberian Jews for a successful invasion and thereafter for maintaining their hegemony over the conquered region of Iberia.

Arab chroniclers record that the conquerors entrusted the garrisoning of such important cities as Elvira, Seville, and Cordoba to the Jews while the invaders pressed on in hot pursuit of the fleeing Christian forces. One chronicler informs us that Malaga, which had no Jews, could not be garrisoned because no Jews resided in the city and the Christians had all fled!

The gates to the strategic city of Toledo were opened by Jews on a Palm Sunday when the Christians were attending church services. The imminence of the Arab attack had been anticipated, for the Visigothan grandees had already fled the city, and the archbishop had made tracks all the way to Rome.

"The Berber/Arab successes in Iberia were made possible only by the assistance and collaboration of both the Sephardim and the formerly Berber Jews. Once empowered, the primitive Berbers and Arabs, dependant on the industrial and commercial sagacity of the Jews for the continuation and growth of their societies and economies, instituted a period of tolerance. The Arabs absorbed the scholarly attributes of an advanced civilization. Many of the "Arab" philosophers, poets, mathematicians and scientists were converted Jews, or descendants of converted Jews. A new enlightened era for both Arabs and Jews was born.

Jews regained the right to practice their faith and the Jewish populations of North African towns soon burgeoned with new, vibrant Jewish communities.

"In Kairuwan and the province of Ifriqiya, the famous heir of the ancient Carthagenians-Semitic civilization, the Jews, reinforced by numerous arrivals from Egypt and Palestine, had a fully developed life at the time of the Fatimid rise to power (909). In fact... the enemies of the new dynasty asserted that it had much Jewish blood in its veins... During the tenth century the city of Kairuwan, glorified by the Arabs as one of the four gates to Paradise, embraced a large and prosperous Jewish community. The latter soon felt strong enough to throw off the tutelage of the eastern academies.... Fez.... became from its inception (808) a major center of Jewish culture."19

Likewise, the liberal policies of the new Berber rulers of Spain laid the foundation for "The Golden Age" of Sephardic Judaism.

Notes
1.George Gilbert, Jews in Photography; a Social History, 1996, p. 23.
2.Solomon Grayzel, A History of the Jews, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1969, p. 180 .
3.Monroe Rosenthal and Isaac Mozeson, Wars of the Jews, Hippocrene Books, NY, 1990, p. 117.
4.Rosenthal and Mozeson, Ibid. P. 117-8
5.Solomon Grayzel, A History of the Jews, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1959, p. 180.
6.Translation of Cassius by Galbraith Welch in, North African Prelude, The First Seven Thousand Years, William Morrow and Company, pp. 141-2.
7.S.S.Safrai, "he Lands of the Diaspora, in A History of the Jewish People, ed. by H.H.Ben-Sasson, Harvard Un., 1976, p. 372.
8.Salo Wittmayer Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, Vol. III, The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, 1957, p. 71, quoting Eutichius, "Annales," in Petrologiae Cursus Completus, series Greca, CXI, 1107 ed. by Cheiko, II. 26; John of Nikiu, Chronique, CXVII, CXX,trans. by Zotenberg, pp. 449, 455.
9.Baron, Ibid., p. 90.
10.Baron, Ibid., p. 271, note 24. Baron also cites two other works by Slouschz, Travels in North Africa and Sefer ha-Massa’ot (Travelogue) and works by other authors too numerous to repeat here. Notable is a work by J. J. Williams, Hebrewisms of West Africa, documenting the ancient intrusion of Hebrew words and expressions into the Berber languages.
11.Monroe Rosenthal and Isaac Mozeson, Ibid., p.193.
12.Rosenberg and Mozeson, Ibid. P. 192.
13.Rosenberg and Mozeson, Ibid. P. 192.
14.Rosenberg and Mozeson, Ibid. P. 193-4.
15.Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, Harper & Row, 1988, p. 177.
16.Rosenberg and Mozeson, Ibid. P. 195.
17.Rosenberg and Mozeson, Ibid. P. 195.
18.Rosenberg and Mozeson, Ibid. P. 196.
19.Baron, Ibid., p. 107-8.

Photo Details: The Jewess, Kahena, Queen of the Berbers, leading the armies of the consolidated Berber tribes against the invading armies of the Arab mercenaries in the year 694. "Lions of Africa and Judah!" was said to have been her rallying cry, "show these Arabs that we will not be enslaved by Islam. Let our slogan be the cry of the Zealots of old; ‘Freedom or Death!’
Drawing by Keith Gunderson in Wars of the Jews, courtesy of Monro Rosenthal and Isaac Mozeson.

Source: http://www.hebrewhistory.info/factpapers/fp019-1_africa.htm

Editor's Note: Many scholars call the inhabitants of North Africa "Berbers." This is actually misleading and quite frankly racist. The Greeks and the Romans called the indigenous populations of North Africa "Berbers" which means "barbarians." This is rather ironic, like the pot calling the kettle black. Herodotus, however, called the natives by their rightful names, beginning from the glorious Egypt to the Atlantic, they are called: Adyrmachidae, Gilligammae, Asbytae, Nasamonians, Numidians, etc. I include this article for the sake of scholarship and documenation. Interestingly enough, Steven Jacobs in his book The Hebrew Heritage of Black Africa, relays that many white Jews, particularly the older ones, are secretly admitting that the original Jews were black!