Synthesis archive · ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵖⴰ

The Amazigh world, from the Canary Islands to Siwa, in one archive.

Tamazgha gathers what has been published on the land, peoples, symbols, persons and history of the Imazighen across North Africa and the Sahel, and links it into one graph. Every claim points to a source.

Open the atlas What is Tamazgha?

58
Places: 21
Peoples: 47
Persons: 25
Sources indexed

Pl. I. Transect of Tamazgha, west to east: the Canary peaks, the Atlas with a hill village, the hammada, the erg, the Hoggar, the oasis of Siwa. Schematic, not to scale.

I. Atlas

One world, many borders

58 places across 10 countries, from the volcanic islands of the Atlantic to the oases of the Western Desert. Each point opens an entry with names in Tamazight, Tifinagh and Arabic, the peoples who live there, and the sources.

II. Peoples

Many peoples, one name

Imazighen, the free people: Guanches and Chleuh, Rifians and Kabyles, Mozabites, Tuareg, Siwis. The archive records each by its own name first, then by the names others gave it.

PeopleOwn nameCountryKind

All 21 peoples →

III. Symbols

A script written on rock for three thousand years

Tifinagh survived in the Sahara on stone, jewellery and the backs of hands, and came back as a national script in the twenty-first century. Each letter has an entry; so do the tattoo, textile and jewellery motifs.

ⵣYazThe free man; the foundational symbol of Amazigh identity.

Fig. 1. Neo-Tifinagh, the alphabet standardised by IRCAM in 2003.All 37 symbols →

IV. The archive

Eight modules, one graph

Every entry links to the others it touches: a place to its peoples, a person to the events of their life, every claim to its source. Nothing is a dead end.

V. Entry points

Where to begin

Lexicon

Library

Essays