IN the Romance languages (Spanish, French and Italian) of Medieval Europe, Moor was translated as moro, moir and mor.
Derivatives of the word ‘moor’ may be found even today in these same languages.
In Spanish, for example, the word for blackberry is mora — a noun which originally meant Moorish woman.
Also in Spanish, the adjective for dark-complexioned, which now means brunette, is moreno.
We find a similar legacy in the French language.
In French moricaud means dark-skinned or blackamoor, while morillion means black grape.
Again, as in the Spanish, the Italian word mora means negro or Moorish female. Also in Italian, mora means blackberry, while moraiola means black olive.
The term ‘berber’
“Strictly speaking,” writes Thomas F. Glick, “Moors were mauri, Berbers who lived in the Roman Province of Mauretania; therefore, its use stresses, sometimes by design, the Berber contributions to al-Andalusian culture.”
In Arabic literature, the word ‘moor’ was fairly non-existent, and the term ‘berber’ was applied to practically all the inhabitants of the Maghrib (Islamic North Africa west of Egypt).
The term ‘berber’ is thought to have derived from the Latin barbari, an appellation equivalent to the English ‘barbarian’, which the Romans called peoples who spoke neither Latin nor Greek.
The view that the ancient Berbers were a predominantly white-skinned, blue-eyed race of Hamites has been largely shaped by recent colonial attitudes towards Africa.
Another idea that seems to be gaining general acceptance is that the bulk of the population consisted of a mixture.
Our view is that the Berbers emerged as the result of an intermixture between Caucasoid people (who had moved into the Maghrib by the second millennium BC) and the more ancient Africoid inhabitants of North Africa.
Among the Berbers of North Africa, according to Roman documents, were the “…black Gaetuli (Melanogaetuli) and black-skinned Asphodelodes.”
In addition, Harold A. MacMichael points out that Africoid blacks —theTibbu and Tuwarek —resembling the ancient Nigritians of the Sahara, are by origin Lamta Berbers. The Haratin, an ancient people whose descendants now occupy southern Morocco and Mauritania, have been called ‘black Berbers’.
Arab geographer Ibn Hawkal ( ca. 950) considered the Tuareg to have come “…originally from the Sudan, and that by their mothers they are children of Ham.”
Wah ibn Munabhih (who died in 732) wrote that the Berbers belonged to the black races of Ham.
‘Uthman’ Amr ibn Bahr al-Jahiz (776-869), a brilliant black Muslim writer, in a significant work entitled The Su-periority of the Blacks Over the Whites, stated that “…among the blacks are counted the Sudanese, the Ethiopians, the Fezzan, the Berbers, the Copts, the Nubians, the Zaghawa, the Moors.”
Included among the pastoral Berber clans were the Luwata, Zana ta, N afusa, Zuwagha, Miknasa and Nafzawa.
Among the more sedentary Berber clans were the Sanhadja, Masmuda, Kutama, Ghamara and Hawwara.
Of the clans that were instrumental in the Muslim invasions and occupation of Spain were the Nafza, Masmuda, Luwata, Hawwara, Zanata, Sanhadja and Zugwaha.
A Muslim scholar, while discussing the Berber women of the Sanhadja confederation, wrote that: “Their colour is black, though some pale ones can be found among them.”
In the Romance of the Cid (Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar) with its graphic references to the Almoravids, we are further informed of the ethnicity of at least some Berber women.
This group of women consisted of 300 Almoravid Amazons led by a ‘black Moorish woman’ named Nugaymath Turquia.
“She appears in the Primera Cronica General of Alfonso X (El Sabio), king of Castile and Leon (1252-84).
The Primera was com-pleted about 1289 under his successor Sancho IV.
The events are associated with the Almoravid siege of Valencia after the death of the Cid. Nugaymath Turquia is the leader of a band of three hundred Amazons. They are negresses, they have their heads shaven, leaving only a topknot, they are on a pilgrimage and they are armed with Turkish bows.”
According to the text:
“King Bucar ordered that black Moorish woman to encamp nearest to the town with all her company …. That Moorish woman was so shrewd a master archer with the Turkish bow that it was a wonder to behold, and for that reason (the History) says that the Moors called her in Arabic nugaymath turquia, which means ‘star of the archers of Turkey.”
Far from being primitive savages, the accumulated evidence points to industry, commerce and technical proficiency amongst the ancient Berbers.
Among the products introduced by them into Spain were olives, wheat, figs, amergris and saffron.
Dyes and garments from North Africa were also highly prized.
These North Africans engaged in the mining of silver and iron, and traded in gold and coral with the Sudan.
The term ‘saracen’
While many scholars generally agree that the word ‘saracen’ is of Afro-Asiatic origin, it is ‘far from certain’ that it means ‘Easterner’.
The general belief is that “…the Saracens were originally nomadic tribes of the Arabian and Syrian deserts, early known as peoples who attacked the borders of the Roman Empire.”
Pliny the Elder, or Pliny the Naturalist (23-79 AD) appears to have been the earliest author to mention the Saracens as a group of people.
St Jerome (ca. 375), in his Commentario-rum in Esaiam, identified a people in Western Asia known as the Agareni(Hagarens, descendants of Hagar the Egyptian) “…who are now called Saracens, taking themselves the name Sara.”
German theologian, Rabanus Maurus (776-856) made similar observations.
In his Commentaria in Genesim, Maurus connected the Moors typologically with the house of Ishmael.
It is significant to note that an early Medieval kingdom located in the Mesopotamian delta was calledKaracen.
It was known to the Byzantine Greeks as Saracenos. According to French historian Jean-Paul Clebert: “Kara (which means black) linguistically evolved into Sarakenos, Saracin.”
“The Medieval Spanish painter,” says French art historian, Jean Devisse, “associated the colour black with the Saracens.”
Dorothee Mitlitzki, however, stresses that: “The people who contributed to the formation of what, in the Middle Ages, was known as Saracen culture, were of the most varied ethnic origins.”
Saracensserved a crucial public role, states Mitlitzki – political, military and religious — and what fanciful in them is emphasised for the purposes of patriotism, propaganda and entertainment.
It is in this context that the prominent position of confrontation between Christian knights and mighty (even gigantic) black Saracen warriors, emerges.