AMONG the most substantial Berber groups to occupy Spain were the Hawwara, Luwata, Nafza, Masmuda, Miknasa, Zanata, and Sanhadja. Before participating in the 8^th Century invasion of Spain, the Hawwara Berbers in Africa occupied the province of Tripolitania and the deserts of southern Tunisia. 

They worshipped the Libyan sun-god Amun, who was depicted as a bull or ram. 

After the invasion of Spain, they settled in Cordoba and established a fortified city near Jaen. 

A wealthy group of Hawwara also settled in Morida and Medellin. 

Abd-al-Rahman ibn Musa al-Hawwari was a judge in Ecija during the reign of Abd-al-Rahman III. 

The golden age of the Umayyad Dynasty in Spain came during the 10^th Century. 

Under the reigns of Abd-al-Rahman III (912-61) and Hakam II (961-76), the Umayyad Dynasty established sovereignty over the most substantial portion of the Iberian Peninsula. 

At the pinnacle of the Umayyad Dynasty the great city of Cordoba possessed 200 000 residences, 600 mosques and 900 public baths that were patronised by all social classes. 

Among his many accomplishments, Hakam II added 27 schools for the free instruction of the poor. 

It should be pointed out that, at least during this era of Islamic Spain, girls as well as boys went to school and numerous Moorish women became prominent in the literary and artistic fields. 

Other Moorish women were involved in education, law, medicine and library science. Both Tarik ibn Ziyad and Abd-al-Rahman I — the founder of the Umayyad Dynasty in Spain in 756 — are said to have belonged to the Nafza Berbers. 

In fact, one of the most important keys to Abd-al-Rahman’s success as a monarch was his recruitment, directly from Africa, of a well-trained army of more than 40 000 Berbers. Many of the Nafza settled in Spain. 

Rich and numerous, the Nafza Berbers of Osuna, Spain, became civic leaders, writers and theologians. 

The Nafza also constituted a significant part of the population of Takurunna.

The Masmuda Berbers were described as blacks by Abu Shama in his Kitab al-Ravdatayn. 

They settled in several parts of Spain, including Mawrur, Cordoba, Valencia, Guadalajara and Santaver. Masmuda Berbers also settled in southern Portugal. 

Neither did wealth and prestige escape the Masmuda. The previously mentioned founder of the powerful Almohad Dynasty, Abd al-Mumin, was a Masmuda Berber. 

Al-Kahina (ca. 690), the woman who led the most determined resistance to the early Arab invasion of North Africa, was a Zanata Berber. 

With the invasion of Spain, many Zanatas settled near Seville, in Sidonia, Alicante, Murcia, Guadalajara and in the region of Saragossa. 

The Marinids, who in 1275 invaded Spain from Morocco and defeated Christian Castile, were Zanata Berbers. 

Zanata is written several ways in various texts, including Zenata, Znaga and Zenaga. 

The Zanata used a Libyco-Berber script and spoke Zenega, a Kushito-Hamitic language. 

This seems to be the basis for the name Senegal. 

The Zanata are also credited with having introduced the camel into the Maghrib. 

The Sanhadja Berbers of the western Sahara were composed of both sedentary peoples and nomads. 

Included among the nomad Sanhadja were the Lamta and Lamtuna Berbers. 

The Sanhadja, known as the Mulaththamun (people of the veil), were responsible for the second significant Moorish invasion of al-Andalus (the Arabic name for Islamic Spain). 

In 1095, the Sanhadja Berbers initiated the Almoravid Dynasty. 

The Almoravid Dynasty was called the ‘Empire of the Two Shores’. 

It lasted a 100 years and stretched from the Senegal River in West Africa to the Ebro River in northern Spain. 

There has been much discussion and speculation about the Sanhadja face mufflers. 

In Islamic Spain the veil was considered a privilege of the true Almoravids, and its wearing was forbidden to all but the Sanhadja. 

It was something like a uniform or distinctive dress of the ruling class. According to Ibn Hawkal: “Since the day they were created their faces … have never been seen, unless it be their eyes. This is because they muffle their faces when they are young and they grow up with that custom.”

According to al-Bakri (d. 1078), there were among the Sanhadja Berbers blacks ‘professing Judaism’.  

These blacks are referred to as the ‘Bafour’. 

The Bafour practised Judaism before they were overcome and absorbed by the Almoravids. 

The Bafour and Sanhadja are both linked, by the way, through their association with the early rulers of the Ghanaian Empire. 

A prototype of the warrior-king, both as priest and potentate, the Almoravid Emperor Yusuf ibn Tashfin led veiled fighting men into al-Andalus, beginning in 1086, at the request of the hard-pressed Muslim residents of Spain. 

Yusuf, a Sanhadja Berber from the Sudan, had his physical features described by the Arab chronicler al-Fasi as ‘brown-skinned, small-framed and hook-nosed, with heavy eyebrows and woolly hair’.

Among Yusuf’s troops was a personal retinue of 4 000 Blacks carrying Lamti shields (covered in hippopotamus skin), peculiar bows, Yazani spears, Zabian javelins and moving to the constant sound of drumming. “The bizarre aspect of the African army,” writes Norris, “was a valuable psychological weapon.”