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The Maghreb (المغرب العربي al-Maġrib al-ʿArabī; also rendered Maghrib (or rarely Moghreb), meaning "place of sunset" or "western" in Arabic. It is generally applied to all of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia but actually pertains only to the area of the three countries between the high ranges of the Atlas Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea. Some writers also included Spain — especially during its period of Muslim domination — in the definition. Isolated from the rest of the continent by the Atlas Mts. and the Sahara, the Maghreb is more closely related in terms of climate, landforms, population, economy, and history to north mediterranean areas than to the rest of Africa. The region was united politically only during the first years of Arab rule (early 8th cent.), and again under the Almohads (1159–1229). The Arab Maghreb Union was established in 1989 to promote cooperation and integration among the Arab states of North Africa. Its members are Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and recently, Mauritania, a country that is not Maghrebian in any sense of the word. Envisioned initially by Muammar al-Qaddafi as an Arab superstate, the organization is expected eventually to function as a North African common market, although economic and political unrest, especially in Algeria, have hindered progress on the union’s joint goals. Many Maghrebians, however, do not recognize Mauritania as part of the Maghreb.

The majority of Maghrebians are Arab, with different non-Arab populations throughout. One of the most common indigenous populations that can be found throughout the Maghreb, particularly in Morocco and Algeria, are a people known in the Western literature as the Berbers. It is important to note that the label Berber is not recognized by the various different groups of people on whom this label has been imposed in the literature. Sundry other influences are also prominent. In the northern coastal towns, conversely, several waves of European immigrants have influenced the population — most notably the moriscos and muladies, that is, indigenous Spaniards who had ealier converted to the Muslim faith and were fleeing, together with ethnic Arab and Berber Muslims, from the Catholic Reconquista. Other European contributions include French, Italians, and others captured by the corsairs. Among West Asians are Turks who came over with the Ottoman Empire. A large Turkish population exists, particularly in Tunisia and Algeria, that has been assimilated through and through. Though they retain their Turkish surnames, they consider themselves natives, a phenomenon that is not found throughout the rest of the Arab world, where non-natives hold on grudgingly to their otherness. This further attests to the cosmopplitanism that the region is well-known for. Jewish communities, historically the Berber Jews who predated even the introduction and conversion of the majority of Berbers to Islam in the 7th century, and later Spanish Sephardic Jews also fleeing the Spanish Catholic Reconquista, have been present in the older cities and have contributed to the wider gene pool through conversion and assimilation. In Algeria especially, a large European minority, the "pied noirs", immigrated under French colonial rule; the overwhelming majority of these, however, left following independence, though many are now coming back to their countries of birth. Many Europeans lament their forced exiles, an experience that is widely narrated, particularly in French literature, cinema and song. France maintains a close relationship with the Maghreb countries that is unequalled anywhere else. The movements of people from both sides of the Mediterranean, the common language, dense cultural exchanges and the importance of economic relations attest to this.

The Maghreb largely shares a common culinary tradition; indeed, it was jocularly defined by Habib Bourguiba as the part of the Arab world where couscous is the staple food, as opposed to Arab countries of the Eastern Arab world, where white rice is the staple food. In terms of food, similarities are found throughout the Arab world. Two important examples are Maloukhiya and Bakalewa, two popular Arab dishes found throughout the Arab world.

Religion

Two thousand years ago the area was colonized by Roman settlers. Following settlement by the Jewish Diaspora and then the preaching of the Gospel, by the second century the area had started to become a centre of Latin-speaking Orthodoxy. Gradually, both Roman settlers and Romanized Phoenicians and Berbers became Christian. In this way the region was to produce figures such as the Church writer Tertullian (c 155 - c 202), the martyr St Cyprian of Carthage (+ 258), the Righteous Monica, her son the philosopher Blessed Augustine, Bishop of Hippo I (+ 430) (1), the martyr St Julia of Carthage (5th century) and many other saints of God.

In the early centuries, the Church here was also to be much shaken and divided by various heresies and schisms. There was fanatical Donatism from the fourth century onwards, Manicheanism which so tempted the pagan Augustine, and then Arianism brought by the invading Germanic Vandals in the fifth century. The heresies and schisms of the region were much conditioned by politically-motivated nationalism. The process here was therefore similar to the rise of the ethnic heresies of Monophysitism and Nestorianism of the Copts in North-East Africa, in what is today known as Egypt, and the Semites in the Middle East, modern day states such as Palestine and Lebanon.

The beginning of the end of Orthodoxy in the Maghreb came in the year 647 with the arrival from the east of the first Arab invaders, bringing Islam with them. The capture of St Cyprian's great Christian Metropolia of Carthage in 698 and the gradual Islamization of dissident native Romans, Phoenicians and Berbers.

Letters from the Christian Maghreb to Rome from the ninth century prove that Christianity was still a living faith at that time. Orthodoxy continued and several bishops and dioceses were active. Relations continued with the Patriarchal See in Rome and towards the end of the century, under Pope Benedict VII (974-983), a certain priest called James was sent to Rome to be consecrated Archbishop of Carthage. However, it is from this end of the tenth century that we hear that Christians are abandoning even the local form of Latin, and as in the Middle East, are using Arabic to communicate.

Islam

From the 7th century onward, the region has been almost entirely Muslim in religion, with a small but thriving Jewish community as well as a small Christian community. Most follow the Sunni Maliki school, although small Ibadi communities remain in some areas. A strong tradition of venerating marabouts and saint's tombs is found throughout regions inhabited by so called Berbers, still commemorated by the proliferation of "Sidi"s on any map of the region, though this tradition has substantially decreased over the twentieth century. A network of zaouias traditionally helped proliferate basic literacy and knowledge of Islam in rural regions.

History

From the end of the Ice Age, when the Sahara dried up, contact between the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa was virtually non-existent. This remained the case until after the time of the Arab expansion and the spread of Islam; even then, trans-Saharan trade was restricted to costly (but often profitable) caravan expeditions, trading such goods as salt, gold, ivory, and slaves.

Paleo-anthropological evidence suggests that originally the Maghreb was inhabited by "Caucasoid" Cro-Magnoids (Iberomaurusians) in the north. Later, about 8000 BC, there came from the east "Caucasoid" speakers of northern Afro-Asiatic languages such as Berber at least since the Capsian culture.

Many ports along the Maghreb coast were occupied by Phoenicians, particularly Carthaginians; with the defeat of Carthage, many of these ports naturally passed to Rome, and ultimately it took control of the entire Maghreb north of the Atlas Mountains, apart from some of the most mountainous regions like the Moroccan Rif.

The Arabs reached the Maghreb in early Umayyad times, but their control over it was quite weak, and various Islamic "heresies" such as the Ibadis and the Shia, adopted by some Berbers, quickly threw off Caliphal control in the name of their interpretations of Islam. The Arabic language became widespread only later, as a result of the invasion of the Banu Hilal (unleashed, ironically, by the Berber Fatimids in punishment for their Zirid clients' defection) in the 1100s. Throughout this period, the Maghreb fluctuated between occasional unity (as under the Almohads, and briefly under the Hafsids) and more commonly division into three states roughly corresponding to modern Morocco, western Algeria, and eastern Algeria and Tunisia.

After the Middle Ages, the area east of Morocco was loosely under the control of the Ottoman Empire. After the 19th century, it was colonized by France, Spain and later Italy.

Today over two and a half million Maghrebins live in France, especially from Algeria, as well as many more French of Maghrebin origin.

Maghribi traders in Jewish history

In the tenth century, as the social and political environment in Baghdad became increasingly hostile to Jews, many Jewish traders there left for the Maghrib, Tunisia in particular. Over the following two (three?) centuries, a distinctive social group of traders throughout the Mediterranean World became known as the Maghribis, passing on this identification from father to son.

Source: Avner Greif, "Contract Enforceability and Economic Institutions in Early Trade: The Maghribi Traders' Coalition," American Economic Review 82: 128 (1994).

Modern territories of the Maghreb

• Algeria
• Ceuta (a Spanish exclave)
• Libya
• Melilla (a Spanish exclave)
• Morocco
• Tunisia

Medieval regions of the Maghreb

• Ifriqiya
• Djerid
• Sous
• Zab
• Hodna
• Rif
• Maghreb al-Awsat (Central Maghreb)
• Morocco (Maghreb al-Aqsa)
• Tamesna
• Tripolitania

Notes

See also

• Arab Maghreb Union
• Barbary Coast
• Berber
• Moors
• History of Algeria
• Maghreb toponymy
• North Africa
• Tamazgha
• Mashriq
• Northwest Africa
• Maghrebi script
• Jews of the Bilad el-Sudan (West Africa)
• Jews and Judaism in Africa

External links

• literature, cinema and music of the Maghreb
• News and Views of the Maghreb

• Maghreb
• North Africa
• Regions of Africa
• Muslim history