Kahina
Encyclopedia
al-Kāhina was a 7th century female Berber
Berber people
Berbers are the indigenous peoples of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are continuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River. Historically they spoke the Berber language or varieties of it, which together form a branch...

 religious and military leader, who led indigenous resistance to Arab expansion in Northwest Africa, the region then known as Numidia
Numidia
Numidia was an ancient Berber kingdom in part of present-day Eastern Algeria and Western Tunisia in North Africa. It is known today as the Chawi-land, the land of the Chawi people , the direct descendants of the historical Numidians or the Massyles The kingdom began as a sovereign state and later...

, known as the Maghreb
Maghreb
The Maghreb is the region of Northwest Africa, west of Egypt. It includes five countries: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania and the disputed territory of Western Sahara...

 today. She was born in the early 7th century and died around the end of the 7th century probably in modern day Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...

.

Kahina's disputed origins and religion

Her real name was said to be Dihyā, Dahyā or Damiya (the Arabic spellings are difficult to distinguish between these variants). al-Kāhinat (the female soothsayer
Divination
Divination is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic standardized process or ritual...

) was the nickname used by her Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...

 opponents because of her reputed ability to foresee the future.

Over four centuries after her death, Tunisian hagiographer al-Mālikī seems to have been among the first to state she resided in the Aurès Mountains
Aurès Mountains
The Aurès , or Aurea, refers to an Amazigh language-speaking region in East Algeria, as well as an extension of the Atlas mountain range that lies to the east of the Saharan Atlas in eastern Algeria and northwestern Tunisia...

. Just on seven centuries after her death, the pilgrim at-Tijani was told she belonged to the Lūwāta tribe. When the later historian Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldūn or Ibn Khaldoun was an Arab Tunisian historiographer and historian who is often viewed as one of the forerunners of modern historiography, sociology and economics...

 came to write his account, he placed her with the Jrāwa
Jarawa (Berber)
The Jarawa or Jrāwa were a Berber Zenata tribal confederacy that flourished in northwest Africa during the seventh century CE. Under l-Kahna, they led the Berber resistance to Arab invasion in the late 600s....

 tribe.

According to various sources, al-Kāhinat was the daughter of Tabat, or some say Mātiya. These sources depend on tribal genealogies, which were generally concocted for political reasons during the 9th century.

Accounts from the nineteenth century on claim she was a Jew or that her tribe
Tribe
A tribe, viewed historically or developmentally, consists of a social group existing before the development of, or outside of, states.Many anthropologists use the term tribal society to refer to societies organized largely on the basis of kinship, especially corporate descent groups .Some theorists...

 were Judaized Berbers, though scholars dispute this. According to al-Mālikī she was said to have been accompanied in her travels by what the Arabs called an "idol", possibly an icon of the Virgin or one of the Christian saints, but certainly not something associated with Jewish religious customs.

The idea that the Jrāwa
Jarawa (Berber)
The Jarawa or Jrāwa were a Berber Zenata tribal confederacy that flourished in northwest Africa during the seventh century CE. Under l-Kahna, they led the Berber resistance to Arab invasion in the late 600s....

 were Judaized comes from the medieval historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

 Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldūn or Ibn Khaldoun was an Arab Tunisian historiographer and historian who is often viewed as one of the forerunners of modern historiography, sociology and economics...

, who named them among a number of such tribes. Hirschberg and Talbi note that Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldūn or Ibn Khaldoun was an Arab Tunisian historiographer and historian who is often viewed as one of the forerunners of modern historiography, sociology and economics...

 seems to have been referring to a time before the advent of the late Roman
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

 and Byzantine
Byzantine
Byzantine usually refers to the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages.Byzantine may also refer to:* A citizen of the Byzantine Empire, or native Greek during the Middle Ages...

 empires, and a little later in the same paragraph seems to say that by Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 times "the tribes" (presumably those he had listed before) had become Christianized. In the words of H. Z. Hirschberg, "of all the known movements of conversion to Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

 and incidents of Judaizing, those connected with the Berbers and Sudanese in Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

 are the least authenticated. Whatever has been written on them is extremely questionable." Hirschberg further points out that in the oral legends of Algerian Jews, "Kahya" was depicted as an ogre and persecutor of Jews.

al-Kāhinat may have been of mixed descent: Berber
Berber people
Berbers are the indigenous peoples of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are continuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River. Historically they spoke the Berber language or varieties of it, which together form a branch...

 and Byzantine Christian, since one of her sons is described as a 'yunani' or Greek
Greeks
The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....

.

Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldūn or Ibn Khaldoun was an Arab Tunisian historiographer and historian who is often viewed as one of the forerunners of modern historiography, sociology and economics...

 records many legends about al-Kāhinat. A number of them refer to her long hair
Hair
Hair is a filamentous biomaterial, that grows from follicles found in the dermis. Found exclusively in mammals, hair is one of the defining characteristics of the mammalian class....

 or great size, both legendary characteristics of sorcerers. She is also supposed to have had the gift of prophecy
Prophecy
Prophecy is a process in which one or more messages that have been communicated to a prophet are then communicated to others. Such messages typically involve divine inspiration, interpretation, or revelation of conditioned events to come as well as testimonies or repeated revelations that the...

 and she had three sons, which is characteristic of witches in legends. Even the fact that two were her own and one was adopted (an Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...

 officer she had captured), was an alleged trait of sorcerers in tales. Another legend
Legend
A legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude...

 claims that in her youth, she had supposedly freed her people from a tyrant
Tyrant
A tyrant was originally one who illegally seized and controlled a governmental power in a polis. Tyrants were a group of individuals who took over many Greek poleis during the uprising of the middle classes in the sixth and seventh centuries BC, ousting the aristocratic governments.Plato and...

 by agreeing to marry him and then murdering him on their wedding
Wedding
A wedding is the ceremony in which two people are united in marriage or a similar institution. Wedding traditions and customs vary greatly between cultures, ethnic groups, religions, countries, and social classes...

 night. Virtually nothing else of her personal life is known.

al-Kāhinat's legendary life

al-Kāhinat succeeded Kusaila
Kusaila
Kusaila or Kasila or Kusayla was a 7th century chief of the Awraba tribe of the Berber people and head of the Sanhadja confederation...

 as the war leader of the Berber
Berber people
Berbers are the indigenous peoples of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are continuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River. Historically they spoke the Berber language or varieties of it, which together form a branch...

 tribes in the 680s and opposed the encroaching Arab armies of the Umayyad Dynasty. Hasan ibn al-Nu'man
Hasan ibn al-Nu'man
Hasan ibn an-Nu`uman al-Ghasani , amir of the Umayyad army in North Africa. The nisba indicates he either came from Ghassān in Yemen or was part of an Arab tribe originally from that area.-Biography:...

 marched from Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

 and captured the major Byzantine
Byzantine
Byzantine usually refers to the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages.Byzantine may also refer to:* A citizen of the Byzantine Empire, or native Greek during the Middle Ages...

 city of Carthage
Carthage
Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...

 and other cities (see Umayyad conquest of North Africa
Umayyad conquest of North Africa
The Umayyad conquest of North Africa continued the century of rapid Arab Muslim expansion following the death of Muhammad in 632 CE. By 640 the Arabs controlled Mesopotamia, had invaded Armenia, and were concluding their conquest of Byzantine Syria. Damascus was the seat of the Umayyad caliphate....

 ). Searching for another enemy to defeat, he was told that the most powerful monarch in North Africa was "the queen of the Berbers" (Arabic: malikat al-barbar) al-Kāhinat, and accordingly marched into Numidia
Numidia
Numidia was an ancient Berber kingdom in part of present-day Eastern Algeria and Western Tunisia in North Africa. It is known today as the Chawi-land, the land of the Chawi people , the direct descendants of the historical Numidians or the Massyles The kingdom began as a sovereign state and later...

. The armies met near Meskiana in the present-day province of Oum el-Bouaghi, Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...

. She defeated Hasan
Hasan ibn al-Nu'man
Hasan ibn an-Nu`uman al-Ghasani , amir of the Umayyad army in North Africa. The nisba indicates he either came from Ghassān in Yemen or was part of an Arab tribe originally from that area.-Biography:...

 so soundly that he fled Ifriqiya
Ifriqiya
In medieval history, Ifriqiya or Ifriqiyah was the area comprising the coastal regions of what are today western Libya, Tunisia, and eastern Algeria. This area included what had been the Roman province of Africa, whose name it inherited....

 and holed up in Cyrenaica
Cyrenaica
Cyrenaica is the eastern coastal region of Libya.Also known as Pentapolis in antiquity, it was part of the Creta et Cyrenaica province during the Roman period, later divided in Libia Pentapolis and Libia Sicca...

 (Libya) for four or five years. Realizing that the enemy was too powerful and bound to return, she was said to have embarked on a scorched earth
Scorched earth
A scorched earth policy is a military strategy or operational method which involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from an area...

 campaign, which had little impact on the mountain and desert tribes, but lost her the crucial support of the sedentary oasis-dwellers. Instead of discouraging the Arab armies, her desperate decision hastened defeat.

Hasan
Hasan ibn al-Nu'man
Hasan ibn an-Nu`uman al-Ghasani , amir of the Umayyad army in North Africa. The nisba indicates he either came from Ghassān in Yemen or was part of an Arab tribe originally from that area.-Biography:...

 eventually returned and, aided by communications with the captured officer adopted by Kahina, defeated her at a locality (presumably in present-day Algeria) about which there is some uncertainty. Before the battle, foreseeing the outcome, she sent her two real sons over to the Arab army under the care of the adopted son, and Hasan
Hasan ibn al-Nu'man
Hasan ibn an-Nu`uman al-Ghasani , amir of the Umayyad army in North Africa. The nisba indicates he either came from Ghassān in Yemen or was part of an Arab tribe originally from that area.-Biography:...

 is said to have given one of them charge of a section of his forces. According to some accounts, al-Kāhinat died fighting the invaders, sword in hand, a warrior's death. Other accounts say she committed suicide by swallowing poison rather than be taken by the enemy. This final act occurred in the 690s or 700s, with 702 or 703 given as the most likely year. In that year, she was, according to Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldūn or Ibn Khaldoun was an Arab Tunisian historiographer and historian who is often viewed as one of the forerunners of modern historiography, sociology and economics...

, 127 years old. This is evidently yet another of the many myths which surround her.

In later centuries, Kahina's legend was used to bolster the claims of Berbers in al-Andalūs
Al-Andalus
Al-Andalus was the Arabic name given to a nation and territorial region also commonly referred to as Moorish Iberia. The name describes parts of the Iberian Peninsula and Septimania governed by Muslims , at various times in the period between 711 and 1492, although the territorial boundaries...

 against Arab claims of ethnic supremacy—in the early modern age, she was used by French colonials, Berber nationalists, Arab Nationalists, North African Jews, North African feminists, and Maghrebi nationalists alike for their own didactic purposes.

Manly Wade Wellman
Manly Wade Wellman
Manly Wade Wellman was an American writer. He is best known for his fantasy and horror stories set in the Appalachian Mountains and for drawing on the native folklore of that region, but he wrote in a wide variety of genres, including science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, detective...

wrote a historical fantasy novel about her, called Cahena.

Her sons Bagay and Khanchla, converted, and led the berber army to Iberia.
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