Jebli Arabic
Jebli is a pre-Hilalian Arabic dialect spoken in the mountains of northwestern Morocco.
The historical development of this Moroccan dialect is unclear.
The word jebli means "of/from the mountain". It is mainly spoken in the western Rif by tribes of, Berber and Morisco descent over the past ten centuries.
- Jbalas: all its 44 tribes speak Jebli Arabic;
- Ghomaras: out of nine tribes, seven are fully Jebli-speaking, the two remaining are partially Jebli-speaking, with a significant Ghomara Berber-speaking community;
- Sanhajas de Srayr: two Jebli-speaking tribes – Ketama and Aït Seddat – out of ten tribes, the remaining speak Sanhaja Berber;
- Riffians: out of twenty tribes, six are fully or partially Arabophone; among them, five speak Mountain Arabic − Targuist, Aït Itteftf, Aït Boufrah, Mestasa and Metioua − while the last one speak Hilalian Arabic;
- Tribes of Zerhoun and the neighborhood of Sefrou : although not belonging to the same ethno-linguistic group than Jebalas, their pre-Hilalian dialects are sometimes classified as belonging to the same macro-family as Jebli.