Kahina
Al-Kahina, also known as Dihya, was a Berber warrior-queen of the Aurès and a religious and military leader who lived during the seventh century AD/CE.
Al-Kahina is known to have united various Berber tribes under her leadership to fight against the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb, leading the indigenous North African defense of the region then known as Numidia. She fought in multiple battles, notably defeating Umayyad forces in the Battle of Meskiana. Afterwards, she became the uncontested ruler of the whole Maghreb region, and remained so until being decisively defeated at the Battle of Tabarka.
There are various accounts of the circumstances surrounding her death, but she is thought to have died in modern-day Algeria towards the end of the seventh century, or early 8th century. For five years Al-Kahina ruled a free Berber state from the Aurès Mountains to the oasis of Ghadames. She is considered one of the most famous figures of her era in the history of the Berber resistance to the Arab conquest. Her legacy has been retold through the oral tradition since her lifetime. There are various written accounts of her from precolonial and postcolonial perspectives.
Name
Her name is Dihya or Dahya. Her title was cited by Arabic-language sources as al-Kāhina . This was the nickname given to by her Muslim opponents because of her alleged ability to foresee the future.Origins and religion
Over three centuries after her death, Tunisian hagiographer al-Mālikī seems to have been among the first to state she resided in the Aurès Mountains. There is some debate about which Berber tribe Al-Kahina originated from. Seven centuries after her death, the pilgrim at-Tijani was told she belonged to the Lūwāta tribe. However, when the later historian Ibn Khaldun wrote his account, he placed her with the Jarawa tribe.Various authors have claimed that Al-Kahina was Jewish, Christian or of the traditional Berber pagan religion. Various sources suggest that she was of Jewish faith or that her tribe were Judaized Berbers. The idea that the Jarawa were Judaized comes from the medieval historian Ibn Khaldun. Hirschberg and Talbi note that Ibn Khaldun seems to have been referring to a time before the advent of the late Roman and Byzantine empires, and a little later in the same paragraph seems to say that by Roman times "the tribes" had become Christianized. As early as 1963, the Israeli historian H.Z. Hirschberg, in retranslating the text of Ibn Khaldun questioned this interpretation, and in general the existence of large Jewish Berber tribes in the end of Antiquity. In the words of H.Z. Hirschberg, "of all the known movements of conversion to Judaism and incidents of Judaizing, those connected with the Berbers and Sudanese in Africa are the least authenticated."
According to al-Mālikī, Al-Kahina was accompanied in her travels by an "idol". Both Mohamed Talbi and Gabriel Camps interpreted this idol as a Christian icon, either of Christ, the Virgin, or a saint protecting the queen. However, Tunisian historian M'hamed Hassine Fantar held that this icon represented a separate Berber deity, suggesting she followed traditional Berber religion. However, Al-Kahina being a Christian remains the most likely hypothesis. According to various Muslim sources, al-Kāhina was the daughter of Tabat, or Yanfaq, or according to Ibn Khaldun she was the daughter Mātiya ibn Tifan.
Military victorie in Meskiana
In the 680s, and after Kusaila was killed and the decline of the Kingdom of Altava, most of the Berbers joined Dihya and Kingdom of the Aurés.After a successful siege in Carthage, Arab Muslim general Hasan ibn al-Nu'man, was searching for his next enemy to defeat, and was told by the peoples of Kairouan that the most powerful monarch in North Africa was Al-Kahina, they described her as "A women in Aurés Mountains, feared by the Romans and followed by the Berbers", and accordingly marched into Aurés Mountains.
In 698, and after hering of Hasan's arrival, she demolished the city of Baghaya believing that Hasan wanted to use it as a fortification, and when Hasan heard of that he entered Aurés and Kahina followed him. the armies met in Meskiana Valley in the present-day province of Oum el-Bouaghi in Algeria, at the Battle of Meskiana. Al-Kahina defeated Hasan so soundly, and after she chased until reaching Gabes, he fled Ifriqiya and holed up in Cyrenaica for five years.
After the battle, she spared all the muslim captives and sent them to Hasan in Cyrenaica, expect for Khalid ibn Yazid al-Qaisi, she took him back to her home in Aurés, and said to him, "I have never seen a man more handsome or braver than you! I want to nurse you so that you will be a brother to my sons." She had two sons, one is a Greek and the other is a Berber, according to Al-Raqiq Al-Kairouani one was named Qwaider and the other Yamin. Khalid answerd, "How can that be when you have lost the ability to nurse?" She replied, "We Berbers have a custom of nursing that allows us to inherit from one another." So she took barley flour and mixed it with oil, making what is known as Bsisa in Maghreb, and placed it on her breasts. She called her two sons and said to them, "Eat it with him on my breasts." And after they finished she then told them, "You are now brothers.", and thus she adopted Khalid bin Yazid.
Realizing that the enemy was too powerful and bound to return, Kahina was said to have embarked on a scorched earth 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 Muslim armies, her desperate decision hastened defeat.
Deafet and Death
eventually returned and, aided by communications with the captured officer Khalid bin Yazid al-Qaysi adopted by Al-Kahina, defeated her at the Battle of Tabarka in 702. However, according to the French historians Charles André Julien and Roger Le Tourneau, Kahina fought the Islamic conquest troops at El Djem Roman amphitheater but was killed in combat near a well that still bears her name, Bir al Kahina in Aures.Regardless of the manner of her death, it is reported that she was beheaded, and her head was sent back to the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan in Damascus as proof of her death.
Although there are ambiguities about the exact manner of her death, anthropologist Abdelmajid Hannoum summarised what we do know thus:
"Though the story of the Kahina may vary from one informant to another, the pattern is the same: the Kahina is the Berber heroine who fought the Arabs for independence."
Legacy
Although Al-Kahina's writings, including poems and speeches were all destroyed after her death, she was adopted as a symbol by North African women in resistance to foreign occupation and against male hegemony. During the period of French colonisation of Algeria, Kahina was a model for the militant women who fought as part of the resistance. In the Kabyle insurrection of 1851 and 1857, women such as Algerian national hero Lalla Fatma N'Soumer and Lalla Khadija Bent Belkacem, who were known as chief warriors, took Al-Kahina as a model.In the early 20th century, the French, anxious to Frenchify Algeria by Romanising its past, drew parallels between themselves and the Romans. The Algerian nationalists, seeking to tie Algeria to the East instead, draw the same parallels, but for them both Rome and France were colonial powers, responsible for the decline of Phoenician civilisation in the past, and Arabic civilisation in the present. Both ideologies used Kahina's mythology as a founding myth. On one side, she was the one who fought the Arabs and Islam to keep Algeria Christian, on the other, she was the one who fought all invaders to create an independent state.
In the present day, the image of Kahina is constantly used by Berber activists to showcase how they, as a people, are strong and will not be conquered or diminished by other communities. Her face is often seen in graffiti and sculptures around Algeria to showcase their support for the progressive ideals she represents. While her true appearance is still unknown, artists have depicted her with certain aspects that reinforce the progressive movement she is known to represent.
However, not all governments accept the ideals behind Kahina. One statue of Kahina in Baghai was condemned by the government due to blasphemy. The president of the Defense of the Arab Language, Othman Saadi, said that Kahina represented the resistance to Islam, and thus, should be condemned.