Wednesday, October 15, 2008

The Egyptian Berbers

I have just known for the first time that there are Egyptian Berbers . Al Badeel Newspaper published a series of reports about the Berbers mainly in the Western desert.The journalist who should be mentioned in this important file is Mr. Youssef Abd Rabou.

Unlike what is mentioned in Arabic Wikipedia about their existence in Egypt that they came with the Fatimids from North Africa to Egypt. It is true that several Berber tribes came with the Fatimids to Egypt but the Berbers came to Egypt before that since the time of the ancient of Egyptians since the time of Ramses III.

They are now concentrating in the Western desert in Siwa. Their population in Siwa is 21,000 distributed in 11 tribes. Just like any tribal society ,the old traditions and customs come in the first place even before the Religion sometimes.

Here are the links of the series in Arabic from El-Badeel official website:

The Berbers in Egypt as a minority have small demands ,beside the recognition which I think it is important ,they want their language to be taught in their schools , I do not know any reason why the State does not listen to them , as if the State listens to anyone including the majority of the Egyptian people.

Now you must know that Adali Abdir is trying to use the Egyptian Berbers in his dirty game against Egypt , yes the minority reports game but they refused to be part of that dirty game. The Berbers in Egypt do not have any other home except Egypt ,they are Egyptians in the first place as I understand from that report , it is not a matter of Ethnicity. For me I consider them Egyptians 100% not a minority. In the end they stayed in Egypt for thousands year where as my Turkish grandfather came from about 200 years alone.

Of course don’t expect the Egyptian State to reward them because the Egyptian State doesn’t differentiate between its citizens !!

The report again discuss the old closed the Egyptian X-File of Al Jaghbub Oasis that was taken from Egypt in the 1930s thanks to the Italians despite we got all the documents that prove it is part of Egypt. FYI President Mohamed Naguib wanted to restore especially after the Libyan independence in 1951 and the Egyptian Revolution in 1952 ,it was well documented but of course Naguib didn’t too much time in the rule and Nasser who broke the union with Sudan didn’t seem interested in restoring this land. In 1977 when the tension between Sadat and Gaddafi thanks to the later crazy mood reached to a nearly military operation, President Sadat wanted to restore the oasis, already the plan was that the Egyptian forces would go and restore it but thanks to the interfere of several regional and world leaders both sides gave up. To be frank I think the presidents of Egypt do not understand its importance yet ,for them it is just an Oasis in the desert faraway from the Capital !!

By the way do you know that the Nile Word is originally Berber word which means Blue when the Arabs came they used it with “The” to define the Nile !!??

1 comment:

  1. Sudanese Observer9/12/2010 03:28:00 PM

    Were you just in favour of a military annexation of the Jaghbub Oasis by Egyptian forces???

    Not surprising really since you support the military annexation and illegal occupation by Egyptian forces, of Halayeb.

    The civilised way of settling disputes is through arbitration...

    ReplyDelete

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