Kahina

Daya Ult Yenfaq Tajrawt
Dihya / Tihya
Dihya memorial in Khenchela, Algeria
Reign	Early 7th century
Burial	Khenchela

Dihya or Kahina (Berber: Daya Ult Yenfaq Tajrawt, ⴷⵉⵀⵢⴰ Dihya, or ⴷⴰⵎⵢⴰ Damya; Arabic: ديهيا), was a Berber queen, religious and military leader who led indigenous resistance to Arab Islamic expansion in Northwest Africa, the region then known as Numidia. She was born in the early 7th century and died around the end of the 7th century in modern-day Algeria.

Disputed origins and religion

Her personal name is one of these variations: Daya,Dehiya, Dihya (ⴷⵉⵀⵢⴰ), Dahya or Damya (with Arabic spelling it is difficult to distinguish between these variants). Her title was cited by Arabic-language sources as al-Kāhina (the priestess soothsayer). This was the nickname used by her Muslim opponents because of her reputed ability to foresee the future.

She was born in the early 7th century and may well have been of mixed descent: Berber Jews and Byzantine Christian, since one of her sons is described as a 'yunani' or Greek. Dihya may have ruled as a Christian queen but some Arab historians wrote that she was a Jewish "sorcerer", and she was able to defeat the Arab Islamic invaders who retreated to Tripolitania. For five years she ruled a free berber state from the Aures mountains to the oasis of Gadames (695-700 AD). But the Arabs, commanded by Musa bin Nusayr, returned with a strong army and defeated her. She fought at the El Djem Roman amphitheater but finally died around the end of the 7th century in modern-day Algeria in a battle near Tabarka: according to Islamic legends, she ordered -when dying after her final defeat in 702 AD- her sons to convert to Muslim faith.

Accounts from the 19th century on, claim she was of Jewish religion or that her tribe were Judaized Berbers. 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 were Judaized comes from the medieval historian Ibn Khaldun, who named them among a number of such tribes. 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" (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 and incidents of Judaizing, those connected with the Berbers and Sudanese in Africa 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. 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. 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 came to write his account, he placed her with the Jrāwa tribe.

According to various Muslim 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.

Ibn Khaldun records many legends about Dihyā. A number of them refer to her long hair or great size, both legendary characteristics of sorcerers. She is also supposed to have had the gift of prophecy 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 officer she had captured), was an alleged trait of sorcerers in tales. Another legend claims that in her youth, she had supposedly freed her people from a tyrant by agreeing to marry him and then murdering him on their wedding night. Virtually nothing else of her personal life is known.

Conflicts and legends

Dihya succeeded Caecilius as the war leader of the Berber tribes in the 680s and opposed the encroaching Arab Islamic armies of the Umayyad Dynasty. Hasan ibn al-Nu'man marched from Egypt and captured the major Byzantine city of Carthage and other cities (see Umayyad conquest of North Africa). 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) Dihyā, and accordingly marched into Numidia. The armies met near Meskiana in the present-day province of Oum el-Bouaghi, Algeria. She defeated Hasan so soundly that he fled Ifriqiya and holed up in Cyrenaica (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 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.

Another, lesser known account of Dihyā claimed that she had an interest in early studies of desert birds. While this view may or may not be plausible, some evidence has been recovered at the site of her deathplace, modern-day Algeria. Several fragments of early parchment with a painting of a bird on them were found, although there's no way to conclude the fragments were hers. However, it is possible that she began her interest while in Libya, as the painting was of a Libyan bird species.

Defeat and death

Hasan eventually returned and, aided by communications with the captured officer adopted by Dihya, 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 biological sons over to the Arab Islamic army under the care of the adopted son, and Hasan is said to have given one of them charge of a section of his forces. According to some accounts, Dihya 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, 127 years old. This is evidently yet another of the many myths which surround her.

According to Muslim historians, her sons Bagay and Khanchla, converted, and led the Berber army to Iberia.

Legacy

Supposedly, Dihya had a passion for ornithology that shaped science and learning in early North Africa. Today, many look up to her for her great findings and independence. She shares the same homeland as the famous Saint Augustine.

In later centuries, Dihyā's legend was used to bolster the claims of Berbers in al-Andalus 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.

Cultural references

• Author Manly Wade Wellman wrote a historical fantasy novel about her, called Cahena. A movie was made with her title, not her name.
• The TV series Relic Hunter (episode 64) The relic hunters recover an artifact that had belonged to Kahina. Kahina is seen in flashback scenes.
• The "Legacy" episode of Xena: Warrior Princess (season 6) provides a fictionalized story about Kahina in northern Africa.

See also

• Umayyad conquest of North Africa

Bibliography

• Ibn Khaldun, Kitāb al-Ibar. Usually cited as: Histoire des Berbères et des dynasties musulmanes de l'Afrique septentrionale, a French trans. by William McGuckin de Slane, Paul Geuthner, Paris, 1978. This 19th-century translation should now be regarded as obsolete. There is a more accurate modern French translation by Abdesselam Cheddadi, Peuples et Nations du Monde: extraits des Ibar, Sindbad, Paris, 1986 & 1995. Hirschberg (1963) gives an English translation of the section where Ibn Khaldun discusses the supposed Judaized Jarāwa.
• Hannoum, Abdelmajid. (2001). Post-Colonial Memories: The Legend of the Dihyā, a North African Heroine (Studies in African Literature). ISBN 0-325-00253-3. This is a study of the legend of the Dihyā in the 19th century and later. The first chapter is a detailed critique of how the legend of the Dihyā emerged after several transformations from the 9th century to the 14th.
• H. Z. Hirschberg, 'The Problem of the Judaized Berbers', Journal of African History, 4 (1963), 313-339.
• H.Z. Hirschberg, A History of the Jews in North Africa. E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1974 (2nd ed., Eng. trans.).
• al-Mālikī, Riyād an-Nufūs. Partial French trans. (including the story of the Dihyā) by H.R. Idris, 'Le récit d'al-Mālikī sur la Conquête de l'Ifrīqiya', Revue des Etudes Islamiques 37 (1969) 117-149. The accuracy of this translation has been criticised by Talbi (1971) and others.
• Modéran, Yves. (2005). Article 'Dihyā (Dihyā)', Encyclopédie Berbère vol. 27, p. 4102-4111. The most recent critical study of the historical sources.
• Talbi, Mohammed. (1971). Un nouveau fragment de l'histoire de l'Occident musulman (62-196/682-812) : l'épopée d'al Kahina. (Cahiers de Tunisie vol. 19 p. 19-52). An important historiographical study.
• at-Tijānī, Rihlat. Arabic text ed. by H.H. Abdulwahhab, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt, 1994. French trans. by A. Rousseau in Journal Asiatique, section containing the story of the Dihyā is in n.s. 4, vol. 20 (1852) 57-208.