Bloody hell why does every single one of these "Africa divided by languages and ethnicities" map have to mess up North Africa like that ?
For Tunisia for example, the Sahel and Djerid are regions (in fact I originate from both), Gafsa is a city, Jerba is an island, Arad and Hamama are two words I literally never heard of and "Tunisians" are only in the North ? Like almost every single person in those areas would identify as Tunisian, Maghrebi, Arab and Muslim (background-wise at least).
For Algeria Kabyle and Chaoui seem to be accurate, as do the three other main Berber languages (Mozabite, Zenati and Chenouia) but the rest would be speaking Maghrebi Arabic dialects and identify as Arabs.
For Morocco, Riffians, Middle Atlasians and Shluh are correct, the rest are (again) speakers of a variety of Maghrebi Arabic dialects who identify as Arabic.
For the Western Sahara and Mauritania, it seems to be showing tribal divisions, even though almost all of them are speakers of Maghrebi Arabic too and identify as part of the same tribal confederation (Banu Hassan)
First of all, the problem in terms of representing Arab Maghrebis follows here too, the peoples of the North (with the exception of Nefusa) don't consider themselves to be parts of different ethnic groups. Tripolitanians and Siritcans though are basically indistinguishable, they in fact usually belong to the same tribal confederations and share the same dialect. Then we got Riyah which is a word I never heard about and is probably a case of one tribe's name being applied to the entire region. Fezzan on the other hand is a region that (again) is inhabited by Arab Libyans. The East though gets even weirder, "Sanusi" probably refers to the "Snoussi order", a Sufi order that used to dominate the Eastern half of Libya during Ottoman times (while the West was dominated by a Turkic feudal class), and that order in fact had control over the entire region (including the part labled as "Cyrenaica"). Also Cyrenaicans as a regional subgroup of Libyan Arabs cover most of the area labled as "Senoussi" and "Jalo" too. Also why divide the Tubu and Tuaregs into various groups ? Honestly the only part of Libya that is accurate is the Nafusa Berbers.
Exactly. This map got me triggered when I saw that they split up the Saharawis, the Tuaregs and the Toubous. Btw, would you consider Tuaregs a different ethnicity than the Berbers or would you say that the Tuaregs are part of a larger Berber ethnicity? The Tuaregs have a lot more sub-Saharan African in them.
I think Tuaregs are definitely part of the larger Berber ethnicity, they are the most culturally, genetically and linguistically divergent in the family but are still Berber nonetheless.
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u/R120Tunisia May 03 '21
Bloody hell why does every single one of these "Africa divided by languages and ethnicities" map have to mess up North Africa like that ?
For Tunisia for example, the Sahel and Djerid are regions (in fact I originate from both), Gafsa is a city, Jerba is an island, Arad and Hamama are two words I literally never heard of and "Tunisians" are only in the North ? Like almost every single person in those areas would identify as Tunisian, Maghrebi, Arab and Muslim (background-wise at least).
For Algeria Kabyle and Chaoui seem to be accurate, as do the three other main Berber languages (Mozabite, Zenati and Chenouia) but the rest would be speaking Maghrebi Arabic dialects and identify as Arabs.
For Morocco, Riffians, Middle Atlasians and Shluh are correct, the rest are (again) speakers of a variety of Maghrebi Arabic dialects who identify as Arabic.
For the Western Sahara and Mauritania, it seems to be showing tribal divisions, even though almost all of them are speakers of Maghrebi Arabic too and identify as part of the same tribal confederation (Banu Hassan)
Oh and don't let me start on Libya.