Mozabite

The Mozabites, who call themselves At Mzab, are a Zenati Berber people of the northern Sahara, centered on the M'zab valley. They became Ibadi Muslims under the Rustamid dynasty, which from 767 made Ibadi Islam dominant among central Maghreb Berbers.

When the Fatimids took the Rustamid capital Tahert in 911, the Ibadi community was driven south to Ouargla. Fresh persecution in 1012 sent it into the M'zab, where five walled ksour were built between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, joined by two more in the seventeenth century.

Cut off by desert, the federation long ran its affairs through a religious council, with strict Ibadi rules governing land, water and marriage. Elaborate underground irrigation turned the wadi bed into palm groves, and merchants traded between the Sahara and Mediterranean ports. In the 1500s the oases recognized Ottoman Algiers as nominal overlord while remaining self-governing.