Tamazight

Tamazight, or the Berber languages, is the North African branch of the Afroasiatic family, spoken by the indigenous Amazigh peoples from Morocco to Egypt, with Tuareg varieties deep in the Sahara. Berber speakers spread from the Nile Valley into the Maghreb in the second millennium BC, and their ancestors built Numidia and Mauretania.

From around 600 BC their language was cut into rock and tombstone in the Libyco-Berber alphabet, whose Tuareg descendant, Tifinagh, remained in use among desert nomads. Arab conquests brought Islam and Arabization, yet Berber remained the speech of mountains and desert.

Berber dynasties ruled the Maghreb and al-Andalus, including the Almoravids, Almohads and Marinids; the Marinids held Fez in 1337. After their fall, Arabic gained ground in cities while Tuareg confederations kept Tamazight alive along trans-Saharan trade routes, preserving Tifinagh letters.