Amazigh, Mozabite

The Mozabites (Imzabiyen in Tumzabt, Beni Mzab in Arabic) are the Berber people of the M'zab, a limestone plateau cut by the Wadi M'zab in the northern Algerian Sahara. Two things define them together: they speak Tumzabt, a Zenati Berber language close to the speech of Ouargla and the Oued Righ, and they follow Ibadi Islam, the school that is neither Sunni nor Shia. They descend from the Ibadi community of the Rustamid state of Tahert (Tiaret, 767-909); after the Fatimids destroyed Tahert, the Ibadis withdrew to Sedrata near Ouargla and then, from 1012, to the M'zab, whose remoteness protected them. The five towns of the Pentapolis (El Atteuf, Bounoura, Melika, Ghardaia, Beni Isguen) were founded between 1012 and 1350; Berriane and El Guerrara joined in the 17th century. The confederation kept its autonomy under the Ottomans, paid France a yearly tribute from 1853 and was annexed in 1882. A Mozabite Jewish community of about 3,000 (1881) lived in Ghardaia until 1962. Mozabites are known as shopkeepers and traders: men have long run shops in the northern cities while their families stay in the M'zab.

Each Mozabite town is built in rings around a hilltop mosque whose minaret once served as a watchtower, with houses of equal height and doors that never face one another, and each has a summer settlement in its palm grove. Water is shared through fixed openings in channels measured palm by palm, from thousands of wells and flood dams. A council of about twelve clerics (the azzaba) in each town regulates building, water, schooling, marriage costs, dress and disputes, and the council of Ammi Said sets common rules for the seven towns. Men wear a white gandoura, wide sirwal and a skullcap; married women go out wrapped in a white haik showing one eye. A bride brings a decorated goatskin water bag to her husband's house, and neighbours check on her if it is missing from the roof. Weddings are collective and their cost is capped. Children attend Ibadi Qur'an schools after state school. Beni Isguen's auction market and carpets are known across Algeria.

Mozabites practise Ibadi Islam strictly. Ibadis elect their imams on piety, pray with arms at their sides, keep plain undecorated mosques and hold that a Muslim who dies in unrepented grave sin is not saved. There are no saint shrines, Sufi brotherhoods or marabouts, a contrast with the Maliki Arabs of the same valley. The clerical councils govern religious and much of social life, and a member who breaks the rules can be excluded from the community. Ties run to the Ibadis of Djerba (Tunisia), the Nafusa Mountains (Libya) and Oman. No source describes a drift away from Ibadi practice among the young.

Scripture portions in Tumzabt are published by the United Bible Societies (on Bible.is, 2021). Global Recordings Network has a Good News audio programme whose first 13 stories are in Tumzabt, recorded with a speaker in Marseille. No Jesus Film is listed in Tumzabt. No church among Mozabites is known; evangelicals are under 2%. Leaving Islam means exclusion from a community that controls housing, marriage, trade networks and schooling.