Amazigh, Matmata

The Amazigh of Matmata are the Berber-speaking people of three hill villages on the northern Dahar plateau of southern Tunisia: Zraoua (Amazigh Azro), Tamezret and Taoujout, in the Matmata area of Gabes governorate. They number about 5,500 and call their language Chelha (Chilha), a Zenati Berber variety known to linguists as Matmata Berber or Jbali-Tamezret. Sadok Sahli counted about 3,700 speakers in 1975; linguist Maarten Kossmann groups it with the Berber of Douiret, Djerba, Sened and Zuwara in a Tunisian-Zuwara cluster, while Ethnologue files it under Nafusi (jbn), the Berber of Libya's Jebel Nafusa.

The village names are themselves Berber: Tamezret means 'the village' (an Arabic inscription there is dated 1410) and Taoujout 'the perfumed hill' or 'mint'. In the Middle Ages the Dahar and Jebel Demmer hills were a refuge for Ibadi Berbers fleeing the Banu Hilal invasions of the 11th century, and Maliki Sunni Islam spread there only slowly, still incomplete in the early 15th century (Mohamed Hassen, 2012). The fortified hill villages, granaries and troglodyte houses date from those centuries.

Matmata town, famous for its pit houses, gave the group its name, but by 2020 no Amazigh speakers remained in the town itself; the language survives in the three villages. After independence the Bourguiba government moved families down from the old hill villages to new settlements on the plain (Old Zraoua was emptied from the late 1970s), discouraged the language and promoted a single Arab-Tunisian identity. The 2011 revolution brought an Amazigh revival: the first Amazigh cultural congress met in Matmata in 2011, and each village now has its own cultural association.

The Amazigh of Matmata are related to, but distinct from, the Amazigh of Tataouine (Chenini and Douiret) about 80 km to the south. Field workers describe the two as separate peoples with different customs and religious identity. Joshua Project files Morocco's Taznatit under the same entry; they are a different people, the Zenati Berbers of Figuig and the Algerian Gourara, with their own research file (berber-taznatit).

The three villages are close to one another in customs and are described by field workers as 'harmoniously united'. Unlike other Amazigh communities in Tunisia, men and women mix socially and women are seen as equal co-workers with the right to work as men do. Children grow up speaking Chelha at home and many learn to write it in Tifinagh script through the village associations; they also learn Arabic and French at school and follow radio, television and the internet.

Housing: the old hilltop villages are clusters of stone houses, cisterns, terraces and granaries built into the rock of the Dahar; Old Zraoua, abandoned from the late 1970s, keeps its terraced gardens and rain cisterns, and two families still live there. Families now live in the newer villages below. Taoujout keeps one of the old Amazigh castles (ksar).

Heritage and festivals: Mongi Bouras, an architect from Tamezret, turned a house at the top of the village into a museum of Amazigh life (1999), with embroidered shawls, woven woollen wraps (bakhnoug), slippers and tools, and serves village dishes such as krabbiz couscous with herbs, olives and dates. Zraoua has hosted a festival of the mountain villages since 2012, Tamezret holds cultural days, and in January the three villages celebrate the Amazigh New Year (Idh Ouskas), from 10 to 14 January, with visitors from across Tunisia, Libya and Algeria. Young people from Zraoua recorded the first Amazigh rap in Tunisia.

The villagers are Muslims. Pray4Tunisia says they follow the Ibadi school, which holds that a true Muslim proves his faith in deeds as well as words and does not look down on other Muslims, and that their Maliki neighbours see the Ibadi Amazigh as outsiders. The Jebel Demmer and Dahar hills were Ibadi until the late Middle Ages, but academic work today counts Djerba as Tunisia's only surviving Ibadi community, so the label may describe heritage and identity more than separate mosques or scholars. Daily practice (prayer, Ramadan fasting, Islamic weddings and burials) looks like that of their Arab neighbours; each village has its mosque, and the tradition holds that the Berbers built conspicuous white mosques on the hilltops so that passing armies would think the villages already converted.

The cross motif survives in Amazigh carpets, architecture and older women's facial tattoos, a reminder of North Africa's Christian centuries, though villagers today know nothing of that heritage. The Amazigh revival since 2011 celebrates pre-Islamic customs such as the Amazigh New Year, tied to the farming calendar, without any break with Islam.

There is no Scripture, audio recording or Jesus Film in Matmata Berber. Portions exist in Nafusi (jbn), the Berber of Libya's Jebel Nafusa, which is related but not the same speech, and the New Testament and the Jesus Film are available in Tunisian Arabic, which all villagers also speak. Global Recordings Network lists the Matmata, Tamezret, Taoujout and Zawa (Zraoua) varieties but has no recordings in them. Pray4Tunisia lists the Amazigh of Matmata among Tunisia's unengaged, unreached people groups and asks churches to pray for and adopt them. No believers or fellowship are known.