Amazigh, Gafsa

The Amazigh of Gafsa are the Berber families of El Sened (As Sanad), a small town in the Orbata hills of Gafsa governorate in central Tunisia, and of the nearby village of Majoura, whose Berber name is Tmagurt. Their forebears lived in fortified mountain villages; most of the families now in Sened came down from them, as Tunisia's governments pushed the Amazigh of the hills into new settlements on the plains.

Their own language, Sened Berber (ISO 639-3 sds), was an East Zenati Berber language with two dialects, Sened proper and Tmagourt. Provotelle documented it in 1911 in his study of the 'Zenatia of Qal'at es-Sened', when the whole town still spoke Berber. By 1968 only the elderly spoke it, and it has since died out. The families now speak Tunisian Arabic, though Berber words and pronunciation still mark their speech.

They still see themselves as Amazigh and are seen as such by their neighbours. Field workers describe a clear line between them and the settled Bedouin Arabs of the Sened area: the Amazigh think of themselves as orderly and tidy, and accuse the Bedouin of having taken their land and ruling over them unjustly.

Names: Amazigh of Gafsa, Gafsa Berber, Amazigh of El Sened; the people call themselves Imazighen when they use a Berber name. Joshua Project lists them as 'Amazigh, Gafsa'. Joshua Project ('Amazigh, Tmagourt') and the IMB ('Tmagourt') also list the people of Majoura (Tmagurt), the second village of the same Sened Berber speech, as a group of their own. No source describes a Tmagourt community apart from the Sened Amazigh, so they are counted here as one people.

Little has been written about daily life in Sened. Field workers describe the Amazigh families as tidy and well-organised, earning their living in private trades, the civil service and manual labour, and living in some tension with their Bedouin neighbours over land and local power. Like other Tunisian Amazigh, they lost most of their distinct dress and customs under the post-independence policy of a single Arab-Tunisian identity, and the 2011 revolution opened space for a revival of Amazigh pride across the country.

Their Berber language now survives only in traces in their Arabic and in the 1911 texts Provotelle recorded, which include a Berber version of the Banu Hilal epic (Taghribat Bani Hilal) that tells of the Arab tribes whose arrival in the 11th century began the Arabisation of the region. The hills around Majoura are also an archaeological area: in 2023 Tunisia's National Heritage Institute excavated Capsian prehistoric sites at al-Majoura and Wadi al-Nadhour, the culture named after Gafsa (Capsa).

Field workers report that the Amazigh of Gafsa follow the Ibadi school of Islam, neither Sunni nor Shia, which teaches that a true Muslim shows his faith in deeds as well as words, and that Tunisia's Maliki majority regards the Ibadi Amazigh as outsiders. Joshua Project's profile repeats this. Historians of Ibadism, however, place Tunisia's surviving Ibadi communities on Djerba only, and no study, mosque or association documents Ibadi practice in Sened. It is possible that Ibadi identity survives there as family heritage while daily practice follows the Maliki rite of the surrounding towns; this needs checking on the ground.

Islam shapes daily life: the five prayers, the Ramadan fast, Islamic marriage and burial. No Christian believers are known among them.

The Amazigh of Gafsa speak Tunisian Arabic, which has the New Testament and other Scripture, the Jesus Film and audio recordings, so language is not the barrier; their Berber heritage language is extinct and needs no translation. Joshua Project counts no Christians among them (frontier people group). Pray4Tunisia, a network of field workers in Tunisia, lists them among the country's unengaged unreached people groups and asks churches to pray for and adopt them; no resident ministry is reported.

Sened Berber belonged to the East Zenati branch of Berber, in the same Tunisian-Zuwara group as the Berber of Djerba, Matmata and Zuwara in Libya. Provotelle's 1911 study, the main record of it, includes a Berber version of the Banu Hilal epic. Linguists list two dialects, of Sened and of Tmagourt (Majoura). The shift to Arabic was fast: in 1911 everyone in Sened spoke Berber, in 1968 only the elderly, and the language is now classed as extinct (Glottolog; ISO 639-3 sds). The ASJP database dates its extinction to about 1990.