Amazigh, Zenaga

The Zenaga are the last speakers of Zenaga (Kläm Aznaga, Azayr), the only living Berber language of Mauritania and the most divergent of all Berber languages, spoken by a few thousand people, an estimated 3,500, in the Trarza region of south-western Mauritania between Mederdra, Rosso and the Atlantic. Their name recalls the Sanhaja (Iznagen) Berbers, the nomads of the western Sahara who launched the Almoravid movement in the 11th century and whose speech once covered the land from the Senegal River to southern Morocco. After the Char Bouba war (1644-1674) the Arab Beni Hassan warrior tribes disarmed the Berber tribes and made many of them tributaries; Hassaniya Arabic spread, and over six centuries Zenaga retreated to a few tribes of Trarza that specialised in Islamic scholarship, herded sheep and cattle and lived as nomads: in 1940 about 13,000 speakers in four tribes, among them the Tendgha and the Idab Lahsen, the two dialects known today. In society the Zenaga speakers are Bidan (White Moors) of scholarly (zawaya) or tributary standing, with Bidan tribal identities, dress and customs; 'znaga' as a social term means the tributary rank, which is why speaking the language was long seen as impolite among non-speakers and many parents stopped passing it on. All speakers are bilingual in Hassaniya, most are over fifty, and the language has never given rise to any claim to a separate identity.

Zenaga speakers live as other Trarza Moors do: in towns and villages around Mederdra and along the road to Rosso, in Nouakchott, and in camps where families still keep sheep, goats, cattle and some camels. They share the Bidan tent and tea ritual, the daraa and melhfa, Hassaniya poetry and the high value placed on religious learning; their tribes are known for their scholars and Qur'an schools. Zenaga survives as a language of the home, kept above all by older women, and of private talk among elders; about a fifth of Hassaniya's vocabulary (by some counts a tenth) comes from Zenaga, especially words for plants, animals, places and herding. The linguist Catherine Taine-Cheikh recorded and described the language from the 1990s and published Zenaga-French and French-Zenaga dictionaries (2008, 2010).

The Zenaga speakers are Sunni Muslims of the Maliki school, and their tribes belong to the scholarly (zawaya) tradition of the Moors: boys learn the Qur'an by heart on wooden boards in the mahadra, and families honour lineages of jurists and teachers. Sufi orders, saints' blessing (baraka), amulets and healing by Qur'anic recitation are part of everyday faith, as among other Moors. Many speakers valued the language itself as a sign of their ancestors' independence and piety.

No Scripture or Christian media exist in Zenaga, and with a few thousand elderly speakers who all speak Hassaniya, translation is unlikely. Speakers can use the Hassaniya New Testament, Genesis (2024), the JESUS film, GRN audio recordings and Bible apps. No believers are known. Mauritania's law makes apostasy and blasphemy capital crimes and bars citizens from churches, and the Zenaga's place among the scholarly tribes ties their identity closely to Islamic learning.