Throughout history, the Amazigh tributary represented one of the most important cultural pillars of North Africa as it appears in songs, customs and traditions, while Amazigh literature has remained absent despite being one of the central literatures that established global literatures.
He wrote some Amazigh literature in other languages, such as Latin. One of the first history novels is attributed to the great Amazigh writer Lucius Apuleius, which was translated 3 times into Arabic in a Libyan translation from English, Algerian from French and Tunisian from Latin.
Apuleius described, as Abd al-Latif Hasouf says in his book “Amazighs, the story of a people” as “the prince of African orators and the most influential and famous in his time.” He is called the Berber Avilay, who was born in the city of Darwush, the Algerian city near the Tunisian border and chose to reside in Carthage, and he had many books, including the book Defense or Magic, the book of fluorides, philosophical, scientific and religious books.
Amazigh also knew the writer Tertenius or Trans Affair, one of the flags of the theater among the Romans, and his most important plays, The Girl of Andros, the Brotherhood, the Mother-in-law, and Gilad himself.
And this bid has continued since the years before the birth of Christ until today, as no civilization has passed over the region but within this dominant civilization there appeared talented Berber writers writing in the language of that culturally dominant, and in the modern era, French-speaking writers emerged from the Berbers, such as Muhammad Khair al-Din and Miloud Pharaoh, and in Arabic Muhammad Shukri was one of the The most important of these writers, and in Italian and Arabic, the Algerian novelist Amara Lakhous stands out today as one of the most important Berber writers in the world.
Haditha publishing houses are now trying, in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, to return texts to Tamazight or write directly in Berber, even if it sometimes takes a political dimension.
Apart from the Amazigh political activity, some Tunisian intellectuals seek to bridge the relationship between the Amazigh and Arab cultures through authorship, proximity and dialogue, and among these is Dr. Fathi bin Muammar, who recently launched his short book "Amazigh Tales of Djerba" issued by Dar Manwal.
Writer Fathi bin Muammar
Born in the Qalala region on the island of Djerba in 1967, he studies Arabic language and Arabic literature and holds a doctorate from Al-Zaytuna University with a thesis "The origin of the idea of evil through the book of Enoch and its manifestations in Judaism, Christianity and Islam" and he had obtained a master's degree in Islamic civilization from the same university under the title "The Ten Commandments And its manifestations in the Torah, the Bible and the Qur’an.
He works in literary and intellectual criticism and is active in cultural civil society institutions and runs the Tawfiq Bakkar Prize for Novel.
A reflection on the author’s biography shows us the writer’s position on the Amazigh issue, as he is not politically active and is not in a break with Arab-Islamic culture, but rather he is integrated and specialized in it, and at the same time he clings to his Amazigh identity and seeks to define it.
Amazigh stories
The book offers a special workbook, as it is a collection of stories presented in the Amazigh mother tongue in Arabic letters, and the author himself transferred them into Arabic, and the Amazigh text and the Arabic text are adjacent page by page.
The stories were supported by precise margins at the end of each story, some of which were directed towards the Amazigh recipient, and a section directed towards the Arab reader.
They are 10 stories with an introduction and an introduction that frame the experience.
It varies to stories that record people's lives, their days, and others that capture their customs, traditions and beliefs.
The stories came under the following headings:
The red thread, the wolf grass, the donkey and the camel, the snake and Nesif, the book and Zqdoud, Omar bin Masoud, the boy and the girl, and if the heart died, and friends.
Reason for writing
In the introduction to the book, the writer mentions that his motives for writing it are personal, as he is an Amazigh, who, in his childhood, clashed with a situation while joking with a sheikh, greeting him in French.
He says, "I still remember how that sheikh whom I used to disagree with every afternoon and sit down to hear from him stories from him with his crutch, the day he appeared to him in a cowboy hat and his life in French in a deliberate provocation. That was what dictated me to the misery of a teenager when I was sixteen. That day I heard the phrase" Your language is your “language, your life,” before telling him a story about the strength and danger of language.
So the young man started secretly recording what he was hearing from "what is said automatically in councils, weddings and various occasions," but that these stories were split and much of what he had recorded was lost, so he set out to restore those fragments and stories split by imagination according to the "Amazigh storytelling method" as he heard it from adults.
Then awareness of the language led him to restore it through storytelling and preserve it by documenting Amazigh stories, as the language lives in storytelling and is composed and received.
Juxtaposition and mixing of text and body
The juxtaposition between the Amazigh and Arabic texts in one book and the writer’s choice of Arabic letters confirms the extent of this relationship between the two cultures and the ability of the Amazigh culture to adapt to other languages.
The truth is that reading these Amazigh stories does not feel alienated to the Arab recipient, as it is part of his oral heritage sometimes or its similarity, and this documentation is nothing but a door to learn about the peculiarity of this Tunisian Arab Amazigh culture that knows an important richness and diversity, that would root the fixed values in a new reality, the values that defend Its stories do not contradict the values advocated by Arab-Islamic culture.
The stories revolve around the themes of adhering to the fundamentals, respecting the great and avoiding greed, as well as caution against treachery, magic and wealth, as well as marriage, mother tongue, happiness, and people's worldview, "life, existence and what they believe."
Like Arab myths, these stories are formed from animal stories and human stories and take different forms, between real, miraculous or supernatural events.
Most of them take an educational or educational character, and this is the case for myths in all cultures of the world as stories that are narrated orally in family councils and are often narrated by adults to young people. The stories form part of the life-understanding lessons that children and youth receive to confront their personal and collective future.
Therefore, these Amazigh stories acquire an anthropological value for reading the reality of the community of the island of Djerba today and yesterday. By his example, and by that he revives the myth by re-writing it by restoration or by acting, so we enter with him within the door of experimentation in narrative writing.
Fathi bin Muammar puts his stories in a simple Arabic language close to the colloquial to delude oral narration, so it is a light-hearted language that does not rely on the culture of its creator but on the character of its narrator.
This is what pushes the stories towards superstition and explains the writer’s choice to name his stories on the cover of the book as “stories.” For example, he begins the story of the written by saying:
"Our first grandmother said: In the old days there was a good man. He lives happily with his wife and children. He always works. He is not proud of any work."
The localization of stories on the island of "Djerba" in particular makes the book a documentary achievement for the region and its culture, which is the richest region by virtue of the diversity of its population throughout history between Christians, Jews, Berbers, blacks and even from different Islamic groups.
The writer does not deny his educational goals for placing this book when he says in its introduction that the book will make the Arab reader know the Amazigh heritage and make the Amazigh know its origins, culture, diversity and richness by placing the Amazigh language in its Arabic version, which makes the book a ready material for those working on the Amazigh creative text And the Amazigh language.
His introduction concludes, "Certainly, these stories and myths played an important role in entertainment and pastime in ancient times in which no person can entertain anything but what he hears verbally on cold, dark winter nights or less moonlit summer nights, because warm climates allow children and adults. Sometimes the opportunity to move and play in the moonlight. However, these stories have educational and directive purposes that are not hidden from anyone, as they praise good behavior and alienate ugly behavior .. There is no story without meaning or lesson.
Fathi Ben Muammar presented a model for constructive cultural work that seeks to consolidate the relationship between successive cultures and civilizations in a region outside the ideological and political conflicts to build the Tunisian citizen child who believes that he is the product of this accumulation and wealth that Tunisia has lived from the passage of different civilizations and cultures on its land and every civilization that left its culture Humanity that is intertwined in daily life and social traditions so that we can hardly separate it from any civilization that came.
Thus, a person rises as a cumulative existence of cultures, acquired things through his religion and race, and others through memory and the memory of his land.