[This article is part of a dossier on Tankra Tamazight, Amazigh Revival, and Indigeneity in North Africa, edited by Brahim El Guabli. To read other articles in this dossier, read the introduction here.]

Ancient historians have frequently borne witness to the Amazigh people’s abundant narrative tradition, passed down orally through the generations up to the modern era, when it was virtually absorbed by modern means of communication such as school, radio, and especially television, which invaded Amazigh culture with the allure of globalism.[1] Television in particular invaded Amazigh culture and made Amazigh speakers feel backward and culturally stagnant, resulting in a gradual abandonment of this tradition. Thus, an ancient Amazigh narrative tradition was gradually obliterated and now risks extinction. What remains of this tradition is simply what lives in the memory of the elders, especially those who absorbed this tradition at an early age, throughout the Amazigh territories. Even this last bastion will vanish if it is not preserved.

Driven by obvious colonial motives, the European colonizers who conquered North Africa between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, collected and recorded parts of this tradition,[2] but despite those motives they did Tamazight (Amazigh language) a favor by safeguarding part of that tradition which otherwise could have disappeared. After having been exposed to the literature of other nations, subsequent generations of …