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'al-Kāhinat' (Classical Arabic for "female seer"; modern Maghreb Arabic 'l-Kahna', commonly romanised as 'Kah(i)na', also known as 'Dihya' or 'Kahya') was a 7th century female Amazigh religious and military leader, who led indigenous resistance to the Arabization of the Northwest African region known as the Maghreb, she was born in the early 7th century and died in the 690s in modern day Algeria.

Contents

Kahina's Disputed Religion

Kahina's Legendary Life

Notes

References

Kahina's Disputed Religion

Her real name was 'Dihyā', 'Dahyā' or 'Damiya' (the Arabic spellings are difficult to distinguish between these variants); 'al-Kāhinat' was the nickname used by her Arab opponents because of her reputed ability to foresee the future. According to legend, l-Kahna was the daughter of Tabat, or some say Mātiya^[1], a chieftain of the Jrāwa tribe from the Aurès Mountains. Other accounts indicate she was a Jew or that her tribe were Judaized Berbers, though scholars dispute this^[2].
Ibn Khaldun records many legends about l-Kahna. A number of them refer to her long hair or great size, both legendary characteristics of sorcerers. She is also supposed to have had the gift of prophecy and she had three sons, which is characteristic of witches in legends. Even the fact that two were her own and one was adopted (an Arab officer she had captured), was an alleged trait of sorcerers in tales. Another legend claims that in her youth, she had supposedly freed her people from a tyrant by agreeing to marry him and then murdering him on their wedding night. Virtually nothing else of her personal life is known.

Kahina's Legendary Life

L-Kahna succeeded Kusaila as the war leader of the Berber tribes in the 680s and opposed the encroaching Arab armies of the Umayyad Dynasty. Hasan ibn al-Nu'man marched from Egypt and captured the major Byzantine city of Carthage and other cities (see Umayyad conquest of North Africa ). Searching for another enemy to defeat, he was told that the most powerful monarch in North Africa was l-Kahna, and accordingly marched towards the Aurès. The armies met near Meskiana in the present-day province of Oum el-Bouaghi, Algeria. She defeated Hasan so soundly that he fled Ifriqiya and holed up in Cyrenaica (Libya) for four or five years. Realizing that the enemy was too powerful and bound to return, she embarked on a scorched earth campaign, which had little impact on the mountain and desert tribes, but lost her the crucial support of the sedentary oasis-dwellers. Instead of discouraging the Arab armies, her desperate decision hastened defeat.
Hasan eventually returned and, aided by communications with the captured officer adopted by l-Kahna, defeated her at a locality (presumably in present-day Algeria) about which there is some uncertainty^[3]. Before the battle, foreseeing the outcome, she sent her two real sons over to the Arab army under the care of the adopted son, and Hasan is said to have given one of them charge of a section of his forces. According to some accounts, l-Kahna died fighting the invaders, sword in hand, a warrior's death. Other accounts say she committed suicide by swallowing poison rather than be taken by the enemy. This final act occurred in the 690s, with 693 (some say 697) given as the most likely year. In that year, she was, according to ancient accounts quoted by Ibn Khaldun, 127 years old, which would place the year of her birth in the 6th century, c. 566. This was probably not meant literally, as great age was often depicted with exaggerated numbers.
In later centuries, Kahina's legend was used to bolster the claims of Berbers in al-Andalūs against Arab claims of ethnic supremacy—in the early modern age, she was used by Europeans, Berbers, and Arabs alike for their own didactic purposes.

Notes

1. according to some, this name is an arabicized form of the Christian name Matthias or Matthew, see cited paper by Talbi for more discussion
2. Talbi (see citation below) points out that she was said to have been accompanied in her travels by what the Arabs called an "idol", possibly an icon of the Virgin or one of the Christian saints, but certainly not something associated with either Jewish or pagan Berber religious customs. The idea that the Jrāwa were Judaized comes from the medieval historian Ibn Khaldun, who named them among a number of such tribes. Talbi notes that Ibn Khaldun seems to have been referring to a time before the advent of the late Roman and Byzantine empires, and a little later in the same paragraph seems to say that by l-Kahna's time "the tribes" (presumably those he had listed before) had become Christianized. The most recent study, by Modéran (cited below), agrees with and reinforces Talbi's conclusions.
3. Talbi suggests it was between Setif and Tobna

References

★ Hannoum, Abdelmajid. (2001). ''Post-Colonial Memories: The Legend of the Kahina, a North African Heroine'' (''Studies in African Literature''). ISBN 0-325-00253-3. This is a study of the legend of the Kahina in the 19th century and later. The first chapter is a detailed critique of how the legend of the Kahina emerged after several transformations from the 9th century to the 14th.

★ Modéran, Yves. (2005?). Article on ''Kahena'' in vol. 27 of ''Encyclopédie Berbère'', p. 4102-4111. The most recent critical study of the historical sources.

★ Talbi, Mohammed. (1971). ''Un nouveau fragment de l'histoire de l'Occident musulman (62-196/682-812) : l'épopée d'al Kahina.'' (''Cahiers de Tunisie'' vol. 19 p. 19-52). An important historiographical study.