Kahina place of birth Aurès Mountains
Al-Kahina (Arabic: الكاهنة, lit. 'the diviner'), also known as Dihya, was a Berber queen of the Aurès and a religious and military leader who led indigenous resistance to the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb, the region then known as Numidia notably defeating the Umayyad forces in the Battle of Meskiana after which she became the uncontested ruler of the whole Maghreb, before being decisively defeated at the Battle of Tabarka. She was born in the early 7th century AD and died around the end of the 7th century in modern-day Algeria.Origins and religion
Her personal name is one of these variations: Daya, Dehiya, Dihya, Dahya or Damya. Her title was cited by Arabic-language sources as al-Kāhina (the priestess soothsayer). This was the nickname given to by her Muslim opponents because of her alleged ability to foresee the future.She was born into the Jrāwa Zenata tribe in the early 7th century. For five years she ruled a free Berber state from the Aurès Mountains to the oasis of Gadames (695–700 AD). But the Arabs, commanded by Musa bin Nusayr, returned with a strong army and defeated her. She fought at the El Djem Roman amphitheater but finally was killed in combat near a well that still bears her name, Bir al Kahina in Aures.Accounts from the 19th century on claim she was of Jewish religion or that her tribe were Judaized Berbers. According to al-Mālikī, she was accompanied in her travels by an "idol". Both Mohamed Talbi and Gabriel Camps interpreted this idol as a Christian icon, either of Christ, the Virgin, or a saint protecting the queen. M'hamed Hassine Fantar held that this icon represented a separate Berber deity, suggesting she followed traditional Berber religion. However, Dihya being a Christian remains the most likely hypothesis.The idea that the Jarawa were Judaized comes from the medieval historian Ibn Khaldun, who named them among seven Berber tribes. Hirschberg and Talbi note 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 Roman times "the tribes" had become Christianized. As early as 1963, the Israeli historian H.Z. Hirschberg, in retranslating the text of Ibn Khaldun and rigorously repeating the whole document, questioned this interpretation, and in general the existence of large Jewish Berber tribes in the end of Antiquity. In the words of H.Z. Hirschberg, "of all the known movements of conversion to Judaism and incidents of Judaizing, those connected with the Berbers and Sudanese in Africa are the least authenticated. Whatever has been written on them is extremely questionable."Over four centuries after her death, Tunisian hagiographer al-Mālikī seems to have been among the first to state she resided in the Aurès Mountains. Seven centuries after her death, the pilgrim at-Tijani was told she belonged to the Lūwāta tribe. When the later historian Ibn Khaldun came to write his account, he placed her with the Jarawa tribe.
According to various Muslim sources, al-Kāhinat was the daughter of Tabat, or some say Mātiya. These sources depend on tribal genealogies, which were generally concocted for political reasons during the 9th century.Ibn Khaldun records many legends about Dihyā. 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.
birthplace place of origin native place homeland birth city