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TheSanhaja (Arabic:صنهاجة,romanized: Ṣanhāja, or زناگةZnāga;Berber languages:Aẓnag, pl.Iẓnagen, and alsoAẓnaj, pl.Iẓnajen) were once one of the largestBerber tribal confederations, along with theZanata andMasmuda confederations.[1] Many tribes in Algeria, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, Tunisia and Western Sahara bore and still carry this ethnonym, especially in itsBerber form.
Other names for the population includeZenaga,Znaga,Sanhája,Sanhâdja andSenhaja.
Ibn Khaldun and others defined the Sanhaja as a grouping made up of three separate confederations, not as a single confederation.[2][3][4] The distinction is usually made with a diacritical point placed above or below that is present in the Arabic text and often lost in English.
Berber tribes such as the Sanhadja orKutama are often attributedHimyarite origins by Arab historians (which the Sanhadja likely adopted themselves for political legitimacy), but other genealogical sources and moderngenetic testing reveal this supposed origin to likely be a myth, given the predominant Berber Y haplogroup is E, and thepredominant Arab Y haplogroup is J. The historianAl-Idrīsī presents one example of the Himyarite myth as following:
He then traced the origin of the Ṣanhādja and Lamṭa tribes to their common male ancestor Lamṭ, son of Za‘zā‘, who was from the children (min awlād) of Ḥimyar, and thus attributed to both of them the South Arabian roots. The similar origin is also ascribed to the “brother” of Ṣanhādj and Lamṭ by maternal line, Hawwār, whose forefather was al-Muṣawwir, son of al-Muthannā, son of Kalā‘, son of Ayman, son of Sa‘īd, son of Ḥimyar. According to a legend, his and his tribe’s abode was in Hejaz, but they left it in search of lost camels, so that crossed the Nile and reached the Maghrib, where al-Muṣawwir married Tāzikāy, the mother of Ṣanhādj and Lamṭ.
— Anastasia V Stepanova, Origin of the Berber Tribal Confederation of Ṣanhādja[8]
After the arrival of the religion of Islam, the Sanhaja spread out to the borders of the Sudan as far as the Senegal River and the Niger.[1][9]
Sanhaja Berbers were a large part of the Berber population. From the 9th century, Sanhaja tribes were established in the Middle Atlas range, in theRif Mountains and on the Atlantic coast of Morocco as well as large parts of the Sanhaja, such as the Kutâma, were settled in central and eastern parts Algeria (Kabylia, Setif, Algiers, Msila) and also in northern Niger. The Kutama created the empire of theFatimids conquering all North African countries and parts of the Middle East.[6][10] The Sanhaja dynasties of the Zirids and Hammâdids controlledIfriqiya until the 12th century and established their rule in all of the countries in the Maghreb region.
In the mid-11th century, a group of Sanhaja chieftains returning from theHajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) invited the theologian Ibn Yasin to preach among their tribes. Ibn Yasin united the tribes in the alliance of theAlmoravids in the middle of the 11th century. This confederacy subsequently established Morocco, and conquered western Algeria and Al-Andalus (part of present-day Spain).[11]
The Sanhaja tribes would remain in roles as either exploited semi-sedentary agriculturalists and fishermen, or higher up on the social ladder, as religious (Marabout or Zawiya) tribes. Though oftenArabized in culture and language, they are believed to be descended from Sanhaja Berber population present in the area before the arrival of the ArabMaqil tribes in the 12th century, which was finally subjected to domination by Arab-descended warrior castes in the 17th centuryChar Bouba war.[12][unreliable source?][dead link]
According to Mercer, the wordsZenaga orZnaga (from the Berber rootẓnag orẓnaj, giving the nounAẓnag orAẓnaj with the additional masculine singular prefixa-, orTaẓnagt orTaẓnajt with the additional feminine singularcircumfixta--t, orIẓnagen orIẓnajen with the additional masculine pluralcircumfixi--en, orTiẓnagen orTiẓnajen with the additional feminine plural circumfixti--en) are thought to be a romanized distortion ofZenata andSanhaja from Arabic.[citation needed]
The descendants of the Sanhaja and their languages are still found today in theMiddle Atlas mountains, eastern Morocco, northern Morocco (Rif), western Algeria, Kabylia and Kabyle territories.
The Zenaga, a group believed to be ofGudala (the southernmost Sanhaja tribe) origin, inhabit southwestern Mauritania and parts of northern Senegal. However, they are a small population.[13]
