Canarian Amazigh
My sources and theories.
The first people that we know for sure to visit the islands was of the seafaring peoples from the Mediterranean countries, such as Phoenicians and Romans. They hunted a certain fur seal and fis
hed in the waters around the islands, they also collected color to dye on Lanzarote and some sources also claim that many countries deported offenders to the islands which was a common practice in these times.
Since the Canarian Amazigh, according to the Spanish colonizers, were not Muslims, one can assume that Canarian Amazigh immigrated to the islands in a big scale sometime during the time after Juba II but before Islam's conquest of North Africa.
Since the second half of the first century BC and as a result of increasing communities of Roman citizens living in the North African centers, Rome started to create colonies in North Africa. The main reason was to control the area with Roman citizens, who had been legionaries in many cases. The second reason was to give land and urban properties to the Roman military troops who had fought for the Roman Empire and so decrease the demographic problem in the Italian peninsula. The third reason was to facilitate the Romanization of the area and so the integration of the local Amazigh tribes, through marriage and other relationships- in the Roman Empire's social and cultural world.
Some Amazigh-tribes that had been living on these land in North Africa for thousands of years and did not accept Roman colonization rebelled against them and some tribes got expelled to The fortunate islands (Canary islands) as we know romans visited before trough the journals of Juba II.
I personally believed and it is proven it was not only one wave of immigration but minimum two. The tribes i describe in my work were the largest and latest move to the islands.
How and why is still not for sure but my theory is that the largest pre-colonial immigration was when the romans invaded and colonized Africa's northern areas. Many of the Amazigh tribes that live and still live in or around the Atlas Mountains were forced to leave their land and go to the Canary islands. It is these Amazigh-tribes who came to characterize the islands with their culture, language and religion, and it was their descendants that Europeans encountered when rediscovering the islands. By time they forgot why and how they come to the islands.
Some stories survived and many theories is still out there.
One thing that stayed was the names, that's why my belief is that the Canarian Amazigh originial names is after their respective tribes that we can trace back to North Africa.
A very common procedure used by the Amazigh in north africa to name their lands or themselfs after their tribes-name. From now i will give you my Sources and explanations from both Canary islands and North Africa that the tribes i claim to inhabit Canary islands in pre-colonial time had similar names to what the Canarian Amazigh called themselfs which is where they came from in North Africa originally.
The colonizers didn't have this knowledge and just wrote what they heard without seeing the clear connection.
Here are my claims backed up island by island.
La Palma island
When the Europeans first came to the island of La Palma the inhabitans called their island Benhoare, which means Sons (Ben) of Hawara (Hoare),
Hawara, was a large Amazigh tribal confederation spread widely in the Maghreb.
Further reading about Hawara-Tribe (in French)
https://journals.openedition.org/encyclopedieberbere
La gomera Island
Here the connection is clear. As this tribe still exist today in small number.
The Ghomara are an ethnic group of northern Moocoo, living between the rivers Oued Laou and Ouringa east of Chefchaouen and south of Tetouan, in the Western Rif. The river Tiguisas runs through their territory.
El hierro Island
The name of the first settlers of El Hierro omes from the primitive voice Ben-Bachir. the Amazighs of Tenerife , the Guanches , are called into "Bin-Ban-Cheni", which means " Children of the children of Tenerife " . For this reason i and many more believe that the El hierro Amazigh could have descended from the Guanches of Tenerife.
Lanzarote Island
I believe that the islanders of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura both had a mixture of Amazigh rebels and Amazigh slaves and was simply called Mauri by the Romans who put them there as they were all of a mixture of Amazigh Tribes mostly from todays Tipaza province and also some Roman and Phoenician people settled on Lanzarote and Fuerteventura were they mixed up over time with the larger amazigh population.
Mauri (from which derives the English term "Moors") was the Latin designation for the Berber population of the old Mauretania. It was located in the part of Africa west of Numidia. an area coextensive with present-day north Morocco and northwest Algeria.
Fuerteventura island
Read Lanzarote
Teneriffe island
The colonizers called the Amazigh of Teneriffe "guanches" a corruption of their tribe-name which was Guansheri.
M. d’Avezac also derives ’Guanche’ from Guansheri or Guanseri, an Berber tribe in North Africa described by El-Idrisi and Leo Africanus.
Gran Canaria Island
The Colonizers named this Island and all other Islands after this tribe which was the Canarii tribe, here you see the connection without a doubt.
The Canarian Amazigh are decendents from the Berber tribe of the Canarii of southern Morocco , as was also reported a long time ago by the Roman writer Pliny the elder in his Historia Naturalis .
Sources
Biogeography and Ecology in the Canary Islands
The Canary Islands: A Cultural History (1764)
History of the Canary Islands (1993)
The Guanches of Tenerife, The Holy Image of Our Lady of Calandria (2017)
The Moorish Empire: A Historical Epitome (2018)
Imperialist Archaeology in the Canary Islands: French and German Studies on Prehistoric Colonization at the End of the 19th Century (2005)
https://journals.openedition.org/encyclopedieberbere
Wikipedia
Old Amazigh tribal men in Moroco speaking eye to eye in person.
Simon Lbou 2020 ©
