.. Kabylia, for those who do not know, is a province of Tamazgha, east of Algiers. It definitely offer wonderful sights, beautiful vistas in a word … nothing more than what we can see normally in other mountainous regions.
What’s so characteristic, which made Kabylia renowned throughout the centuries is the perpetual worries of its inhabitants to escape foreign domination and thus bondage. The Romans, Turks, have never managed to establish itself in Kabylia, while the Arabs had never put their noses.
France, which has yet managed to dominate, at the cost of a thousand difficulties, was obliged, in order to ensure the sustainability of its presence, to respect local customs or Berber customary law …
Certainly there were no gendarmes or police or rural police, but the men of the village freely combined to establishing and maintaining order within the Kabyle village (taddart). The laws voted by everybody – and I say by everybody – even in large villages of more than 5,000 people – were passed and strictly respected by everybody. Every week, in fact, the entire male population (one of age in Kabyle, 18 years, and that since time immemorial) any kabyle town met to adopt, if appropriate, new decrees or laws, decide to perform public works and individually take oath of non-infringement of the laws.
And one did not only testified against himself, but against all other citizens of the village, including against his own parents and children. The truth was sacred. This means that everyone was at the same time a citizen, legislator, policeman and even a judge ….
Muhand Aεrav Besεud (1924-2002)
From the article:
“Le Mouvement Nationaliste en Kabylie”
by Muhand Aεrav Besεud, Historia Magazine, No. 235.
Thanks Dahmane At Ali!