century A.D., and Mauri by the Romans. They are of Lybian origin, and form
a powerful and rich nation."[1] This name of Moors is applied not only to
the descendants of the ancient Lybians and Numidians, who live in the nomad
state or in settled abodes, but also to the descendants of the Arabs who,
in the eighth century A.D., brought with them Islamism, imposed by the
sabre of Ogbah and his successors. Even further was it carried, into Spain,
when Berbers and Arabs, reunited under the standard of Moussa and Tarik,
added this country to the empire of the Khalifa. In the fifteenth century
the Portuguese, in their turn, took the name to the Orient, and gave the
name of Moors to the Mussulmans whom they found on the Oriental coast of
Africa and in India.

[1] Geographica, t. xviii, ch. 3, Section ii.

The appellation particularizes, as one may see, three peoples entirely
different in origin--the Berbers, the Arabs of the west, and the Spanish
Mussulmans, widely divided, indeed, by political struggles, but united
since the seventh and eighth centuries in their religious law. This
distinction must be kept in mind, as it furnishes the necessary divisions
for a study of the Moorish literature.


The term Moorish Literature may appear ambitious applied to the monuments
of the Berber language which have come down to us, or are gathered daily
either from the lips of singers on the mountains of the Jurgura, of the
Aures, or of the Atlas of Morocco; under the tents of the Touaregs of the
desert or the Moors of Senegal; in the oases of the south of Algeria or in
Tunis. But it is useless to search for literary monuments such as have been
transmitted to us from Egypt and India, Assyria and Persia, ancient Judea,
Greece and Rome; from the Middle Ages; from Celt, Slav, and German; from