forgotten, there came across North Africa a very different race from
those who had preceded them, the desert Arabs, introducing the creed
of Islám. In the course of a century or two, North Africa became
Mohammedan, pagan and Christian institutions being swept away before
that onward wave. It is not probable that at any time Christianity
had any real hold upon the Berbers themselves, and Islám itself sits
lightly on their easy consciences.

The Arabs had for the moment solved the Berber problem. They were the
amalgam which, by coalescing with the scattered factions of their
race, had bound them up together and had formed for once a nation of
them. Thus it was that the Muslim armies obtained force to carry all
before them, and thus was provided the new blood and the active
temper to which alone are due the conquest of Spain, and subsequent
achievements there. The popular description of the Mohammedan rulers
of Spain as "Saracens"--Easterners--is as erroneous as the supposition
that they were Arabs. The people who conquered Spain were Berbers,
although their leaders often adopted Arabic names with an Arab
religion and Arab culture. The Arabic language, although official, was
by no means general, nor is it otherwise to-day. The men who fought
and the men who ruled were Berbers out and out, though the latter were
often the sons of Arab fathers or mothers, and the great religious
chiefs were purely Arab on the father's side at least, the majority
claiming descent from Mohammed himself, and as such forming a class
apart of shareefs or nobles.

Though nominal Mohammedans, and in Morocco acknowledging the religious
supremacy of the reigning shareefian family, the Moorish Berbers still
retain a semi-independence. The mountains of the Atlas chain have
always been their home and refuge, where the plainsmen find it