Persistence and Change in Names on the North African Landscape:Berber Tribes in Ibn Khaldun's Genealogies and as they Appear Today

By David M. Hart
Source : The Journal of North African Studies
Volume 5,Issue 1, Spring 2000 , pp. 121 - 146.

Abstract
The issue is to determine just how much of, and to what degree, Ibn Khaldun's Berber genealogies, as well as those culled by his Arab historian predecessors, as they emerge in the de Slane translation of the Histoire des Berberes, have stood the test of time: for in most cases those groups whose names are still extant represent at present much smaller units which are often far removed spatially from their original and medieval namesakes. There is, in addition, the possibility that the latter simply appropriated, for whatever the reason, the name of the former, given the lack of any demonstrable genealogical or filiative connection between the medieval group and its modern namesake or namesakes as well as the often considerable spatial distance between them.