Astronomy among the Ayt Xebbac of Tabelbala

L'astronomie chez les Ayt Xebbac de Tabelbala

Lameen Souag (1)

1 LACITO - Langues et civilisations à tradition orale

Berber ethnoastronomy remains inadequately studied, with the honourable exception of Tuareg traditions (Bernus & Ag-Sidiyene 1989; Aghali-Zakaria 2014). For northern Berber, even the best modern dictionaries rarely include more than a couple of astronomical terms beyond the most generic – although the earliest surviving Berber lexicon, Ibn Tunart (12th century), includes eleven such terms (van den Boogert 1997: 119). In this context, any new data is of value, if only to provoke others into documenting the field more extensively. This article therefore presents and analyses what little could be gleaned of the hitherto undocumented astronomical vocabulary of Berber-speaking nomads in southwestern Algeria, in the course of fieldwork primarily focused on another language.

Mots clés: Ethnoastronomy; Berber; Tamazight

Domaines: Linguistique

Lameen Souag. Astronomy among the Ayt Xebbac of Tabelbala. Études et documents berbères, 2019, 42, pp.215-219. ⟨halshs-02953066⟩