Berber languages in the context of "Islas Chafarinas"

Berbers, or the Berber peoples, also known as Amazigh or Imazighen, are a diverse grouping of distinct ethnic groups indigenous to North Africa who predate the arrival of Arabs in the Maghreb. Their main connections are identified by their usage of Berber languages, most of them mutually unintelligible, which are part of the Afroasiatic language family.

They are indigenous to the Maghreb region of North Africa, where they live in scattered communities across parts of Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and to a lesser extent Tunisia, Mauritania, northern Mali and northern Niger (Azawagh). Smaller Berber communities are also found in Burkina Faso and Egypt's Siwa Oasis.

The Marinid dynasty (Arabic: المرينيون al-marīniyyūn) was a Berber Muslim dynasty that controlled present-day Morocco from the mid-13th to the 15th century and intermittently controlled other parts of North Africa (Algeria and Tunisia) and of the southern Iberian Peninsula (Spain) around Gibraltar. It was named after the Banu Marin (Arabic: بنو مرين, Berber: Ayt Mrin), a Zenata Berber tribe. It ruled the Marinid sultanate, founded by Abd al-Haqq I.

In 1244, after being at their service for several years, the Marinids overthrew the Almohads which had controlled Morocco. At the height of their power in the mid-14th century, during the reigns of Abu al-Hasan and his son Abu Inan, the Marinid dynasty briefly held sway over most of the Maghreb including large parts of modern-day Algeria and Tunisia. The Marinids supported the Emirate of Granada in al-Andalus in the 13th and 14th centuries and made an attempt to gain a direct foothold on the European side of the Strait of Gibraltar. They were however defeated at the Battle of Río Salado in 1340 and finished after the Castilians took Algeciras from the Marinids in 1344, definitively expelling them from the Iberian Peninsula. Starting in the early 15th century the Wattasid dynasty, a related ruling house, competed with the Marinid dynasty for control of the state and became de facto rulers between 1420 and 1459 while officially acting as regents or viziers. In 1465 the last Marinid sultan, Abd al-Haqq II, was finally overthrown and killed by a revolt in Fez, which led to the establishment of direct Wattasid rule over most of Morocco.

Hamites is the name formerly used for some Northern and Horn of Africa peoples in the context of a now-outdated model of dividing humanity into different races; this was developed originally by Europeans in support of colonialism and slavery. The term was originally borrowed from the Book of Genesis, in which it refers to the descendants of Ham, son of Noah.

The term was originally used in contrast to the other two proposed divisions of mankind based on the story of Noah: Semites and Japhetites. The appellation Hamitic was applied to the Berber, Cushitic, and Egyptian branches of the Afroasiatic language family, which, together with the Semitic branch, was formerly labelled "Hamito-Semitic". Because the three Hamitic branches have not been shown to form an exclusive (monophyletic) phylogenetic unit of their own, separate from other Afroasiatic languages, linguists no longer use the term in this sense. Each of these branches is instead now regarded as an independent subgroup of the larger Afroasiatic family.

The Afroasiatic languages (also known as Afro-Asiatic, Afrasian, Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic) are a language family (or "phylum") of about 400 languages spoken predominantly in West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahara and Sahel. Over 500 million people are native speakers of an Afroasiatic language, constituting the fourth-largest language family after Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, and Niger–Congo. Most linguists divide the family into six branches: Berber (Amazigh), Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, Omotic, and Semitic. The vast majority of Afroasiatic languages are considered indigenous to the African continent, including all those not belonging to the Semitic branch (which originated in West Asia).

The five most spoken languages in the family are: Arabic (of all varieties), which is by far the most widely spoken within the family, with around 411 million native speakers concentrated primarily in West Asia and North Africa; the Chadic Hausa language, with over 58 million speakers in West Africa; the Cushitic Oromo language, with 45 million native speakers; the Semitic Amharic language, with 35 million; and the Cushitic Somali language with 24 million, all the latter three in the Horn of Africa. Other Afroasiatic languages with millions of native speakers include the Semitic Tigrinya, Tigre and Modern Hebrew, the Cushitic Beja, Sidama and Afar languages, the Berber languages (Shilha, Kabyle, Central Atlas Tamazight, Shawiya and Tarifit), and the Omotic Wolaitta language. Most languages of the non-Semitic branches (especially Chadic and Omotic) have far fewer speakers, and many Afroasiatic languages in Africa are vulnerable or endangered.

Arabic has had a great influence on other languages, especially in vocabulary. The influence of Arabic has been most profound in those countries visited by Islam or Islamic power.

Arabic loanwords have made into many languages as diverse as Abkhaz, Afrikaans, Amharic, Albanian, Armenian, Assyrian, Azerbaijani, Balochi, Bengali, Berber, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chechen, Circassian, Croatian, English, French, Georgian, Greek, Gujarati, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Kazakh, Kurdish, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Malay, Mongolian, Montenegrin, Nepali, Odia, Ossetian, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romani, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Sicilian, Spanish, Sindhi, Somali, Swahili, Tagalog, Tajik, Tatar, Tigrinya, Turkish, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uyghur, Uzbek, Visayan, Wolof, Xhosa, Yoruba, Zulu, as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. Other languages such as Maltese and Nubi derive from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary. Arabic words were being used from the Iberian Peninsula all the way to Maritime Southeast Asia prior to the spread of European international words.

The Ghomara (Arabic: غمارة, romanized: Ghumāra, Berber languages: ⵉⵖⵎⴰⵔⵏ Ighmaren) are a group of tribes in northern Morocco belonging to the Berbers. They live in the western Rif, in the area of Chefchaouen and Tetouan.

Originally, Ghomaras were a Berber tribal group belonging to the Masmuda confederacy. While most have shifted to speaking Arabic, a minority continue to speak the Berber Ghomara language.