Seeing as the world is imploding around us again ...

Short thread on North African (Maghrebi) Resistance and its link to Folklore.

Being at the very heart of the Mediterranean, the precipice of three different continents, North Africa has always had to face invasion by all reaches of the world. From the Greeks and Phoenicians and Romans and Vandals to the Arabs and Turks and French and Spaniards. 1/

Yet even so, many, if not all, North Africans remain linked to the very same people who first settled in the Maghreb. Resistance and endurance Is quite literally in their blood. And that has seeped into North Africa’s folklore. 2/

Remember Lalla Aīcha Kandicha?

One popular tale of her origins is that she was a Portuguese Condesa (countess) who fell in love with a Moroccan man. In another, she was a Moroccan woman from El Jadida whose husband was murdered by the invading Portuguese in the 15th century. 3/

In both tales, Aicha uses her beauty to seduce the invaders and lure them to where the Moroccan resistance lay in wait, in solidarity and for vengeance respectively. 4/

Dihya (Al-Kahina), the seventh centurry Queen of Tamazgha (North Africa west of Egypt) similarly has myths and legends tied to who she was. Her resistance against the Arab invaders played a huge role in the Algerian resistance to French occupation in the 19th-20th century. 5/

Stories about resistance, resilience, and vengeance are so prominent in North Africa. And they almost always centre around women. This is not a coincidence. Women have been at the heart of Maghrebi society for millennia, no matter how restricting the global patriarchy gets. 6/

So, to all my North African girls, we’ve weathered many storms before. We can weather this one. And the next. Because we descend from a long line of warriors—and almost all of them were women. We’re our ancestors pride. Don’t ever let the world convince you otherwise. 7/7