The Amazigh — 'free people' in their own tongue, long called Berbers from outside — are the indigenous people of North Africa, rooted there millennia before the Arabs. In Morocco they are the country's deep foundation: the Almoravid, Almohad, and Marinid dynasties were Amazigh, and Tamazight is today an official language of the kingdom.
Imazighen, the plural of Amazigh, stretch from the Siwa Oasis of Egypt to the Atlantic, and south to the Tuareg of the Sahara — a mosaic of peoples speaking related languages: Tarifit in the Rif, Tamazight in the Middle Atlas, Tashelhiyt in the Souss, written in the ancient Tifinagh script. Long marginalized by post-independence Arabization, the Amazigh movement won its breakthrough in 2011, when the new constitution made Tamazight an official language alongside Arabic.
