Français – عربي – ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ – English
Eid al-Adha (عيد الأضحى), the feast of the sacrifice, commemorates the sacrifice offered by Abraham, the “Father of the believers”. It is the main Muslim religious holiday. For Eid al-Adha, Muslim families sacrifice a sheep. In Tamazight, Eid al-Adha is called “Tafaska”. This name is directly inspired from another holiday which was familiar to the Amazigh long before Islam: Easter (Pascha in Latin). In West Africa, this name became “Tabaski”.
Abraham’s sacrifice
The sacred texts tell how God ordered Abraham (Ibrahim) to offer his son as a sacrifice. Abraham obeyed, and got on his way with his son. At the last moment, when Abraham was about to kill his son, an angel stopped him, and told him that his obedience to the divine order, and his readiness to sacrifice what was the most dear to him, was enough to show that his heart was fully devoted to God. Abraham then sacrificed a ram in place of his son.
Abraham’s sacrifice is mentioned both in the Torah and in the Quran. This episode plays a fundamental role in the sacred history of the three major monotheistic religions. Abraham is presented as a model of faith and obedience to God. To commemorate Abraham’s sacrifice, Muslim families sacrifice a sheep for Eid al-Adha, on the 10th day of the Islamic month of Dhu al-Hijjah.
The Easter sacrifice
In Tamazight, the language spoken by the indigenous populations of North Africa, Eid al-Adha is called Tafaska (ⵜⴰⴼⴰⵙⴽⴰ). Long before the first Muslims came to their area, the ancient Amazigh were familiar with another community living among them, who also believed in one God and also celebrated a religious holiday for which they sacrificed a sheep: the Jews. The name “Tafaska” certainly comes from Pascha, the Latin name for Passover/Easter – both a Jewish and Christian holiday.
Jewish Passover, Pessah (פֶּסַח) in Hebrew, commemorates the deliverance of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, through the prophet Moses (Musa). The day before they left Egypt, God told Moses to ask all members of his people to sacrifice a lamb, and to spread its blood on the doors of their houses. During the following night, God sent the angel of death to kill all the first-born sons of the Egyptians, but he “passed over” the houses of the Hebrews, who had the blood of the Passover lamb spread on their doors, without entering them.
The North African Amazigh, who were used to seeing their Jewish neighbors sacrifice a lamb every year for Passover, saw the relation between this custom and the one taught by the Muslim newcomers. The transformation of the letter P en F is common for Tamazight words borrowed from Latin (i.e. pullus (chicken) / afullus).
At the time when Islam arrived in North Africa, most inhabitants of the region were Jewish or Christian. For the Christian Amazigh, Abraham’s sacrifice and the Jewish Passover were images of another sacrifice: Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, to redeem mankind from sin. Christian Easter is more a celebration of Christ’s resurrection than of his death. This is the reason why Christians no longer offer sacrifices, because they see Christ’s redemption as the perfect sacrifice, offered once and for all. However, North African Christians were still familiar with animal sacrifices, even though they no longer practiced them.
Tafaska in history
The name “Tafaska” (or Faska) took root quickly among the Amazigh tribes, who spoke a language related to the modern-day Tamazight dialects. There were apparently even people called Faska: Abu Hafs Omar al Hintati, the chief of the powerful Hintata tribe, from the High Atlas mountains, was originally called Faskat u Mzal Inti. Ibn Tumart, the Almohad spiritual leader, renamed him Abu Hafs, after a companion of the Prophet Muhammad, to reward him for his loyalty. His descendants, the Bani Hafs, founded the Hafsid dynasty in Ifriqiya.
With the Islamisation of West Africa, Tafaska became Tabaski. This name, originally Wolof, the language of one of the first Sub-Saharan tribes who converted to Islam, extended to all Sub-Saharan Muslims.
The fact that the Muslims to the South of the Sahara adopted the Amazigh instead of the Arabic name of the holiday is due to the presence of nomadic Sanhaja (Iznagen ⵉⵥⵏⴰⴳⵏ) tribes in the area close to the Senegal river. Their commercial vocation and their monopoly on gold trade made them highly influential in the caravan cities South of the Sahara. The name of the Senegal river, and of the modern-day State of Senegal, might actually come from the Sanhaja, whose name was transcribed “Zenaga” by the first European cartographers.
Later, the Almoravid dynasty – also Sanhaja Amazigh – conquered Aoudaghost, in the Kingdom of Ghana, in 1054, extending their domination all the way to the Senegal river. The Almoravid Emir Abu Bakr ibn Umar died in the Tagant region, in modern-day Mauritania, leaving behind his pregnant Tukulor wife. Their son, Ndiadiane Ndiaye, became the legendary founder of the Djolof Empire, in Senegal. The Almoravids played an important role in the Islamisation of West Africa, and the legend of Ndiadiane Ndiaye shows the close links between the Amazigh dynasties and the Muslim West African kingdoms.
Eid mubarak said to all our readers!!!
