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Queen Kahina's Well, Bir el-Kahen, Algeria
On the outskirts of Bir El Atar, Algeria, a small well provides water to part of the town. The site is nondescript, without a plaque or any sort of memorial to preserve the memory of the battle fought near the well almost fifteen hundred years ago. The only reminder of that history is the well’s name: Bir El Kahen, Queen Kahina’s Well. Here, in 698 AD, the Arab leader Hassan ibn al-Nu’man defeated—and, according to some versions, beheaded—the Berber queen Kahina, who had driven the Arabs out of the Central Maghreb six years earlier. One legend says that before the battle began, al-Nu’man offered Kahina the chance to retreat; she replied “Kings do not flee,” and led her soldiers into battle.1
Description
Queen Kahina Legends about Queen Kahina have endured until modern times; with so little known about her personal life, it is next to impossible to separate myth from history. Kahina was a leader of the Berber Jerawa tribe in the Aurès mountains of present-day Algeria. Supposedly she could see the future and performed divinations which allowed her to predict her enemy’s movements.2 “Kahina” means sorceress or soothsayer in Arabic; several aspects of her legend are common tropes in stories of sorceresses, including her long hair, great size, and three sons.3 According to one legend, she freed her people from a tyrant by agreeing to marry him and then murdering him on their wedding night.4 Many of the stories surrounding Kahina construct her as a Berber pastoral ideal: one chronicler had her proclaim that “the Arabs search for towns, for gold and for silver, but we seek only pasturage”.5
Battles against the Arabs After the fall of Byzantine Carthage, Kahina led the resistance against Arab invaders in 692 and 693.6 She inflicted a major defeat on al-Nu’man, driving his forces out of Tunisia. After that battle she took many prisoners; according to legend, she adopted one of them, Khalid ben Yazid, as her own son, and he later betrayed her.7 She held sway over a large area of the Maghreb for several years, despite discontent over her ruthless style of warfare. She supposedly urged the chiefs of tribes in Algeria and Tunisia to burn their cities and bury their gold and silver (“vile metals”), so that there would be nothing to reward the invaders.8 Fortifications burned from Tripoli to Tangier; the people of the Maghreb, especially city-dwellers, were so devastated that they cheered the Arabs’ renewed invasion in the late 690s. al-Nu’man defeated Kahina for the final time in 698. She died beside the well that still bears her name; legends differ as to whether she was beheaded by her captors or killed herself after realizing that the battle could not be won.9
Kahina's Religion The first Arab historians to write about Kahina did not identify her as Jewish. Around five hundred years after her death, historians began to relate highly romanticized and embroidered versions of her life, obviously influenced by popular legend.10 These identified her as a Jewish queen, and often included a story of her telling her sons, after her final defeat, to go to the Arab camp, make peace, and convert to Islam.11 Kahina has been identified with many different religions and cultures in North Africa, and her true identity is still a matter of historical debate.
The Well Today, Queen Kahina’s Well is owned by ADE (Algérienne des Eaux) and provides water for part of the town of Bir El Atar.12 Although historians and researchers occasionally visit the well, it has no historical marker of any kind; one visitor declared that the indifference with which the site is treated is an insult to Kahina’s memory.13
Sources
[1] Akyeampong, Emmanuel, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., eds. Dictionary of African Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Accessed August 11, 2014. http://books.google.com/books?id=39JMAgAAQBAJ
[2] Stillman, Norman A. "Kahina, al-." Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. Brill Online, 2014. Accessed August 12, 2014. http://0-referenceworks.brillonline.com.luna.wellesley.edu/entries/encyclopedia-of-jews-in-the-islamic-world/kahina-al-SIM_0012530
[3] Maroney, Eric. The Other Zions: The Lost Histories of Jewish Nations. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010. 121. Accessed August 11, 2014. http://books.google.com/books?id=p8_f-npoejEC
[4] Ibid, 119.
[5] Akyeampong and Gates Jr. Dictionary of African Biography.
[6] Stillman. "Kahina, al-."
[7] Corcos, David. "Kahina." Encyclopaedia Judaica. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. Accessed August 11, 2014. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CCX2587510579&v=2.1&u=mlin_m_wellcol&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w&asid=824ec0cb2b347bc2d8f0c51f57732a43
[8] Jackson, Guida M. Women Leaders of Africa, Asia, Middle East, and Pacific: A Biographical Reference. Xlibris, 2009. Accessed August 12, 2014. http://books.google.com/books?id=BIw5alqGQ4wC
[9] Ibid.
[10] Stillman. "Kahina, al-."
[11] Jackson. Women Leaders of Africa, Asia, Middle East, and Pacific: A Biographical Reference.
[12] Hanachi, Jugurtha. "Bir El Kahina en quête de réhabilitation." Le Matin. January 12, 2014. Accessed August 11, 2014. http://www.lematindz.net/news/13355-bir-el-kahina-en-quete-de-rehabilitation.html
[13] Ibid.