The Legendary Jewish Warrior Princess of the Berbers

Oct. 18 2018

In the late 7th century, the forces of the Umayyad caliphate were on the march westward from Egypt, eager to expand their empire. They soon found themselves fighting a confederation of Berber tribes led by a woman named Dihya al-Kahina, who to this day remains the stuff of legend. Arab accounts portray her as a sorceress, while some Algerian Jewish folklore has her as an anti-Semitic ogre. But the great 14th-century Arab historian ibn Khaldun notes that her tribe were converts to Judaism, and this is likely the origin of the claim that she was a Jew, made popular by the early 20th-century journalist Nahum Slouschz in his travelogue of North African Jewry. Ushi Derman recounts Slouschz’s version of her story:

Dihya offered peace, but the Muslim commander would not accept unless she acknowledged the authority of the caliph and adopted Islam, an ultimatum she rejected scornfully. According to Slouschz, she was a descendant of a priestly family deported from Judea by Pharaoh Necho in the days of King Josiah. She did not intend to enter the family history as a leader who caused yet another deportation of the dynasty, and certainly did not intend to convert to Islam. “I shall die in the religion I was born to,” she answered the commander’s demands, and went on forging her steel sword.

Berber tribes from all over the Maghreb arrived to join Kahina in her campaign, which they gloriously won after exhausting battles. Defeated and ashamed, the Arab general had to escape with what was left of his troops to Tripoli, where he had to face the caliph and tell him of his defeat. Kahina then chased his troops all the way to Carthage, and then became the city’s ruler [as well]. . . .

It took [the Arab armies] five years to recover from the losses caused in the battle with Dihya. [But they then returned with] a much larger force and managed to conquer Carthage and to defeat the Berbers. . . . After her defeat, Kahina took her own life by falling into a deep well. The Muslims pulled out her body, severed her head, and sent it to the caliph. The well is still called the Kahina Well.

Despite Slouschz’s claims, most modern scholars doubt that Kahina was in fact Jewish.

Read more at Museum of the Jewish People

More about: African Jewry, Algeria, History & Ideas

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023