KABYLES or KABAIL, a confederation of tribes in Algeria, Tunisia, and a few oases of the Sahara, who form a branch of the great Berber race. Their name (Arabic gabilat, pl. gabail), was at first indiscriminately applied by the Arabs to all Berber peoples. There are two divisions—Great Kabylia and Lesser Kabylia, the former being also known as the Kabylia of the Jurjura (also called Adrar Budfel, "Mountain of Snow"). Physically many Kabyles resemble the Arabs of Algeria. Both Kabyle and Arab are white at birth, but rapidly grow brown through exposure to air and sunshine. Both have in general brown eyes and wavy hair of coarse quality, varying from dark brown to jet black. The Kabyle appears to be of heavier build and more muscular. Both are clearly long-headed. Some, how ever, of the purer type of Kabyles in Kabylia proper have fair skins, ruddy complexions and blue or grey eyes. In fact there are two distinct types of Kabyles : those which by much admix ture have approximated to Arab and negroid types, and those which preserve Libyan features. Active, energetic and enter prising, the Kabyle is found as a soldier in the French army, as a workman in the towns, as a field labourer, or as a pedlar or trader earning the means of purchasing his bit of ground in his native village. The Kabyles are Mohammedans of the Sunnite branch and the Malikite rite, looking to Morocco as the nearer centre of their religion. Some retain their vernacular speech. The
best known of the Kabyle dialects is Zouave (which gave its name to the Zouave regiments) or Agawawa, spoken on the north ern side of the Jurjura at least from the time of Ibn Khaldun. The Kabyles have no alphabet, and their literature, of historical pieces, proverbial couplets and quatrains, dancing songs, etc., is preserved by professional writers.
See General L. L. C. Faidherbe and Dr. Paul Topinard, Instruc tions sur l'anthropologie de l'Algerie (1874) ; Melchior Joseph Eugene Daumas, Le Sahara algerien (1845) and Moeurs et coutumes de l'Algerie (1857) ; De Slane's translation of Ibn Khaldun's Hist. des Berberes (Algiers, 1852) ; Aucapitaine, Les Kabyles et la colonie de l' Algerie (1864) and Les Beni M'zab (1868) ; L. J. A. C. Hanoteau and A. Letourneux, La Kabylie et les coutumes kabyles (1893) ; Charmetant, in Jahrbiicher der Verbreitung des Glaubens (1874) Masqueray, Formation des cites . . . de l'Algerie (1886) ; Dugas, La Kabylie et le peuple kabyle (1878) ; Recoux, La Detnographie de l'Algerie (188o) ; J. Liorel, Races berberes: les Kabyles (1893); MacIver and Wilkin, Libyan Notes (19c1)