Kahina

Al-Kahina (), also known as Dihya, was a Berber queen of the Aurès and a religious and military leader who led indigenous resistance to the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb, the region then known as Numidia notably defeating the Umayyad forces in the Battle of Meskiana after which she became the uncontested ruler of the whole Maghreb, before being decisively defeated at the Battle of Tabarka. She was born in the early 7th century AD and died around the end of the 7th century in modern-day Algeria. Her personal name is one of these variations: Daya, Dehiya, Dihya, Dahya or Damya. Her title was cited by Arabic-language sources as al-Kāhina (the priestess soothsayer). This was the nickname given to by her Muslim opponents because of her alleged ability to foresee the future. She was born into the Jrāwa Zenata tribe in the early 7th century. For five years she ruled a free Berber state from the Aurès Mountains to the oasis of Gadames (695–700 AD). But the Arabs, commanded by Musa bin Nusayr, returned with a strong army and defeated her. She fought at the El Djem Roman amphitheater but finally was killed in combat near a well that still bears her name, Bir al Kahina in Aures. Accounts from the 19th century on claim she was of Jewish religion or that her tribe were Judaized Berbers. According to al-Mālikī, she was accompanied in her travels by an "idol". Both Mohamed Talbi and Gabriel Camps interpreted this idol as a Christian icon, either of Christ, the Virgin, or a saint protecting the queen. M'hamed Hassine Fantar held that this icon represented a separate Berber deity, suggesting she followed traditional Berber religion. However, Dihya being a Christian remains the most likely hypothesis. The idea that the Jarawa were Judaized comes from the medieval historian Ibn Khaldun, who named them among seven Berber tribes. Hirschberg and Talbi note that Ibn Khaldun seems to have been referring to a time before the advent of the late Roman and Byzantine empires, and a little later in the same paragraph seems to say that by Roman times "the tribes" had become Christianized.