Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/240

 some distance south of Tunis. The site was badly chosen, and is now marked only by ruins and a scanty village, but for some centuries it served as the capital city of Ifrikiya, which was the name given to the province lying next to Egypt, embracing the modern states of Tripoli, Tunis, and the eastern part of Algeria up to the meridian of Bougie. West of this lay Maghrab, or the "western land," which was divided into two districts, Central Maghrab extending from the borders of Ifrikiya across the greater part of Algeria and the eastern third of Morocco, and Further Maghrab, which spread beyond to the Atlantic coast. In these provinces Arabs and Berbers lived side by side, but in distinct tribes, the intercourse between the two varying in different localities and at different times. For the most part each race preserved its own language, the several Arabic dialects being distinguished by archaic forms and a phonology somewhat modified by Berber influences; but there are instances of Berber tribes which have adopted Arabic, and some of the Arab and mixed groups have preferred the Berber language.

The religion of Islam spread rapidly amongst the Berbers, but it took a particular development, which shows a survival of many pre-Islamic religious ideas. The worship of saints and the devotion paid at their tombs is a corruption which appears elsewhere, on lines quite distinct from the Asiatic beliefs as to incarnation or transmigration, and in the west this saint worship takes an extreme form, although