Berber flag
The Berber flag or Amazigh flag is a flag that has been adopted by many Berber populations including protestors, cultural and political activists.[1][2]
![](../I/Berber_flag.svg.png.webp)
The flag was inaugurated in Wadya, a town of Kabylia situated in Tizi Ouzou, a province of Algeria, by an elder Algerian Kabylian veteran, Youcef Medkour.[3]
History
Mohand Arav Bessaoud, Algerian activist and founder of Berber Academy, designed the flag in 1970.[4][2] It was used in demonstrations in the 1980s, and in 1997, the World Amazigh Congress at Tafira on Las Palmas in the Canary Islands made the flag official.[1]
Description
The flag is composed of blue, green, and yellow horizontal bands of the same height, and a Tifinagh letter yaz or aza.[1][2] Each colour corresponds to an aspect of Tamazgha, the territory inhabited by the Berbers in North Africa:[2]
- Blue represents the sea.
- Green represents the mountains.
- Yellow represents the desert.
- The red of the letter z (ⵣ in Tifinagh) represents resistance and the martyrs/free man of the Imazighen.
The letter z represents the word Amazigh, the root of which it is taken from.[1]
References
- Ilahiane, Hsain (2017). Historical dictionary of the Berbers (Imazighen) (2nd ed.). Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 29. ISBN 978-1-4422-8182-0. OCLC 966314885.
- Fedele, Valentina (2021), "The Hirak. The Visual Performance of Diversity in Algerian Protests", Partecipazione e Conflitto, University of Salento, 14 (2): 693, doi:10.1285/i20356609v14i2p681, retrieved 2022-12-20
- Yahia ARKAT (10 January 2019). "Aux origines de l'emblème amazigh" (in French). Archived from the original on 12 November 2020. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
- Ilahiane, Hsain (2017). Historical dictionary of the Berbers (Imazighen) (2nd ed.). Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 52. ISBN 978-1-4422-8182-0. OCLC 966314885.