[3] R Basset, Nouveaux Contes Berbers, p. 18.  Paris, 1897.  La Pomme de jeunesse.

[4] Spitta-bey, Contes Arabes modernes, p. 12.  Ley de 1883.

[5] Arless Pasha, Contes Populaire de la vallee du Nil.  Paris, 1895.

During the conquest of the Magreb by the Arabs in the seventh century A.D., Kahina, a Berber queen, who at a given moment drove the Mussulman invaders away and personified national defiance, employed the same ceremony to adopt for son the Arab Khaled Ben Yazed, who was to betray her later.

Assisted by these traits of indigenous manners, we can call to mind ogres and pagans who represent an ancient population, or, more exactly, the sectarians of an ancient religion like the Paganism or the Christianity which was maintained on some points of Northern Africa, with the Berbers, until the eleventh century A.D.  Fabulous features from the Arabs have slipped into the descriptions of the Djohala, mingled with the confused souvenirs of mythological beings belonging to paganism before the advent of Christianity.

It is difficult to separate the different sources of the Berber stories.  Besides those appearing to be of indigenous origin, and which have for scene a grotto or a mountain, one could scarcely deny that the greater part, whether relating to stories of adventure, fairy stories, or comical tales, were borrowed from foreign countries by way of the Arabs.  Without doubt they have furnished the larger part, but there are some of which there are no counterparts in European countries.  “Half a cock,” for instance, has travelled into the various provinces of France, Ireland, Albania, among the Southern Slavs, and to Portugal, from whence it went to Brazil; but the Arabs do not know it, nor do they know Tom Thumb, which with the Khabyles becomes H’ab Sliman.  In the actual state of our knowledge, we can only say that there is a striking resemblance between a Berber tale and such or such a version.  From thence comes the presumption of borrowed matter.  But, for the best results to be gained, one should be in possession of all the versions.  When it relates to celebrated personages among the Mussulmans, like Solomon, or the features of a legend of which no trace remains of the names, one can certainly conclude that it is borrowed from the Arabs.  It is the same with the greater number of fairy tales, whose first inventors, the Arabs, commenced with the “Thousand and One Nights,” and presented us with “The Languages of the Beasts,” and also with funny stories.

The principal personage of these last is Si Djeha, whose name was borrowed from a comic narrative existing as early as the eleventh century A.D.  The contents are sometimes coarse and sometimes witty, are nearly all more ancient, and yet belong to the domain of pleasantries from which in Germany sprung the anecdotes of Tyll Eulenspiegel and the Seven Suabians, and in England the Wise Men of Gotham.  In Italy, and even in Albania, the name of Djeha is preserved under the form of Guifa and Guicha; and the Turks, who possess the richest literature on this person, have made him a Ghadji Sirii Hissar, under the name of Nasr-eddin Hodja (a form altered from Djoha).  The traits attributed to such persons as Bon Idhes, Bon Goudous, Bon Kheenpouch, are equally the same as those bestowed upon Si Djeha.