KABYLES, or more correctly Kabâil, a number of tribes in the Algerian region of northern Africa, of special interest to the politician from the peculiarity of their institutions and from the part they will probably play in the development of the French colony, and to the ethnologist as the best known branch of the great Berber race. In 1864 it was estimated that they amounted to 2,200,000. The country which they inhabit is usually regarded as consisting of 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”). It is admitted on all hands that the Berbers form the main aboriginal element in the population of northern Africa, that at one time or other they have occupied the whole tract of country from Egypt in the east to the Canary Islands in the west, and that they are still represented not only by the Tuâreg (Amashir, &c.), who retain their native speech, but by many tribes that have become altogether Arab in language. In regard to their real ethnic relations, however, there has been much discussion and theory: Kaltbrunner includes the Berbers in the Mediterranean race in which Haeckel places the Semites, Iberians, &c. M. G. Olivier recognizes the Berbers as Aryans, and Faidherbe regards them as the indigenous Libyans mingled with a fair-skinned people of European origin; while Pruner Bey and Duveyrier maintain the close relation of the Berbers with the ancient Egyptians, and consider them as forming together the white African race. Be this as it may, the Kabyles are a Berber stock, and more particularly correspond to that part of the race which was known to the Romans as Numidians. Physically they do not present any very prominent contrast to the Arabs of ...