The former Barbary States now comprise the modern states of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. The Berbers spoke variations of a Hamitic language, mainly Tuareg and Kabyle. The Tuaregs were nomadic Berber tribes ensconced along the trade routes across the Sahara desert. Judaic presence in the continent of Africa can be said to go back to the Biblical sojourn of Abraham in the lush Nile Delta (Goshen),
where Abraham, together with his entourage and herds of cattle awaited the passage of a drought in Canaan. It is also related in the Bible that the vizier to the Pharaoh, Joseph, summoned his family to join him in Egypt. Many Israelites followed, at first as settlers, and then as slaves captured in Canaan by the aptly characterized "Warrior Pharaohs." After the states of Israel and Judah came into existence, Judaic traders traveled westward along the African coast with the voyagers of Tyre and Sidon, the Canaanite sea-farers referred to by the Greeks as the "Phoenicians." Jews composed a significant proportion of the major North African Canaanite settlement at Carthage (Kart Hadash, or "New City"), and Jewish presence has been well documented elsewhere along the coast during the Pre-Roman period. The Romans termed the Canaanite settlers the Peonicus Carthagenians, which in turn has been transcribed into the "Punic Peoples." The Canaanite city-states of Utica and Carthage were ruled by a Soffut, akin to the Israelite shoffet, or judge. In Jews and Photography, George Gilbert notes that "in the Mellahs (the Jewish quarters) of Morocco it has long been legend that Jews settled in Northwest Africa even before the destruction of the second temple (586 BCE). In support of this belief one sees Hebrew inscriptions on tombstones in the Roman town of Volubilis (west of modern Fez)."1
Under the Ptolemaic Greeks (323-31 BCE), the Jews brought their technological, industrial and commercial expertise to Alexandria, one of the largest and economically important cities of antiquity. Judaic artisans, merchants and scholars composed some 40% of the population. They were organized into guilds with reserved sections in the synagogues. The tannaic scholar, Rabbi Judah, visited Alexandria and reported: "... they were seated there not in mixed order, but goldsmiths apart, silversmiths apart, and weavers apart, blacksmiths apart, coppersmiths apart, and weavers apart. So that when a poor [artisan] entered there, he recognized the members of his own craft and turned to them to find means for the maintenance of himself and his family."
