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

[5] Arless Pasha, Contes Populaire de la vallée 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