Shawiya

Shawiya, also spelled Chaouïa, Berber ethnic and linguistic group of the Aurès Plateau region of the Atlas Mountains of northeastern Algeria. The Shawiya speak one of four major Algerian Amazigh languages.

The Shawiya practice cereal agriculture in the uplands and pastoral nomadism and horticulture in the oases along the edge of the desert, migrating between the two areas. The Shawiya have only limited interactions with the urbanized Arabic-speaking Algerian population, to whom they are a tribal minority. Nominally Sunni Muslims, most Shawiya have only rudimentary knowledge of the textually oriented practices of Middle Eastern Islam.

Traditionally, Shawiya interaction with outsiders was limited to trade with settled Berber groups, particularly with their Kabyle neighbours, who speak a closely related dialect, and to seasonal employment in the Arabic-speaking areas of the Maghrib. Organized according to clan divisions, Shawiya villages in the uplands are occupied only in the summer months of the migration cycle.

Although their isolation from the centre of Algerian power prevented them from playing a larger role, the Shawiya strongly opposed the French in the Algerian revolution in the 1950s, reflecting an awareness of national issues that suggested a continued integration of the Shawiya into mainstream Algerian culture as it adjusted to the emergence of Algeria as a significant oil-exporting nation.