Kahina, Al-

   This is the surname of the legendary Berber prophetess (female of al-kahin, "the seer") of the apparently Judaized tribe of Jerawa, a Zanata branch in the Aurès in northern Algeria. She is also known by the name of Dahiyya. She distinguished herself in assuming the leadership in the Berber resistance against the Arabs who under Hassan Ibn Nu`man al Ghassani, the Umayyad governor of al-Qayrawan, had forced the Byzantines out of Carthage in 698. Al-Kahina laid all the land waste before the advancing Arabs, inflicted on them a heavy defeat, and pushed them back beyond the borders of present-day Tunisia and Libya. Afew years later, however, the Umayyad caliph `Abd al-Malik reinforced the Arabs troops, and the Berbers were decisively beaten near the old Roman port town of Tabarqa. Al-Kahina was pursued into the mountains and was killed in 702 in combat near a well still today called Bir al-Kahina (the well of al-Kahina).