ABSTRACT
The advent of Islam divides precolonial Algeria into pre-Islamic and Islamic. Pre-Islamic Algeria is the favorite domain of colonial writers and more recently Kabyle-Berber oppositional intellectuals. Precolonial Algeria displayed a variety of modes of sociopolitical control and life-styles. Rural precolonial Algeria was the territory of the "great tribes," some nomadic, others quasinomadic and still others sedentary. South of Algiers, on the high plateau of the Sahara Atlas, laid the towns of Bou Saada, Djelfa and Messaad, forming a triangle at the heart of the Ouled Nail mountain. The practice of the Azriyat in the eastern mountain of the Aures resembled that of the Nailiyat because it was also based on women's sexual freedom. Women who were orphaned, divorced, repudiated, widowed or unable to marry at the appointed age became dance performers and engaged in sexual activity with their patrons until they found a husband..
