Scientific event

Any historical elucidation of our intangible heritage is considered a welcome idea. Indeed, among the few facts that have come down to us on this matter, the history of North Africa emerges with the civilization inaugurated by Carthage, and the Punic language comes to the fore as a free, dominant language. While Rome's victory in 146 BC put an end to eight centuries of Carthaginian sovereignty, it failed to erase the hegemony of the Punic language, which is attested until the 6th century. However, the periods of Roman and then Byzantine domination left few, if any, traces of the nature of the intangible heritage of that period, with the exception of Roman vestiges.
Cultural life began to regain ground with the arrival of the Islamic conquests. The Punic language, by its Semitic nature, proved capable of facilitating communication with the new rulers, and the Punic and Arabic languages both contributed to defining the contours of the emerging culture. As for the linguistic contacts of the popular language, they allowed for the shaping of the features of what is today called Darja or Maghrebi. We have observed a virtual absence of studies on this transition from Punic to Maghrebi, even though the dominant popular language (Punic) did in fact evolve through contact with the Arabic language—much like the Berber-speaking variants, leading to the birth of the "Maghrebi" language during this pivotal period from the 9th to the 11th century; this explains the Punic substrate and its Arabic form. It should be noted here that the influence of Amazigh languages certainly left traces, even if they were not prominent.
In this exploratory meeting, we shed light on a part of our cultural history and intangible heritage that has been obscured by partial narratives, with the exception of historical linguistics in the 19th and early 20th centuries. For this, we call upon multiple disciplines, including medieval historians of the Maghreb region, jurists specializing in Nawâzil, anthropologists who have researched this period, in addition to various linguists and philologists.