People
Nababes
area of Oued Sebaou (Barrington)
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The Nababes were a Berber people of Mauretania Caesariensis, in what is now northern Algeria, and the Tabula places them south of the Mons Ferratus, the Djurdjura range of Kabylia, around the valley of the Oued Sebaou. The Roman writer Pliny says a river, probably the Isser, separated them from the Macurebi. They probably belonged to the Quinquegentiani, the 'five peoples', a tribal league finally subdued under Maximian. In two towns of the region the name survives as a personal surname, as if its bearers were felt to be outsiders there. The geographer Ptolemy gives other forms of the name and seemingly other homelands, a tangle perhaps explained by a partly nomadic life.