This work compares medieval and modern Arabic sources relating to the Berber Empires (11th-13th centuries) with the way in which European studies have apprehended this topic against the backdrop of the emergence of orientalism and the expansion of France in the Maghreb. Indeed, the invocation and then the study of the Berber Empires served to characterize a great Other of proximity : the Maghreb at once so close and yet so different. Studying this past therefore amounted to giving perspectives to this radical difference. In the context of the colonized and then newly independent Maghreb, this yet distant past never ceased to serve as a reference and as a framework for a "roman national" which aimed to give these States a solid foundation.