This silver fibula would have been worn by a Kabyle woman in the first half of the nineteenth century to affix her robes. The Kabyles are a Berber people from the Atlas Mountains in North Eastern Algeria. They believed silver was a sign of purity. It was originally one of a pair, which were worn on the front of the body, just below the shoulders, to hold the wearer’s dress together. The two fibulae would have been linked by a chain attached to the loop at the top.

This brooch was probably made by a Jewish silversmith. In the late fifteenth century many Jewish people emigrated to North Africa to escape persecution in Europe. The Jewish population dominated the silversmith profession until the late nineteenth century as Berbers regarded working with metal as a low status profession.