The Kutama were a medieval Berber confederation of the Lesser Kabylia and the Babor mountains in eastern Algeria, conventionally classified within the broader Sanhaja branch but consistently treated as a distinct grouping in the early Islamic sources.
Their geography centred on the cities of Ikjan, Mila, and Setif, with extensions east towards Constantine and north towards the Mediterranean coast. The medieval sources describe a sedentary agricultural population organised in segmentary lineages.
The Kutama provided the demographic and military base of the Fatimid movement, founded in their territory in the early tenth century by the Isma'ili missionary Abu Abdallah al-Shi'i. Kutama armies took Raqqada and the Aghlabid emirate in 909, brought the Fatimid Caliph al-Mahdi to Ifriqiya from Salamiyya, conquered Egypt in 969, and founded Cairo as the new Fatimid capital.
After the Fatimid centre of gravity shifted definitively to Egypt and the Maghreb was delegated to the Sanhaja Zirids, Kutama political importance declined. The contemporary toponymy preserves the name in the Ketama region of the western Rif (a separate, later application) and in scattered place names in eastern Algerian Kabylia.