Dihya, known to the Arab chroniclers as al-Kahina — "the priestess" or "the soothsayer" — was a Berber queen who led the indigenous resistance to the Umayyad conquest of north Africa from her stronghold in the Aurès massif during the late seventh century.
The principal medieval sources are Ibn Khaldun's Kitab al-'Ibar and the chronicles of Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam and al-Maliki, written several centuries after the events; modern reconstructions have read these accounts against archaeological and ethnographic evidence with mixed results. The Kahina is variously associated with the Jrawa Zenata confederation and with a Christian or Jewish religious affiliation, depending on the source.
After defeating the Umayyad commander Hassan ibn al-Nu'man at the Oued Nini around 698, she imposed a scorched-earth strategy across the Aurès to deny the Arab forces resupply, a decision that medieval and modern accounts have read both as strategic necessity and as a political miscalculation that alienated her settled subjects.
She was defeated and killed in battle around 703. Her sons were absorbed into the Umayyad command and the conquest proceeded westward to the Atlantic. In modern Amazigh political memory the Kahina is a foundational figure: warrior, queen, and ancestor of indigenous resistance.