According to legend, l-Kahna was the daughter of Tabat, a chieftain of the Jrâwa tribe from the Aurès Mountains. Other accounts indicate she was a Jew or that her tribe were Judaised Berbers, though some scholars dispute this. During this period, many Jews had sought refuge from Byzantine persecution in the Aurès region, bringing their religion to the local Berber tribes. On the other hand, Punic settlements and Arab polemicists may have had some effect on how she was called.
Her title may originally have been a Punic, Hebrew or Aramaic word; it is difficult to determine how she obtained the Arabic title al-Kāhinah. The term was used by pagan Punics and Arabs to refer to female seers and priests, by Jews to refer to someone of the priestly Kohen lineage, and perhaps by Muslim Arabs to refer to non-Muslim sorcerers and witches.
Ibn Khaldun records many legends about l-Kahna. Many legends refer to her long hair or great size, both legendary characteristics of sorcerers. She is also supposed to have had the gift of Prophecy and she had three sons, which is characteristic of witches in legends. Even the fact that two were her own and one was adopted was an alleged trait of sorcerers in tales. Her adoptee was a captured Arab officer, and before her defeat, she allegedly sent all three sons over to the Muslims so they would not die in the fighting. Another legend claims that in her youth, she had supposedly freed her people from a tyrant by agreeing to marry him and then murdering him on their wedding night. Virtually nothing else of her personal life is known.
The Kahina succeeded Kusayla as the war-leader of the Berber tribes in the 680s and opposed the encroaching Arab armies of the Caliphate. She defeated Arab armies once, then faced them again five years later. Realizing that the enemy was too powerful, she embarked on a scorched-earth campaign, which had little impact on the mountain and desert tribes but lost her the crucial support of the sedentary oasis-dwellers.
Instead of discouraging the Arab armies, her desperate decision hastened defeat. According to some accounts, she died fighting the invaders, sword in hand, a warrior's death (other accounts say she committed suicide rather than be taken by the enemy). This was around 693 CE, when she was, according to ancient accounts quoted by Ibn Khaldun, 127 years old. This was probably not meant literally. Great age was often depicted with exaggerated numbers.
In later times, her legend was used to bolster the claims of Berbers in Andalusia against Arab claims of ethnic supremacy; in the early modern age, she was used by Europeans, Berbers and Arabs alike for their own didactic purposes.
Source: Hannoum Abdelmajid 2001: Post-Colonial Memories: The Legend of the Kahina, a North African Heroine (Studies in African Literature): ISBN 0-325-00253-3