Category:Sahrawi tribes: Difference between revisions

The Sahrawi people consist of a number of nomadic or formerly nomadic tribes, of Arab-Berber origins. The Beni Hassan Arabs immigrated from Yemen in the Middle Ages, and mixed with the local Sanhadja Berber communities, to form the people known today as Sahrawis and Moors. Subsaharan Black Africans contributed with a third element to the population mixture, through slavery and the practice of released slaves (Haratin) to continue living within the tribes that had held them captive. These tribes are identifiable by their nomadic culture, including specific clothing and customs, and the Hassaniyya Arabic dialect, which they are the only ones to speak.

Sahrawi-Moorish tribes are centered in today's Mauritania and Western Sahara, but also exist in southern Morocco, north-west Mali and western Algeria. The term "Sahrawis" specifically denote the people of the former Spanish Sahara, who through Spanish colonization developed differences with tribal affiliates from French-colonized surrounding areas (Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria). Today known as Western Sahara, this territory of undetermined sovereignty is contested between the Kingdom of Morocco and the Polisario Front, an Algerian-backed indigenous movement.

Until the 20th century, Sahrawi society was organized into autonomous tribes, stratified into several "castes", such as the traditionally dominant Hassane warriors, religious and scholarly Zawiya and Chorfa tribes, and the Znaga subservient tribes; to this was added the Haratin populations, slaves (abid) and, depending on the area and tribal culture, mallemin, iggaouen (griot) and other professional castes.

Further reading

• John Mercer (1976), Spanish Sahara, George Allen & Unwid Ltd (ISBN 0-04-966013-6)
• Tony Hodges (1983), Western Sahara: The Roots of a Desert War, Lawrence Hill Books (ISBN 0882081527)
• H. T. Norris (1986), The Arab Conquest of the Western Sahara, Longman Publishing Group (ISBN 0-582-75643-X)
• Anthony G. Pazzanita and Tony Hodges (1994), Historical Dictionary of Western Sahara, Scarecrow Press (ISBN 0810826615)
• Anthony G. Pazzanita (2006), Historical Dictionary of Western Sahara, Scarecrow Press
• Akbarali Thobhani (2002), Western Sahara Since 1975 Under Moroccan Administration. Social, Economic, and Political Transformation, Edwin Mellen Press (ISBN: 0773471731)
• Virginia Thompson and Richard Adloff (1980), The Western Saharans. Background to Conflict, Barnes & Noble Books (ISBN 0-389-20148-0)

List of Sahrawi tribes

Below you will find a list of tribes that exist or have existed in the Western Sahara region, although they have not necessarily been exclusive to this territory. It is not complete. Note that not all of the Sahrawi population consists of tribe members (see e.g. Haratin)