Lamtuna
The Lamtuna were an ancient Berber tribe living in the Western Sahara ( Mauritania , Morocco and Algeria ). They belonged to the Sanhada covenant . According to a lineage legend, the Lamtuna were close relatives of the Tuareg .
Arabic historians assigned them a Himyar origin from Yemen , which could not be proven genealogically and linguistically does not seem to fit, as they were Berber . The Lamtuna formed the core of the Almoravids (1046–1147). Attributes of the Lamtuna and the other Sanhajah tribes that recur in the written sources were their nomadic way of life with dromedaries, the wearing of a face veil and a diet based on milk and meat.
The Lamtuna roamed the Sahara with their herds between Morocco and Senegal , always looking for green pastures. They were Islamized in the 7th century and together with the Masufa and the Judala founded the League of Sanhajah in the 9th century in order to gain control of the caravan routes of the Trans-Saharan trade . They built the Aoudaghoust caravan center and made it the capital of their union. After the dissolution of the Sanhajah covenant, they accepted a missionary task as Almoravids in the 11th century and spread Islam throughout the region.
After the invasion of the Arabs, the Lamtuna, under their leader Imam Nasreddine, were the last of the Sanhajah to resist Arabization even in the 17th century.
The class of marabouts in Mauritania still sees themselves as their descendants.
Individual evidence
- ^ Rainer Oßwald: The trading cities of the West Sahara. The development of the Arab-Moorish culture of Šinqīt, Wādān, Tīšīt and Walāta. Marburg studies on Africa and Asia. Vol. 39. Dietrich Reimer, Berlin 1986, pp. 25f