Families, marriages and names

An Aït Atta name states filiation and lineage: “Muha u-Sa'id n-Ait Mhand u-Brahim” means “Muha son of Sa'id, of the group of the people of Mhand son of Brahim”. This system makes it possible to read, in Hart, the name of the qaid “'Ali u-l-Hajj 'Assu n-Ait Bâslâm”.

According to syntheses based on Hart and Becker, a marriage proposal involved a gift (sugar, henna, kohl) to the bride's father; before independence the contract was oral, concluded before the faqih and notable witnesses, then written in Arabic and signed before notaries after 1956. The celebration generally lasted three days, opened by the ahidus.

Hart devotes part of his 1981 book to kinship and marriage among the Aït Atta of Oussikis (according to Peyron's review).