Glossary

Name given by the French authorities to the military conquest of Morocco (1907-1934). SAGHRO uses it in quotation marks or in book titles, and otherwise speaks of conquest, military operations or the establishment of colonial control.

Administrative and military category of the Protectorate: a “submitted” fraction had recognised the Makhzen's authority under French control. SAGHRO keeps the word in archival quotations, but uses “agreement”, “rallying” or “end of fighting” in its own texts, according to the documented facts.

Literally “slipper”: a chief's luck. Bad harvests or a defeat could lead to his removal and a new election.

Penalty for a broken oath.

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

“Year of peace” granted to a killer, within set limits and guaranteed by each section, according to the customary code of the Aït Atta of the Rteb published by Ahda; outside those limits, revenge went unpunished.

Collective pasture with rigidly fixed opening and closing dates; the agudal n-Ilimshan, for instance, is shared with the Ihansalen according to a calendar.

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

Saint, holy man; the descendants of Mulay 'Abdallah bin l-Hsain attended the election of the top chief and kept the war banner.

Collective dance and poetry: men and women in parallel lines facing each other, at weddings, naming ceremonies or full-moon nights.

Council, assembly of notables; according to Hart, real power remained in the hands of this very egalitarian assembly, each member of which had to know customary law well.

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

Common or collective land.

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

“Big man”, notable; Hart also gives amqqran, pl. imqqranen, with the same meaning.

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

Frame drum (a wooden hoop with goatskin stretched over one side and a snare); among the Aït Atta, only men play it in the ahidous (Hart, p. 93).

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

“Safeguard”: a guarantee of safety granted by the authority to those who stop fighting. French sources call the acts concluded under this name “submission”; the agreement of 25 March 1933 was concluded, according to Gérardin, on “aman conditions” negotiated by the Aït Atta leaders (see chapter 9).

Itinerant poet of central Morocco; Peyron records, among the Ait Atta, the quip of an amdyaz mocking neighbours reluctant to join the fight against the conquest.

Elected chief, at various levels of the tribal organisation. The term also means “elder”.

“Land chief”: local chief of a group of clans, elected every spring by the same rotation principle. He watched over fields and irrigation channels and collected fines used for common needs.

“The chief from above”: top chief of the Aït Atta, elected in theory every year at Admam, near Igharm Amazdar, by rotation and complementarity between the five fifths. Essentially a war-chief, he represented the Aït Atta to the neighbouring tribes. Spillmann calls him shaikh al-'âm, “chief of the year”.

Protection granted to a stranger for the time of his passage. The expression bab n-umur, “the man of the lance”, designates among the Aït Atta the head of a tribe or section according to Gélard, the representative of a lineage according to Hart.

The oath administrator, who pronounces the formula that the accused and his co-jurors must repeat without error, barefoot, in their shirts and unarmed.

Clothing and furnishings the bride takes to the groom's house.

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

Post-harvest prayer and offering to saints, in the Saghro.

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

Speech, and one's given word. Among the Aït Atta, a society of oral tradition, a pledged word has according to M. Hamdane an inviolable status: “Yuf ad tṛṛẓ takatt nnk, ula iṛṛẓa wawal nnk”, “better your hearth be broken than your word”. For a marriage deed one says “sskrn awal”, “they made the word”.

A man's agnates, who swear with him and, in the event of murder, accompany him into exile for three days before returning to negotiate blood money.

“The people of 'Atta”: a confederation of south-eastern Morocco that claims the founding figure of Dadda 'Atta. Ayt (aït) means “people of”: the name expresses a shared belonging, not a demonstrated biological descent.

The Aït Atta “of the shade” (umalu), north of the sub-Atlas furrow, and those “of the sun” (tafuyt), to the south, who also called themselves “Aït Atta of the Sahara”.

Confederation of the eastern High Atlas (Ait Merghad, Ait Hdiddou, Ait Izdeg, Ait Yahya) formed in the 17th century to check the expansion of the Ait Atta, its historical rivals. Folk etymology: “those who found peace”.

Customary law. Duclos uses the Arabic term qâ'ida (“fundamental rule”) and distinguishes this old law from the “Berber customary justice” instituted by the 1930 dahir.

Lineage headman, appointed by the clan chief (amghar n-tmazirt).

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

Blessing, divinely granted luck. Gérardin writes that when Bournazel fell his men broke ranks, believing that “Allah's baraka had abandoned the chief”.

Flintlock rifle; Hart also records sasbu (from French “chassepot”) for the 1874 Gras rifle and tatsaʿit for the 1886 Lebel rifle.

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

Blood money paid to the victim's agnates, the central mechanism for ending a vendetta (tamaddit). Hart devotes precise pages to it (1981, pp. 200-201, according to Peyron).

Moroccan auxiliary unit commanded by French officers. At Bougafer, goums, partisans and harkas made up the bulk of the assault troops; Gérardin cites the 7th, 16th, 17th, 21st, 28th and 34th goums.

Fortified village or collective granary of earth and stone, often several storeys high (Arabic equivalent: qsar, ksar).

“The bone”: lineage. Each lineage had a representative (bab n-imurn) appointed by the clan chief.

Peyron notes a shift: mountain fighters, called imɣiwwuɣ (“dissidents”) or imsubren (“unsubdued”), are now called imžuhad (“fighters of the jihad”). Words first express the viewpoint of whoever uses them.

Transhumants; tarahhalt means transhumance, and the woman who transhumes.

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

The young men who escort the bride to the groom's house or tent and must protect her from attempts to snatch an item of her clothing (Hart, p. 92). Hamdane quotes the expression “the ogress's escorts”.

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

Supreme court of appeal of the Aït Atta, sitting at Igharm Amazdar: six judges (two from the Aït Y'azza, two from the Aït Zimru, two from the Aït Hassu), rechosen for each case; in case of disagreement, six and then six more arbiters, up to eighteen, the local amghar n-tmazirt breaking a tie.

Couplet, the dominant poetic form in Central Moroccan Tamazight; sung solo and to a fast rhythm it becomes a tamawayt (Aoudjit 2023).

Fines. The Igharm Amazdar qânûn mostly uses the archaic form timawlin, a sign, according to Hart, of the text's age.

The “five fifths”: the uppermost division of the confederation. Their main function was to provide, in rotation, the top chief of all the Aït Atta.

Spillmann names the five: Aït Wallal, Aït Wahlim, Aït Isful, Aït Izza (Yazza) and Aït Ounbgi (according to the Wikipedia synthesis; not verified in the book).

In the poems analysed by Bounfour, resistance is designated by metonymy: “powder” (lbarud), “bullets” (rrsâs, lqurtas). The Arabic word muqâwama only prevailed later.

Written document (in Arabic, mixed with Amazigh terms) recording customary rules and scales of fines. The one from Igharm Amazdar, photographed by Hart in 1961, is neither dated nor signed.

Messenger who carries a case and brings back the answer. In Ahda, he takes to Igherm Amazdar the question of custom raised by the Aït Atta of the Rteb and is paid by the losing party; in Stitou, without a cited source, he investigates the dispute at first instance.

Electoral principle described by Gellner and Hart: when it is a group's turn to provide the chief, the other groups elect him from among its members. Chiefs could be removed at any time, notably if their “luck” failed.

French Wikipedia's wording, according to which the designated fifth itself elects its candidate, inverts the principle described by Hart.

“Agreements of the Five Fifths”: camel-skin documents, reputedly two centuries old, kept at Tiniurshan with the old war banner. Hart calls them “alleged”: he did not see them.

Territory outside the authority of the makhzen (central government). Encyclopedic syntheses place the Aït Atta in this “land of siba” until the conquest.

A term of Makhzen then colonial vocabulary; it denotes a political relationship (fiscal and military autonomy), not “disorder”.

Short wool turban worn by men before the Protectorate, which also served as a rifle scabbard.

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

Distinctive triangular headdress worn by Aït Atta women.

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

Pact of co-lactation, an alliance between groups sealed by a symbol of “milk kinship”. According to Gélard it is no longer a contemporary practice, but former pacts still determine marriage prohibitions. Not to be confused with the Aït Atta tata described by Duclos (judicial correspondent).

“Closed, fenced” (root FRG, as in afrag, the hedge): among the Aït Khebbach, said of lineages between which marriage is forbidden because of former co-lactation pacts.

Sanctuary (hurm) around Igharm Amazdar, with a radius of 27 to 29 km according to one of Hart's informants: murder was absolutely forbidden there and war booty had to wait three days at its limits.

The collective oath, the “cornerstone” of the Aït Atta judicial system according to Hart. The number of co-jurors varied with the gravity of the charge: 5 for theft of barley, 10 for theft of livestock or from a house, 20 for the murder of a woman, 40 for the murder of a man.

Individual grain-storage cubicle in the collective storehouse; a man who changes co-juring group loses it, along with his water rights (Hart, p. 10).

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

Protection given by lay tribesmen to the descendants of saints (shurfa, mrabtin), sealed by a sacrifice.

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

The hearth, and by extension the nuclear family; it is the unit counted in censuses (“hearths”, kanoun).

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

The tent, and the transhumant nuclear family living in it.

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

Marriage, generally a three-day ritual; the ahidous marks its first evening at both families' homes (Hart, p. 92). Tamghra n-w-ushshn, “the jackal's wedding”, refers to rain in sunshine, as in Hamdane.

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

Very short sung poetic pieces of south-eastern Morocco, notably among the Ait Atta; improvised at celebrations and gatherings, they comment on love, separation, migration or current events. Azergui says women sing them; Salime (2022) describes them as produced by women and men.

The singular “tamnaḍt” and the Tifinagh spelling are proposed by SAGHRO from the attested plural “timnadin”: to be validated by speakers.

Localised clan or tribe; also designates the assembly of adult men dealing with public affairs.

The liver, seat of the emotions in the speech of the Aït Atta, where English says “the heart”. M. Hamdane records among others: “Txatr as tasa”, “his liver is big” (he is fearful); “ibby tasa nns”, “it cuts his liver” (he felt great compassion for him); “Iṛbba tasa”, “he raised his liver on him” (he loves him dearly); “Ur ili tasa”, “he has no liver” (he is pitiless).

Judicial correspondent each 'Attaoui had in every group other than his own; his mere presence made any violence during a procedure sacrilegious. Neither judge nor advocate, according to Duclos.

Temporary protection paid by a traveller (tazttat) to a tribal protector (amzttid) to cross a territory.

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

Collection of customary rules of a section, tribe, fortified village, granary, market or holy place; also called shurūṭ (“conditions”) in the qsour of the Rteb. Hart uses the plural tiʿaqqidin in another sense: the “guardians of custom”, judges of Igherm Amazdar.

Written charm against bullets.

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

The members of the istinaf, also called ait l-haqq, “the people of the truth”.

One-night wedding feast with a single sheep slaughtered, held by poor people; even reduced, it makes the marriage licit in everyone's eyes (Hart, pp. 91-92).

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

The bride (tislit) and the bridegroom (isli). Tislit n-w-ushshn, “the jackal's bride”, means the rainbow.

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

Small gift in kind (sugar, henna, kohl, dates, clothing) taken by the young man's father to the girl's father: its acceptance marks the first act of the marriage. It is not bridewealth (Hart, p. 91).

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

Curved dagger.

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.

“He of the sheep”: a man who changes co-juring group, or is naturalised in a new lineage, clan or tribe by sacrificing a sheep.

Form and meaning after D. M. Hart's glossary (1984), which marks this word as Tamazight; Hart's transcription.