The Saghro and Aït Atta country

The Jbel Saghro extends the Anti-Atlas eastwards. Its plateaus, volcanic peaks and canyons reach 2,712 m at Amalou n'Mansour; rainfall rarely exceeds 300 mm on the summits. Three main passes cross it from north to south.

For Hart, the Saghro is the Aït Atta's “point of origin”, from which they supposedly radiated in all directions, and Igharm Amazdar their capital. In 1960 Hart estimated the Aït Atta at between 150,000 and 200,000 people spread over the provinces of Beni Mellal, Ouarzazate and Ksar es-Souk.

The territory is marked by discontinuity: a single clan, such as the Aït Bu Iknifen, is found in at least seven separate localities. The distinction between Aït Atta “of the shade” (north of the sub-Atlas furrow) and “of the sun” or “of the Sahara” (to the south) also structures their geography.

Described by Beaurpère in 1930 from his informants, the heart of the eastern Saghro is a long furrow where two almost always dry rivers, the Regg (“Saghro river”) and the Ichem, flow in opposite directions; villages tap their springs through drainage galleries (khottara). The upper valley then has about 534 hearths, 415 of them Aït Atta and 119 Haratin; its winter pastures receive the flocks of the Aït Wahlim, Aït Ounir and Aït Wallal, and the Haratin there make earthenware dishes (keddour), hence their nickname Ikkedaren (pp. 235-237).

Hart himself revised his estimates: in his 1984 book he puts forward an order of magnitude of 100,000 to 150,000 Aït Atta in the early 1960s, based on the 1960 census (p. 12), i.e. fewer than the 150,000 to 200,000 of his 1966 article. According to him, the Aït Atta compare their attachment to the Saghro to that of a horse tied on a long rope: however far they wander to graze, their homeland always pulls them back (1984, p. 6).