Step 1 · Topic
Origins and expansion
A confederation that claims to have been born in the Saghro and spread, from the 16th to the 19th century, from the Drâa to the Tafilalt and up to the slopes of the Central Atlas.
Guided tours · 9 steps
Discovering the Aït Atta
Origins, confederation, institutions, law and ways of life.
Map of the Aït Atta expansion (after Dunn, 1973) — Wikimedia Commons, CC0
Step 2 · Dossier
Dadda Atta: History, tradition and founding memory
A founding figure whose name the confederation bears, not a demonstrated biological ancestor. This dossier separates what the tradition tells, what memory has made of it, and what the documents allow us to establish.
Step 3 · Topic
The “five fifths”
At the top of the segmentation, five groups without their own chief, whose essential function was to provide, in turn, the chief of all.
Step 4 · Topic
Electing a chief: the amghar n-ufilla
A top chief elected each year by those who could not be elected, removable, unpaid, and whose office lapsed around 1926-1927.
Step 5 · Topic
Igharm Amazdar, the capital
“London, Paris, Washington and Igharm Amazdar”: a village of a hundred houses that was the political, judicial and sacred centre of the Aït Atta.
Step 6 · Topic
Protecting, making amends, integrating: pacts
Between groups and between persons, ritual commitments (an animal's blood shed, milk shared) created protection, peace and chosen kinship.
Step 7 · Topic
The written custom of the Ziz qsour
Collections of rules, written in Arabic with Amazigh words, organised life in the fortified villages: houses, water, theft, marriage, oath.
Step 8 · Topic
Transhumance, oases and markets
Pastoralists above all, between summer pastures in the north and winter pastures in the south, most Aït Atta were still transhumant in the 1960s.
Step 9 · Topic
Igherman: fortified villages and granaries
Rammed earth and stone, several storeys, guarded stores: the architecture of permanent homes.
