Skip to content
SAGHRO

Guided tours · 5 steps

The voices of the Aït Atta

Timnaḍin, war poetry, language and transmission.

Amber (copal) necklace, Aït Atta — Musée Salies (Bagnères-de-Bigorre), collection Afrique du Nord, CC BY-SA 4.0

  1. Step 1 · Dossier

    Voices of the Saghro: Timnaḍin

    Very short sung pieces, improvised at celebrations and gatherings, voicing love, absence, criticism and memory. Every text shown here comes from a published source, quoted briefly, with its context and date.

    Open

  2. Step 2 · Dossier

    Poetry in the face of war: Memory of the Ait Atta

    What poetry has kept of the fighting of the conquest, and what we cannot yet attest. No text is attributed to 1933 without proof.

    Open

  3. Step 3 · Topic

    Telling the conquest: poetry under the bombs

    Amazigh poems from the Central Atlas, collected after the conquest, name the aeroplane, the cannon and the disaster.

    Open

  4. Step 4 · Topic

    Dress, jewellery and language

    White turban and beard for men, indigo veils and silver for women, a variety of Tamazight.

    Open

  5. Step 5 · Topic

    Reading colonial sources

    Officers and ethnographers described the Aït Atta in order to govern them: their texts remain indispensable, provided one knows where they speak from.

    Open