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The original inhabitants of Mauritania were the Bafour, presumably a Mande ethnic group, connected to the contemporary Arabized minor social group of Imraguen ("fishermen") on the Atlantic coast.
Western Sahara is a disputed territory on the northwest coast of Africa. About 20% of the territory is controlled by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR); the remaining 80% of the territory is occupied and administered by neighboring Morocco. It has a surface area of 266,000 square kilometres (103,000 sq mi). It is the second most sparsely populated country in the world and the most sparsely populated in Africa, mainly consisting of desert flatlands. The population is estimated at just over 500,000, of which nearly 40% live in Morocco-controlled Laayoune, the largest city in Western Sahara.
The history of Western Sahara can be traced back to the times of Carthaginian explorer Hanno the Navigator in the 5th century BC. Though few historical records are left from that period, Western Sahara's modern history has its roots linked to some nomadic groups such as the Sanhaja group, and the introduction of Islam and the Arabic language at the end of the 8th century AD.
Beni Ḥassan is a Bedouin Arab tribe which inhabits Western Sahara, Mauritania, Morocco and Algeria. It is one of the four sub-tribes of the Beni Maqil who emigrated in the 11th century from South Arabia to the Maghreb with the Bani Hilal and Banu Sulaym Arab tribes. In the 13th century, they took the Sanhaja territories in the southwest of the Sahara. In Morocco, they first settled, alongside their Maqil relatives, in the area between Tadla and the Moulouya River. The Sous Almohad governor called upon them for help against a rebellion in the Sous, and they resettled in and around that region. They later moved to Mauritania, and from the 16th century onwards, they managed to push back all black Mauritanians southwards to the Senegal Valley river. The Beni Hassan and other warrior Arab tribes dominated the Sanhaja Berber tribes of the area after the Char Bouba war of the 17th century. As a result, Arabs became the dominant ethnic group in Western Sahara and Mauretania. The Bani Hassan dialect of Arabic became used in the region and is still spoken, in the form of Hassaniya Arabic. The hierarchy established by the Beni Hassan tribe gave Mauritania much of its sociological character. That ideology has led to oppression, discrimination and even enslavement of other groups in Mauritania.
The Sahrawis, or Sahrawi people, are an ethnic group and nation native to the western part of the Sahara desert, which includes the Western Sahara, southern Morocco, much of Mauritania, and along the southwestern border of Algeria. They are of mixed Hassani Arab and Sanhaji Berber descent, as well as Sub-Saharan African and other indigenous populations.
The people of Western Sahara speak the Ḥassānīya dialect of Arabic, also spoken in northern Mauritania, and Spanish. They are of mixed Arab, African, many consider themselves to be Arab. Most claim that they descend from the tribe called Beni Hassan, an Arab tribe, who immigrated to the Western Saharan desert in the 14th century. The Sahrawis are Muslims of the Sunni sect and the Maliki law school. Their interpretation of Islam has traditionally being quite liberal and adapted to nomad life.
The term Djema'a can refer to two things in a Western Sahara context.
The Sanhaja were once one of the largest Berber tribal confederations, along with the Zanata and Masmuda confederations. Many tribes in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, Tunisia and Western Sahara bore and still carry this ethnonym, especially in its Berber form. Other names for the population include Zenaga, Znaga, Sanhája, Sanhâdja and Senhaja.
The Haratin, also spelled Haratine or Harratin, are an ethnic group found in western Sahel and southwestern Maghreb. The Haratin are mostly found in modern Mauritania, Morocco, Western Sahara, and Algeria. In Tunisia and Libya, they are referred to as Shwashin.
The Reguibat is a Sahrawi tribal confederation of mixed Arab and Sanhaja Berber origins. The Reguibat speak Hassaniya Arabic, and are Arab in culture. They claim descent from Sidi Ahmed al-Reguibi, an Arab Islamic preacher from Beni Hassan who settled in Saguia el-Hamra in 1503. They also believe that they are, through him, a chorfa tribe, i.e. descendants of Muhammad. Religiously, they belong to the Maliki school of Sunni Islam. Their population in 1996 exceeded 100,000 people.
The Oulad Delim are a Bedouin Sahrawi tribe of Arab descent which originated in Yemen. They are descended from Delim bin Hassan, who was from the Ma'qili tribe of Beni Hassan which settled in the Sahara in the 12th century. They were formerly considered of Hassane status i.e. part of the ruling warrior stratum. The Oulad Delim speak Hassaniya Arabic, a Bedouin dialect which is very close to pure classical Arabic. They traditionally live in the southern regions of Western Sahara, especially around the city of Dakhla. They are also found in Morocco in the region of Rabat, Marrakech, Sidi Kacem and El Jadida, where their ancestors received lands from the Moroccan sultans for their participation in warfare, as a Guich tribe, as well as in Mauritania in the region between Nouadhibou and Idjil.
The Tekna is a semi-nomadic Sahrawi tribal confederation of mixed Arab and Lamta Sanhaja Berber origins. Its constituents today inhabit southern Morocco, northern Western Sahara and western Algeria, but traditionally with wider migration routes. Nowadays, its population is estimated to be around 709,000.
Sidi Ahmed al-Rgibi was an Arab Sahrawi Islamic preacher and political leader from Beni Hassan tribe, in the tribal areas of the north-western Sahara desert in the 16th century. He was born in 1590 in El Kharaouiaa. He was considered a holy man and an idrissid, or descendant of Muhammad. He died at the age of 75.
The Char Bouba war, also known as the Mauritanian Thirty Years' War or the Marabout War, took place between 1644 and 1677 in the tribal areas of what is today Mauritania and Western Sahara as well as in the Senegal river valley. It was fought between the Sanhadja Berber tribes and Muslim populations in the river valley, led by Lamtuna Imam Nasr ad-Din, on one hand; and the Maqil Arab immigrant tribes, foremost of which was the Beni Hassan, as well as the traditional aristocracies of the Wolof states on the other, supported by the French.
The horma was a tribute paid by subservient tribes to their protectors in traditional Sahrawi-Moorish society in today's Mauritania and Western Sahara in North Africa. The powerful Hassane warrior tribes would extract it from low-caste Znaga tribes, where each member was forced to personally pay an overlord in the dominant tribe. The forms and rates of horma varied throughout the region and through history, and was normally dependent on the relations of strength between the tribes involved. It could be paid in cattle, goods or services.
The mallemin were a professional caste of blacksmiths and metalworkers within Hassaniya Arab society, Mauritania, southern Morocco and Western Sahara and. They held a low place on the social ladder, but their services were used by all tribes.
The Emirate of Trarza was a precolonial state in what is today southwest Mauritania. It has survived as a traditional confederation of semi-nomadic people to the present day. Its name is shared with the modern Region of Trarza. The population, a mixture of Berber tribes, had been there for a long time before being conquered in the 11th century by Hassaniya Arabic speakers from the north. Europeans later called these people Moors/Maures, and thus have titled this group "the Trarza Moors".
Precolonial Mauritania, lying next to the Atlantic coast at the western edge of the Sahara Desert, received and assimilated into its complex society many waves of Saharan migrants and conquerors.
Mauritania, officially the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, is a sovereign country in Northwest Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Western Sahara to the north and northwest, Algeria to the northeast, Mali to the east and southeast, and Senegal to the southwest. By land area, Mauritania is the 11th-largest country in Africa and the 28th-largest in the world, and 90% of its territory is situated in the Sahara. Most of its population of approximately 4.3 million lives in the temperate south of the country, with roughly one-third concentrated in the capital and largest city, Nouakchott, located on the Atlantic coast.
The Zawaya are tribes in the southern Sahara who have traditionally followed a deeply religious way of life. They accepted a subordinate position to the warrior tribes, whether Arab or Berber, who had little interest in Islam. The Zawaya introduced Sufi brotherhoods to the black populations south of the Sahara. The jihad movements of the Fula people in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have their origins with the Zawaya. Today the Zawaya are one of the two noble castes of Mauritania.
References
- ↑ "Archived copy". lcweb2.loc.gov. Archived from the original on 30 October 2004. Retrieved 13 January 2022.
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